Harmoniums, Hens and Sewing Machines

My collection of reed instruments is growing apace. We are the proud owners of an old Alexandre harmonium..aka pump organ...courtesy of a bit of an Ebay moment, ok so two notes don't work but hey what do you want for £1.

Of course I've now got my eye on bigger and better harmonia and I've browsed the web merrily wondering how hard it is to fix the notes that don't want to work.

Found a good few websites so there are people looking after these things, despite the terrible prices they seem to fetch on Ebay. http://www.reedorgans.co.uk/

The harmonium works like a sort of horizontal accordion. You have to pump a foot pedal which inflates a bellows arrangement which in turn allows the notes to sound. Rather a good noise comes out of ours. The bellows are in tact, but it could do with a little TLC as the previous owner has knocked it about a bit.

And for my next Ebay trick I purchased an old Singer sewing machine, one of the pedal type (see the link between harmoniums and sewing machines, type in pedal and then check the distance and voila a completely insane purchase) and I have hauled it back to my house full of underappreciated things that really shold be worth more money but aren't.

The sewing machine is great, complete with its oak table, original instructions, all the various attachments for quilting, variable hems and other things I don't think I've ever tried. There is even a spare drive belt (old leather strap thing). It looks to be from the 1920's/30's and seems to have been much better looked after than the one my grandma had.

I am currently resisting the temptation to acquire big fluffy chickens called Buff Orpingtons. I've been looking at the possiblity of installing chickens for a while. We do have the room, but we don't yet have a fully fenced off area in the garden.

Having spent today lunching with a large crowd of Buff Orpingtons (and blue ones and jubilee ones) at Harperley Hall POW Camp I am quite struck on them. They are huge, and very amusing. I'm not sure they could fly if they wanted to. Knowing us they'd end up in the house, but not for lunch.

I've finally discovered the point of ironing

For as long as I can remember ironing has been a way of reinforcing creases. Thanks to my new 'steam generator' iron I think I just removed all the creases from a garment!!! My linen clothing will now be crease free, until I get in the car, sit down or bend, at which point all the creases will reappear.

Seriously I don't like ironing. I have tried not to wear anything that needs ironing for the past 8 years (the advent of children). But our old steam iron stopped working and Jason spent £5 on a new one from Tesco's. As a result the minority of my clothes that do need ironing became completely unwearable as even I won't go out in massively crumpled clothing. Alas I am not the shape for lycra, so something had to be done.

The new iron has an extra kettle like attachment so I can just steam away all those stubborn creases in about a third of the time it used to take me to iron a basket of clothes. Never thought I'd be happy doing the ironing. I don't think this 'happy to iron' feeling will last long, but it is worth noting just for the shock factor.

Current grumbles

In no particular order - and just to get it out of my system.....

Kids who hang around the area and vandalise the local church, and harass my elderly neighbours.

The fact that the local council, the county council and the police have replied to my email about said youths within 24 hours of me sending my email...but they have all told me that there are not likely to be any resources (police) or funds (the money bit) to do much about it!!!

A government who thinks keeping kids at school to do pointless subjects until they are 18 will make any difference...the local kids causing the problem are about 14, they are at school.

The fact that these kids are really quite clever. They know the police are unlikely to come, they have specially selected easy targets. They know to go home by 9pm (seems to be when they disappear).

These kids know they are being given useless qualifications now that everyone passes pretty much everything (they are not stupid), they know they are not likely to get a job even if they do pass their exams, and they know they shouldn't be getting away with this.

By trying to be fair the government is effectively disabling everyone who uses the education system.

I spend quite a few spare minutes wondering where would be the best place to move to...globally. Unfortunately the Orkneys were well featured in the Telegraph the other week, so that means half of London will be buying it up shortly.

Half term - itis

Half term started with a virus, my back had been hurting all week, and by Friday I couldn't move. So missed a day of work and spent most of the weekend feeling out of sorts. My Saturday snooze was disturbed at 11am by the kids announcing that they had 'found a dog in the road'. Thankfully the dog hadn't been hit by anything, but it had attached itself quite firmly to the children, more particularly to the tennis ball Elinor was holding.

The dog was a smooth haired border collie, and it spent most of the day behaving extremely well; being nice to cats, children and Fudge (who being a JRT was not so good in return). She happily fetched endless tennis balls and sat properly on the dog mat, which is much better than the normal dog of the house. I phoned the police who said I had to take her to them sometime before 5pm. Poor dog, I thought. Not believing that anyone could have lost her on purpose, but rather surprised that nobody had been around looking for her.

Anyway in the meantime the children of the area had invaded the garden and started making things with the sundry piles of building materials, which had spread from the garden to the surrounding road. This, as usual, put me into a very bad mood as I can feel the damages claims coming in from the less tolerant neighbours, and anyone unlucky enough to have their car parked in the area. I still haven't got over last year's smashed car window incident which cost me £60 for the Autoglass people and much aplogising for my hooligan 5 year old son's behaviour (he did shout Scooby Doo as he threw the stone that broke the windscreen - apparently).

So, having tried to get the dog to take me to her home (complete failure, she dragged me to the end of the road, grabbed a stick and dragged me back to my house), I gave up and took her to the police station. Sadly she wasn't microchipped but apparently it is against the law (isn't it always) to keep a stray dog without the written permission of the council! So we left her there, well I shoved her into the kennel and she whined a lot. The policeman on duty wasn't optimistic but I made him promise to ring me if anything happened. So that was my quiet Saturday.

Sunday we went off to my mum's for lunch. Came back to packing for the annual Crieff expedition, and a telephone message to say that the dog had been collected by her owners, who are hopefully microchipping her for next time. Packed up all our animals for their holiday at the kennels, and tried to keep the kids indoors.

Thinking about it the rest of the holiday was a breeze compared to Saturday...the kids have been to kids club and done Ceilidhs, Discos and Fashion Shows. I've polished off a few glassess of red wine and Jason has complained about his golfing ineptitudes.

Trouble is that it is Saturday again tomorrow. I think if I can get the kids to the 8am swimming club session my day will be a lot more peaceful.

Old pics

I found this postcard and thought I'd put it onto the blog, if you know me you will know where this is :-)

Private healthcare - the animal perspective

Cinders (cat) got run over yesterday, thankfully a lady stopped and took her straight to the vet. The lad that hit her was apparently going too fast, he knew he hit her but didn't stop. Even though she was lying in the road, stunned, and clearly not dead. She was extremely lucky as she only has a snapped tooth and cuts on her chin - she also bit her tongue. So I am now feeling considerably poorer and Jason has been threatened with some radical personal surgery if he keeps letting the cats out! I have some strict rules about which cats are let out and when, ie they go out if they are hungry, and not for too long, and are called back in for food. She is currently lying on a towel in our bedroom (she really likes towels), trying to lick all the sticky plaster stuff off her leg from where the vet put a drip in to stop her getting shock.

The vet that had her didn't want me to take her home, they had her in a little cage on a drip and she looked really fed up - not eating or drinking. They said the vet was busy and wouldn't be able to see if she needed an operation until either tomorrow or Monday! Anyway this morning I asked for a price .....feeling the £ signs ticking away, plus I also think most animals like to be in familiar surroundings not shut in a tiny cage in silent room. Cost for admission, 1 night's stay, some antibiotics and painkillers and a saline drip £107! Costs to stay overnight for Sunday and Monday another £120, cost for operation ??? Anyway I didn't get that far as I phone my normal vet and told them what was going on (bear in mind I used to have a lot of animals and have spent a fair bit of time at the vets in the past 14 years since moving here).

My vet said that it was fine to bring her in first thing Monday, remember the other vet said they wouldn't be doing anything until Monday anyway. So I phoned the first lot back and said I was coming to get her (didn't give them a choice)...10 mins later my vet phoned me to say that the other lot had been on the phone checking that I had made an appointment, the first vet had said they were really worried, thought she needed to be hospitalised etc (1 vet giving the other a guilt trip, and giving me a guilt trip too).

Collected Cinders, parted with £107, went to other vet - who had stayed specially as the first vet said it was urgent. My vet had a look, said she looked quite perky. He took out the needle for the drip that the other lot had kindly left in, saying that she looked like she didn't need anymore fluid to him. He clipped off some fur from her chin (cat purring at this point), said it was a bit nasty but would probably heal up ok if we keep it clean (as if I'd keep it dirty), said the tooth operation looked a bit pointless as the tooth will probably drop out on its own, and the op would be fiddly and expensive. So I've got an appointment to take her in on Tues evening. Total cost at my vet £24 for Saturday out of hours appointment, 1 painkiller injection and 10 antibiotic tablets. Hmm I wonder why I go to my vet!!!

However the warning sign at Vet No1 was that the first thing they said to me was 'is she insured' and the second thing was ' can you sign this consent form' which gave them authority to do anything without asking me first.

Cat is now asleep on my bed, she has stuffed her face with food and spent an hour trying to lick the nasty sticky plaster mark off her leg.

Jason has been threatened with radical surgery if he keeps letting the cats out, he has also promised to revamp the dog flap to make it less cat friendly.
Cats are banned from going out until this is done.

I am thankful that a good samaritan called Leanne stopped to rescue Cinders from the middle of the road before the next car squashed her flat, and found time to put a note through the door saying what she had done. I am also happy that she went to the vet and that because she received prompt treatment the cat didn't go into shock, but I am even happier that my regular vet is such a calm and sensible practitioner who doesn't just go for the insurance....and the guilt trips.

Just switched to new blogger software, another new password :-(
Spent four hours tidying up the house today. Didn't actually clean anything, but moved a lot of stuff around. Tis the season to be tidy.

Last day of term tomorrow. We're celebrating by going out for lunch and letting the kids go to kids club for the last time this term. I'm sure that the school carol service will be lovely but the church is just too small and unless you are prepared to get there half an hour early there is no chance of getting a seat. If you do sit down it is highly unlikely that your child will then be visible, such is the extent of overcrowding that occurs.

Sunday will be the church nativity and Christingle, now those I am looking forward to. I've even stuck cloves into some satsumas today just to give the living room that festive smell.

George has just appeared as he thinks he has a rat in his bedroom. So I now have to go and investigate. Having tried to tidy said bedroom today I can confirm that anything is possible.

Time for decisions

Christmas is nearly upon us again. I tend to get a bit fed up at Christmas. The TV vision of either joy and festivities, or misery and depression seems to go to extremes, with no middle ground.

I tend to feel it is the season to be depressed, if you are ever going to be depressed now is the time to do it.

For the past 4 years I've been working within my own company. All holidays and breaks from work have caused me to reflect on what I do and why I choose to do it. If you run your own company and don't 'go to work' there is no money. The thoughts 'surely it would be better/easier/less stressful to get a (proper) job' float through my head at these times when really I should be making the most of the quiet time. This year I feel more relaxed (at the moment) and I guess that each year the feeling will get better. Year 1 was terrifying, and now I know it is just how things are and something else will come along. Every week I am thankful that I don't have a proper job. I like the feeling of control it gives me, even if the cashflow can cause moments of stress...

I've got mental plans in place for the things I am going to start doing to promote the business and grow it beyond being mostly just me. They feel real and do'able now, probably for the first time I'm confident enough to admit publicly that I'm good at what I do and worth a premium sum of money. That looks a bit silly in print, but it took me a long time to remove myself from traditional employment and it has taken me a bit longer to start properly getting my head round the issues of what is good value and how I can provide it in a consultancy framework.

Similarly the pressure to buy everything to make things better is still there but I am getting a bit better. I still think I probably shop beyond my means but at least this year I have gone a whole year without a credit card - in itself that deserves a celebration.

What I want for Christmas
~ A bathroom that works (ours hasn't for the past fortnight)
~ A new concrete floor on the back yard (currently rubble and holes)
~ A few thoughtful presents for everyone, not lots just for the sake of it

All of which seems promising at the moment as long as Jason doesn't find anything else to demolish in or around the bathroom and the kids don't start to seriously lobby for excessive presents - but I think I have trained them not to do that by now.

My Ebay account has been busy, buying not selling, in advance of the festive season. I've converted to using the various shops that sell via ebay so my bidding days are over, as I now prefer the Buy it Now prices offered by people who seem to be legitimate businesses.

The festive organic meat selection is on order, if I have to eat meat I want to avoid some guilt by avoiding mass farming methods. Sadly I only stayed a vegetarian for 5 years and that was before children appeared. I lapsed due to an irresistable craving for a bacon sandwich and that was it.

Let the chemo begin...well not quite

If you received a letter from a hospital telling you to start attending chemotherapy appointments what would you think that meant???

After extensive tests and biopsies etc this is the only info that has landed on the doormat at my parents house. So off we all trotted last Thursday to the hospital (in Sunderland) where my parents were told all future treatments would take place.

Needless to say my mum has cried a bit about the implications of all of this...but somehow I feel it is all very bizarre. There are a few reasons for this.

There has never been a conversation with anyone about the results of all the tests...I'm talking a couple of days of tests here. There was no reason give as to why the chemotherapy was being recommended. Does this mean that if nobody says the big 'C' word that it doesn't exist. Or is this all precautionary as nobody seems to want to touch my mum with a scalpel or an anaesthetic if they can help it...which leads me back to the chemo appointment last week.

Having trekked 30 miles to the hospital, we got to reception in plenty of time and realised that we'd never noticed a sign to the department listed on the appointment letter. My dad was still somewhere in the car park with the map, and me and my mum were talking to the receptionist. Thankfully the receptionist really knew that there was no such department, and despite the letter head on the consultant's letter the REAL appointment was in a different hospital 12 miles away in Durham.

The Sunderland receptionist phoned the Durham clinic and explained where we were. My dad was gently prised away from the reception area where he briefly looked like he was contemplating whether to explode or cry with irritation, and we zoomed as fast as my car would go (within reasonable speed limits...and with due care and attention...particularly as there are speed cameras in Tyne and Wear), to Durham.

Then commenced the parking fiasco that is Durham hospital. Whilst the building is quite cosy, the car park is on the compact side and there is no way in the world that everyone visiting can park their cars. I have no idea where the staff park, I think they teleport in somehow. BEFORE the PFI hospital this place had a VAST car park...it is now a (very expensive) housing estate.

So I dropped my parents off at the door and went off to stalk people who looked like they were about to move their car. I have a mystic approach to parking, I imagine my ideal space, and usually it appears. The visualisation worked and I got a space within 5 mins and headed back to the hospital.

But my mum had the appointment letter and I couldn't remember the name of the unit...thankfully a helpful cleaner showed me where to go...where I found my mum, but my dad had gone looking for me. I'm still not sure how I missed him as there is only one corridor. So off I went back to the car park where I found him talking to another lady who had lost her relatives somewhere. I noticed there was quite a lot of this sort of thing going on in the car park...so if you screen people for confusion at the hospital I expect you'd find that the whole population is disorientated and confused..as it is very hard to be anything else.

Meanwhile back in the chemo unit they were reading out the drug sheet to my mum. When we got back it looked like everything was all systems go , so my dad and I headed off to the restaurant for a coffee...mainly to avoid my dad having to being to close to the chemo unit.

Soooo one hour later we went back to find my mum reading the Daily Mail and looking very perky. The reason being that as soon as the nurse doing the chemo read her notes she decided that the whole thing looked like a very bad idea. Something about warfarin, excessive bleeding and artificial heart valves seems to do this to the medical profession (it had a similar effect on the anaesthetist in Sunderland).

Turns out my mum had waited an hour for someone to find a registrar to find out about prescribing an antibiotic that my mum isn't allergic to and then to administer it intravenously before even thinking about the cancer treatment.

My mum appeared to be ok with the whole thing - a tribute to her new heart drugs which seem to have done the trick at last - but the nurses were apparently making a bit of a stand as they clearly don't want to risk the bleeding thing happening in their unit.

This Thursday they are going to try again. The whole process will start two hours earlier to allow for antibiotics to be given (prevents infection in heart valves so essential). My dad has printed out a list of all the things my mum is allergic to and my mum has promised to pay attention. My dad can find Durham and is quite happy to sit in the chemo lounge with his mp3 player on this week, which means I don't have to go.

Which only brings me back to the 'why is this happening?' question. I did ask my mum if she wanted to know the biopsy results, but her view is that whatever they are the medical profession have clearly got it into their heads that they need to give her chemotherapy so why bother asking.

I hope it all stays surreal like this, as it is much less scary this way. But very odd.

We're back from Sweden. We managed to negotiate things so that everyone got to do everything they needed to do, so Elinor went on her school trip, but just left a bit early to get the ferry


It is a shame that the route from Newcastle to Sweden is finishing as we've enjoyed cruising off to Scandanavia. The new route is to Norway which is a new and exciting place to visit, but having had a look at holiday cottage prices it is also significantly more expensive.

If you do happen to be in Goteborg a great place to visit with kids is the Universeum. We've been twice now and it beats any other natural history/science museum I've been to.
You can watch their huge aquariam on a live webcam on
http://webcam.universeum.se/view/view.shtml
There can't be many museums with their own rainforest!

The perils of late night film watching

Just the other week I was complaining to someone at work about the tripe that they show on TV nowadays. 'All I want', I said, 'is non stop Pride and Predjudice'..and that sort of thing really. What with the recent stresses of hospital trips etc I've been having a challenging time unwinding of an evening, and my other half doesn't appreciate me reading into the late hours as my preference is to read in bed, and his preference is to sleep there.

Turns out my colleague has a large collection of all sorts of books and DVDs and the next day the following DVDs appeared on my desk.
1. Pride and Prejudice - the recent film version rather than the BBC one
2. Bride and Prejudice - the Bollywoodesque version
3. North and South - the BBC TV adaptation of an Elizabeth Gaskell novel and plotwise really a version of victorian Pride and Prejudice

So late at night, when everyone else has gone to bed. There I am glued to the TV watching these films. Bliss.

I heartily recommend watching all three. But I do have a warning for the North and South viewer, the full two DVD set is 233 minutes long. So, if like me, you start watching it at 10.45pm don't be surprised when it is 2.30am that you finally get to bed. Plus if you think Colin Firth has a good glare (you know what I mean), he is but an amateur compared to Richard Armitage in North and South.

I'm currently experiencing an aversion to accounts. This would be all well and good if I wasn't an accountant. Trouble is I'm in procrastination mode. So one day very soon I'll need to do a very late night to catch up.

Deadlines are looming...arrgh...so is half term!!!!

Fortunately most of my paid work is for IT consultancy services . But if I don't sort out the small print on a couple of CT600s soon I'll be writing very grovelling letters to HMRC (see hmrc.gov.uk and try and find the 'don't panic page' , there isn't one, neither is the 'my dog ate corporation tax return' excuse going to work).

Long distance hospital commuting

The daily trips to Sunderland have finished for the moment as my mum has now come out of hospital. Having had a wonderful operation day her recovery was not quite so straightforward and she lost a lot of blood, eventually requiring a transfusion. So it turns out the anaesthetist was correct, and that really the operation was the least of it!

It is a relief to have her home as the 50+ mile round trip for visiting became quite tiring after a week. I believe it is important to visit every day for a number of reasons, 1. it shows the hospital staff that someone cares about the patient, 2. it hopefully cheers up the patient, 3. it gives the visitor a chance to see what has changed in a 24 hour period.

In this case between Thursday and Friday the major change in my mum was that she went from pink to grey, stopped eating and couldn't stand up. Quite drastic.

I can understand why the NHS has chosen to create regional centres for certain treatments. What I don't understand is the point at which treatments become so expensively specialist that they need to be centralised.

As usual the human impact of trekking 26 miles to the hospital for the appointment, and then the 52 mile round trip to visit seems to have been overlooked. If I wasn't able to drive it would have taken hours for us to get visit. Totally impractical if it was just my dad, who doesn't relish the opportunity to discover the delights of Sunderland every day.

I wonder how many people feel isolated and overlooked in this current centralising service? When I was younger I worked in organisations that centralised, then decentralised. It is possible to generate very good arguments for cost savings and efficiencies on either side. Believe me, I used to do the figures, you really can prove this stuff either way. I also saw staff burst into tears with the stress of it all.

In 5 to 10 years time the NHS will happilly decentralise again, in the interests of patient care I expect. In the meantime all this change is so very costly and wasteful, if this is not immediately obvious in cash terms it is very obvious as soon as you become a patient and have to try to work out where you are in a very complicated system.

I also received a recruitment email today advising me that there are lots of opportunities due to the recent regionalisation of the NHS. So how exactly does that work? You reduce the number of organisations but you develop vacancies? Obvious isn't it, the staff who didn't feel like being merged, and who had enough length of service, have taken pay-offs because they don't want to travel to the new regional centre. Hmm so very efficient. All those one-off costs going through the books.

I truly hope that this centralisation stuff is central government stupidity again. Otherwise the regional people need to give themselves a good talking to for a lack of common sense and humanity, both towards their own staff and the general public who have little choice but to be NHS patients at some time.

I've just got in from visiting my mum in hospital. Thankfully the operation she had today went very well. I didn't want to mention anything before as I am strangely supersitious about these things.

It is interesting to see my mum in hospital mode. I think she has been in and out of hospitals a fair bit, mainly because she got something called rheumatic fever as a child and it damaged her heart. So she started with that, and then had open heart surgery back in the early 1960's to unblock a heart valve, followed by regular annual checkups and then two new artificial heart valves on her 70th birthday in 2003, and a pacemaker just over a month ago.

Ever since I can remember my mum told me 'not to get too used to having her around', this was because of the heart thing. But today I've come to the conclusion that she must really have the constitution of an ox.

Despite artificial heart valves and a pacemaker, and having had a general anaesthetic (to say nothing of the actual operation), she was bright and alert and chatted on for a couple of hours. No problem. You'd think nothing had happened if it wasn't for the intravenous drip thing!

I'm just so impressed really.

justbloggin

The harvest festival season approaches. As with most things there is always more than one, this is a new feature of my life brought about by children, one event is never enough. There is the school harvest festival, then the church harvest festival. As the school is a church school the two are not that different.

One has a play involved, so there are words to learn, as well as a donation to produce. The other requires a donation of some kind and a few more well known hymns.

As with all things charitable it is hard to know what to give. Whilst veg is lovely stuff today's recipient of the harvest vegetables might not manage to eat them before they go off.

The nicecest part of the school version seems to me to be the fact that a couple of children are dispatched to the nominated people to deliver parcels and maybe have a bit of a chat.

Personally I rather like the songs, 'we plough the fields and scatter' as it reminds me of being the small child at the assembly with the vegetables. I don't really feel like it was that long ago that I was sitting cross legged in assemblies myself.

But I have started to notice that where I used to get quite sentimental at school services and similar child centric productions I've now started to observe the clock and wonder when the tea and biscuits will be served.

Gotta be quick the battery is nearly flat

Well Im working on trying out the wine club's first delivery. It came in handy as the students who have been working for us during the summer have all gone back to University, with plenty of gifts, not limited to a bottle of chardonnay.

We decided to shut the second office as there isn't really anyone to sit in it at the moment. Closing the office has meant that we were rather oversupplied with IT equipment. Said 'stuff' is now relocating itself to student residences, parents houses, and our other office which is likely to look a teeny bit full up when we finally squeeze everything into it.

It has resulted in a major IT swap round at home as I refuse to let the kids have computers or televisions in their rooms. So I just had to go to Ikea to sort out the storage. Where I noticed that the staff have kindly located all the desks in the till area ready for the influx of 30,000+ students into the Tyneside/Durham area in the next few weeks. Which saved a lot of traipsing round the isles. Similarly Tescos are doing the same thing so my search for PC speakers (for the kids interactive games) and CD cases (for the games CDs) was rather easier than expected as everything was in the doorway. So despite the shops being packed it was a very painless experience.

The kids now go to the PC rather than the TV, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. They were playing some Viking board game on the computer tonight, looked a bit like chess. I've seen all their videos about ten times each already so it makes a change.

Thanks to the wonders of Ikea we now seem to have more space in the room, despite having added more furniture. Kind of makes me want to move to Sweden :-)

Everything happening at once

I'm not too sure about Murphy's Law, which I think is the one that says 'if something can go wrong it will go wrong', but I think there should be a new law of 'if something can happen, at least 3 other things will also happen on the same day'.

A case in point. Who would have thought that DFDS the ferry company would sell off their vessel the Princess of Scandanavia just as we are due to go to Goteborg (aka Gothenberg) for the festival of lights in November?

DFDS are cancelling the route completely which means that any trips to Sweden via ferry from Newcastle have to take place before the end of October. Equally who would have expected that the only week we are available to go to Sweden is the week before the ferry service ends, and that it clashes with a school field trip week.

This would not be quite so odd if it wasn't for the fact that normally (ie every other year up until now) 8 year old pupils were not permitted on the week long residential field trip. But as a special concession this year they are allowed to go. A fact which we only discovered last week when a letter came home inviting said 8 year old to go to the trip, causing much excitement and sibling rivalry.

On top of which it is also my birthday in the same week, and I had decided that all things being equal said daughter should go on the field trip! It is a special birthday (with an '0' in the year) when one is meant to make a fuss, although I hate the idea of organising my own birthday 'do' which means that it ain't gonna happen. Unless someone hires someone to organise it, so it definitely won't happen.

Now the dilemma is which of the three possible events takes precedence. As I see it my options are;
1.Book the trip to Goteborg and cancel the field trip (wrath of small child forever)
2.Change the trip to Norway or Holland on a different date (new opportunity to locate clashing events, but more of the year to choose from as not restricted on dates up to the end of October)
3.Get my money back (means no autumn holiday :-( and everyone is unhappy)

I will consult 'she who must be consulted' on option1 and refer to 'him upstairs' for options 2 and 3. Unless anything else happens we'll probably end up in Holland...but the way things are going it could be next year!

My life would be so much easier today if someone hadn't thrown the toothpaste tube down the toilet!!!!!!!








This is a great example for performance management goal setting (think positive, whilst trying to find packet of mints for the morning). It meets all of the criteria;
1.Specific - toothpaste required
2.Measurable - one tube would do as there are only four of us in the house
3.Achievable - if I could be bothered to go to the shops at 9.45pm
4.Realistic - toothpaste is widely available
5.Timely - I need it now

Sadly this is beyond the current performance objectives of the small person responsible for flushing the toothpaste. But he did do the artwork.

The odd image on the left is an ultrasound of a bladder polyp.

I was checking out the prognosis (as you do) because my mum seems to have developed one of these.

As a regular warfarin user it turns out this little thing got detected a lot earlier than it would normally have done. The trouble now is that nobody really likes to operate on people who take warfarin (aka rat poison like substance that can cause excessive bleeding, but also helps to thin the blood if you are prone to getting blood clots).

This is not 'the' polyp, the NHS only give you copies of certain scans and I don't think they do one of your bladder polyp to take away yet. I am hoping that the real one is much smaller. This will also be my mum's second operation in 6 weeks if they continue to run according to the current plan.