Shake, rattle 'n' roll

My doctor wonders why I always resist having new drugs added to my collection. He thinks it's because I believe my body is a temple, frankly it's because I lack the kitchen space. I have a whole kitchen drawer given over to storing the blessed things, that's not to mention the drawer next my bed for the nighttime drugs or the salad drawer in the fridge full of stuff that requires refrigeration.


Every morning whilst assembling my assortment of medical miracles I have a scene from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert go through my head. It's the one where Bernadette and Mitzy are sitting having breakfast at a picnic table in the middle of the Australian outback. Something of a surreal scene anyway but then you see what's in Bernadette's bowl - it's full of pills and she's coyly downing them one by one.

Finally it has happened to me ...

The Red Planet

No-one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that Martian affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No-one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.


Interesting tidbit from BBC news http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6363243.stm

A wink and a curtsey to H.G. Wells and Jeff Wayne

Driving miss crazy

What is it with motorists today? Are they hungover on cheap pink champagne? Overcome by the fumes of a googoplex of red roses? High on serotonin and feeling invincible after scoffing all those chocolates?

I have had so much bad car karma today it's unbelievable. Maybe that should read good car karma as I'm still here tapping away to tell you about it. I've been cut up on roundabouts, overtaken on bends, had motorized cherry pickers pull out in front of me at the cheek rippling speed of 3 mph and then stop dead leaving me stranded blocking a roundabout.

The dialysis unit is tacked on the back of the main hospital and is accessible down a little side road which forms a T junction with the main access road down the side of the hospital. People park down the entire length of this road which makes it rather narrow - they park there as the main car parks are run by people with wooden legs and patches over their eyes clonking about going "Arrrrgh!" all the time ... but that's the NHS for you you might get free treatment but you're gonna need a private nose job after paying through it for all the parking.

Anyway whenever I come out of the dialysis access road I always pause behind the first parked car on the main road to allow anyone coming up the road to come through. Today there was a Bedford-type van coming up and there definitely wasn't room for both of us to pass so discretion being the better part of valour I let him come up.

He indicated right to come into the little road that I had just left and stopped effectively blocking me in. Never mind a wave of thanks or anything, his mate in the passenger seat started jabbing his finger in the direction of their turn - ug ug ug ug ug ug jab jab jab jab - he evidently thought they didn't have enough room to get through but for smeg's sake they were driving a Bedford van not the frickin' QE2. Duuuuuhhh until you move I can't get out you twat.

Ooooh ripe Anglo Saxon expletives!!

Whole lotta love

I'm rather proud of the fact that my husband doesn't buy into Hallmark Day, I mean Valentine's Day. I'm rather glad that he won't be coming home tonight looking sheepish and clutching a manky bunch of roses from the garage down the road - just because he felt he had to.

He shows his affection for me in other more practical ways throughout the year. Getting up early to defrost my car, for example, when I have to leave the house an hour before he does or warming my gloves on the radiator on a frosty morning mean far more to me than a heart shaped box of chocolates.

Putting my cynicism to one side I wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day - love to all.

A little stiff

Viagra goes on sale over the counter at Boots tomorrow - 50 quid is a little hard er, to swallow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6351171.stm

A star is born

For all his newly acquired Dougalphiles out there (and I swore to myself that this wasn't going to be a cat blog) here's the boy and his sister on their first night home.



Getting hairier (the cats that is, not the hired help)



Relaxing on the slave's pillow



Well it does say Cat on the box

Space cadet

Dougal, call sign 'Fluffbomb', sits comfortably on his bed of CJ's unmentionables but no matter how hard he concentrates he just can't make sense of the words in this book.

Food for thought

They look after us really well at the dialysis unit, we're fed and watered regularly throughout the treatment starting with tea & toast for breakfast, tea & biscuits at 10am and then sandwiches just before we leave.

Apparently some of our sandwiches have been disappearing somewhere between the kitchen and the unit, one of the theories postulated is that the porters might be pinching them and selling them (a jokey theory, not an actual accusation I should add for fear of being sued by an angry porter!).

Just imagine, a thriving black market for NHS sandwiches - who'd'a thunk it?

The Laminator

He arrived in a blinding ball of light, naked and beautiful. He turned and saw me open mouthed in astonishment, he strode down the hall towards me giving me the chance to admire him in his birthday suit which was tailored to perfection, hugging his every curve and muscle.

“Come with me if you want to live in a home free of dust mites and fleas burrowing into your carpets” he said

“Oh you’ve come to fit the new floor in the cloakroom?” I gasped

“Affirmative”

He is The Laminator

He was bad to the bone “Er, you might want to put some pants on unless you want your John Connor getting caught in the snap ‘n’ click joints” I said helpfully, half hoping that he would stay just as he was. He thought that over for a moment and said ominously “I’ll be back”.

A few moments later he returned carrying his arsenal of Homebase antiqued oak laminate boards. He looked so dangerous in his leather trousers and his black Ray Bans and dangerous he was as he blundered about in the windowless room whilst wearing sunglasses.

“Stick around” he grinned at me. “Wrong movie" I replied, "but OK I’ll just go and put the kettle on shall I?”

I barricaded myself in the kitchen and hunkered down at the kitchen table with my Cyberdyne laptop and a mug of PG Tips – I wanted to run a virus scan, my Skynet ISP was letting through far too much malicious logic for my liking.

In the next room I could hear a colossal battle going on as The Laminator fought with corners and pedestals and pipes, the rise and fall of the machines’ motors as they clashed with medium density fibreboard.

Eventually there was silence then a dusty figure burst through door, it was done, the Laminator had once more prevailed. He smiled a toothy grin and gave me a thumbs up as he retreated back down the hall “Hasta la vista, baby”

Pistils at dawn

I need to have a word with the man in charge of the weather. What are you thinking? Giving us warm weather in January and now ultra cold conditions?!

While I was out doing my rounds yesterday I spotted a daisy blooming in the grass, the laurels have bundles of new growth pushing up and my pieris has bright red new shoots on it. The temperature here this morning was -6C - all those poor plants lulled into a false sense of spring are going to have their little botanical nuts frozen off.

It's just not cricket.

The pursuit of happiness

As I hinted yesterday, I went back to work this week. I don't know why I bothered really because apart from a couple of hundred emails of the look, raise your eyebrows in disbelief and delete variety, I had nothing to do all day.

You see the Captain, in my absence, is homesteading. For those unfamilar with the term it essentially means that she's trying to takeover. I now have half as much to do as I had before she joined us.

I'm fairly sure she thinks she's doing me a favour but she is not. I had all my programs running smoothly, I knew percisely where every document was, my tracking records were immaculate. Now I'm sharing my tracker with her and my information has holes in it. It's all gone to heck in a handbasket. Blimey I'm talking like her now. I even said at the KFC tonight, "I'll have that to go please" rather than saying "takeaway". Puhlease!!!

I'm very unhappy working on the base, apart from the boredom, the prospects and the diabolical pay I feel quite vulnerable in today's political climate and I've developed a pressing need to put some distance between myself and George Dubbya's band of merrie men

So what to do? It's time for me to spread my wings and follow my dreams. I'm considering applying for another job away from the base, away from the MOD. It would take a minor miracle for me to actually get it but Captain Marvel (who by the way is unhappy with his moniker and henceforth wishes to be referred to as Captain Scarlet) believes in me so it's time I started believing in myself.

Today has been cancelled due to lack of interest

I'm going back to work today. Ugh.

Smells like teen spirit

I need to enlist the help of all you ladies (any guys reading can consider themselves honorary ladies only without all the monthly hormone surges and all that goes with them).

You may recall from my previous post that I absolutely loathe the scent of musk. Well, by a strange coincidence, upon my return from the dialysis unit today I discovered on my doorstep a little gift box of Body Shop Musk. By a process of elimination I have concluded that it must have been left there by sister-in-law F because my mother-in-law is far too cheap to get me something like that just for being poorly, besides she brought me 2 perfectly good jigsaws from the charity shop last week, and SIL M gave me an identical gift box for Christmas.

I am at the point where I feel I really need to say something. For one thing these kind and very sweet girls are wasting their money buying me something that's going to end up down the charity shop. For another I'm fed up with my Christmas presents ending up down the charity shop.

A few years ago I confided to SIL F that I hated the smell of musk. At this point she hadn't ever bought me any, it was her mother who was the main culprit buying me Jovan Musk all the time. I fully expected word to get back to MIL if not the other SIL. Well MIL seemed to stop buying it for me but I ended up with musk from both SILs for Christmas.

One year I took a set back to the Body Shop for exchange but the assistant said it wasn't worth anything because they hadn't had that particular gift set in for a couple of years. So to add insult to injury I'm obviously getting my SIL's cast-offs because she doesn't like it either!

So, what do I do, say something or smile sweetly and quietly flog it off on Ebay?

The 39 steps

Due to the fact that I've been a recluse for the last 2 weeks or so, I have very little to write about so I thought I'd do a 39 Things About Me list - one for each birthday. I know these things are incredibly narcissist but can't you say that about all us bloggers?

1. I played the clarinet at school. One of the great regrets of my life is that I flogged mine to pay for driving lessons.
2. I bought my first house when I was 18.
3. My favourite fragrance is Van Cleef by Van Cleef and Arpels.
4. My least favourite fragrance is musk. One whiff makes me want to heave yet each Christmas my mother-in-law or one of my sisters-in-law will buy me some despite me having actually told one of my SILs that I hate it!!
5. I'm pretty good at improvisation (like what they do on Whose Line Is It Anyway?)
6. I used to be a lifeguard.
7. My favourite food is funnel cake. Freshly cooked doughnuts will do instead at a pinch.
8. I hate coffee.
9. I paid off the mortgage on my third house 2 years ago.
10. Although I love cats, every knick-knack, calendar, picture, card, mug does not have to be cat themed.
11. I'm fascinated by plants and trees but I'm a terrible gardener.
12. My best physical feature must be my eyelashes. They're very long and dark - I'm frequently asked if they're real.
13. I grew up in a house with the number 13. Never did me any harm, ahem.
14. My favourite flowers are sunflowers and lilies. Roses in my opinion are overrated.
15. I've had 12 surgical operations.
16. I consistently score highly on internet IQ tests, according to them with my IQ I must be a genius but of course I take that with a pinch of salt.
17. My other nickname is Maverick. I haven't got a clue why.
18. My favourite alcoholic drink is vodka, freshly squeezed lime juice and slimline tonic, all preferably frozen until slushy. My favourite soft drink is actually sparkling spring water.
19. I have a poster signed by all the boys at Orange County Choppers.
20. I collect russian dolls and camels. My favourite doll is only about 3.5 inches high but she has 9 others inside her with the smallest being the size of a coffee bean.
21. I can speak a little Polish, Russian, and German. I used to be very good at French at school but I've never had the opportunity to use it since.
22. I have an odd ornament on my book shelf - it's an upper engine mounting bolt from an F-15E engine.
23. The first place I ever visited outside the UK was New Zealand. We flew in a Boeing 767 and had to refuel 3 times before we got there. It took almost 36 hours and almost put me off air travel for life.
24. I've been to the US of A 7 times, twice to California, 5 times to Florida.
25. My favourite colour is purple but I've learned that it looks terrible on me and on my walls.
26. My favourite authors are Patricia Cornwell and Thomas Harris.
27. My favourite movie is Space Cowboys.
28. I've had 17 jobs - the longest time with one employer is 7 years, the shortest is 4 hours.
29. My favourite album of all time has to be Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds.
30. I almost met Richard Branson once, it was after the worst Virgin flight we'd ever had (lads behind us were beyond intoxicated and were still being given booze)and Mr Branson had been on the same flight. He scurried off (and I mean scurried) as we were trying to catch him to complain.
31. I hate watching sport and listening to people discussing it.
32. I've 'flown' in Boeing 747 and F-15 training simulators.
33. I've fed blue mau-mau on frozen peas.
34. I was in the school choir.
35. Whenever I visit the beach I have to come home with either pebbles or seashells or holy of holies, sea glass - pieces of glass worn smooth by the sea.
36. Whenever I have boiled eggs I have to puncture the empty shells to stop the witches sailing away in them.
37. I've wrestled an alligator. OK so it was only about 10" long and it wasn't really wrestling ...
38. I passed my driving test first time.
39. I rebuilt and restored a 1973 VW Beetle (not ALL by myself of course)

Today I will be mostly choosing the cactus

Just a quick cut and paste jobbie today rather than a lengthy discourse on things close to my heart ie me. Despite the fact that I chose this picture because I love sunsets and saguaro cacti, I think this actually sums me up quite accurately.

Your Personality Profile

You are funky, outdoorsy, and down to earth. While you may not be a total hippie... You're definitely one of the most free spirited people around. You are very impulsive - every day is a new adventure. However, you do put some thought behind all your actions. Still, you do tend to shock and offend people from time to time!

http://www.blogthings.com/worldsshortestpersonalitytest/">The World's Shortest Personality Test

The code seems to be cracked (ha ha) and takes you to a different page, here's the cypher (good job I test these things innit?):

http://www.blogthings.com/worldsshortestpersonalitytest/

Sad Dragon

I had my first unsupervised outing since my surgery today. I took a walk down to visit the giant who is holding the high street of our small town in a full-nelson and squeezing the life out of it ... Tesco in other words. It's only a 10 minute walk so I wrapped up well and headed off.

I only needed a couple of things, basically I only went out to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. I was queuing at the cigarette kiosk because it was quicker than going through the main tills, I looked over at the papers and was horrified to see on the front page of the local paper a news story about someone from my squadron. He's been jailed for 2 years.

I can't remember how long ago it was but I know the investigations have been running for some time, this man was involved in a car accident which left 2 people dead. It was a head on collision, from what little I know about it, he was overtaking another car when he smashed into a car coming in the opposite direction. I don't believe this was reckless driving but more a serious error in judgement by a man unfamilar with our roads while driving a lefthand drive vehicle - he had his own family in the car with him at the time and his wife was seriously injured.

I feel desperately sorry for the loss of a mother and her daughter. Nothing can mitigate that loss and I'm not sure sending a decent man to jail for 2 years balances the books.

Discuss?

PS Sad Dragon because my squadron is called the Green Dragons. Although a lot of them piss me off from time to time I am fiercely loyal to them and consider myself the Dragon Den Mother.

Worshipping at the Temple of 3BT

I promised Clare a couple of months ago that I would try harder with the 3BT concept, so here goes.

1. My house is tidy because my parents-in-law have threatened to visit. MIL does not subscribe to my housework doctrine of clean enough to be healthy, untidy enough to be happy. She hoovers every day, cleans her oven every week and I suspect that she even polishes her apples. I cleared up the clutter but didn't manage to vacuum as the vacuum cleaner was upstairs and I can't manage it down the stairs one-handed. They just had to sit in squalor.

2. My parents -in-law arrived an hour later than they said they would.

3. My parents-in-law leaving.

Book Report - Ugly

I just finished reading Ugly by Constance Briscoe. Once I picked it up I literally couldn't put it down, not so much because it was enjoyable but because it certainly was compelling. It makes for very distressing reading at times but there are occasions when I found myself smiling, even some of the unsavoury moments have a hint of comic absurdness so I just couldn't help myself.

Here's a link to a Sunday Times interview with the author which details some of the highlights of the book http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1985687_1,00.html . The interview is worth a read if nothing else.

Borborygmi 'n' blues

It has been my experience that following any surgery there follows a period of depression. I'm on that slippery slope now, I'm feeling bored and miserable. Physically I feel much better than I did last week but I'm still not able to use my right hand properly yet. I'm looking forward to a proper meal, not only am I unable to cook but I have difficulty managing cutlery, to which the sofa if it could talk would attest, so I've been eating a lot of sandwiches. Bleh.

You may be wondering about the borborygmi, cool word isn't it? I think it's a word that Word Imp over at Word Imperfect might be interested in. It's quite onomatopoeic too. In my belly right now it sounds like there's a giant in there yelling :

Boooooorrrrrboooorrrrryyyyygggggmmuuuuuusssssss!!!!!!

That's right - things have started working again. I've had many weeks where there has been no tangible activity, not even a bottom burp, other than the occasional diamond studded rabbit pellet.

Unh huh, thank you very much.

On being held at needle point

When I arrived at dialysis last night there were sharp intakes of breath and much oohing and aahing all round as the nurses looked at my arm. It is a bit of a spectacle I have to admit. The back of my hand looks as though I've been dip dyed with my knuckles being darkest and the colours graduating through blue, purple and green up towards my wrist.

The hairy side of my arm is a revolting jaundiced yellow. The underside is multiple shades of purple and working back down to my palm, well that's actually quite pretty and rather like marble with the usual healthy flesh colour being shot through with pink and blue.

Of course at the centre of it all is the wound itself which is surrounded by vivid pinky-red skin because it it most definitely infected. Sister Mac said I needed to peel off the Dermabond myself so it could be swabbed.

Another sharp intake of breath but it's hard to refuse when someone's waving a 1 & a half inch large bore needle at you.

So peel it off I did and I nearly passed out in the process. Imagine trying to peel off sunburnt skin when it's about 2mm thick and stuck down with superglue. I'm seeing stars just writing about it.

A little later I was supposed to start an infusion of intravenous antibiotic. It was being administered by Nurse Blusher who was being assessed on the task by Sister Mac. Sister Mac whispered to me that I had to refuse to have the drug as a test for Nurse Blusher. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it but remember Sister Mac is the one with the large bore needles, so I agreed.

Nurse Blusher went through her strict routine step by step and when it came to the point where she had to ask me if I agreed to receiving the drug, I just launched in to my spiel of having thought about things and really I'm already taking 2 oral antibiotics I didn't really want to take the IV one as well especially as it is so urotoxic (kills off the kidneys), blah blah blah.

The poor girl just went red (hence her code name) and asked me if I was joking. I managed to keep a straight face and kept up the charade with some input from Sister Mac until she went through the protocol that she was being tested on.

Fortunately she passed and Sister Mac said I deserved an Oscar. Who says you can't have fun when you're ill?

Puss 'n' boots

I treated myself to a new pair of boots a couple of weeks ago, Dougal thought the box was tailor made for him.

Sealed with a twist

I'm now 4 days post-op and the swelling and bruising is improving slowly. My hand is no longer the size of a small boxing glove and is now merely a subtle shade of zombie-skin grey. I can type a little better, previously I had to employ the hunt-and-peck method with the index finger on my right hand but now I'm almost back to my lightning fast touch typing speed.

The wound on my wrist however is infected. It's livid (not to mention slightly annoyed) and very sore. I rather freaked out my GP when I went to see her yesterday to ask for some antibiotics, she was worried that I was developing gangrene due to the funny colour of my hand but thankfully we established that it was just bruising.

The interesting thing about this op is that it wasn't dressed with anything afterwards. Instead they sealed it with something called Dermabond which is a clear glaze that sets hard over the incision site protecting it from contamination. It also saves you from having to pfaff around with dressings (which is great for me because the adhesives really irritate my skin) and allows you to take a shower. Supposedly it peels off after a week or so.

In this instance it appears to have sealed in an infection. Just for once it isn't my dodgy aftercare that's done it, more worryingly I could have got it from the surgeon or theatre. Even if I had the bacteria on my skin to begin with I was practically hosed down in antiseptic before the surgery began. However it happened, now I have it it'll be a bugger to get rid of. Diabetics are human sized petri dishes for bacteria to thrive on.

I expect to have the Dermabond removed this afternoon at dialysis because I need to swabbed in order to establish what kind of infection is going on. I'm not looking forward to that as I strongly suspect it will be painful.

Incisive wit

Picture this: you're lying there on the narrow surgical table, draped and prepped for surgery. Your arm, out of sight behind the drapes, is flooded with local anaesthetic (which incidentally hurts like !*$& as it goes in) , the theatre assistants are surfing Match.com and soft music is playing in the background.

Feeling a little anxious you desperately search for something to focus on other than what's going on on the other side of the drapes. Your mind tunes in to what's actually playing in the CD player.

Ooh goody, a collection from the 70's ... Roberta Flack and Killing Me Softly ... The 3 Degrees and When Will I See You Again? ... Boston with More Than A Feeling ... Blue Oyster Cult and Don't Fear The Reaper ...

Eeeeek!!

Count Fistula; The Reawakening

Tomorrow morning I go in for more surgery, on my right wrist this time. Hopefully this fistula will be a success. I'm worried that a. it's not going to work just like the one in my left wrist and b. it will bugger up my hand.

Nothing much more to say. Keep your fingers crossed, let's hope I'm still able to do that myself after tomorrow :-).

Taking the piss

Until last week I was an Ebay virgin, never had an account, never bid on anything, never sold anything. Cap'n Marvel opened an account in 2005 but had never used it himself either. I decided to go on Ebay to search for a boardgame from my childhood - Take The Brain (Zoe I hope this little farce brings a smile to your sad lips). I apologise for the profanity but I'm a tad miffed.

It all started at Christmas., bored with TV I started a jigsaw one night and really enjoyed the peaceful time in the kitchen, Cap'n M joined me after a while and we just spent a pleasant evening working and chatting together. I wanted to do another one but didn't have any in stock so we started playing our meagre collection of boardgames instead.

Finding games that just 2 people can play is a bit of a trial. There's Scrabble of course but I'm completely pants at it and always get royally thrashed by the Cap'n which I find annoying because here I am a relatively articulate, well-read, bloggist with a huge vocabulary while he buys newspapers only for the cartoons and has never willingly read a book that has a bigger word to picture ratio in it.

We have a lovely set of wooden board games like Ludo, draughts, chess, snakes & ladders but I wanted something a bit more fun and started to reminisce about Take The Brain which I used to play for hours with my brother. To be fair it's quite similar to chess but the pieces have more wacky names like Ninnies and Numskulls making it more appealing. I've wanted this game again for years but had given it up for dead long ago, my parents must have given away our games before I left home - little did they know they were sitting on a goldmine.

Anyhoo the Cap'n suggested I do a search on the the internet which had never occurred to me (I know, duhhhhh which way did he go George ...) and lo and behold there were 3 or 4 for sale on Ebay! I went for the one with the lowest bid and longest time left because it looked to be the one in best condition.

For about 2 days I was the highest bidder and was pretty chuffed to be getting it even if £8 was a little steep for a 36-year old boardgame.

And then a bunch of complete wankers came along and suddenly the price shot up to £30!

Little did I know that I was engaged in a battle of wits with a bunch of twats who I envision to look like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons and we're fighting for what is evidently the Holy Grail of boardgames.

To make things more interesting someone also posted that they were selling another Take The Brain for the buy it now price of £34.99. I was torn, the buy it now copy was quite tatty - and 35 quid - but I could end the suspense.

I really wanted to get the better game (nothing like a bit of competition to sharpen your desires - kerrang, I've fallen into the Ebay trap) so I decided to wait until the last minute so I could get my final bid in. I had until about 6:50 pm on Saturday, if I could get the winning bid submitted at the very last moment, Take The Brain would be mine!! Unfortunately we usually go out to do our food shopping on Saturdays at about 6pm so I couldn't see my plan through - instead I took a gamble that normal people aren't sitting in front of a computer screen at that time on a Saturday night so I plugged in my final max bid of, wait for it, £40!

Boy was I ever wrong.

As soon as we got back I rushed to my laptop to find that the other bidder had beat me by 1 penny! That fucker, within a minute of my final bid, had started plugging in figure after figure until he revealed what my final bid had been. In less than a minute he beat me by a lousy penny. To add insult to injury the buy it now version had also been snapped up. Grrrrrr!

If anyone has this game please let me know - I'll make it worth your while :-)

Bingo Fuel

I’ve had to concede defeat and give in to the fact that I’ve gained weight over Christmas and the New Year. Of course for most people that’s nothing exceptional but as I am trying desperately to lose weight in order to be activated on the transplant list it is something of a blow.

I dropped my "dry weight" a couple of weeks ago and ever since I’ve been struggling to take off the extra fluid that computer thinks that I’ve gained between sessions. On 2nd January the computer reckoned that I had gained 4½ kilos which equates to 4½ litres of fluid – to put things into perspective that’s almost 8 pints. Not only did I not drink that much fluid over the weekend but I still have enough kidney function to pee a little bit therefore making me able expel some of what I take in the way nature intended.

Needless to say losing 8 pints of fluid in 3½ hours to restore me to my dry weight is hard going. Consequently I’ve been restricting my fluid intake more and more in order to keep up and it’s making me ill and miserable. Amongst other things this has had a catastrophic effect on my bowel, my poor fluid starved body is sucking out the moisture of the umm, number 2’s, making it impossible for them to pass through.

Ergo I must have gained good old fashioned lard.

I don’t deserve to be as heavy as I am. It’s not like I eat crap all day long, I never have. OK I have a few glasses of wine and a packet of crisps every couple of days, I’m not a saint for crying out loud but what I survive on and still not lose weight is ridiculous.

It drives me nuts when I read those sappy success stories in the Sunday papers of people who suddenly have an epiphany over their weight and by simply cutting out fish & chips, pies, chocolate, curries and pints of beer and eating a healthy diet instead they lose 8 stone – if it was that effin’ simple I’d be giving Posh Spice a run for her money by now, I've been on a low calorie, low fat, low sugar diet since I was 11 years old!

My next step now is medication. I’m going to be taking a drug called Xenical which prevents the body from absorbing fat. Instead the fats within your food just pass through your system undigested so if you have too much ie more than 3-5% you run the risk of such delights as oily diarrhoea or even anal leakage. Niiiice.

You call this progress

Has anyone else experienced difficulty in accessing blogs with a blogspot.com address lately? Since I switched over to the new version of Blogger I have extreme difficulty connecting to them, including my own site!

While I was sleeping

Woohooo! The site meter tripped over to 1000 today ... I was in fact the 1000th visitor myself. Thanks for pushing up that counter with me - it gives an old girl an awful lot of satisfaction.

Break in transmission

Happy New Year everyone!

It's funny how things go sometimes, I had 2 weeks off work and thought that I would have ooooooodles of time for writing, customising, etc. The reality, obviously as I haven't been anywhere near this blog for over 2 weeks, was very different. Forgive the essay version of the recap but I shall try to keep it as snappy as possible.

Monday 18 Dec - The Gas Man Cometh

I spent day 1 of my precious leave cleaning like a woman possessed. The gas man was coming to service the boiler and central heating system at noon and as I don't do housework as often as I should, this was probably a good thing because it forced me to tidy up. He arrived promptly, was here for approximately 32 minutes and left £45 richer. Nice work if you can get it. He didn't even comment on how shiny everything was.

I spent the afternoon attempting to make gingerbread. I was following an American recipe that I found online, I was lucky enough to have been given some American measures for cups, etc. which was fortunate as my kitchen scales have gone kaput, however you know what everyone says, everything's bigger in America and that applies to recipes too. The dry ingredients were far too much for my puny little Masterchef so I had t0 halve everything as best I could. Half of the dough made about 30 gingerbread men & gingerbread trees, which I promptly overbaked into rock hard little table decorations.

Tuesday 19 Dec - Essex Girls go round the outside

Tuesday morning was spent as usual at the dialysis unit. After treatment I spent a few hours Christmas shopping trying to bag the final perfect gifts for the parents-who-have-everything. I think I managed to find the very last parking space in all of Christendom and was acutely aware whilst walking back to the car with my bulky first purchase, of other motorists cruising along behind me like great white sharks prowling the shallows. It felt rather good to load the boot of the car and walk off back in the direction of the town leaving the parking predators fuming behind me.

When finished I drove home and crashed in the recliner for 20 minutes before being whisked away by the good Cap'n to visit his brother and his family in Essex, an hour & a half''s drive from where we live. I love these relations to bits but it is always a bit of a trial as they are so different from us country bumpkins in Suffolk, I always feel so square in their presence as they are so damn trendy and I am so damn not.

The house is always filled with smoke and they have an enormous German Shepherd who insists on greeting visitors personally with a paw on each shoulder and looking them squarely in the eye. He's soft as muck but due to his sheer size he can do some damage (particularly to chest catheters) if you don't have your wits about you.

We drove home at about 9pm as we both needed to be up early in the morning.

Wednesday 20 Dec - Promoting a good image

I still can't believe that I agreed to attend the Lt's promotion to Captain at 08:00 am on a day when I was on leave. Somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed to arrive early for the 2 minute ceremony which was followed by a breakfast most of which I can't currently eat.

I arrived home at about 10:00 and set about wrapping presents. This is the part of Christmas I dread the most because I can't wrap for toffee ... I I I I said that I I I I can't rap for to-o-o-o-ffee, mo fo.

Anyway 4 hours, several rolls of sellotape and 2 dozen yards of curling ribbon later I stopped for lunch and then I remembered that I had to get some small gifts and sweets for the kids who might turn up for the staff Christmas luncheon on Friday. We have a Secret Santa gift exchange and I like to do a little raffle-type game so any kids who turn up get something to unwrap too. Ain't I sweet.

I set off into town and bought a dozen suitable little things and brought them home for another marathon wrapping session.

After that I decorated the previously mentioned jawbreakers, I mean gingerbread.

Thursday 21 Dec - It's worse than that, he's dead Jim

Dialysis as usual. On the way back I pulled up to some traffic lights which were on red. A car pulled up behind me and as is my custom I examined the occupants in my rear view mirror.

I was intrigued by the passenger as it looked like he was fast asleep, head back on the back of the seat. With my second look I concluded that he didn't look very healthy at all, in fact Omigodddd! He's dead!!

With a further look (the lights take a long time to change) I realised that he was in fact a shop mannequin but I have to say I'm baffled by why he might need to be driven around in a Mini-Metro.

I then had to make a quick stop off to work again to drop off the kids' parcels and the Secret Santa stuff so no-one would see me arrive with them the next day and thus give away who gave those gifts.

In the afternoon I had an appointment to talk to my GP about my mother. The Parkinsons is affecting her brain and giving her some kind of dementia. She thinks that her parents still live at home and that all her own kids have died. It's all very upsetting and I needed to talk to someone about it. Dear old doc was great and instantly made room on her schedule to see my parents together in the New Year

Friday 22 Dec - How not to be a domestic goddess

I couldn't sleep Friday morning so I was up around 4 am, just in time for the milkman to deliver my long awaited orgasmal box. Pfft is all can say. Any orgasm derived from that measly collection would definitely have been faked. It contained:

a tiny bag of Brussels sprouts
4 parnsips, each about the size of my thumb
2 apples
2 carrots
2 potatoes
a vacuum pack of beetroot
2 satsumas
2 tiny onions

I was somewhat perplexed by what exactly I was supposed to do with such a minute quantity of stuff. Size matters to a girl no matter what they tell you.

And so, on to the the piece de resistance of my "relaxing" week before Christmas. I blew up my hob with 3 days to go until Christmas.

I was following a Nigella Lawson recipe for cola baked ham. It's very simple, you simmer your joint of gammon in cola for a couple of hours and then you bake it in a very hot oven for a few minutes with a few extra ingredients until you have a succulent crisp coated joint.

I was actually cooking 2 joints as I couldn't find one big enough to feed 25 hungry Americans. I had turned up the heat ever so slightly on one of the pans and then left the kitchen for a couple of minutes to make a fuss of Dougal in the living room. I heard a muted pop and went back in to the kitchen to investigate.

The Real Thing was oozing in a thin syrpy puddle all over the hob and the work top but the pans had stopped simmering - yup not only can you melt teeth and clean your toilets with it but you can also short electrical circuits and totally mess up hobs with it.

I had to finish the ham by casseroling it in the oven and then baking it off.

Fortunately it turned out to be the best ham anyone has ever tasted. Certainly the most expensive.

I'm not going to cover the week after Christmas as it was extremely boring but tiring with not much time being spent at home. I apologise if I've kept you in suspenders for such a long time, I'll try and make it up to you this year.

Funnylingus

My regular readers will know that I like to indulge in a a little wordplay now and then, the saucier the better - observe the gratuitous use of the word "pussy" in my post titles.

Anyhoo, a source of amusement for me was delivered this morning, quite literally, to my doorstep. It's the bill from my milkman and yes I do know it's cheaper to buy from a huge multi-national conglomerate like Tesco who are only a few hundred yards down the street but I haven't the heart to kill off yet another of our traditional trades.



Take note if you will of the circled portion. It's supposed to be detailing a charge for a small box of organic vegetables, yet it says to me and my dirty mind "Orgasmal Box".

Ooooooooh Matron! I can't wait for that delivery!

Support your local milkman!!

A pink kink in her think

As I’m sitting here writing at the kitchen table, my progress is being monitored by one of my cats. She’s sitting purring loudly and staring at me over the laptop screen. She’s on Prawn Patrol. Her hunted eyes follow my fingers’ every move just in case they should produce from behind my ears, Paul Daniels-stylee, a pink morsel.

Prawns are, you see, kitty crack and Cami’s a prawn whore who’s going cold turkey.

When Cami first came to live with us almost 5 years ago she was the smallest cutest bundle of fluff you have ever seen. She had peculiar tastes though having apparently been weaned onto Weetabix and milk rather than catfood. Her first night home she didn’t show any interest in the food we put down, she preferred to nibble on cat litter instead. She did develop more conventional tastes and now when she gets the crunchy munchies she eats ordinary cat food. And prawns.

Things have got out of hand just lately and she’s got a little too used to having them often so she’s been cut down to a few every weekend. This makes her alternately very sulky and very adorably affectionate. I like the affectionate bit and it’s hard not to reward nice behaviour with a little treat, trouble is once she gets what she wants she wants more, more, MORE!!

With hindsight I think Cami and her brother Dougal were too young to leave their mother but I also think we saved their lives by bringing them home when we did - they were infested with fleas and I believe that if they’d been left any longer without intervention that they probably would have died from anaemia. Their third litter mate had died already so I think we got them just in time.

The couple we got them from said to me as we were leaving on that fateful Saturday, “they might have one or two fleas”. One or two? Bloody hell the poor little buggers were absolutely heaving with fleas and would have to pause every couple of seconds mid-playfight to stop and have a good scratch. They were being eaten alive and I couldn’t get them into the vets until Monday.

So I sat with them on my lap and a mug of hot water beside me and combed them with a flea comb. And combed them and combed them. The fleas came off on that flea comb clustered like tiny bunches of grapes and I swiftly plunged the comb into the glass of hot water to kill them. I sat and did that for over an hour changing the water every ten minutes to ensure that it stayed hot enough to kill the fleas. When I got to the vet on the Monday night he could only find a couple of fleas on them.

I wish I’d carried on with the regular combing, they have very dense, long fur (I think they have some Maine Coon or Siberian in their genes, definitely some Husky somewhere in there) and they hate being combed now. They love being outdoors and getting muddy and matted from creeping through the undergrowth. I frequently have to extract twigs from their fur and they usually leave me something prickly after they’ve been snoozing on the bed.

kasjrdobcljasroiacjamslkdljLDLKLDJqowueojvlzn,\ c x,cxnlkgjpaswlhjegjasgdd I have to go now, she thinks I have some prawns stashed in the keyboard.

Dancing in stilettos in the snow

Saturday night was spent at our annual Dialysis Unit Christmas Party. This year’s was actually a ceilidh - we had a live 7 piece band playing Irish folk music with dancing plus of course great food and company.

Cap’n Marvel is fairly musical and was fascinated by some of the instruments used on stage. The one that most took his interest was a strange looking contraption that from where I was sitting looked like a small fat viola with a keyboard and a wind up handle. It turned out to be a hurdy gurdy and it would seem that the player was used to being asked about the instrument because when the Cap’n went up to ask questions the guy said “Here, I’ll give you a leaflet.”

A warm mince pie and a dollop of clotted cream to anyone who makes the connection between the post title and the subject.

Cold War

It's funny that Shaz should mention her microwave/convection oven in the previous post's comments because one is going to feature in today's story. It goes thusly:

The building I work in is a former aircraft hangar dating from WWII and was converted into offices just after the war. It gets pretty draughty at times due to having a huge uninsulated roof space and suspended ceilings. Heating is in the form of ancient cast iron radiators that resemble dinosaur ribcages. Unfortunately the valve that controls the one in my office wrung off many moons ago and now I have to turn it on and off with the aid of an adjustable spanner - there is no middle ground, it's either on or off. It's such a palaver that usually I don't turn it on until it gets really cold and I make do with a little fan heater to take the chill off until I can stand the cold no more.

It's the same story for my Lt's office which is a windowless, airless room just off mine and the previous occupants have never actually felt the need to have their radiator on at all. However, my new Lt was stationed in Arizona previously where it gets pretty warm most of the time and she's been feeling the cold since moving over here so when she moved in she wanted her radiator on. And mine too!

Every morning I walk into my office and exclaim "bloody 'ell it's hot in here!" and proceed to turn on my fans while the Lt proceeds to combat the draught by turning on her portable air conditioning unit that doubles as a heater. This morning was no different, I walked in, said my piece at which the Commander appeared at his door (my office is at the centre of a suite of offices for the Command Section ... it's a glorified reception area and I'm prone to a lot of through traffic and have no privacy) to see what was going on.

I explained the situation to him and he went over to my radiator to try and turn it off but for some reason turning the valve one way made the radiator so incredibly hot it was like the surface of the Sun and we could barely get close enough to it to turn the valve the other way. This didn't actually turn it off this time, merely turned the temperature down to blast furnace temperature.

Hurrumph.

Anyway, half an hour later this strange hot smell started to permeate the room and I began to worry that the heating was about to melt down like Chernobyl. The Commander came out of his office again and moaned at me for complaining about the heat and then putting on my fan heater. I told him that I hadn't at which point the Lt piped up and said that she was bakng cookies for everyone in her new microwave/convection oven. The Boss and I just looked at each other for a moment and then he went off for a meeting.

A few minutes later she emerged with a pile of cookies and said to me "Gosh I feel so bad, making you smell these baking when you aren't allowed to eat them". She swiftly flounced off to deliver said cookies to the rest of the staff.

My gast has rarely been so flabbered, how insensitive can you get? Shaz if you can tell me what you did to your oven I shall endeavour to do the same to the Lt's.

The Contaminatrix

The results of the latest swab from the line in my chest came in today. I apparently have a coliform bacterial infection. Go on and follow the link, have a good shocked gasp and get it out of your system and then come back and read the rest.

I'm devastated and at a loss for how I managed to acquire this little lurgy. Let me just state for the record that I am very careful about changing my dressings. Everyday after showering and before changing the dressing I wash my hands with hot water and antibacterial handwash, apply an alcohol hand rub, use only sterile swabs soaked in Betadine solution which is supposed to kill all pathogens.

Might as well use Domestos. Kills all germs. Dead.

So the solution is to have intravenous Gentamycin, a particularly noxious antibiotic. When the nurse looking after me asked her colleague to fetch the Gentamycin, she added "Oh and remember to bring the anaphylaxis stuff too".

Gulp.

Bloggus Interruptus

To my trio of faithful readers, yes I am still around, sorry I haven't written much lately but it's all been so blah that I haven't really wanted to share all the shitty nitty gritty itty bitty details.

Suffice it to say that I've been ill with a cold/sinus infection, I've covered about 400 miles in the last 2 weeks for numerous hospital visits for scans in preparation for my next surgery (which should be after Christmas) and my Mum ... oh my Mum is going downhill fast.

And I'm completely knackered.

Only a week and a half to go and then I have the week off before Christmas, I'll be on my own during the day so I will have some precious me (and maybe you) time.

Per ardua ad astra

I was lucky enough today to arrive back from lunch just as a couple of incentive rides were taking off. An incentive ride is essentially a prize for doing something really special like winning the Wing Airman of the Quarter Award and it involves a flight in a fighter jet - Boeing F-15Es in this case.

It's quite something to watch and hear as they're taking off but it must be something else to actually be inside the jet because once the jet has lifted off the runway the pilot throttles forward the engines to full afterburner and climbs vertically about 60,000 feet into the sky. I've been told it's virtually impossible for the passenger to breathe even with a g-suit.

From the ground it's amazing, a friend of mine got a ride a few years ago and I was allowed to watch him take off right from the end of the runway. Even with double hearing protection the sound was deafening and with those twin Pratt & Whitney F100-229 engines at full throttle you can feel each one of your internal organs vibrating.

On a clear day you can watch the jets until they're just a tiny speck way up above you. Today was cloudy so the cloud ceiling was low and they disappeared pretty quickly but this was offset by being able to see the stripey twin cones of the afterburner flame against the dark grey of the clouds, you just can't see them on a bright day.

As you can probably tell I'm a bit of an anorak when it comes to planes.

I almost got to have an ride myself once, not in an F-15 but in a KC-135 refueling tanker belonging to the Alabama Air National Guard. Unfortunately some bureaucrat decided that they didn't want to take a "foreign national" ie me so my friend Dave got to take the flight instead. He smuggled on board a Union Flag as a protest against the decision which was later presented to me with a lot of ridiculous pomp and ceremony by my squadron commander!

Here's a picture of the flag and a certificate, you might be able to make out the text, maybe not, but trust me every time I read it I have to giggle as it's all so ahem, serious

Pussy Galore

According to Scary Duck (not scary and not a duck but pretty freakin' funny) and someone he can't remember the name of, starting a new blog is "like getting a kitten. You either lavish your undying love on it for the rest of its natural life; or you get bored of it after a fews days, brain it with a rock and leave it for carrion."

How true. If my blog were a kitten it would be stuffed full of tuna and tuckered out from chasing the feather-and-jingly-bell-on-a-fishing-rod toy one day and shut in the porch with nothing but the litter tray and a manky spider-plant for company the next.

Poor wee thing.

There's a rat in me kitchen

Well actually it's either a shrew or a vole, hard to tell which as its head has been gnawed off by one of my cats. Typical really they catch something and then bring it indoors and drop it in front of their food bowl while they have a nibble of Go-Cat. Still I should be grateful that they haven't brought in another bat and let it loose to fly around the house.

Little darlings.

Count Fistula

Looks like I shall be having more surgery just before Christmas which will be difficult to say the least especially as I was supposed to be cooking the Christmas dinner this year. Cap'n Marvel (my pet name for my husband) may have to do the catering instead ... he can just about manage beans on toast or mashed potato.

The surgery will be to either fix my existing fistula or to create a new one in my other arm. The current one clotted and collapsed following a procedure I had yesterday to X-ray the blood vessel. I'm fairly depressed not only because of the surgery but also because it means that I have to have this blessed tube in my chest for at least another 3 months.

I've spent 18 months trying to get a functioning fistula in use, I've had 3 operations so far - first to create one in my left wrist (it never worked), the next in my left elbow (it developed a kink that narrowed the blood flow) and finally I had surgery to remove the kink.

But it's not all doom and gloom, I'm finally starting to lose some weight - 1.5 kgs in the last month! Only another 20 or so and I can finally get on the transplant list and then life will get really interesting!

Frozen Cherryrita

I like a little tipple, me, so when I discovered a new item in Tesco's alchie alley called Sourz Cherry and what with it being a. cherry flavour, b. sour and c. ahem alcoholic I just had to try it.

YUM!!!

Neat it's quite nice, a little syrupy, maybe a bit like cough medicine. I also mixed with some diet tonic and it made a lovely drink.

Considering it's only 15% alcohol I got tipsy quite quickly (it happens with kidney disease, I've always been a lightweight when it comes to how much I can take but it's worse since I started dialysis) and I couldn't finish the second (or maybe the third? hic) drink that I made up last night so I decided to freeze it.

Tonight I retrieved it from the freezer and found that it wasn't quite frozen solid and with a little help from a fork I managed to break it up in to fairly slushy crystals. Now that's good stuff - very refreshing and fun to eat/drink - a kind of cross between a granita and a frozen Margarita.

Apparently also available in Pineapple (can't wait to try that one) or Apple (meh).

Kaboom-cha

Over the last year or so I've become addicted to butternut squash, I absolutely love it - roasted, boiled, microwaved, mashed, souped - it's all good.

Jamie Oliver seems to have caught on to it too but I feel rather smug knowing that I started eating it before it became trendy. Ol' wubber lipsth wrote a recipe for it recently in our Sunday magazine, it was a variation on Pumpkin Pie and he used the seeds as a topping by roasting them off and sprinkling them over the top.

It got me thinking that I might try and do something with the seeds the next time I got a squash rather than just chucking them in the compost bin. It just so happened that instead of a butternut squash I bought a Kabocha which looks like a small green version of your standard Jack O' Lantern type pumpkin.

I scooped out said seeds and set about washing the pulp off them (which was revolting as it felt like dense, slimy, matted hair). I then dried them off, put them on a baking tray and drizzled over some oil, some salt and smoked paprika. Then I put then in the oven where I was roasting the flesh along with some other veggies and a turkey breast.

After they had been in the oven for about 15 minutes I tried a couple of them - and found them somewhat crunchy - the seeds were considerably thicker than in a butternut squash. Still I thought I would persevere with them, perhaps they would be better if cooked a little longer.

After the seeds had been back in the oven for a while I was busy washing up when I started to hear strange noises coming from the oven. Kerpow! Pop! Kerpow! Ping! I rushed over and looked through the glass door only to the seeds dancing in the oven and exploding. I got the tray out of the oven and almost lost an eye as the damn things were cracking open all over the place.

I could see inside the cracked shells that there was a brown kernel but it was impossible to get out whole so I gave up in the end. Sigh, another cooking calamity ... the salt and paprika was an inspired combination though, it smelled gorgeous while coooking so I shall give it one more try with butternut squash seeds before I write-off the experiment completely. Stay tuned.

My God, it's full of stars!

I took a week off last week and spent the time mostly on Christmas shopping. One of my favourite shops to visit is Lush. I don't in all honesty buy much there, I often tend to go in and drink in all the delicious scents and being unable to decide which lovely thing to buy I often just walk out again.

This time however I took the plunge and bought some black licorice soap which is supposed to be great for the complexion, an exfoliating bar for spotty botties (not mine I hasten to add) and a big bar of Angel's Delight soap which smells heavenly (boom boom).

I first used the Angel's Delight at the weekend and I was rather disconcerted to learn that it contains little gold foil stars like table confetti. I hadn't noticed them when I bought it and I was a little miffed to have to fish them out of my delicate bits as they were rather sharp!

Big Bang Theory

Hands up everyone who remembers Space Hoppers! My Space Hopper was my favourite toy when I was a kid. I spent many happy hours bouncing round the garden pretending that I was riding Black Beauty or Champion The Wonderhorse. I have a picture somewhere of me sitting on it in an extraordinarily short dress with my own coltish legs on display (God, how I wish I still had those legs).

I don't know what happened to the original but I am now, at the tender age of 39, the proud owner of another Space Hopper courtesy of Hawkin's Bazaar. It's not as big or as sturdy as I recall and I'm a little concerned that it might burst under my not inconsiderable weight, but all the same I spent the evening bouncing round my living room like a complete maniac. It was truly liberating and I can heartily recommend it as a supreme method of stress relief.

Oh yeah it's best to wear a pair of Tigger ears for full effect. Bounce, bounce, bounce!

Moonstruck

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the Moon. If I ever get my finger out and write this novel that I've been mooning over for years, it will probably be set on the Moon.

At the top of my Christmas list every year for the last umpteen years has been "Moon Globe". So far I have received an array of Earth globes in styles ranging from antique schoolroom (which is intriguing to pore over and look at how the country names and boundaries have changed) to inlaid with semi-precious stones. I even have a globe with the constellations on it. But alas, no Moon Globe. I know they exist, people just aren't looking hard enough.

For instance, last night as we were driving home from a day out at about 5pm, the sky over my home was a beautiful dusky lavender and set into this sky was one of the largest full moons I have ever seen. It was stunning, golden yellow and looked as though it was illuminated from within. The man in the Moon was perfectly visible too. It wasn't just a disc in the sky, it was 3 dimensional, you could tell it was a globe.

That's not too much to ask for is it?

Rubber Bullets

I recently took the probably unprecedented step of actually forwarding the link for my blog to my boss. I needed him to know what caused my near-breakdown last week especially as the Shirt had wrongly indicated that it might have been the new Lieutenant who had stirred up the trouble; I couldn't adequately express what the problem was in person so I wanted him to read it instead.

He's a good egg and we had a heart to heart the next day and everything is fine now. He also seems to have taken on board the fact that I'm neither happy nor challenged in my present job and asked me was there anything else that I could take on. I told him that I fancied having a go at maintaining the squadron website to which he agreed and said that any training the squadron could fund I could go for.

I am now thinking that I might have bitten off more than I can chew after my first HTML lesson with the squadron's resident pointy headed computer whizkid, Codename: Tigger. A week ago I couldn't even spell HTML never mind would have considered writing my own code.

Now I know a little about code, and you know what they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Well I'm armed and dangerous, luckily I'm armed with blanks but I have to tell you when you shoot yourself in the foot with a blank it still frickin' hurts!

Fortunately the only casualty so far has been my own blog. I had recently attempted to post images by clicking on the image button in the Blogger editor but each time my pictures have disappeared into the ether. I've tried troubleshooting with the Blogger Help files but have actually found them spectacularly unhelpful.

Today I decided to try writing an HTML tag (giggle, check out the techno speak) and after writing several broken tags I finally managed to get a picture of my husband uploaded (yes he's sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 simulator, but that's another post). However, the picture takes up most of the screen and as much as I love the guy I figured my profile and all the links to archives, hit counter, etc, probably would be useful to have on display - he was obscuring the lot. So I moved him to the bottom of the page instead but my stuff is still missing in action.

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!

Oh well back to the drawing board. Now where did I put that 'HTML For Dummies'?

Mission Improbable

Today is my 17th wedding anniversary. We lived together for 5 years before we eventually made it legal, aside from my few spells in hospital over the years we have never spent more than 2 nights apart. I've known my lovely husband for more than half my life and I cannot happily visualise life without him.

We met a month before my 17th birthday in a pub called The Forest which sadly is no longer a pub but a large private house. On that fateful day we had both been dragged up there by our respective best friends against our wills. His best mate had wanted to introduce him to my best mate but fate intervened.

He was (and still is) a biker, not the grubby grebo kind of biker, instead he was a cleancut lad who happened to only have one mode of transport - a Honda 250 Superdream. I loved his cheeky grin and twinkly blue eyes framed by gorgeous long eyelashes. He still has the blue eyes of course but the cheeky grin with its slightly crooked teeth has been replaced by some dodgy crowns of which he is very self-conscious and now he rarely smiles.

I don't know what he liked about me. I was wearing some white trousers which used to be my karate trousers but I managed to convert them into day wear. As it was the mid 80s I was also wearing my New Romantic navy blue boots that had zips that curved from the front of the foot round to the outside of the calf - I had used some pink ribbon to make little bows and tied them to the zip-pull. I thought it looked cool but probably I looked like a dork. On top I was wearing an almost backless teal sweater. Like I said, it was the 80s - no-one ever made fashion sense in the 80's.

My 'friend' did her best to distract his attention and wore his leather jacket and basically draped herself over him as often as she could while I contented myself with squirting a soda siphon into a little gremlin charity money box, convinced that I was going to be left on the shelf again. But apparently he only had eyes for me.

When it was time to go home we didn't exchange phone numbers or make plans to see each other again and I thought that was that. However, the next night I was on my way up to my friend's house when I heard a bike pull up next to me and it was him!! We stood and chatted for over an hour in the pouring rain - all the time he kept his helmet on because he'd been down at the burger van eating burgers with raw onion and he didn't want me to smell his breath. He told me he was on his way home to watch, wait for it, Dynasty! Once again we parted company without making any plans.

The next day I decided to look up his phone number and give him a call but he wasn't in when I called. I went out for a jog in the woods feeling like an idiot for calling and when I was on my way back I saw in the distance someone walking up the road with a Golden Labrador. Thinking it was my unpleasant next door neighbour I started walking away as fast as I could but fortunately not fast enough because it turned out to be my future soulmate walking his boss' dog, Solomon, trying to find my house. He came home with me so I could wash and change and then we went out for a walk together. The rest as they say is history.

I cannot fathom how we have managed to stay together so long because we are so different. He's a leg man, I have limbs that can only loosely be described as legs. I like tall men, he's the same height as me. I like kissing, he likes to get right on down to business. He's a clean & tidy freak, I'm the world's worst housekeeper. I like to cook hearty meals from scratch, he likes something frozen and out of a packet. He is Yin to my Yang, Crockett to my Columbo, Beano to my Beckett, Captain Birdseye to my Nigella Lawson, Jimmy Osmond to my Jimi Hendrix.

Somehow by a miracle we have stayed together through more differences than sames, through happiness and tragedy and my love for him grows stronger every day.

Halloween

All Hallows Eve in Twisted Pines
A night to stay inside
A gibbous moon ‘neath hazy cloud
Casts feeble light but wide
Goblins, ghouls and skeletons
Are creeping round outside
I sit by the fire and wonder
What’s going on out there?
A ghostly force quite playfully
Starts lifting up my hair
I hear cackling and rattling
Strange shadows pass close by
My hands are weak and trembling
I let out a quiet sigh
The doorbell rings, I start to shake
Perhaps it’s Frankensnail?
I creep to the door my knees a-quake
I fear my legs will fail
I open up that dread portal
My heart skips half a beat
It’s far, far worse than I imagined
Surprise! It’s Trick or Treat!

<©> Calamity Jane

I See Dread People

OK this will be my last rant for a while, just need to get this out of my system.

Just lately I've developed an enormous core of bubbling contempt and resentment that I fear I'm about to go off like Krakatoa. My boss had the misfortune of walking in yesterday just when the pyroclastic flow was about the reach the surface. Just as well that it was him really, if it had some dumb little Airman he'd be forming some rare exotic igneous rock called Ignoranticite by now.

As is usual with us gals it's the stupid things that set us off, we're dealing with the heavy stuff just fine but someone comes along and utters some banality and suddenly the end of the world is nigh.

Episode the First: Last week I was talking to the Shirt outside. A Tech Sergeant comes along and asks the Shirt how he likes his Volvo. Shirt says he likes it just fine. The TSgt say he's unhappy with his brand new Volvo, just had to have the fuel tank stripped out because of some fault with a sensor. Shirt says oh did you have that fixed by the dealer in Bury? TSgt says no, he's ha ha, been, ha ha, barred from that one ha ha, he takes his to ha ha, Downham Market.

Mental screech of brakes - barred from a Volvo dealership? WTF? What the fudge did he do? The Shirt asks the same question.

Apparently the TSgt went in one day to see if they could take a look at the problem, they tell him that he really needs to make an appointment as they are rather busy. TSgt says what do you mean I need to make an appointment, I want my car fixed! So it turns out that to appease him they take a look under the bonnet and there appears to be a faulty sensor which they fix and he goes away.

2 months later the same fault happens again. TSgt screeches to a halt outside the showroom storms in and throws his car keys at the service manager and yells at him something to the effect of you said you fixed it, I want it fixed properly NOW! The service manager of course doesn't take too kindly to this attitude and he throws the car keys back at TSgt. TSgt loses his rag and in the ensuing slanging match makes a mess of the service manager's desk and the receptionist's desk. TSgt gets ejected and is barred.

Now I know the service manager, the sales manager and several of the staff at this dealership - my husband has bought 2 new Volvos from them in the last 3 years. They are extremely nice people. I am ashamed that someone from my squadron could be such an arsehole to them and relate the story in such a braggardly and unashamed fashion with a British national standing by. I am even more ashamed that I didn't have the nerve to say something to this guy but he was escorted away by the Shirt before I had a chance. I'm having to suppress keying his Volvo every time I drive past, I content myself with giving him Paddington stares instead.

Episode the Second: The RAF Commander gave me a message for my boss that there had been a complaint about engine noise from our engine testing facility and could we supply him with our rules of conduct as far as noise ordinance goes. I passed on the message and we had a little conversation about noise in general. My boss said if I was bothered by the noise then I should move. I took it in the way it was intended, as a joke but when a senior NCO made the same remark but with more barbs round the edges I got a tad annoyed.

It was the general tone rather than the words - We, the Mighty US Air Force, are Your Protectors! Bow down before us and be grateful that are here to wake you at 4:45 am every morning! If you don't like it move! Forget that your family has lived here for generations! Never mind that house rental to Americans has pushed the house sale prices up to unaffordable levels!

And when the Shirt chimed in with we should restrict everyone to base so they don't spend their money "on the Economy" and we'll soon show the local populace how grateful they should be. Puhlease!! The only businesses that will notice the difference will be the pubs!

Episode the Oh Whatever: I'm too tired to relate the rest of what I hear every day like it's so expensive in this country (oh really, maybe you should try living on a British salary without COLA (no not the Real Thing, Cost Of Living Allowance) or utilities allowance or housing allowance - we'll see how you manage on 975 quid a month) or we get ripped off at the garage because we're American (no you get ripped off because you're a punter just like everyone else trying to get their clutch fixed) or we're a target for crime (try not leaving your thousand dollar stereo on display in your unlocked car or maybe throw a little council tax our way to fund the police so they can do something about it) or raining AGAIN?! (after the driest July and Autumn in living memory? Hurrah! It's raining!) or the roads here are sooo narrow and the cars are soo small and no free refills when you go to McDonalds and where's the nearest mall and gas is sooooo expensive I can't afford to drive up to Scotland for the weekend ... Boo effing bloody hoo!

And so, on to the heavy stuff. I have diabetes and kidney failure. I need to lose about 70lbs before I can get on the transplant list, I've managed to lose about 1lb in the last 5 months of virtual starvation. My daily fluid allowance is only about 1.25litres. I take God knows how many pills very day. I have very little spare time these days, Sunday is my only free day. I'm quite likely going to need surgery on my arm again, this time to be cut from shoulder to elbow to bring those blasted blood vessels closer to the surface. My Mother has Parkinson's disease and is losing her marbles and her mobility. My Uncle-in-law has Prostate Cancer. My Dad can barely walk. I think I've started the menopause. I'm childless and too ill and too old to adopt, too broke for surrogacy. My brother has disowned me for reasons wholly unknown to me. I expect to get a 1.5% pay rise this year - wow what will I do with an extra £160 a year? Whee, let's hit Poundstretcher!!

It's no surprise really that I have to vent a little from time to time is it? Relax everyone the eruption is over.

Serial Monotony

I have a new officer working with me; she’s the Section Commander – basically the squadron personnel officer/customer service manager/Commander’s executive officer all rolled into one. She wants to take work from me and give it to someone else. I run the performance reporting program for the squadron, all military personnel have a written performance appraisal once a year, more often if they have a change of supervision; I request all the paperwork, read and make corrections, track everything and make sure it gets turned in on time.

I’m pretty darn good at it too – my squadron is the only one in the Group that has a 100% on-time rate. I’m a legend in my own lunchtime.

The thing is as the Commander’s Secretary it’s not actually my job, I got the program to look after temporarily about 3 years ago and for one reason and another I’ve kept it. The new Lieutenant wants it to go back where it belongs which will leave me with monitoring the Commander’s calendar and proofreading correspondence that comes in for his signature. Woo hoo.

Most people would be overjoyed at having their workload decreased but I get ground down by the tedium. The logical answer would be to find another job but that’s a tall order if you have diabetes & kidney failure, can you imagine sitting there in your interview finery clutching your CV and glowing references telling the interviewer that you’re wonderful and reliable and oh by the way you will need Tuesday and Thursday mornings off. New disability laws be buggered, you don’t stand a snowball in hell’s chance.

Even within the MOD it’s difficult especially as most jobs that are vacant are only open to staff who are due to be made redundant and have first dibs.

I joined the MOD to get away from being a secretary (not that there’s anything specifically wrong with being a secretary – I just had my midlife crisis early and thought there has got to be more that I can do apart from office management). I left school with the bog standard array of O levels and I took the path of least resistance as dictated by my parents who don’t hold any truck with careers, no dear what you want is a job.

I thought it would be a fresh start, I thought I could get my toe in the door and retrain to do something else. The dream was to do an OU degree or similar in Engineering and transfer into the Research & Development branch. At first I was assigned to Quality Assurance and for 3½ years I was happy. Then a US Air Force regulation decreed that foreign nationals couldn’t do the job I was doing so I had to take the next job that came up – a secretarial job.

According to the local personnel office, the MOD only fund training that relates to the job you’re in already so I can train to be an even more efficient administrator but little else. I feel like my life is slipping away before my eyes without ever having done anything worthwhile.

Sorry I’m just a miserable old bat today.

3 Gross Things

I recently discovered Clare's positively inspirational and inspirationally positive site which was being featured on Blogger's Blogs of Note. It's a wonderfully uplifting site, she sees beauty where most people see the mundane so at at first I thought I would mention a few beautiful things myself but then I thought why steal Clare's thunder, she has the beautiful stuff market cornered already so why not put my own icky spin on it.

1. I decided to give myself a beauty MOT today and have a pedicure, body scrub, exfoliate, depilate, etc, etc. While clipping my toenails I discovered that the lady who waxes my legs has been neglecting my toes. I had to tweeze out several hairs on both little piggies that were over an inch long. I didn't think toe hair could grow that long. I need to get better acquainted with my feet.

2. I found a small white lump in one of my armpits and being of the better out than in persuasion I gave it a squeeze. Out came a HUGE blackhead with a long, thick tail. I swear it winked at me.

3. I have a large lump and and enormous purpley-black bruise from yesterday's kerfuffle with dialysis and bleeding in Tesco's carpark. It is shaped roughly like the USA, except Maine and the northeast appear to have been flooded by the Great Lakes. The needle puncture appears to have taken out Chicago.

A Big Prick

I should have known today would be a terrible day when I was halfway to the hospital and realised that I had forgotten my insulin. Great no breakfast while I'm dialysing, I was starving too, so I had to make do with 2 small cups of tea and the salad out of my sandwich (1 slice of cucumber, 1 & a half slices tomato and a few shreds of lettuce = NHS salad sandwich ... I've had more salad garnish in their regular sarnies).

Sister Mac was assigned to me today and she successfully managed to get a needle in my arm which was used as the arterial supply for the dialysis machine, my chest line was used as the venous return so I got a really good dialysis for a change.

When it came to having the needle out I didn't stop bleeding for about 20 minutes - they had given me a mega dose of heparin which is an anticoagulant because I have a history of clotting the machine, and this prevented me from getting up as quickly as I would have liked. But eventually it did stop and I made my way home.

When I got to a village called Culford I got caught doing about 40 in a 30 limit. It's the first time in 19 years of driving that I've ever been caught, I'm not a speed freak as such but like most people I often do about 5 -10mph above the posted limit. I'm a bit peeved about the whole situation as I do normally stick to the limit through this village but I tend to coast from 40 down to 30 in my own time, the speed trap was round a corner about 200 yards in from the end of the 40 limit and the police were hiding behind a dark reddish-brown Range Rover so I didn't think it was very sporting of them. I expect that will be my first 3 points on my licence and a hefty fine.

When I got into Twisted Pines I needed to get a loaf of bread for bacon sandwiches for lunch so I stopped in at Tesco and parked in their back car park. As I was getting my stuff from the back seat an old geezer in a Corsa swooped in through the whole row of vacant spaces next to me and almost took my offside wing off! He then attempted to park in the spot next to me where I was standing with my doors open rummaging for my bag and jacket. Then he pulled forward again and revved his engine several times which I took to be impatience causing me to grab whatever I could so I could get out of his way. Why the other 10 spaces were no good to him I don't know but he wanted to park next to me - I almost said something to him but when I saw how doddery he was I thought better of it.

While I was walking towards the shop and putting my jacket on my arm felt warm and wet so I felt my elbow and sure enough I'd sprung a leak! I went back to the car because I had some gauze on the passenger seat and by the time I got back my arm was soaked. I stood there beside the car with pressure on the leak, covered in blood wondering what on Earth I should do. I have rarely felt so isolated as I did standing there in a public carpark covered in blood with no-one taking any notice.

The pad I was using soaked through pretty quickly but I didn't want to take the pressure off to put a clean one on, I just needed a nice thick pressure pad applied but wasn't sure where I was going to get one from. I decided to try and get someone to help and eventually managed to get someone's attention and the next thing I know is she's got someone from Tesco to call an ambulance!

A Tesco first aider came out to me and she was lovely, she obviuosly had some knowledge but what she lacked was equipment. I had a whole cluster of Tesco staff round me when the ambulance turned up - siren wailing, lights flashing - I was mortified. I'd been hoping for the first response guy rather than the full blown ambulance jobbie.

Anyway suffice to say they were great, I kept apologising to them for calling them out to such a minor event but they were OK about it and cleaned me up, patched me up and generally made a fuss of me. Thanks James and Graham the EMTs, and thanks Sharon for not walking away like everyone else!!

A Little Alliteration, Part 2

Desmond the debt-collector was only really dastardly by day. During his downtime he was indeed quite a dear, and dishy too with darned good diction. Desmond was becoming decidedly disaffected with dastardly debt-collecting and was only doing it for the dosh. His dearest desire was to design a dinghy and sail it down the Danube.

So Desmond with duplicity in his heart drove his Ducati to the Dilks’ domain over in deepest darkest Dorchester. He dismounted and dragged his despondent feet towards the door. With a trembling digit he depressed the doorbell. DING DONG! declared the doorbell while Desmond waited with a distinct feeling of dread.

Behind the door Desmond could discern a dissonant discussion debating the danger in opening the door on a day when the family was due a visit from the dastardly debt-collector. Deciding that Desmond looked a decent dude who definitely couldn't double as a debt-collector, Dilbert Dilks opened the door.

“Good day Mr Dilks, I’m Desmond the debt-collector” declared Desmond displaying his dazzling dental work.

Dilbert Dilks dropped to the deck in a dead faint.

"Damn!" said a disgruntled Desmond and drooping his shoulders dejectedly, "I'm quite deficient in the discretion department, I do hope he isn't damaged."

To be continued ...

Saddle Up

Here in the rural hinterland of East Anglia, there are plenty of things you see everyday - tractors towing trailers laden with carrots & sugar beet, suicidal pheasants, F-15 fighter jets using 88,000lbs of thrust to get off the ground, even Asian mini-deer called Muntjacs who were introduced by some local landowner with a sense of humour, sometime last century.

But something you don't see everyday is gentlemen trundling down the pavement on invalid scooters wearing spaghetti ties and ten gallon hats. Yup bet your bottom dollar cowpokes, I saw one today. Yeeeehaawww!

Tray Bong

I've been told that the French refer to us Rosbifs as a nation of shopkeepers. I've never really been sure what that is supposed to mean except that it is derogatory. Well all I can say is it takes one to know one.

Last Saturday, Twisted Pines was the latest small market town to succumb to the curious spectacle of the traveling French Market. I had visited one when it came to a neighbouring town and I wasn't overly impressed but as the only alternative was laundry or paperwork I walked down to take a gander.

I had a Tony Bliar-type vision (cue heavenly choir and Vaseline smeared lens) of the Brits and the French trading side by side, working together on the free common market, each bringing trade to the other. However, clearly anticipating French embargo and tension between the natives and the visitors, the local council shrewdly set aside one of the car parks in town for the market instead.

Malheureusement it was a dozen stalls at the most selling goods that ranged from cheap Chinese-made belts to cheap Chinese-made straw baskets. Qu'elle deception! And this country just isn't ready for cured sausages, we like 'em plump and pink not turdlike! There was a stall that sold nothing but garlic - but zut alors £7 for 500g is too beaucoup de l'argent even for the likes of spendthrift gastronomes like myself.

My only hope of consolation for this blatant ripping off of the unsuspecting British public, is that the French traders had to buy petrol before driving home.

A Little Alliteration, Part 1

Dilbert Dilks the devilishly debonair Dane, along with his dame, the desirably delectable Dora and their delightfully dippy daughter Dinah, were doing their darnedest to dodge the deviously diabolical dilemma that was destroying their diverse Delicious Dildo Deliveries To Your Door service in deepest darkest Dorchester.

Determined to deliver only the dandiest dildos, they disdained to pay their dues and descended into the direst debt causing them to deliver the deeds of their dear domicile to the dastardly debt-collector, Desmond. Dear oh dear what a debacle, what will they do?

Thing 1, Thing 2

I’ve finally figured out why I was getting nauseous on dialysis – it’s all down to the rate at which I have fluid taken off. It seems I can’t tolerate much more than 800 mls per hour which means that I can only afford to gain about 2 litres between sessions (the computer adds an extra few hundred mls for saline and drinks during the session).

This puts my daily fluid allowance at about 1.5 litres to include all drinks, gravy, jelly, fruit, etc. It’s a tough regime to stick to and it takes its toll on the bowel – I haven’t had a proper No 2 since Monday because I’ve been so strict with my fluids.

I mentioned this to Sister Sailor today and we started joking about enemas and colonic irrigation then she came out with the startling fact that you can give yourself a DIY colonic by waterskiing. Being a sporty type she unwittingly managed this herself when unable to stand up and not wearing a wetsuit this position forced rather a lot of high pressure water where the sun doesn’t normally shine.

This reminded me of an acquaintance of mine who suffering a similar termination of regular bowel action took matters into her own hands with embarrassing consequences. Miss X took an old squeezy mustard bottle, rinsed it thoroughly (or so she thought), filled it with warm water and inserted it into her rectum. She was splattering mustardy poo for days afterwards – every time she sneezed, sat down, coughed, etc. out it would come.

I think I’ll stick to my plums and Senokot for now but I do have a squeezy curry sauce bottle knocking around in the kitchen somewhere …

I Am The Law

Working with the military, friends come and go as tours of duty begin and end. Initially I had difficulty accepting this rapid turnover and would get quite upset but now after 7 years it’s virtually a case of turn up at the leaving do, shake their hand and say “OK then, see ya!”

Occasionally you get people that you get close to and the goodbyes get harder. I’ve recently had to wave goodbye to Dave and Julie and their gorgeous cats Chester and Kensington. Dave was the First Sergeant for my squadron and was a good mate and confidant. My husband nursed his Porsche back to health after a long illness (just one of his many talents, among wall building, welding, plumbing, computer genius, CAD work) and Dave’s generosity in payment kept our heads above water while my husband was unemployed.

There must be something about the name Dave because another Dave that I knew was hard to say goodbye to a few years ago. He should have arrived home again in California today after 15 months away from his lovely family on what’s called a “remote assignment” in Turkey. Most tours with the US Air Force are undertaken with your family in tow but with remotes the military member goes unaccompanied. As I understand it remotes are in places that are either too dangerous or too alien to take a civilian family to. They're off to Hawaii next so they had to endure the tough assignment before scoring the holy of holies.

Dave was a “pointy head” avionics whiz who worked in a microelectronics laboratory but he was assigned to a staff job in Quality Assurance at the same time that I was a Technical Order Distribution Officer – I procured, tracked, distributed and inspected all technical data required for maintaining F-15s and their support equipment and for flying them too. He’s retrained into Intelligence now and I’m sure he’s heard all the jokes before so I’m not even going to mention the one about not usually seeing the words Intelligence and Dave in the same sentence.

I thought of Dave as younger brother. Or a puppy. He was always dragging back some booty that he’d managed to dig up from somewhere, and dancing around all knees, elbows and big feet with his tongue hanging out excited about what he’d pulled off. I’m sure he’s grown out of that by now … maybe.

He also fed my Sour Skittles addiction – best not dip too much into that murky period, I was different person when I did Skittles.

One afternoon I was sitting working at my computer when a message flashed up saying that I was being monitored. I couldn’t carry on working while the message remained so as there was an “OK” button in the message I pressed it and it went away.

A minute later it happened again so I thought I’d better get the computer dude down to see what was going on – I wasn’t particularly concerned about being monitored, you sign a user agreement before you’re allowed a network account that says you’re likely to be monitored and as I hadn’t heard of chatrooms, Ebay and blogs back then I was reasonably compliant. I was worried in case it was some kind of virus, so off I went.

Before I got out of the door I couldn’t help but notice Dave curled up in hysterics on the floor.

It took him a full 5 minutes to tell me what he was laughing about because he was laughing so hard and it turned out that he’d learnt how to send messages through the network that pop up on the screen. He’d set me up. Hmm, time to neuter that puppy.

A few weeks went by when the perfect opportunity came along to play the joke on one of the other guys in the office, Jamie. Jamie had acquired a whole load of old .exe arcade type games. Needless to say those games are verboten on a military computer.

Jamie was busy at his desk playing Frogger and had a couple of other guys, his supervisor included, standing behind him when I sent the message through the network direct to his screen that OSI – The Office Of Special Investigations, the US Air Force's Secret Police was "watching his illegal activities".

Jamie totally freaked out – unsurprising really as he was waiting to go to Officer Training School in preparation for retraining as a fighter pilot. An OSI investigation would undoubtedly cost him his new career.

He started to shutdown his system. I managed to keep a straight face long enough to ask what was wrong but I couldn’t contain my laughter for long so I left and went to the office next door. While I was in there giggling hysterically the computer guy came in and asked me what was going on. With a stroke of genius he decided to go storming into my office and told Jamie that he was impounding the computer. He promptly dismantled everything and took it away leaving poor Jamie wondering what was going to happen next.

He got as far as explaining to the Group exec about what happened (the exec was playing along as he twigged that there was foul play afoot) and was prepared to go and talk to the Group Commander before he found out that it was all a big joke. But don’t feel too sorry for Jamie folks – he had that shock coming to him for a looooong time.

Welcome home Dave!! If you’re reading this I thought you’d like a trip down Memory Lane.

Soggy Pussy

Stubbed my little toe last night whilst trying to go through a door (note to self must allow more clearance). Naturally I used some ripe Anglo Saxon expletives which rather startled the cat that I was carrying at the time. Her ripe feline expletives, punctuated with claws, forced me to drop her and she ran off through the catflap. I opened the back door to try to entice her back in before she got too wet - it was blowing a gale and raining cats & dogs - a wet pussy tends to stain the sofa.

Imagine my surprise when I spot a cluster of my favourite molluscs outside forming a veritable picket line in the rain. They shook their eye stalks at me in fury and held up tiny placards proclaiming cute little phrases like “Temperance Mothers Against Beer Traps!” and “Make Slime not War!” and “Shock and Awe No More!”.

I fear my hostas could be in danger from gastropod guerillas so I shall have to tread very carefully