The Sturdy Soapbox

I wondered what happened to JR Ewing

I do wonder...

Let's face it.  Most mothers in the animal kingdom, can recognise their offspring by smell, let alone what they look like.

I mention this, only because Anita spent the morning at RAF Cranwell photographing a completely different girl, thinking it was her daughter Rebecca.

Fortunately, the RAF put out a DVD of the event, so we'll be able to see Rebecca marching and being officially recognised as an officer.

Anita doesn't think she got a decent picture of the Queen either, as she was so far away.  I saw a short piece on BBC news of her and apparently Rebecca was in the shot too.  I did look, but in their uniforms, they all look the same to me and obviously to Anita also !

The Queen did take lunch in the same room as everyone else, so Anita can return to work on Monday and boast she had lunch with Her Majesty.  Woo Hoo.

A day out with The Queen

My  niece Rebecca graduates as a fully fledged officer in the RAF today.

There's going to be a lot of marching, handshaking and a flypast of some jets to mark the occasion, which as well as being attended by my brother and Anita, will also see HM The Queen in attendance.

I'm very jealous of my brother getting to a social event in the same company as her Maj.  Apart from a blur as her motorcade whizzed past our school when I was five, I've only ever seen her on television.

Anita is under pain of death not to return without a photo of the sovereign for me.  If she pulls it off, I shall post it here.

The rabbit punch of bodily protest

Things are improving.  I can get up the stairs now without resting part way (though I am whacked by the time I get to the top).

Being naturally impatient, I overdid things a bit on Friday, when I walked about 150 yards to the pharmacy to get pills.  Part way back  on the way home, it felt like 150 miles.

Then, yesterday, I was just pottering in the kitchen and I got a real hard pain in my side.  Fortunately this eased when I sat down. 

On the good side, I am sleeping well and without medication.  All I need to do, is to recognise when my body is protesting that I'm doing too much.

Take it easy ?  I can do that !

I can't open it either !

One of the regular must reads for me, is Thoroughly Modern Millie, a hilarious account of life written by Millie Garfield.

In addition to her written posts, you will find she video posts on her daily challenges with modern packaging and these posts are now entitled the I can't open it series.

In recent weeks, I have found myself the victim of modern packaging.

A couple of weeks before my big operation, I had an overnight stay in hospital for a procedure to regulate my heartbeat and therefore make me strong enough for the big slice and dice job.

The procedure involved my being sedated rather than knocked out and I recall when I came to on the ward, someone had kindly left me a beef sandwich, one of those in the triangular plastic package.

I picked it up, but lacked the strength and the motor skills to actually open it.  I fell asleep and when I woke up again, ready for another hack at it, someone had taken it away.

Last week, I took into hospital a small tub of pump action liquid soap.  I read the instructions carefully on how to disengage the pump bit so it would squirt, yet no matter how closely I followed the directions, the thing just spun round hopelessly, failed to squirt soap and I finally had to remove the whole pump mechanism and pour the soap from the bottle neck.

Wally the Welder bought me a pack of mints in a trendy metal container.  I could see it had a sort of flip top, but I failed to notice the microscopic covering of plastic which kept the whole container sealed.

It took me twenty minutes to get into that container of mints.

So Millie, you are not alone in your battles against modern packaging !

Can't you tell summer's on the way

Bank holiday weekend and it seems all the posse are off for the weekend.

Spoke to Bob the Butcher and as soon as he finishes tomorrow, he's off to Cornwall.  OBC is off down his boat with Val, but I understand they'll be scrubbing and cleaning in readiness for when they take it from its winter moorings.

Pat's forgotten what her son Richard looks like, so she's taking the welder down to Bournemouth, where no doubt Wally will get sand between his toes.  Me, I'm not jealous.  It's nice to be back home.

First night in my own bed

Last night, I spent the first night in my own bed in over two weeks.

I can promise you, hospital beds are far from comfortable and I still have a numb bum to prove it. 

I wasn't that comfortable at my brothers and when I was sleeping downstairs in a room they prepared for me to allow me to stay on the flat, I was scared to turn over in bed, because Charlie the psychopath would start barking.

I moved up to Rebecca's room which was more comfortable, but I don't know about you, I only tend to sleep properly in my own bed.

Admittedly, I slept better last night, but I am up with the sparrow fart.  My surgery scar is really letting me know it is there.  Not only is it itching, but every so often you get a jolt like someone's stuck a dart in you.  It's part of the healing process.  Big wuss that I am, I've only taken a look at it twice, but others tell me the healing process is going well.  When I was in hospital, one of the nurses told me the bruises matched my top.  My top happened to be a rusty orange colour !

I'm girding my loins for a relaxing bank holiday weekend.  I've an Asda delivery coming and OBC is going to drop me some meat in from Bob the Butcher.  Anita sent me on my way yesterday, with half a bag of Jersey Royal potatoes, so I shall be wanting for little this weekend.

She also gave me some leftover home made pizza which was very good indeed.

Coming home will allow me to get back into some of my routines, though I won't be getting the 6:30 bus up to Bob's tomorrow morning or walking up over church hill to visit Asda.

Looks like a nice sunny day ahead and the weather is forecast good for weekend.  My brother is off to his caravan which is located somewhere down in the Severn Valley.  I wonder if he plans to go there with the top down ?

You only get wet if you're going under 30 miles per hour

But of course, my brother had not realised that traffic lights are often red and if you are driving a rag top in the pouring bloody rain and you encounter a set (or several as was our fate), everyone gets a right bloody soaking.

Prior to this, we'd been out into the Shropshire countryside, to a pub called The Bell in a tiny village called Tong.

Shropshire is one of those counties people rarely talk about, yet it happens to be one of my favourites.  I'm biased of course, because in the sixties, I went to school there and it was one of the happiest times of my life, because Teagues Bridge was a superb school.

Shropshire is a lovely green county and neighbours Wales.  As well as hosting towns like Shrewsbury, Ludlow and Bridgnorth, you'll find lots of little villages with names like Wem, Little Wenlock and Much Wenlock.

I was talking to my sister a while ago, who lives in a big house with a tennis court and swimming pool down in Cambrigeshire.  She and her hub would like to retun to Shropshire, but property prices need to harden first.  It was she I lived with when I went to school there.  When she married, she bought a house in Wombridge Road, Trench Lock.  My mum was in hospital for a long time, so I spent a good six months there.

Our journey to the Bell, was dry but cold.  Anita was frozen stiff by the time she got there.  She was less than impressed when my brother insisted the top go down for the return journey, especially when it started to rain quite heavily.

She did her best to protect herself against the storm, zipping herself into a hooded rain jacket, all you could see of her was a small circle of face.  Then she put on her sunglasses, because she was complaining the rain was hitting her in the face so hard it hurt her eyes.

Bro was totally oblivious to her protests and jubilantly proclaimed we'd outrun the storm.  Of course, as we came back closer to where they live, the sets of traffic lights become more frequent and of course they were all red and the rain caught up with us at each set.

Finally, about a mile from home, it was so heavy, he had to admit defeat and put up the top.

Apart from getting soaked, I really enjoyed our little trip to the countryside.

Getting stronger each day

Monday, I had to return to the hospital so they could check my warfarin levels.  I was greeted on the ward where I was looked after, like an old friend.  Sister Verona told me she thought I looked pale, so she ordered a full blood rather than just the INR for warfarin.  When I called back for the results in the afternoon, my platlet count was up, suggesting I may be coming down with an infection, but this has been ruled out by the GP.

The fuss I was made of by the med staff, was better than any medicine I can tell you.  To date, I am alright on the flat for a while, but stairs are still quite a challenge.  My brother dropped me off at home for 5 hours on Monday and Tuesday and I was able to potter about.  I stayed to my lower floor, no need to go upstairs.

I am back at my local hospital tomorrow for yet other INR and then I am going home for the weekend.  I'm having an Asda delivery on Friday and OBC is going to drop some meat off from Bob the Butcher.  It will be nice to be home again.

Been having nice meals over here in Wolverhampton.  Over the weekend, Anita made a cracking Lancashire hot pot, then on Sunday, we were taken out to lunch by my nephew Harry (because it's Anita's birthday on Sunday).  We ended up at Wally the Welder's local, which has a good reputation for food and I can give you a thumbs up on that one.  The mashed potatoes, roasties and yorkshire pudding were freshly made, not frozen or instant.  I had a profiterole and ice cream pudding, which was just criminally good !

Tonight, it's belly pork and my favourite Jersey Royal potatoes, which are now in season (for a few more weeks).  happy to say, there'll be a bag of Royals in my Asda delivery on Friday).

Both the hospital people and my GP are delighted with my recovery as am I.  The scar looks more like a month old than two weeks (which it will be on Thursday).  I'm told you heal from the outside inwards, which is why everyone has been impressing on me not to overdo anything, especially lifting stuff.

After the experience of hospital and the surgery, I have no intention of ending back up there before my time, so be assured, I am taking it very easy indeed.  I'm doing my breathing exercises and my stretching and I take note that my body warns me, by making me tired very suddenly.

Wally the Welder told Pat (who's a nurse), that my SAT was down (whatever that was, because I never told him that).  I had her on the phone concerned, because the closest thing she could think of was my blood oxygen saturation.  Moral of the story - don't trust a welder to relay medical information.

Do remember, this is the guy who's laptop is a Tobushi, who conncects to the web via a Mo Down and who feels the urge to De Rag his hard drive on a regular basis...  So yes Wally, my SAT is alright thanks.

Mmm, chocolate

I want to send the two nursing departments who looked after me, something very special as thanks for their work.  I found a superb site where you pick and drop the choccies into the box and they do the rest.

Now I need some tissues to wipe the monitor down.  I am a pushover for good chocolate (but you have to look for good chocolate).  For example, Lidl, the quirky German cut price supermarket do a 60 percent cocoa dark bar called  Amazonas which defies description and even at their low prices, it is a pound a bar, but knocks spots off some of the big names in chocolate.

So, being a bit of a chocolate snob, I didn't want just to send a couple of boxes of Cadburys Roses, when you consider the work that went into getting me off a ventilator and back in front of my keyboard in 7 days.  I'm taking the angle, that even angels need to be decadent once in a while, so I shall over the weekend be putting together one of these personally selections for the ICU team and the ward team who treated me so well.

I did look at the disgracefully opulent  La maison du Chocolat, but by the time they'd added VAT and postage to the order it almost doubled the cost and there would have been very little choccy in the boxes.

Channie has been to the New york La Maison and told me of her experiences quaffing dark liquid chocolate.  there are some countries where you could be arrested for such debauchery.

The site I chose is www.kennedyschocolates.co.uk  If you decide to visit, take some tissues to wipe your screen down afterwards.

www.lamaisonduchocolat.co.uk  This is a pretty sexy site if you're a choccy lover.

Of course if you are on a budget and want a quick opulent fix, try this.

Go to Asda and buy a tub of their own brand cocoa.  Pour a mug full of milk (full fat or whatever) into a jug and heat it to below boiling temp in the microwave.  Drop in 3 teaspoons of Asda cocoa and sweeten to your taste (I use Splenda).  Then, get one of those electric hand blenders and zap the mix for thirty seconds getting some air into the mixture.  Pour into your biggest, most favourite mug (mine's a big one with Daleks on) and enjoy ten minutes or so of liquid filth.  And here in England, they can't touch you for it !