White lines (now we're having fun baby)

I was supposed to have my chest line replaced today but as it turned out I had it replaced yesterday so I'm currently sitting on a lovely padded cloud of codeine & paracetamol waiting for Captain Scarlet to come home and wash my hair for me.

When I arrived at dialysis yesterday morning they couldn't get blood to flow through the line to the machine so I had to trip on over to Addenbrooke's to have a new line fitted. Now this is the catheter that goes into the skin above my right boob, tunnels up under the skin towards my collarbone and then dips down into my subclavian vein. It gets stitched in where it enters the skin and there's another incision just on my collarbone where they open up the skin in order to pull and push it to where it's supposed to go. It's literally my lifeline because without it I can't have dialysis.

It's not the first time I've have one replaced, when I first started dialysis I had a different line. For the first month while there are still stitches holding everything in place in you're not allowed to get the stitches wet. When my stitches came out I celebrated with a long hot shower, keeping dressings and gauze on to stop surprisingly dirty soap (you really don't want to know what lives in your soap) getting into the wounds.

Afterwards I had to remove the dressings to clean everything with antiseptic and replace with clean dry dressings. Well I couldn't get off the gauze that was taped to the end of the catheter, so I decided to cut the tape off. Unfortunately I managed to cut off one of the lumens (the end of the catheter has two limbs or lumens - one for blood to go out to the dialyser, one for the cleaned blood to come back to me). Fortunately I cut it below the clamp or else I would have either bled to death on the bathroom floor or inhaled an air embolism into my heart. Sobering stuff (and kept the chopped off end as a talisman ... I know I'm a weirdo, but hey what can ya do. BTW check out the fabric on my desk chair mrrrreow).



So back to yesterday, the blocked line had been in my chest for 19 months and it was fairly well embedded so removing it and replacing with another was a pretty unpleasant experience ... under a local anaesthetic I might add. Long story short, much pushing and shoving later I was operational again. I'm sore and stiff, I have a huge swelling and the makings of an enormous bruise and I'm encased in clear adhesive dressings which I'm not looking forward to having ripped off tomorrow when everything gets checked and cleaned. But what's really irritating me is that I can't wash my own hair, I can't wait until Capt S comes home.

PS - I forgot to update you all on the whole live donor saga. Capt S has type O blood which means he's the "universal donor" and I, with my type AB blood am the "universal recipient". We're still waiting for tissue typing and cross matching to be completed before we see just how much of a perfect match we are for each other, but the preliminary results are looking promising.

And now for something completely different

Braaaaaiiiins!!

PS - I can't figure out how to embed a video from YouTube instead of posting a link. Hints on a postcard please.

Blame it on the Dougie

Poor Dougal hasn't had a good week either. We got home one day this week to discover that someone had detonated a poo bomb in his drawers and he was smothered all over his tail, belly and knickerbockers. I don't know whether it was the sunshine, the moonlight or the good times but he stank to high heaven and was a walking biological hazard, he was covered in weaponized pootonium

Since Dougal and his sister have very long dense fur they do suffer from the occasional dingleberry (such a cute word for a nasty object) which we are usually able to clip out but this stuff was spread too far and too thick. Time for a bath.

Dougal doesn't like baths. Dougal's a powerful cat with paws like bear claws and teeth that Jaws would be proud of. Dougal wasn't happy.

Neither was CJ. CJ has a tendency towards retching when confronted with nasty smells. CJ can't help it. CJ can't retch quietly.

It was a cold frosty night, the kind of night where sounds are crystal clear and travel for miles. RAHHHHHrrrrruuuuGGHHHHHH!!!! Said CJ. MEooOOooooUUuuuuEEEOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!! Replied Dougie. We continued in this vein for about an hour (it took 2 baths to get him fresh and clean again and it was almost 24 hours before he dried out properly) with lights going on in windows up and down the street.

We have incidentally now withdrawn from the Popular Neighbour of the Month Competition.

Hurrumph

I've had a trying couple of weeks and I'm back in the black hole of depression again. Dialysis treatments have been terrible lately, neither my line (the catheter in my chest) nor needling my fistula is working particularly well. In fact the fistula clotted on Saturday and my line is partially blocked so things are so bad that I was booked in to have surgery to fix everything today. The surgery got cancelled so I can look forward to another shitty treatment tomorrow followed by a general anaesthetic and a lengthy operation probably on Friday.

Additionally I appear to have lost a friend and I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is that I've done or not done. Made an appalling breach in phone etiquette apparently. There was a strange blog post that's gone now but I've puzzled and worried over it for a couple of days, attempted to make contact but now can only conclude that it was directed at me even though some of the clues don't quite add up to events how I remember them. They say if the cap fits wear it, well I'm wearing this one but it doesn't suit me.

The pride goes before a fall

Earlier this week I actually started to feel more human than I have done of late. My hormones were levelling out at last not to mention not actually being on the rag for a change meant my usual joie de vivre was restored. I'll be the first to admit that I've let myself go over the last few years, failing health, those cursed hormones, stress and anxiety have conspired to erode my self-esteem and often as long as I'm clean, pressed and sober I count my blessings and head off for work.

But not this week, I felt so good about myself for a change I showered, conditioned, exfoliated, moisturised, blow dried, perfumed and dressed for work feeling pretty chipper. I even wore a little make-up - usually I just apply some bronzer to take away the deathly pallor and curl my naturally luscious eyelashes but this time I wore a little more than normal.

Dressed in a slinky tee shirt, trousers and boots that between them add 2 inches in height and remove 10 lbs in weight I was eager to meet the world face-on. The finishing touch was a cute little fake fur gilet that I bought recently that I was wearing for the first time and I love it (since I do possess the Bet Lynch gene, I enjoy a bit of fake fur and animal print when used in tasteful moderation of course - remind me to show you the chairs in my study). I felt like The Cat. Yeooowwww!

So, I arrived at work and fairly strutted around all the offices greeting everyone and finally I slunk sexily into my friend's office. She whistled and made me twirl like Anthea. I dutifully obliged. She said what's that on the back? Fearing that it might be a spider I froze while she came over to investigate. It wasn't a spider, it was the bloody security tag that the shop assistant didn't remove when I purchased the gilet! I'd gone all around the offices completely oblivious to that tag looking like a shoplifter, and my lovely gilet spent the rest of the day hidden from view. Pffft.

Deposit account

We witnessed an amusing episode the other night whilst doing our grocery shopping. Ahead of us at the till was a young lad of about 18 or 19 making a purchase with what looked like £10 worth of 5 pence pieces which was taking a long time to process due to the shop assistant having to count all the coins. And what was he buying that he'd obviously been saving so long for? A box of condoms. Go on my son!

Chopped liver

I heard some terrific news at the weekend, my friend Dave's wife Aimée had a successful liver transplant! Aimée is an amazing woman, so far in her young life she's given birth to 2 beautiful kids, undergone gastric banding surgery and lost an incredible amount of weight; suffered with an acute form of arthritis which left her bedridden for a while and the latest problem was liver failure. She'd been very ill for weeks but thankfully a liver was found for her. You can read about her recovery here. I should add that I think Dave's an amazing bloke to have coped with everything the way he has.



I hope to give you some new news about my transplant situation soon.

Ragtime

Third time in 7 weeks. Need I say any more?

See the little nuclei

The Pharyngula mutating genre meme.

Before I go any further I have to apologise if I haven't quite got the heredity right, genetics isn't really my bag but I do enjoy a bit of sci-fi.

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is‚ …”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

A. You can leave them exactly as is.

B. You can delete any one question.

C. You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is‚” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is‚ …”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is‚ …”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is‚ …”.

D. You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is‚ …”.

*You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

*Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

*Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My parent is: Zoe

1. The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…
Timeline by Michael Crichton

2. The best romantic movie in science fiction is…
Armageddon (I know I'm losing some credibility here but I love that movie)

3. The best (loosely) sci-fi song in rock is…
Waltzinblack by The Stranglers. Heeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

4.The best humorous novel series in sf/fantansy is…
The Discworld books by Terry Pratchett

My victims for this meme are…

Well here's where my genes start to peter out because I'm not going to nominate anyone, there's a growing trend among my correspondents, they no longer want to do the do the tag and run thing, and to be honest I can understand why. Feel free to play along if you want to. Que sera sera.

When the boat comes in

The Cap'n & I took a long awaited holiday the week before last - I might fiddle with the photo layout later but it's taken me this long to crank out the post - sheesh some writer I turned out to be.

We spent a week in Co. Durham, it was our first holiday in this country for years and it proved to be a major logisitical challenge since surprisingly it is more difficult to get holiday dialyis in the UK than it is to get it in Europe (we normally go to the States but couldn't afford upwards of £250 per dialysis treatment). We had wanted to holiday in the Whitby area but that would have meant dialysing at York or Scarborough and one needs to book at least a year in advance for either of those! Darlington was much easier to get in to although they wanted the address of where we were staying before they would commit themselves and I wanted a definite place before I booked somewhere to stay. A veritable Catch 22 - guess who backed down first? Yup, moi meme.

The cottage I booked in the end was absolutely gorgeous, it was a converted cow byre with almost 2 feet thick stone walls, huge kitchen, roomy bedrooms, log fire, chickens on the doorstep, horses in the field - all the mod cons.







We started on Sunday with a quick visit to Consett and then went on to Tanfield Lea where my Dad was born. We then went on to the Tanfield Railway which is the world's oldest railway still in use today. It's a short stretch of track that operates a couple of locomotives and passenger carriages. In its heydey it transported coal and workers from the local colliery. These days the locomotives regularly get dressed up with smiley faces a la Thomas The Tank Engine to transport sticky kids and tired parents on special kids' days. Unfortunately the day we went happened to be one of these days so we were crammed in a small carriage up to our ears in pushchairs, buns and baby wipes.



Later in the day we drove to High Pittington where my Dad was raised by his grandmother. We managed to find the actual house where she lived but I failed in my mission to find where she was buried. My Dad suffered an industrial accident that deprived him of 4 of his toes when he was 15, his Granny died while he was in a convalescent home from what he always believed to be shock and grief over her precious boy's accident. He was whisked away by his Dad to live in Gibraltar and Gran was buried without my Dad ever having the chance to say goodbye.

On Monday we had planned to go to the seaside, Cap'n S had found a booklet for Sunderland that appeared to have been written by one of Tony Bliar's spin doctors and they did such a good job that we were pencilled in, for oh about 5 minutes, to visit. Now forgive me anyone from Sunderland who happens to be reading but I'm sure you will understand where I'm coming from if I say that when you want to go to the beach you don't immediately think of Sunderland. Fortunately the good Cap'n detected my hesitation and he opted for Whitby instead.

It's a long drive to get to Whitby from Durham but it was well worth it. The weather was fantastic and the town and beach were every bit as I remembered. Actually I dodn't remember the Captain Cook Pimped My Ride Experience but then again it was a long time ago.



Sadly we only had a couple of hours there before we had to leave to make the trek across to Darlington for my treatment that night.

Tuesday dawned bright and clear, that day we were off into Durham city centre so I could conduct my first ever blogmeet with the lovely Shaz. When we had been in the planning stages we were trying to figure out a suitable place to meet - now I'm not that familiar with Durham so all I could think of was to meet at the Cathedral. Little did I realise that although you can see the cathedral from most places in the city, getting there involves a short hike up extremely steep and twisty streets. I later learnt that if you use the Park & Ride you can hop on a little bus that takes you all the way to the cathedral ... don't kill me Shaz I didn't know!




Anyway meeting Shaz was like meeting an old friend, we repaired to a little coffee shop and spent a good hour chinwagging until the lunchtime crowd of sightseers started to pressure us for our table.

We set off to do some shopping but didn't get very far before our tummies rumbled in unison and we decided to rendezvous with the Cap'n. After almost eating at a Thai restaurant suggested by the Cap'n (dropped because I knew he wouldn't enjoy it) we ended up in a fish & chip cafe and sat and talked for a long time again before we thought we'd better move along.

Now poor Shaz, I think she had come along with the intention of doing some serious retail therapy but instead we ended up back at at the Cathedral to have a look round inside where I actually managed to pull. We were walking round minding our business when this nice old chap stopped me and insisted that I check out the elevation on his bell tower (the bellth, the BELLTH!!). He also tried to show me his hidden flying buttresses but we managed to make our excuses and moved on.

Following a stroll around the cloister on a pilgrimage to find the loos we posed outside for each other's photo albums and then Sharon & I parted ways with a new friendship forged and promises to see each other again. Ahhhhh.

By Wednesday I was starting to feel somewhat under the weather, we were supposed to go to a place called Diggerland where you can drive JCBs and such (woo) but thankfully for my brand new white Reeboks they were closed. We went to Barnard Castle instead and strolled around a nice shopping area in the centre of town, had a mediocre lunch in an overpriced poncey little restaurant, and then walked around the castle ruins. I had dialysis later in the evening which I wasn't looking forward to and had a little strop on the way before being delivered to the waiting room for a 2½ hour wait before being hooked up to the machine.

The worst day weatherwise was Thursday. We went up to look at the Roman ruins at Corbridge. There is quite an impressive ruined fort up there along with a small but very good museum. I had really wanted to visit Hadrian's Wall and was disappointed to find that the fort wasn't by the Wall, several miles south in fact. I was windswept and cranky by the time we left there and headed for Newcastle where the Cap'n was intent on finding the Metro Centre which we did eventually. Unfortunately my heart really wasn't in traipsing round a giant mall, no matter how impressive so I just did a circuit of the ground floor and headed back to the car.

We checked out of the cottage on Friday and planned to go home via Scarborough! The journey took over 2 hours but took us through some lovely scenery. I spent several holidays in Scarborough as a kid and had very fond memories but somehow this time round it just didn't seem to measure up - it all seemed smaller and dingier than I remembered. We walked along the front and took the little hillside tram up into town. Although we didn't make it to Peasholme Park I did manage to strike one more thing off my nostalgia list - I bought some curd cheesecakes, enough for my parents and me. I've never been able to get these anywhere else in the country apart from Yorkshire and was desperate to have some again.

We then drove down through Hull and across the Humber Bridge the building of which forms a large part of my childhood memory cache - Granny lived in Hull and every time we went to visit her we would have to go and view the progress on the bridge until eventually it opened in 1981 and I got to walk across it.

Finally we arrived home weary and looking forward to a cuddle from our furry family. I shall miss this view from my bed every morning.

Beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena

That's a lot to live up to if you opt to dress as Wonder Woman for a fancy dress party. Needless to say I fell slightly short of the standard set by the delectable Lynda Carter but I did have fun (and I got to sleep with Captain Scarlet at the end of the day).



Black hair is definitely something I should avoid - makes me look washed out because my skin & brows are so fair. We made our costumes virtually from scratch - I made the cape and the skirt (unfortunately I forgot to press the skirt's seams and hems flat) and modified a swimsuit. The boots were a great find on Ebay, not authentic but I couldn't find anything suitable. Captain Scarlet modified a ladies' jacket to make his tunic - I think he did a pretty good job. Here's a close up of the man who's hopefully going to give me a kidney - he's a keeper isn't he?



The photos were taken by a friend who is a professional photographer and the files are so huge I've uploaded a few to Flickr rather than put them here, it's the first time I've attempted to do this so hopefully you can see them here, let me know if you can't and I'll see what I can do to fix it.

It was a long day, I had to prepare all the food because I was too tight to pay around £16.50 a head for a caterer with over 100 people invited. In the end only 30 or so turned up out of the 60 who had RSVP to say they'd come. I got some bullshit excuses such as "I went to sleep and didn't wake up until it was too late to come" which made me feel really special. But hey ho, they missed some good food and a fun night.

I was on the go all day, I didn't sit down, drink or eat for pretty much the entire day, even at the party I only had a couple of drinks. I guess I was running on adrenaline which contributed to my illness the following day. With hindsight, if I'd known so few would grace me with their presence I would have booked the bliffin' caterer!

Enter the Dragon

BOYOYOYOYOYOYONNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!! That was a gong in case you didn't notice, not that tinny little thing your Granny used to tap to summon you to your boiled eggs and soldiers, a massive 6 foot diameter, beaten bronze masterpiece. Yes I'm back!

Firstly, my thanks to everyone who expressed concern over my whereabouts, your comments and emails were very much appreciated. I can't adequately put into words why I stopped posting except to say that I was taken over by some kind of inertia, and boy when that inertia stuff gets holds of you it sure is hard to get ert again.

As you may remember up until my last post I was busily preparing for my 40th birthday party which was to be held a week or so before my actual birthday. I will post pictures and go into more detail another time but just a swift recap for now.

The party went very well. I prepared all the food and my neighbours manned the barbecue for me. Since I did all the choppng and mixing and was the hostess I didn't sit down all day or night so I was absolutely knackered by the time I finally managed to crawl into bed.

The next day I started throwing up (not due to a hangover since I barely had a chance to drink the night before) and later in the day started getting chills too. I was running a nasty fever and as I'm of such a delicate disposition my doctor referred me to the hospital where I stayed for a week. I had a suspected urinary tract infection but there never was any actual evidence of it apart from sickness and fever and some funny stuff going on with blood test results.

My stay in hospital was an absolute nightmare and I thought I would either go mad or drop dead from the stress - more on that in another post - but eventually I told them that they either discharge me or I would discharge myself. I was not going to spend my 40th birthday in hospital and finally managed to escape the evening before my birthday.

Tha whole episode seems to have put me in a real downer because I haven't wanted to do anything. I have just about managed to go to work and go to dialysis but that's it. I've been housesitting the black dog.

However, I'm starting to get back to normal and feeling a bit more positive. Not only have I managed to book some holiday dialysis so I can go away for a week and squeeze in a blogmeet with the wonderful croc-shod Shaz but, and this is a doozy, I've been given a tentative green light to have kidney transplant from a living donor ... none other than Captain Scarlet! My hero!! We need to get his blood tested, etc., but one of the surgeons has at least agreed in principle to the surgery without me having to lose loads of weight first!

222

I've been tagged with this easy little meme by the eminently employable Shaz. Essentially all you need to do is raid Wikipedia for information pertaining to your birth date - enter your day and month of birth into the search feature on the left of their main page. Then add this list, chop the top person off (apologies to Last Minute Lyn) and insinuate your blog's name on the bottom. Then list 3 events, 2 births and 1 holiday that happen/ed on your birthdate. Finally tag 5 other people.

Useless piece of information for you, on a non leap year my birthday is day number 222.

Are We There Yet??
Sarge Charlie
Comedy Plus
Us Danes
Medication Time

Three Events:

1. 1519 - Ferdinand Magellan's five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. They had to turn back after reaching Bermuda because Seaman Staines remembered that he'd left the gas on and Roger the Cabin Boy was suffering from severe piles.

2. 1990 - The Magellan space probe reaches Venus. Apparently upon resuming their voyage they took a wrong turn and instead of circumnavigating the globe they shot off into space.

3. 2006 - Scotland Yard disrupts major terrorist plot to destroy aircraft travelling from the United Kingdom to the United States. Wankers.

Two Births:

1. 1489 - Jacob Sturm von Sturmeck, German statesman and reformer (d. 1553)

2. 1939 - Kate O'Mara, British actress

One Holiday:
Independence Day in Ecuador -- Movement began in Quito in 1809. Independence not achieved till May 1822.

The lucky tagees are:

Bob T Bear Esq
Echomouse
Amy
Ruth
Leanne

Boots of a feather flock together

Not a whole lot going on, on the thinking blogger front but the footwear is conspiring to take over the world.

Cogito ergo blog

Goodness me, I've been nominated for a Thinking Blogger Award - thank you Ruth, I'm right chuffed! As I can't think of anything else to say I'll just get on with naming my nominees to carry the torch forward:

Zoe - Dear Zoe was the first person to ever find me on the blogosphere or at least the first to say hello. She's a thinker with a capital T, I'm sure she won't mind me saying that some of her writing goes right over my head but I like to visit her site anyway because she makes me think (and she often posts stuff that appeals to the latent geek in me).

Glamourpuss - What can I say about Chez Glamour? It does what it says on the tin. Puss writes about her life as the glamourous-pole-dance-instructor-about-town, her highly entertaining memoirs are delivered in a razor sharp, distinctly cerebral fashion.

Goth - No-one could accuse our lad of posting any old tat on his blog. It's definitely a blog for thinkers, why I often sit and think, 'Goth, what the hell are you smoking?' :-)

DQ - Between you and me, I think DQ thinks too much sometimes but then again she is a drama queen and she's had an unsettling few months. Que sera sera honey - everything will all work out for the best.

Claire - Claire's 3 Beautiful Things concept is a lovely thing to behold, no rants, no tears, just serenity. It takes some thought in this day and age to carry that off and she does it err, beautifully.

Postcards from the hedge

Blimey! She's like the No. 27 bus, you don't see one for ages and then 6 come along all at once!

Sorry Clam fans (Clam, thanks Glam) I've been a busy bee but hopefully this pile of posts should make up for it - yup look further than this entry and you'll find several more.

I had today off - happy 4th of July to our colonial friends - which gave me the chance to catch up. I did procrastinate though, tidied the house, washed the net curtains, scrubbed the kitchen floor, I would have worked through my paperwork intray too (ugh) but there was a cat asleep in it and I didn't want to disturb him. So there we have it. I'm all caught up - in blogland that is.

I'll list the highlights and you can follow links to your heart's delight.

I've told you about the building work, my health news, something frivolous, my forthcoming birthday party and you even get some close encounters of the furred kind. Enjoy!

All creatures ... and a few plants

Some pictures for y'all. They're a bit small, click on them for a larger image.

My lovely fuchsias:



Even more impressive when seen from below!



I planted sugar snap peas this year and they all germinated giving me about 12 plants which I put in pots due to the building work going on. For the last 3 weeks we've been getting pods from them regularly which are yummy to eat raw. I've also got a few straggly strawberry plants in a window box which yield about 2 ripe fruits every couple of days.




I also planted round carrots in a trough. They're doing really well although I need to thin them out - I haven't go the heart to do that though.



Tumbling tomatoes in hanging baskets. Flowering beautifully and I saw some fruit set this morning.



Bullrushes in the pond ... not planted intentionally, they're far too big for a small pond! If you look in the background you'll see a heap of ballast, I have to climb on this to water and harvest my strawberries!



Site Foreman, Dougal, is puzzled by the arrival of part of the lunar landing module at the building site.



And finally, Cami looking cute in a rare patch of sunlight

Stayin' alive

It's been raining too much for building so we at Calamity Towers are occupying ourselves by preparing for my impending 40th birthday party. I'm unabashed in telling you that I have called it by the rather pretentious name of The Glitter Ball. It's taking place in a village hall, ha ha, The Glitter Ball.

It's a 70's theme fancy dress party and I'm going as Wonder Woman. That is to say Wonder Woman of the 21st Century (I know, I'm cheating ... it's my party!), the one where she's post marriage, post childbirth, pre menopausal. She no longer wears the star spangled girdle instead she wears boots with good arch support, control top tights and a cape to conceal those batwing triceps.

Capt Scarlet is going as himself. Pictures to follow after the event.

We're also having a barbecue and I'm doing the food. My next door neighbour will be in charge of the grill (which we don't have yet). I've never even thrown a small backyard BBQ before so it remains to be seen how I'll manage with 100+ people. Fingers and toes crossed everyone!

A shed too far

As promised many moons ago I shall give you the story of the building work going on in my back garden.


About 10 years ago Captain Scarlet built this workshop, with a greenhouse attached for me to play in.

At the same time we laid a new patio. I say at the same time but in truth the patio took several months to lay because Capt S handmade every single slab. Yup, 1 to 2 slabs a day cast from a mould made by our next door neighbour. Sigh. They were handmade because he wanted to shape them to go round the edge of our very curvy pond and because I had curvy flower beds that needed edging.


I hand painted every single slab in an attempt to make them look like worn old bricks rather than new grey concrete. Yuh huh. To be fair the colour looks brighter in the photo than in reality.

The Cap'n had been toying with building a new workshop for himself ever since he took himself off to a bricklaying evening class and then got a little practice by building a 36ft x 6ft (in places) garden wall.

Oh by the way, I mixed and poured the concrete for the foundations which were nearly 3ft deep.

Over time the old workshop and greenhouse were rotting and falling to pieces while he hummed and hahed about building something. The incident with the greenhouse roof forced the issue somewhat, so we decided to demolish and build.

Coping with the disruption while it goes on is pretty much what has been keeping me away from the keyboard lately. Plus I'm the builder's mate - mix this, dig that. I've moved about 7 tonnes of bricks which were stored in someone's garden and infested with spiders. I was VERY brave I can tell you. The puzzling thing was that bricks have a recess on the top for the mortar - it's called a frog dont'cha know - and I would find snails inside the frogs where there was clearly not enough room for the the pesky varmints to get inside.

I've moved about 10 tons of sand and ballast from the front of the house to the back. I've made all the concrete for the footings and the floor. I've been busy!

I only have a small garden, maybe 40ft wide by 36ft long. The new building itself occupies nearly a quarter of that space, we have a pond in the middle of the garden so the non-planted area has been taken up by the spoil heap from the foundations plus the materials for the building. I barely have room to walk round some of the piles of stuff but I've been determined to preserve everything living.

It should have been been finished by now but unfortunately the wet weather we've had lately has put paid to all that. Here's where we're up to so far. The bit to left is my new greenhouse. And yes I stacked every one of those bricks onto little pallets from big pallets so we could get them round the back! I need a massage just thinking about it.

Lion in a den of Daniels

A couple of weeks ago I had my first transplant clinic appointment which was traumatic to say the least. I had to sit in the middle of the room surrounded by medical professionals on all sides where I had to undergo an assessment of my fitness for transplant. To cut a very long story short I'm still not on the list, despite the fact that I'm fit and healthy and that I have the rare AB blood group which goes with almost any tissue type. I am considered too fat for transplant.

I had to endure a virtual interrogation of my lifestyle. I tried valiantly to defend myself but I ended up in tears. I have had huge issues with my weight in the past - I was a normal sized kid with normal appetites until Type 1 diabetes struck me when I was 11. From that point on, in rebellion of the strict diabetic diet, I became a compulsive eater.

I almost gave my poor Mum a nervous breakdown because I would steal food from the cupboard and replace it at a later time. It was bizarre stuff too like Steak & Kidney pudding, dry porridge oats, Oxo cubes, basically anything I could get my hands on. I became an expert at knowing where in town I could buy certain brands of food. I would even have to steal money from my parents to buy the food to put back in the cupboard.

I wasn't hugely obese then despite the extra food, being tall you can get a way with a lot of extra poundage, but as I got into my early teens I became more aware of my body image. I discovered that by not taking my insulin I could lose weight. It has essentially the same effect as Atkins, it is why I plead with people not to do Atkins.

Your body's preferred energy source is carbohydrate, sugar basically - doesn't matter what kind, white & crystalline, brown & wholesome, your body doesn't care because it all gets broken down into monosaccharides which pass easily through into your bloodstream and then insulin unlocks the energy. If there's no insulin then your body can't use the sugar so it passes out into your urine.

But the body still needs energy to function so it releases chemicals called ketones which break down stored energy ... fat ... into a usable product. Trouble is these ketones aren't good for you on a sustained basis, they do all kinds of nasty things to your internal organs, especially your kidneys.

Anyway I regularly omitted to take my insulin in order to lose weight. Naturally I made myself ill by doing so and was in and out of hospital to be restabilised. It's essentially why I have kidney disease now. I killed 'em off with stupidity.

But there's more, I experimented with purging - using laxatives, diuretics and vomiting. It used to send my diabetes out of kilter too quickly to have any effect. I must be the only bulimic never to lose any weight.

At one point I was exercising like mad - I would do the full Jane Fonda Workout before going to work, walk briskly for an hour at lunchtime and then come home and cycle 20 miles on my exercise bike. I got extremely fit but I never got any thinner than a UK size 16.

I got so depressed and aggravated with myself for not being able to control this one tiny aspect of my life that once I even overdosed on insulin in an attmept to end it all. I couldn't even see that through properly - I confessed to Mum what I'd done and I was packed off to hospital again.

I've been to Weight Watchers, I've done Slimfast but to no avail. A few years ago I was referred for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for another reason but the CBT helped me get my whole life into perspective. I swore I would never diet again because it makes me feel worthless and all that guilt if I eat something I'm not supposed t,o is so damaging.

I have finally learned not to punish myself for not being perfect, I'm happier in my own skin than I've ever been. I can actually sometimes think of myself as reasonably attractive, nice hair, good skin, pretty eyes. What's more inmportant is that I know it's what's inside that matters, how you live your life not what you look like.

The transplant team want me to go into that dark place again. I'm afraid.