What a week!

What a week! 24th Wedding anniversary, Suzie’s birthday followed by my birthday. Suzie had the week off work as holiday – we should have been going away to Scotland for a few days but with me on a 3 month fixed term contract that wasn’t possible. Mark was home from university (as was his girlfriend) so the 3 of them went and spent Suzie’s birthday in Manchester which meant Suzie got to spend some of the birthday money she’d received. My weekend started Friday night with a visit to see my GP who prescribed some anti-biotics, which meant that on my birthday weekend I couldn’t drink alcohol – Doh! I then had to give a blood sample on Saturday morning at the Walk In Clinic to be tested for sugar levels.

Saturday night we went out with friends and I was supposed to be drinking, but, as I couldn’t I drove and let Dave drink. The meal we had at The Bear at Alderwasley was excellent, a little pricey but excellent. For a little traditional pub out in the sticks it was packed and exceeded expectations. Highly recommended, but, you do have to book up well in advance if you intend to eat.

Andy finally got his hands on a replacement differential for his W30 model BMW 320 and has more or less finished fitting the sound system to his girlfriend’s Ford Ka (I think the sound system is more powerful than the engine). The diff will get fitted this coming weekend I suspect as it is currently sitting outside by the back door.

Mother is in real need of a break from caring for Dad, and although in good spirits this weekend she is so obviously very tired. Currently we are waiting on Social Services doing a needs assessment of them as a couple because in the past they have only ever assessed Dad. Hopefully there will be some movement along those lines now that Easter is out of the way – it always seems that Social Services staff get twice the annual leave of everybody else (barring politicians).

For my birthday I got a good showing of cards, a number of phone calls (including Angie & John) and a couple of emails all wishing me well. On top of that there were a number of messages on the DeauvilleUK web forum – nice people those Deauville riders. Presents were a widescreen monitor (to replace my aging 17” CRT monitor) which makes my old mini tower PC look a lot better than it actually is, a pressure washer (the old one had an impellor problem and was virtually dead on it’s wheels) and a bottle of scotch (thanks Dave, just got to get off the antibiotics now). Sunday saw Steve come round and we removed the near side door card and fitted the replacement speaker panel I’ve had sitting around for 4 weeks now since father-in-law stuck his walking stick through the old one.

Talking of the in-laws, mother-in-law was told last week that she needs a new knee and will have to go into hospital for the operation. She should have been having a series of steroid injections, but, because she doesn’t like injections she didn’t bother. Now she says that if she’d known that by not having the injections she would have to have an operation, then she would have had the injections. What did she expect? That it would heal itself? Now she’s all in a panic that father-in-law won’t be able to visit her because the hospital is 30 miles away, and, that there will be nobody to look after him. She’s forgetting that Janice (Suzie’s older sister) doesn’t work so she could bring her girlfriend up, stay with her father, tend to him and ferry him around. But, as they didn’t remember our wedding anniversary and have told us to stay away from father-in-law’s 80th birthday celebrations in a couple of weeks time because Janice & Dawn will be there, then there’s no way Suzie or I will be taking time off work (unpaid) to be at their beck and call (and we don’t have holiday entitlement in hand to cover it).

If you think kids are bad, just wait until you have to look after old folk!