Monthly Archives: June 2025

Famous Last Words

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Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

“I’m sure five days with an infuser pump will be OK. I’m going to hang it on the bed head and see how it goes”

I may have spoken a little too soon. The hanging the pump on the bedhead worked, in general, quite well.  However, as a plan it does require a certain amount of concentration. There were quite a few typos in my last post, so you may be able to deduce that I wasn’t concentrating well, and that an anecdote is about to be launched on the world.

Imagine it’s 4am, you need the bathroom (again), it’s half light . . .

(This is the reality of life as an older man, my dreams of yachts, sports cars and trophy wives have all been replaced with a genuine desire to simply sleep through the night.)

Then, as your left arm suddenly jerks , and your entire body judders to a halt, you realise the pump is still hanging on the bedhead. This can be even worse when they change the arm for the cannula, as all your coping strategies change sides.

Generally I am OK in the night, but in the day (when I hang the pump from my reading lamp) I am often thinking of other things as I walk away. The reading lamp has fallen over several times but is till working.

Bangor Pier – that woman seems to be following me (Photos are just random . . .)

I am currently grey. Apart from my hair. I shaved that off a few mornings ago.  While I was doing that I noticed my skin is grey and my eyes were grey – the whites that is, the iris is normally grey.  To be honest, I was expecting them to be bloodshot. Grey was a bit of a shock.

The trips to hospital have generally been uneventful. A bit of waiting, some measurements, a lot more waiting.  It tends to take about 45 minutes on average. I could get it down to ten minutes. The expiry date on the drugs is years off so you could get a load racked up the fridge. When the patient comes in, take them through, do the temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and that oxygen thing with the finger tip. Nod wisely, fill in the paperwork. Check the cannula, connect the pump, rewrap and done. ten minutes easy. If the cannula has closed up you need to insert a new one, but even that needn’t take too long.

They have changed my cannula several times over the last four days – once because it had started leaking (though it was still working) once because it blocked  blocked and once because they rewrapped a perfectly good cannula badly and I had to go back, in pain, two hours after the insertion. The swelling meant they had to remove it and try the other arm.

I don’t really enjoy cannulas.

I also think that anyone who inserts one should be made to wear one for a week so they get the feel of it. I made that suggestion on the comments form this morning. I also said that the section that recorded my age, sexuality and religion was irrelevant to my care and they would be better concentrating on providing better parking. Julia says I’m getting better.

January Afternoon – Country Park

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back.

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A couple of days ago I started to shiver violently. I managed to fight it off with paracetamol  and sleep and Wednesday was fine. At 4am this morning I woke, shivering. I pulled a blanket over me and went back to sleep. When I woke, an hour later, it was clear that I needed help and at 6.30 am I surprised one of the neighbours as she put her bin out and took the dog for a walk, waving from my trolley as I was, once again,  loaded into the back of an ambulance.

I had breakfast in hospital (yoghurt), had blood taken, was given antibiotics via a cannula and by 1.00 was sitting in the sun as my sister came to collect me. I am typing awkwardly as I have an infuser pump hanging round my neck and it keeps finding new ways of inconveniencing me.

Tomorrow I will go back for a newly loaded pump And the day after, and the day after . . . Five days, in fact, and on the 6th day I go to see a doctor for assessment. Meanwhile, I am also taking large doses of oral antibiotics too. They are determined to get rid on the infection this time.

In a minute, I will go yo bed and see how ell I can sleep with a pump, several yards of tubing and a cannula. I’ve slept with a catheter for 14 weeks, so I’m sure five days with an infuser pump will be OK. I’m going to hang it on the bed head and see how it goes.

Meanwhile, Number Two Son had racoons on his balcony> He lives several floors up in Toronto, but they currently have scaffolding up on the building and the raccoons were using this to explore the balconies, which were now in reach.

Good Intentions, a Silver Cigarette Case and some Carrot Trivia

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That knocking sound you can hear is one more nail in the coffin of my good intentions. I’m not sure how long it’s been since my last post, but it’s a lot longer than I meant it to be.

In that time I have written the story of Lieutenant Ken Revis MBE, the bomb disposal officer who was blinded when a group of mines went off when he was “delousing” the piers at Brighton. It’s pretty much the same story that I published here a few years ago, but I have some extra information.

It seems that the silver cigarette case I have, was not given by Lt Revis to his Sergeant, it was given by the people of Patcham. They gave a cigarette case to Sgt Woodrow and a silver cup to Revis, all the others were given silver identity discs. I suspect the gifts were dictated by what they could find locally to re-use. The book “Blinding Flash”, which I bought recently, gives the details.

The bomb fell close to a house and though it only went about twelve feet down, took four days to dig out and make safe. The aircraft that appears to have dropped it (and I confess I haven’t yet tied this up 100%) was shot down, killing all the crew. There don’t appear to have been any other planes shot down at the same time, ut as I say, I haven’t yet tied it up 100%. I may never do. But t5hen, until last week I didn’t know someone had written a biography of Lt Revis.

The men were given their gifts when they attended Patcham Church the weekend after they defused the bomb.

I’ve also done a piece on carrots in wartime. That was a nicer one to do – nobody died and nobody was injured. One or two may have turned orange, but that’s a risk you take with vegetables.  Did you know there was a plot to feed oestrogen to Hitler by injecting his carrots. No, that’s not a euphemism, the Office of Strategic Services (an American organisation that later became the CIA) developed a plan to bribe Hitler’s gardener to inject oestrogen into carrots. The plan was that he would either become a gentler person and stop the war, or that he would grow man boobs and his moustache would fall out, thus making the German people lose respect for him. It does not appear to have worked, tough when you look at the state of Herman Göring in later photos you have to wonder if he was the one nibbling the carrots.

They had a similar plan later for contaminating Castro’s boots with thallium, which would, they hoped, make his beard fall out and make him less capable of leading Cuba.

And no, carrots don’t help you see in the dark unless you are deficient in Vitamin A.

“A Vexatious Anachronism”

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Reprinted from the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. 12 April 2025

Gainsborough Toll Bridge – “A Vexatious Anachronism”

The top picture shows the opening of Gainsborough Bridge in its new existence as a free bridge. The grinning bloke on the left, with cap and satchel, is now out of a job.

This 38mm white metal medallion commemorates the freeing of Gainsborough Bridge from tolls in 1932. Tolls were, and still are, a contentious subject for road users. In 1930 there were 88 Toll Bridges (24 being on A Roads) and 55 Toll Bars in England. The newspaper article which provided this information also provided the title, as the reporter was clearly not in favour of tolls. One example he gave was a man who paid £30 a year in tolls – twice the cost of his car tax. Apart from the cost, people also objected to the delays and congestion, and the effect some tolls had on the education of children from poor families, who had to pay pedestrian tolls to go to school.. Today we have around 23 toll roads and bridges in the UK, some being used to finance major new projects and some being Victorian survivals.

The M6 Toll motorway, in case you are interested, has 2.5 million pulped Mills & Boon novels incorporated into the tarmac. This helps with reducing wear and absorbing sound. The books were not chosen with any idea of literary criticism in mind – it’s just that they are printed in such great quantities that there is a large supply of returned and damaged books.

The purchase of Gainsborough Bridge from the company that operated it took many years. There were numerous discussions and false starts noted from at least 1882 until 1912, when a price of £35,000 was offered. It was a good business and the owners were not keen on selling. They had the only bridge between Dunham (which is still a toll bridge today) and the Humber and it was protected by the Gainsborough Bridge Act ,which prevented rival bridges and ferry services.

On the other hand, local tradesmen wanted to free the bridge from tolls as they could see great benefits from unrestricted access.

In 1923 the councils of Nottinghamshire, Lindsey (one of the ancient divisions of Lincolnshire) and Gainsborough, agreed to seek a grant from the Ministry of Transport (using new legislation passed to encourage this sort of scheme) and have a price set by arbitration. Profits from tolls were over £7,000 in that year, and rising steadily. A new bridge, outside the area of monopoly would have cost about £80,000 but Nottinghamshire County Council would not fund the extra road building to connect the bridge to the existing roads. A tunnel was also suggested, but was too expensive.

The bridge was eventually purchased on 31 October 1927, as noted on the medallion, for £130,000 (half of which was paid by the Government). The councils provided the other half of the cost. Pedestrians and cyclists were freed from all tolls and other users continued paying at a reduced rate, with the intention of raising a quarter of the purchase price by continuing tolls for up to seven years.

Eventually, having raised the required money, the joint committee declared the bridge to be free from tolls. The last man to pay a toll was P. J. Pybus, Minister of Transport, who paid his toll with a coin of George III in recognition of the age of the bridge – opened in 1771, and retained his ticket as a souvenir, before declaring the bridge open. Below is a picture of the last toll being paid.

 

Grandparents!

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Yellow flowers in need of identification

Well, despite all the difficulties of the past few weeks we managed to hang in there long enough to become grandparents. It was slightly sooner than we had been expecting but everything was well-managed and mother and baby are doing well.  Despite my advice, Number Two Son was present at the birth and will doubtless be scarred for life. I’m not the greatest father and husband, I admit, but I am a good retailer and it’s important to keep the shop open, as I told Julia when avoiding being present at either birth.

It’s a boy, in case I hadn’t mentioned it before, and he was just short of 6lbs, which is a smaller than average for babies in our family, but plenty big enough if you are the one having to give birth.

Bean flowers

I think that’s all you need to know. It’s much more than all my male readers will want to know. They all stopped reading at “grandparents”, but I know my female readers will want to know the extra details. I remember the trouble I got into after the birth of the two boys when I didn’t know the weights.

To be fair, it wasn’t as bad as the trouble I got into when I took one of them to A&E one night and had to ring Julia when the receptionist asked me “What’s his date of birth?” If you think I’m bad on parenting, I promise you I’m worse on dates.

I’m going to enjoy seeing Number Two Son struggle with parenthood. He caused me plenty of grief growing up and I’m going to enjoy watching him when the boot is on the other foot. I really must go on a diet to make sure I last that long.

Wild flowers

 

Gradual Recovery

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Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Not much news today. My reaction to the antibiotics seems to have passed and everything is going well again after two days of self-pity and misery. I’ve slept a lot and watched a lot of TV, though most of it was curtailed by me dropping off to sleep. I did do some reading of blogs this morning but after about half an hour I stopped as I felt tired. As I have so often told people – patience and rest. It’s so much easier to give advice than it is to take it. Soon I will be finished with antibiotics and hope this will have cured the problem. If not, I’m back to hospital at the first sign of problems, as I don’t want a repeat of last week.

Julia has been told that the scar is looking good. The doctor cleaned it up and removed a few remaining stitches. The pain she is experiencing is from the damage she did to the nerves and will probably fade in time, though it may persist. The internal lump will probably take about eight months to disappear. It’s not great news, but at least there is no major problem. I’ve just been telling her about the need for patience (see above). She doesn’t seem particularly grateful for my advice.

That’s about it.

The man who fixed the fence last week came and fixed the  rest of the fence. When you look at it, you ask yourself what the tenant and the letting agent were doing. It’s clearly been in a bad state for quite a while and should have been fixed years ago. Unfortunately, as you can see from the rest of the garden, the tenant did the bare minimum in the garden. And as we learnt from looking at the state of the bungalow after taking possession, the agents had been doing nothing but charging fees. They certainly hadn’t been checking the tenant was taking proper care of the place.

However, it’s all water under the bridge and there is nothing I can do about it now apart from pay another bill. That seems to be the story of moving house. Even after six months we are still finding things to fix.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Back to Writing Matters

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I’ve now made lunch (pea soup and a sandwich using sliced Polish sausage I meant to use during the week) and had a lie down. It turned out to be a restorative nap of just over an hour, after which I answered comments. Thank you for your good wishes. I will pass them o to Julia too.

Now it is time to get down to writing about writing.

Last month’s planned output was not huge, and I managed to do most of it. I was feeling a little rough towards the end and did allow one deadline to slip by. I also failed to look for more things to do. Obviously I’m a little disappointed in myself for slacking off, but I still managed six submissions. One is a competition entry, which will most likely disappear without trace. Two have already been accepted, which was good news to a man stuck in hospital. Three others are in the grip of an editorial committee. I’m expecting poor results there because it’s a new arrangement and because when things change I usually do worse than under the previous system. It’s just how things are.

Anyway, it will be two from six, even if the worst happens, and when I was beginning that would have seemed like a fine result.

I’ve also been asked for permission to quote a poem of mine as a prompt in part of a series of articles someone is doing. That feels quite good.

In June I have eleven submissions to make.  I already have one acceptance because I was asked to let someone roll a poem forward. I’m always happy to do that. It feels good and it saves time later. I had better get on with some work next week.

That is the first time such a thing has happened, and in a second new first, one of the members of the  Peterborough Military History Group has asked to reprint something I wrote for the group in another local publication.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe a man with fine facial hair is reading a book . . .

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

A Life Without Toast

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The starting point for today’s post is that everything is going well.

I managed to take my antibiotics without mishap (yes, although I haven’t written about it yet, I even had a problem with antibiotics on my return from hospital), am well-rested, and am looking forward to a breakfast of scrambled eggs. I’d bee looking forwards to a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast even more, but one of the first casualties in my war on weight is toast. It’s always been a target, but it has to be eliminated ruthlessly. My previous successful attempts at weight loss have not been through fancy diets, just through simple stuff.

A couple of years ago I stopped having toast at breakfast and cut down to one sandwich at lunchtime. Even without exercise, I managed a small but steady weight loss. Part of my problem is that I used to have active days featuring a lot of walking and lifting and, as I became more managerial (as in chair and car-based) I carried on with the calories and reduced the burning. Same for leisure. I reduced the walking and increased the TV. But mentally, I didn’t make the shift.

Same when I gave up smoking. I felt my metabolism shift, but I didn’t alter my intake.

So, when you strip away all the Hollywood glamour, the miracle cures, the avocados and the steaks, you are left with the truth. If you want to lose weight you have to burn more calories than you eat.

And if you can’t walk far you are going to have to achieve the rebalancing by eating a lot less. That’s why targeting bread is always good – it also cuts out the cheese, the McDonalds and the snacks.

It’s a bleak picture of a spartan retirement, but after the last few days I’ve had to ask myself a few questions about how I want the rest of my life to be, and that starts with a very simple question – long or short? I can work on the details later.

Meanwhile, whilst hovering round Death’s garden gate recently (it’s the one where you enter and dawdle along Death’s garden path until you actually reach Death’s Door) I had to make an official decision for medical purposes. I went for resuscitation, partly because it’s a new spelling to learn, and partly because my bed was in the corridor outside the resuscitation room, which seemed like a sign. Or a hint.

And that, in my weakened state, is enough for now.

Quinoa Salad – health on a plate

Pictures of salad are harder to find than pictures of fish and chips or cake.  I will let yuo draw your own conclusions.

Catching Up – In Sickness and in Health

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Bumble bee on bramble flowers – Sherwood Forest

First things first – Julia is still not well. A few of the dissolving stitches have now come out, but they should have done that weeks ago. The car continues to pull, though it is now dry. She has a bit of trouble breathing. However, we are hoping that the visit to the outpatient’s clinic early next week will give her some answers and a definite course of action.

Meanwhile, she had another visit to A&E on Sunday night (from 6pm to 6pm), but this time travelled in style as we were conveyed by ambulance.

This time, though, it wasn’t her who was ill, it was me.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Basically, as she pointed out, she married an idiot. And I can’t dispute that. I started with a bit of a fever on Friday and Saturday, fighting it off with Paracetamol and sleep. It seemed to work, but on Sunday it came back with a vengeance. Eventually, after being told to go to A&E by someone Julia rang on  a helpline, I refused and went to bed. When she woke me again, I was incoherent and couldn’t actually stand. We knew what it was, because  I’ve had it before. I’ve also been told off by the doctor before. You can’t fight off sepsis with cold cures.

This time it really did a job on me and though we caught it quickly, I should have caught it a lot quicker. If I had, I might not have had to spend four nights in hospital.

Wild flowers

I will tell you about it later. I’ve been at the computer for an hour and am now tired and need to go to sleep. Yes, I’m that weak. On Monday I couldn’t lift a puzzle magazine. On Tuesday  I couldn’t finish a puzzle. On Wednesday they started making more sense and I was getting quite good. By Thursday I was bored of puzzle mags but still lacked the concentration to read a book. I actually ordered groceries online using my phone, but could only manage to do about a third of it before breaking off for a nap.

After returning home I have chatted, dozed, watched TV, eaten cheese on toast and tried catching up on my correspondence. Now, defeated again, I am off to bed.

More stories tomorrow.

Pigs and flowers