Friday 27 June 2008

Happy 18th Birthday Wayne jnr

Happy 18th Birthday Wayne jnr - Hope you had a great Birthday! I just know your mum & dad will have spoilt you rotten -- ENJOY!

Jobless again

Yesterday afternoon I was called to a review meeting with my boss at Trinity and was told that they were terminating my employment with immediate effect. Apparently I have failed to prove my suitability for the role I was recruited into, which is the PC way of telling me that I didn’t fit into the chaotic and disorganised way that Trinity operate. So just when we were starting to plan a trip for next March to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, it suddenly all goes on hold again. It also means that we have had to cancel the decorators who were coming in to do the hall, stairs & landing while we were away.

So it’s back to chasing agencies and applying for roles as they come up. One thing I won’t miss is the daily commute to Telford (or Coventry, or Hitchin) especially the way fuel prices are going right now. It was costing me £80 a week on fuel for the car, £50 a week when I used the motorbike. I’ve already registered with the Job Seekers Plus organisation to claim my £59.15 per week allowance for simply looking for a job, submitted my CV to egg via a contact Suzie has there and chased up a couple of agencies that I’d spoken to recently, so fingers crossed.

In the meantime, Monday afternoon Suzie and I are taking the boys with their girlfriends off for a planned holiday in Lanzarote so all the job hunting business will begin in earnest when we get back on the 9th July.

Saturday 21 June 2008

Diabeties

On Friday 11th April I was advised that I was Diabetic, Type 2. This had been picked up on a regular blood test given 2 weeks earlier when my GP, Dr Paul Birch, was checking out a recurring problem I've had with my waterworks.

So now, 9 weeks later, I have to realise that I'm actually coming to terms with the impact of this discovery. You might ask "why is he having to come to terms with it?" Simple really, I still don't have any symptoms that I can recognise or relate to "being diabetic". When you have a cold you have a runny nose and sneezes. With hayfever you may have sore eyes, sneezing and perhaps a rash. But with Type 2 diabeties all you have is a high sugar content in blood, otherwise refered to as a high blood count. So what?

And that's the problem. You can't see it. You can't feel it. And if you can't see it or feel it then who gives a damn? If it was a cut, you'd treat it until it healed. For gut ache you'd look to relieve constipation or frequent trips to the bathroom. But what do you do with diabeties? How do you visualise it?

On my first visit to the Diabeties Clinic held at the surgery I was asked to run through my diet, list what I typically ate and drank. Virtually everything I mentioned got a "that will have to go" or "you can't have that" type comment and to be honest I came to within 2 minutes of decking the nurse. That's not the right approach for me, and it won't be for many like me. The literature I was given was all about buying the right food and drink from specialist suppliers, and many will do just that, for a while, and then resort to what they did before being diagnosed. Some of the stuff was quite scary, talking about the possibility of going blind and of loosing the use of extremeties, especially the toes and feet.

Fortunately, on my second visit I saw Marion. A nurse with a great sense of fun and a compassion for patients like me who see no point to changing established eating and drinking habits. What she said made more sense. But she, like her colleague, said that they didn't advocate daily checks, just regulation by diet and pills.

But the biggest help of all has come from Fred. Now Fred lives 2 doors down from us and we've known him since he moved in some 15 years (or more) ago. Importantly, Fred is a Type 1 diabetic and has been for roughly 30 years and at 62 he is 10 years older than myself. He produced and lent me a booklet outlining and illustrating a method of counting the sugar and carbohydrate content of food stuffs and drinks. We sat down and went through what I'd eaten that day and "counted" my intake, it was 33. As a diabetic I should have aimed for a count of 20-24, so I was well up but not as high as had been expected. So, I borrowed his booklet and for a week I referred to it before eating or drinking anything I didn't know the "count value" of.

Then he turned up one Tuesday night about 3 weeks ago with an Aviva Accu-Chek blood glucose system. This is an electronic gadget that samples very small amounts of blood and gives a virtually instant readout of the sugar count. It comes with a pen sized tool that uses lancets to prick you finger/thumb. Squeeze out just a drop of blood and let the analyser pick it up with a capiliary action replaceable strip and seconds later you have the result. It's child's play once you get used to it -- which takes 3-5 days. So I started doing a single daily check.

On the Friday following I met with Marion again. She explained that they didn't like doing the daily checks because they can be meaningless, but, I explained that I needed to visualise my problem and this was the only way I could see of doing that. So, she gave me a booklet in which I am to record the readings, which is great because now I can see high and low readings on a chart and relate them to what I've done. Now I can regulate by diet and by pills my sugar level BECAUSE now I can SEE my sugar levels and understand the cause and effect that has lead to a particular reading or set of readings.

So I AM coming to terms with diabeties. Slowly but surely I am moderating what I consume. I will admit that I have room for improvement, but, I'm getting there.

Friday 20 June 2008

What a relief

This morning I had to go to the Derby City Hopsital for an endoscopic inspection of my bladder to rule out bladder cancer.

Good news!

Everything is fine! Everything is normal!

And in a couple of days the discomfort from the inspection will have worn off... honest!

Well that's what they told me anyway....

Thursday 19 June 2008

A bargain

Anybody that knows us will know that we love a bargain. Unlike some people who just go out and buy whatever is cheap our retail therapy takes the form of deciding what we want and then chasing down that item to the lowest possible price. Andy's TV is a case in point. Another is the new helmet I've bought to protect my head in the event of me and my motorbike being involved in any sort of accident. After trying a number of flip face helmets on at a number of dealers I found that only a straight replacement by another Caberg Justissimo would cover by XXL head as most flip face helmets stop at size XL. Having made that decision it was a case of finding one for less than the normal retail price of £149.95

A Best Offer bid on eBay found me just what I wanted, brand new in box (NOS) Caberg Justissimo in Titanium for £80 delivered. When a replacement visor costs £30 I say that that is a RESULT!!!

Our Lads

On Tuesday our Andy was 21 years old. What did he want? A new TV. Now I work with people in IT who are on silly money, and/or have parents who have stacks of cash and habitually buy their offspring new cars or whatever they ask for. But we aren’t moneyed so Sue and I bought him the 37” Samsung LCD TV of his choice on our credit card and we will pay off a chunk of it and Andy will pay the rest, a deal that he is more than happy with especially as he got enough money from friends and family to handle his contribution. Bought on the internet from Dixons it was delivered Sunday afternoon, given to him Monday evening so that he could install it that evening. I have to say that it fits in a treat and the picture quality is excellent.

To celebrate his birthday as a family (remember, he had a BBQ for all his mates and friends) we went out to Wingwahs in Burton on Trent for a Chinese meal on Tuesday night. The six of us (both boys had their girlfriends with them) sat down and ate our fill. Suzie doesn’t usually like foreign food but even she enjoyed herself. It was one of the best Chinese meals I’ve had and worth the trip down from Derby.

Mark has benefited from Andy’s birthday, it that he got given Andy’s old, large, CRT television and it just fits into the gap in the corner of his bedroom. My habit of never throwing anything away meant that when he discovered that he needed an aerial and signal booster, all I had to do was rummage around in my box of bits and presto – one aerial and signal booster. Both boys needed some different cables to complete their set-ups, again, not a problem for my box of tricks. By the end of the evening both were up and running with full freeview services.

The other news relating to our boys is that Mark has had his results for the exams he sat at the end of his first year at Nottingham University. Results varied from paper to paper, but, overall he achieved a pass mark just fractionally under 80% which means that he is still on for a 1st class degree pass. Let us all hope he can maintain the pace and stay the course.

Right now we are very proud parents.

Summer riding

Motorbikes, not horses. It only takes a few hours of sunshine, or the reliable prospect of just that and they are out. Who? The pocket rocket power ranger riders on their “not for road use” kitted race replicas that you can hear wailing from a mile away as they max the throttle for a few seconds between every overtake as they try to “make progress” at warp speed in 40mph speed zones.

And they wonder why they get stopped… Roadside checked… Fined! They pose at watering holes and moan about speed cameras and heavy handed policing before remounting and wheeling off to their next stop which will only be 5 miles down the road because the cramped up riding position which is ideal for racing is crippling for road users. But it is great pose value! Yeah… right!

I’ve been working with a guy who can’t believe that I can commute from Derby to Telford, 64 miles each way, daily and enjoy it. But I do, and the weather doesn’t really affect that enjoyment. Why? Because my Deauville offers me a high level of protection from the elements, which is supplemented by my riding gear. It’s not fashionable but it is eminently practical -- all bought on a budget as funds allow, often items are birthday or Christmas presents (November is an excellent time to find bargains).

So what does my fellow biker ride that’s so uncomfortable that he’s never ridden more than 60 miles in a day and never more than 50 miles in one journey without a stop? A Honda V-Tec VFR, that’s what. The model bike that journalists in the motorcycling press hail as the best sports tourer bar none. His is 3 years old and has done 3,000 miles. I’ve done more miles than that on my 650 Deauville THIS YEAR! And I missed out on the DmD trip to Luxemburg, much to my dismay.

Sunday 15 June 2008

Industrial action

We are currently experiencing a work to rule by the local bin men because the Council wants to take away their bonus scheme. As a result we didn’t get a collection on Friday because we are at the end of the week and at the end of the run. The bin men are highlighting the fact that if they work at the basic rate laid down, then large chunks of the city will go without refuse collection. Now although I’m sitting here with 2 of the 3 bins we have full to the brim (the 2 re-cycle bins) I have to say that in this instance I’m in full agreement with the bin men and the actions they are taking.

On the other hand the Shell tanker drivers are out on strike for more pay to better their £31,800 pa salary. Well I’m sorry, but, I know a lot of lorry drivers out there that would happily work the tanker drivers job for £25,000 pa so No! I don’t agree with the action they are taking and if they all get fired and new drivers trained up then they only have their own greed to blame, no sympathy from me. Hell, if I was asked I’d retrain and drive tankers for £31,800 pa and I don’t accept this argument that because the company is worth more then so are they and to compare themselves to professionals like doctors and lawyers is ridiculous, as is likening their situation to that of premiership football players. They are lorry drivers. That’s all! Their lorries have luxury cabs, automatic everything and they don’t have to sleep up in lay-bys like many other wagon drivers. It’s a cushy life that just happens to be spent in front of a tank of highly inflammable liquid. In the current economic climate they should be grateful they have such a well paid job.

Neglecting the blog

I really must get back into the routine of updating this blog more regularly, I seem to be letting it slip, not intentionally, there just seems to be so much more to do in my life right now...

Work is busy, and just as I was getting to grips with the assignments I’d been given they take them off me and give me a load of others to do. I can understand their reasons (or at least the ones I’ve been given) for doing as they have but it just shows that the management at Trinity just isn’t planning ahead and just thinking on it’s feet. At least I shouldn’t have to work over the Christmas 2008 / New Year 2009 period, which was on the cards with the assignments they have taken off me. The other good thing is that with the improving weather I’ve been able to use the motorbike for a lot of my commuting which has helped make the trips more bearable while saving money at the same time. I dropped my helmet off the seat of the bike a couple of weeks back and it’s affected the internal visor mechanism and marked up both the inner and outer visor (which is £30 to replace) so I’ve elected to buy a replacement which I found on eBay and which should arrive on Monday. I would have liked a different model but I’ve such a big XXL head that few flip helmets are available in that size so I’ve ended up with another Caberg Justissimo instead of the Nolan N103 or Shark Evoline which I’d have preferred. At least I saved a bundle of cash, this one has only cost me £80 which is a bargain.

Friday I took Mark over to Nottingham and we cleared out his accommodation that he’d had for his first year at Uni. So that’s his first year completed, all he has to do now is wait for the results of the exams he sat through May. He recently took his driving test but managed to fail it even before he got out of the test centre. He’ll re-sit it in July after getting back from our holiday.

Andy will be 21 years old on Tuesday 17th so Yesterday (Saturday 14th) we held a BBQ for him and all his mates, all told some 20 – 30 of them turned up and I was cooking for nearly 3 hours. Everything I cooked got eaten but there was loads left over so we will probably have another BBQ today to eat up some of the food that was left over. As usual, Suzie had catered for 3000 so the freezer and fridge are stuffed full. John came up from Colchester and stayed overnight on the large sofa in the lounge. He brought a load of meat with him as he has a really good supplier where he gets really good quality stuff. It was a shame Angie couldn’t make the trip as well but she couldn’t get the time off work.

Today is father’s day, so I dutifully went down with John to see Mum & Dad. Mum was out walking the dog and Dad was fast asleep in his chair. When he awoke it was obvious that he wasn’t quite all there, seems he’s not having a good spell at the moment and the District Nurses are calling 2 – 3 times a week to sort out his catheter for him. Despite everything mother was looking very well and was in good spirits.

For Fathers Day my two boys bought me some T-shirts for me to wear on holiday. I think they are trying to get a message across that's along the lines of "brighten up Dad". Anyway, they are all very nice, summery and suitable for wearing on holiday so everyone is happy.

More news and views later, off to get a life away from the computer for a while…

Tuesday 3 June 2008

Sea legs not required

For several years now Suzie has been bugging me that we should celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (March 2009) with a cruise. Now I don’t have sea legs and the prospect wasn’t exactly filling me with joy. Then one of my colleagues at work told me about a web site where you can plan a round the world tour with 29,000 air miles included, so off I went to the web site to have a look…

The Great Escapade

It looked very promising so I tentatively sent an email to Suzie with the link suggesting that she might like to give it a look. Success, she is hooked on the idea and the planning is starting. Can’t actually book our tickets until I get confirmation in August that (hopefully) I’ve got a permanent work contract, but, as soon as I get that then we’ll be plotting our way round the world and booking the accommodation, transfers, car hire, etc… Now that may seem like a lot of work, but, at least sea legs are not required! Australia, here we come! Krissie, get the Barbie ready and some roo steaks in the fridge. Outline plans are for us to take a week to get to get to Oz, a week in Oz, then a week to get back home. Somewhere along the way we will get to Singapore, possibly Tahiti and/or Fiji and see my sister and her family in America. That has got to be better than a cruise!

They don’t make them like…

Going into the last Bank Holiday weekend, on the Thursday evening the screen on the television went all wonky. The sound was perfect, as was text (like the program bar that displays on-screen by Virgin/Sky) but, moving pictures were all blurred as if time distorted and the colours were really bright. How long had we had this telly? One year and 3 weeks! Easily remembered because the previous one failed on the previous Bank Holiday weekend exactly one year earlier when it was one year and 3 weeks old. Fortunately I had the foresight to take out 3 years product insurance at the time, so I phoned the insurance company and a little man comes out on the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday. He replaced the main-board and power supply without curing the problem so the telly had to be collected to go off to the workshop. Today I got a call to say that it looks like an un-economic repair and that we will most likely be issued with a voucher to get a replacement telly. While this will be a most acceptable result it does bring to mind that old adage --They don’t make them like they used to!