Longer than expected

When I wrote my last post I fully intended to write again very soon, but for one reason or another I haven't been able to.  I've written my next post in my head several times, with it being different each time because of what's been going on at the time, but because of that I've also rather lost track of how long it is since I actually managed to post anything.  At last I'm here, albeit two and a half months since my last posting.

So what's been going on for me?  Well, it's been the summer and traditionally a time when folk go on holiday.  I haven't really been on holiday as such, but I have been up to Edinburgh to stay with my mum on two occasions, each time for about a week.  I've taken the kitten - Isobel Artemis - with me each time and she's had no problem with the car journeys or getting used to a different environment, and has really loved darting up and down the stairs at Mum's.  I don't have stairs in my flat, so Isobel's first encounter with stairs was at Mum's, and each time we've visited she's had great fun galloping up and down them, sounding like she's wearing boots.  She's five months old now, and although young for it, she was spayed last week, mostly because she's desperate to investigate the outside world, but I don't want to risk her getting pregnant.  She's healing well, and hasn't had any problems at all, which has been a huge relief because I was worried that she was a little too young, even though the vet said she'd be fine because she's quite 'long for her age'.  I am completely besotted with Isobel and she's giving me so much pleasure and delight.

At the middle of July/beginning of August I spent two weeks in hospital with my asthma.  I'd had a brilliant couple of days down in London for the Monty Python show and then drove back home on the Thursday.  I wanted to be back home in time for choir as it was the last Flotsam rehearsal before the summer break and we were singing at the wedding of a couple of choir members at the end of August.  In the end I decided to go straight to Flotsam so that I didn't have that post-drive slump at home and have to go out again almost straight away, but then as I was approaching Gateshead I realised that I was going to arrive a bit too soon so I decided to stop at the Angel of the North.  I was absolutely fine when I arrived and when I got out of the car, and fine when I got the wheelchair out of the car and had a little trundle around, but very quickly and suddenly I became extremely ill.  I couldn't breathe and my chest felt incredibly tight.  I got out my nebuliser and started to use it, but I could feel myself going - the world was going black and I was about to pass out.  I knew that if I passed out then I would die.  I could see an elderly man sitting on a nearby bench, watching me, looking concerned, but he didn't approach me or ask if I needed help, and then he started to disappear into the encroaching blackness.  Just as I was resigning myself to dying under the gaze of an angel, the drugs in my nebuliser started to kick in, the blackness started to dissipate, and my breathing started to ease.  For the first time ever I went from being absolutely fine to incredibly ill to fairly okay again in one 'sitting.'  It was a huge relief, but also very confusing because I didn't know how to deal with this new situation - would I continue to be okay?  Should I go to hospital?  Would I be alright if I went home?

When I got back in the car I looked in the mirror and could see that I was far from being the right colour, but my breathing did feel a lot better than they had done and I thought I was probably okay to drive ... although, in retrospect, I probably ought not to have done.  I had been very scared by what had just happened and was feeling rather shocked by it, all of which probably contributed to my decision to leave getting checked out until the next day.  In the meantime I decided that I would go to choir as planned because it was probably safer for me to be with people in the immediate aftermath of this than to go home and be alone all evening.

It took a long time - a good couple of hours - for me to get back to being the right colour, and during choir I was sweating a great deal and not feeling well, although my breathing remained okay given what had occurred on the way.  Perhaps because of the fear of the attack at the angel and being so close to passing out, I didn't tell anyone at the time quite how poorly I'd been (it would be like admitting it to myself), but I did go straight home afterwards rather than join others in the pub for an end of term drink.  And when I got home I was exhausted.

I had every intention of phoning my GP the next day to get checked over, and I set my alarm to wake me in time to phone for an appointment, but when morning arrived I was too tired to move.  I tried to wake up, but I couldn't.  My head didn't feel right.  In fact it hadn't felt right since I'd almost passed out in the asthma attack - it felt thick and heavy and I couldn't really think straight.  I went back to sleep, telling myself that I'd phone the doctor soon, but as the day progressed I wasn't able to stay awake long enough to make the call, and I was fumbling around doing my nebs practically in my sleep.  I don't know what happened to the day, but it disappeared, and the next thing I knew my carer for the day was calling my name from the hall.  I hadn't heard her ring the bell, knock on the door, or even phone me up, so she'd got the code for my keysafe and let herself in.  I managed to explain what had happened, but I still wasn't right, and she said that I seemed a bit confused.  I said that I wasn't, that I was just tired, but actually I think I was confused.  The carer stayed a while, made me a drink (I didn't want anything to eat), and phoned the office/on-call to tell them what had happened and how I was, and then she had to go.

I can't remember much about that weekend, except that my head didn't feel right and my lungs were slipping again.  My GP surgery is closed at weekends and I don't like A&E (plus, I didn't think I really needed to go to A&E) so I was hanging on for Monday.  When Monday morning arrived I managed to wake up to make the call to the surgery, got an appointment with one of the doctors, and went straight up to the surgery.  Part of me must have known that I'd end up in hospital because I had checked my hospital bag was ready, but part of me was still in denial, or maybe not thinking properly, so I didn't gather my meds together or take anything with me to the surgery.  The doctor was lovely, but clearly concerned so had me admitted to my usual ward at Freeman Hospital via an ambulance straight from the surgery.

At first the docs on the ward didn't do very much for me, but I could feel my lungs getting slowly tighter, and the nurses who know me well were concerned for me.  My consultant was off (his first sick leave in his whole career), and the registrar had opted to wait and see how things went with me before doing anything proactive, which was tiring and frustrating for me.  I didn't see the point of being in hospital if they weren't going to do anything different from what I could do and was doing at home, besides which I could feel my lungs getting slowly tighter and tighter.  The following day they agreed that the time had come to intervene and they put up the aminophylline infusion, which slowly, slowly did its thing and I started to get better, except that then the docs were too eager to get it down, despite my telling them that I need to be weaned off it very slowly.  It all went pear-shaped and I ended up back on it very soon after it'd first come down.  This time they kept it up until I was more stable, and as far as I remember it was up until after my consultant came back to work and could oversee the whole the process.  Eventually I was well enough to be free of the aminophylline infusion, and I could start to get some better rest before going home.

I was discharged two weeks after being admitted.  The general consensus was that there was most likely something at the Angel of the North to which I'm allergic - a pollen of some kind, probably - and that the confusion and headaches had been due to the lack of oxygen to my brain when I was so acutely unwell.  These seemed to get better with time and rest, although I was still extremely tired for about a week after I got home and did very, very little other than sleep or lie in bed for my first week home.

Since then my lungs have settled back into their usual state of unpredictability, but I've got back into life, taking each day as it comes.  I've been up to Edinburgh once since then and had some Mum TLC, which is always good for recovery from poorliness, and I've seen various friends at various times too, which help my spirits and remind me how lucky I am to have such lovely people in my life.

There have been a few other medical things going on throughout the summer and recent weeks too, but I'll post about them separately because otherwise it might be overload for both me and you.  Besides which, I've just noticed that it's almost 1.40am and I really ought to take myself to bed if I'm to have any chance of seeing any of tomorrow morning, which I'd like to do as I've been enjoying the sunny September weather.  So for now I'll bid you goodnight and I'll take Isobel for a cuddle in bed.

Interlude

The plan had been to write a second post about Norfolk a couple of days after the first.  Plans don't always go as I'd hope, and this time it certainly hasn't.  A day or two after my last post I started to feel grotty.  It wasn't anything particularly tangible - a deep fatigue and malaise, and an inability even to think properly.  I was hoping it was just a bad day of some kind as I was supposed to be going to Liverpool the next day to meet up with some good friends from the Open University.

That night (Thursday) I had an awful night.  I didn't sleep well, I was very restless, I just didn't feel well, and when my alarm went off on Friday morning I felt awful.  My insides decided they'd prefer to be on the outside and my temperature was up to 39.7C.  There was absolutely no way I was going to get to Liverpool, but to be honest, I felt too ill to be too disappointed.

I couldn't keep my meds down, and I was concerned that my asthma would get completely out of control because of that.  My temperature wasn't responding to the tiny amount of paracetamol that I did manage to get inside me, and I was becoming dehydrated.  I rang the GP.  When I said to the receptionist that I think I needed a home visit she sounded a bit incredulous, but really she should know that I would never ask for a home visit if there was any chance I could get to the surgery.  She said that the doctor might just phone me, instead of visiting.

The doctor did ring me, but he said he was quite concerned so would do a home visit too.  I unlocked the door the next time I got up to go to the bathroom, and when Dr Cn arrived he let himself in.  He could see that I really wasn't well, and he was also worried that I wasn't able to keep my meds down, so he prescribed some Buccastem -  an antisickness tablet that dissolves slowly in the mouth.  He then rang the local pharmacy and got them to deliver it to my home, telling them that I was in no way well enough to go to the pharmacy myself.  I then gave them the prescription Dr Cn had left when they came around with the meds.

The day passed in a haze with weird dreams of high temperature, interspersed with many, many trips to the bathroom.  The doctor then rang me again before he left work for home at the end of the day.  He asked if I'd be okay.  I said that I probably would, but I was thinking, 'I don't know.  You're the doctor.'  Anyway, he told me that I should contact the out of hours doctors immediately if I got any worse or was at all worried.  I promised I would.

The cat was obviously really worried as he wouldn't leave my side.  This may sound odd, but Zach is very sensitive, and when I'm ill at night with my asthma he pats my face gently with his paw until I wake up.  He then watches me intently until I'm sorted and breathing easier.  He didn't need to wake me on the Friday, but he did stay glued to my side, following me into the bathroom and watching me closely all the time.  W came round in the evening and she realised that Zach must be starving because he hadn't touched his food in the kitchen.  He wouldn't go through to the kitchen because he was too busy guarding me, but W brought his food into my bedroom and he snaffled it down.

W was brilliant (as ever).  She cleaned my toilet and the bin that I'd earlier vomited in because I couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough.  She went back to her house and brought her fan back to mine to try to help cool me down.  She sat with me for several hours until I was fast asleep, sometime in the early hours of the morning.

Saturday was much the same as Friday, but I was getting more dehydrated.  When W came round in the evening she went to the supermarket for me to get some rehydration salts (and she also came back with some beautiful flowers that cheered me up loads).  She checked the ingredients in the shop.  I checked the ingredients when she got to mine with them.  W checked the ingredients again.  I checked the ingredients again, and again for luck.  There didn't seem to be anything in them that I am allergic to, so I set to trying to get them into me and keep them down.

Twenty or so minutes after taking the rehydration salts I was lying in bed (in fresh sheets that W had just changed for me) when I realised that I was itching a lot.  Then my eyes started to get itchy and sore and my left eye was swelling up.  I took some antihistamine, but still, my lungs began to tighten and I could feel my throat beginning to swell.  When my nebuliser did nothing to ease the chest tightness and wheezing, and I was being more sick than I had been, I knew I had to take my epi-pen.  I was heading towards anaphylaxis.

The protocol for anaphylaxis is that when you use an epi-pen you have to go to hospital.  You should also call an ambulance to get to hospital.  I hate ambulances.  I did go to hospital, but W took me in her car...  Thankfully, we got there no problem, and possibly quicker than in an ambulance as it was a Saturday night in Newcastle.

I was seen as soon as we went into A&E, and taken straight through for treatment.  The department was full of drunks and people laid out on trolleys in various states of drunken unconsciousness.  The bloke in the bed next to me was absolutely wasted, and trying to get up despite being in head blocks because he had a suspected broken neck.  The poor nurses really had their hands full.  But regardless of that, they were great with me.

Once I was stabilised in A&E I was taken to the Emergency Admissions Unit where I spent the rest of the night and most of the next day.  The anaphylaxis was settling well, but I still had a high temperature, I was still vomiting, and I still had bad diarrhoea so I was far from well.  The medics said they wanted to keep me in for a while, but said that they'd probably keep me in my side room on EAU.  This is why it was a particular surprise when the porter came to take me to the ward.  Nobody had told me I was going to the ward, or what kind of ward it was, so it was even more of a surprise when the porter said I was going to the ward for Tropical Diseases!

It turned out that the ward for Tropical Diseases is also the ward for Infectious Diseases, which gastroenteritis certainly is, and a ward for those with compromised immune systems.  Nonetheless, it was still somewhat unnerving to be going there, and even more so when I arrived.  The Tropical and Infectious Diseases ward is the only ward on the top floor of an isolated part of the hospital.  The corridor leading to the ward is locked.  The door going on to the ward is locked.  There is a red light above the door that indicates when someone on the ward has something particularly nasty.  Each patient has their own room, and each room has a double door/airlock entry system.  Each cubicle can have the pressure inside adapted (I guess some tropical diseases affect pressures, or something), and each room has a camera on the wall so that the patient can be watched with medical staff requiring as little contact as possible.  At night time the camera lens is encircled by red LED eyelashes so that the patient can still be seen in the dark.  The windows in the room don't open.  People hardly ever come in, and when they do they're clad in apron and gloves.  You see these kinds of wards on apocalyptic sci-fi films, but you never think they really exist.  You think there must be some artistic licence for dramatic effect, but no, they do really exist, and I found myself on one.  It was all very, very surreal.

I was on the T&ID ward for three days before coming home on Wednesday evening.  I'm a lot better than I was - so, so much better than I was - but I'm still not right.  It turned out that the gastroenteritis was a bacterial bug, and one that's reportable to the Health Protection Agency, so apparently I might get a call from them to see if they can locate the source of the infection.  I have an idea, but I'll leave it up to the HPA to confirm or otherwise.

I am now completely wiped out.  I still don't feel terribly well, and apparently I could have some symptoms for up to four weeks!  I think this is going to be a slow recovery, and definitely not helped by the anaphylactic reaction.  W and I have contacted the manufacturers of the rehydration salts about that.  The only thing it can have been that caused the reaction is the flavouring, for which the ingredients weren't listed, and under the 'side effects' section in the patient information leaflet it says, 'None known.'  I've filled in a couple of forms for them, and they're also sending one of the sachets off to Germany to be analysed, so at least they're taking it seriously, although I'm still going to try to get in touch with them to find out what the ingredients are in the flavouring.  It's important that I know.  Either there's something in it that I know I am allergic to, but which isn't listed in the ingredients, or I have developed an allergy to something else.  I just hope they give me the information I need.

It's been quite some week.  I'm hoping for a much less eventful week this week.

Catch up

It's way over time since I blogged.  Sorry about that, but here I am now.  Since I was last here I think I've got used to the idea of being discharged from the mental health services ... sort of, though I still haven't heard anything from health psychology.  Next week will be the four week marker since my GP said he'd refer me, so I guess if I haven't heard anything by then it might be an idea to get back to my GP and ask if he can chase it up, seeing as he'd said I should hear within four weeks.

I've been somewhat distracted from all the mental health stuff recently, which is probably no bad thing, except that the distraction has been carpal tunnel syndrome surgery on my left hand.  You may remember that I had the same surgery on the right hand at the beginning of December, which has pretty much healed now.  I can still feel some stiffness in the area of the surgery and some slightly altered sensation around the scar, but mostly it's pretty good and the scar is hardly visible.  I had the same operation done on the left hand last Thursday (15th March).  I had to be at the hospital for 8am so W, who was going to be looking after me in the immediate aftermath, came to stay on the Wednesday night.  We actually had a really lovely evening as we went for an early pizza at the Italian restaurant down the road - Vincenzo's (used to be called Peppy's) - before going to Northern Stage to see the comedian Chris Addison, who was very funny.  It was just what I needed to take my mind of the next day's surgery :o)

All went well with the surgery, although I had to wait until the end of the operating list because of being MRSA positive, so I didn't actually go down to theatre until just after midday.  However, I was back on the ward by 12.50pm and we were back home by 2pm!

As was the case when I had the surgery on my right hand, I've had quite a lot of pain, but I've mostly kept it under control with paracetamol, codeine, and nefopam.  Today has been the first day without the sling, and it's been great to have a bit more freedom, although my hand and arm have been quite achy.

So anyway, W was brilliant and looked after me wonderfully all day Thursday and she stayed until Friday evening.  My mum then came from Friday evening until Tuesday afternoon, and it was so lovely to spend some quality time with her while I'm not in hospital.  It was also very lovely to have her here on Mothering Sunday :o)  My dad came round for lunch on the Saturday as well, which was also very lovely.  Mum had made roasted red pepper and sweet potato soup, cheese scones, and courgette and cheese muffins, which were all delicious :o)  After we'd enjoyed the little feast the three of us went for a walk/trundle in one of the local parks, then came back for a cup of tea before Mum took Dad back home.  My parents split up when I was nine years old, and for many years they had a volatile relationship after that.  Lovely times with both my parents (especially just with the three of us) have been a rarity in my life, and it may well be something like thirty years since I've had such a lovely time with them on my own as I had on Saturday.  It felt special somehow.  My parents have known each other since they were sixteen years old, and I think they both enjoyed talking about those young days together...

I hope we can all do it again sometime.

Mum and I had been going to go out to a National Trust place on Sunday - to Gibside - but Mum had also wanted to catch up with one of her friends and the only time this friend could manage was sometime on Sunday afternoon.  Still, we went for a walk/trundle in the park and had a nice time together.  And on Monday evening we went to a talk at the university by Tess Gallagher, which was very interesting and good fun too.

During her stay here Mum did a lot of crochet, using one of two books that I gave her for Christmas.  She's been teaching herself and has learnt a lot in such a short time.  She's making various tray-cloths etc at the moment while she teaches herself and practises new stitches/patterns.  They're amazing, and she makes them so quickly.  It made me want to get on with some more cross-stitch.  I ended up buying several online, which were all delivered while Mum was here, and now I'm desperate to be getting on with them.  It's difficult with only one fully-functional hand, but I think I'm going to be giving it a go and seeing how I get on.  I'm impatient!

Mum went home on Tuesday and I'm missing her already.  It won't be long till I see her again though, as I'm going up to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks time for Easter :o)  I booked my train at the beginning of last week and J, my step-dad, has booked the ramp for me to be able to get into their house, so we're all set :o)

Things are still in progress regarding my grant application to Motability.  I've had a couple of phone calls from them, so I know they're considering my application, and I'm hoping that I might hear from them with an answer sometime next week.  I'll let you know when I know.

Well that's about it for now.  A bit of a catch up post.

A smashing time

Some of my friends gave me a ukulele as a graduation gift.  I've done a lot of music in the past, playing the violin, piano, and voice, and almost going to The Royal Acadamy of Music back in the mid/late '90s.  However, I've never played the guitar, so the ukulele is a whole new venture, but my friends thought that it'd be an ideal instrument for me as it's light, low-energy, and easy to play sitting (or lying) down.  I've only had the ukulele for two weeks, but I'm greatly enjoying learning it.

I went into town the other day in Taz - my electric wheelchair - to get some ukulele music and another book to teach myself as the book I'd previously bought doesn't give enough practise at the skills it teaches. I went to the main music shop in Newcastle city centre - Windows. It's a fantastic shop, and one that I almost lived in as a teenager with a love of making music.  It's also in the most beautiful old arcade - Central Arcade - which was first built as a commercial exchange and newsroom in 1869, but then rebuilt and opened as an arcade in 1906 after a terrible fire.

Windows has been in Central Arcade since 1908, so only just after the redesigned arcade was opened, and because of its age, Windows doesn't have a lift at all.  Most of the instruments and all of the sheet music are upstairs, so this made my quest to get ukulele music a little tricky.

I made my way to the counter at the far end of the shop, along the narrow aisles of the ground floor, past the expensive digital pianos and all the CDs and records (yes, they even have some vinyl!), and I asked the guy at the till for assistance from upstairs. No problem. All I had to do was wait at the bottom of the stairs, which were all the way back from where I'd come.

After a short wait a lovely young lady came down with lots of books she thought might be useful (I had explained to the man at the till what I was after), and also lots of advice as she plays the ukulele herself. Marvellous, and typical of Windows to have knowledgeable staff. I decided to buy a few helpful-looking books, and I followed her back down the narrow aisles to the till to pay. Still no problem ... until it came to leave...

There wasn't much space between the till and the end of the central racks full of vinyls and CDs; certainly not enough space to turn Taz around, so I had to reverse. However, I was reversing in a tight little space and not concentrating fully because a) I wasn't feeling too well; and b) I was trying to hold onto the rather large box of books I'd just bought in a carrier that was threatening to slip off my knee.

I reversed confidently into a set of free-standing metal shelves full of CDs, only now they weren't so full of CDs. I moved forward to disentangle myself from the shelves, but they had somehow attached themselves to the bottom of my wheelchair. The whole lot fell over. The lovely lady picked up all the CDs, and the grumpy-faced man who had earlier been on the till detached the shelves from Taz. Not so helpfully, he put them back to exactly the same place they had been, and when I then tried reversing again, I promptly crashed into them again. They were now rather bent. I eventually managed to turn Taz around and scoot up the aisle without damaging anything else.  The grumpy-faced, and now grumpy-natured, man held the door open for me as I left.


I hope he read the sticker on the back of Taz. It reads, 'Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.'

In passing

Do you ever overhear snippets of conversations and wonder how on earth they fit into the whole?  I was passing a couple of young men the other day as I trundled through the campus of Northumbria University on my way home, when I heard one of them say to other, 'I have a real hatred of shoe laces.'  Was this a comment out of the blue?  Was it part of a wider conversation about shoes?  What does this guy hate so much about shoe laces?  I was almost tempted to turn around and chase after them to ask.  I resisted in the end, thinking that they might think I was stalking them, or at the least very strange.  No comments from the back! ;oP

On a completely different note, I saw the most terrible thing from the bus window the other day.  We were going down the main shopping street on the edge of quite a deprived part of Newcastle and I saw a young man, who I presume was the father, put a cigarette into a child's mouth.  The child must only have been about 4 or 5 years old, and the 'father' was clearly instructing the child on how to light the cigarette.  It was an awful sight.  It's bad enough to see teenagers smoking, let alone very young children being plied with cigarettes.  It made me angry, and so angry that I felt sick.  I think I would go as far as saying I consider what I saw to be child abuse.  What about you?

Explained absence

Sorry for not having updated in a while.  I'm okay - not in hospital.  I've been away in Edinburgh for a few days with Mum and J, and I've been busy writing stuff for my PGCert portfolio.  In theory I have until 30th August to finish the portfolio, but I actually have the final meeting with my supervisor tomorrow lunchtime so I've been busily trying to finish up.  My supervisor needed to receive my work by email today so that she has a chance to read it before we meet, so the pressure has been on.  Thankfully the hard work seems to have paid off and I think I've done it!  Of course I'll find out tomorrow if there's any major editing to do, but I don't think there'll be masses - there's only one piece I'm not terribly sure about.  So after tomorrow's meeting all I'll have to do is put everything in one document, print it off and submit it!  Mind you, whilst this is the end of the PGC portfolio, it's not the end of the project as I'm hoping to put what I've been writing into a book.  There are a lot of words that go into a book, though, so I still have a great deal of writing to do.  But I'm enjoying it, and I'm enjoying having the time to write without the pressures of other study now that I've finished my degree.

So yes, that's what I've been up to while I haven't been showing myself here - writing.

It was lovely to get away for a few days, and this time not end up in hospital!  While I was at Mum and J's, J's brother, N, and N's Wife, F (that looks terribly confusing.  I hope you're still with me) also came to stay for a couple of days.  I haven't seen them since Mum and J's wedding 18 years ago, so it was great to meet them again, and we've now exchanged email addresses so it should be a lot easier to keep in touch.

Last time I was in Edinburgh there was an article in one of the Scottish newspapers about a new place that was opening in Edinburgh called The Salt Cave.  It's one of a small, worldwide chain.  It's basically a room that's covered in salt - 2 tonnes of salt on the walls and the floor - and has purified, salty air pumped into it.  Up to 8 people can be in the one in Edinburgh at any one time, and a session lasts an hour, during which you sit in a comfy chair, breathe the salty air, relax in a half-light listening to new-agey music with waves in the background, and most likely fall asleep.  The Salt Cave people claim the experience is beneficial to those with asthma and other lung conditions, sinus problems, ear infections, and various other ailments.  I thought it was worth a go, especially as the first session is free :o)  Well I'm not cured, and didn't expect to be, but it doesn't really matter, because it was relaxing and I enjoyed it immensely.  I have to say though that my nose did feel a lot clearer, so maybe there's something in it.  They do say that you need more than one session for there to be significant improvement in breathing conditions, and recommend two to three sessions a week to start with.  I can't afford that at the moment, and with Edinburgh being the nearest Salt Cave to Newcastle it's not likely that I could get there three times a week either, but maybe I'll go when I'm up visiting Mum.  And as I say, it doesn't really matter if it doesn't help the breathing much/at all, because it's relaxing, and that has to be good for my mental health :o)

Okey dokey, I'm off for now to check through my writing in preparation for the meeting with my PGC portfolio supervisor tomorrow.  I promise I'll be a better blogger now :o)

Success!

I have had the most satisfying week of success that I've had for a very long time, possibly ever!

I finished my final Open University course at the end of may, writing my examinable essay (EMA) in a bit of a panic after a bad asthma attack and a prolonged hospital admission.  It was also in the wake of my step-brother's suicide, so I'm sure you can imagine what a particularly stressful time it was.  However, the results came through on Tuesday and to my great surprise I got 87%  I'm thrilled!

Still revelling in the glory of that success on Wednesday morning and I got an email from the OU with official confirmation of my degree - BA (Hons) Lit, with First Class Honours :oD  I knew that if I passed my last course then I'd get my degree, and I knew that I'd get a First, but it was still fantastic to get the official confirmation.

Then on Wednesday afternoon I had an email from Newcastle University offering me a place on their MA in Creative Writing that I'd applied for.  I've been doing their Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing over this past academic year (even though I was still an undergraduate), but I still had to apply for the MA and there wasn't an absolute guarantee that I'd be accepted.

I've been on a high since getting all that news, and I'm now really, really looking forward to my graduation at the Barbican in London on 16th September, and my graduation party back here in Newcastle on 24th September.

I can hardly believe I've done this.  I missed a lot of school through my teenage years because of asthma and bronchitis, also struggling with depression, particularly during my A-level years.  I certainly didn't achieve my academic potential at school, and didn't really believe I was clever enough to do a degree.  Now I have a First class honours degree, I'm well on my way to finishing my PGCert (another 2 500 words to do for my portfolio by the end of the month), and by this time next year I'll almost have finished an MA!

I have surpassed my own expectations, and I'm loving it!

Progress

It's far, far too long since I blogged.  Apologies.  I had my first meeting with my PGCert portfolio supervisor so I've been spending some time writing, and a lot of time fretting that I haven't written enough.  In the end I sent my supervisor the miserly 1254 words I had written, and ended up getting some good comments, although I did promise to write considerably more by the time we next meet.  I'd better get to it though, as our next meeting is on 21st July, which is approaching far too quickly :o/

Now then, back in May I blogged about how I can't get into my local pharmacy because they have no disabled access.  They assured me that they'd finally been given planning permission for a temporary ramp, and I speculated on what a 'temporary ramp' might be.  Weeeeeeeeell, I went to the pharmacy on Friday, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had at last had a doorbell fitted so that wheelchair users could now attract the attention of the shop keepers without having to rattle the letterbox while the door automatically closes on our faces.  After pressing the new doorbell, I wasn't entirely sure that it was working because I didn't hear any tell-tale ringing, but a minute or so later one of the assistants came to the door, and then asked if I would like the ramp!  Would I like the ramp?!  Of course I would like the ramp!  I would love not to feel like a second-class citizen waiting out on the street next to the dog that's been tied to the bollard whilst its owner has gone inside the shop.  It turns out that a temporary ramp is a foldy-uppy ramp that, although apparently heavy, can be put into place when needed and then stored away inside again. 

It was a real novelty to go inside the chemist shop.  While I was waiting for my prescription I had a little scoot around and looked at all the things I now had access to buy ... and then decided that there wasn't really anything that I particularly wanted to buy at that time.  At least I knew that for myself now.  How very pleasing  :o)

The ramp does look pretty heavy, and for some reason they keep it behind the counter at the far side of the shop.  I rather suspect that the pharmacists and shop assistants are going to get fed up with lugging it around all the time, and if this happens they might just push management for a permanent ramp.  Sooooo, my very basic plan is to go into the store as much as possible, which won't be difficult as I have to go there for my prescription very frequently, and they almost never have everything on my scripts, so I invariably have to go twice for each one.

Progress, definite progress, but my quest for equality of access isn't over yet.  I'll be back into Boots tomorrow for the rest of today's prescription, so I hope the pharmacists and shop assistants have had spinach for dinner tonight ;o)

Brides

Two of my friends got married on Saturday.  It was a lovely wedding and C, the bride, looked beautiful.  The occasion, though, reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother a few weeks ago.  It was a very surreal conversation, and one that you should probably never have with your mother.

I'll be graduating with my under graduate degree this September (I just sent off my last essay today!) and I'm having a party to celebrate.  My mum suggested the party when I was in hospital sometime last year or the year before, and it was just before my most recent admission that I started to organise the party and send out invitations.

Mum and J are very kindly paying for most of the party, and it was while we were discussing some of the costs that this surreal conversation took place, beginning with her saying, 'Of course, if you decide to get married next year then we'll have to have a re-think about finances.'

????????  'Yeeees, but I need a man, and a relationship with a man, before getting married becomes a possibility.'

'Hmmm.  Have you thought about maybe going to Thailand and getting a Thai bride?'

??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????!!!!!!!!!! 'No.  I can honestly say that I haven't.  And Mum, I'm not gay.  You do know that, don't you?'

'Yes, it's just ... Well, I thought with your liberal views, and all that...'

?????!!!!!!!????????  'Er.  Um.  Right.  I see.'  NO, I DON'T!!! What liberal views in particular????  'Well, um, I'm not gay, and I'm not going to Thailand to get a wife.'

'Oh.  Okay ... So you won't be getting married next year?'

'No, I think that's very unlikely.  Lovely as it would be to be getting married, I do want to marry a man, and I want it to be a man I love.'

I have no idea where that idea of hers came from, and I have to say that I felt as though I ought to be apologising for being straight.  I'm also rather perplexed as to why she seemed to think I might want a bride!  And a Thai bride!  This is the woman who was anxious about me being well enough to go to North Yorkshire, so I have no idea where this notion of me jetting off to Thailand came from.  And a bride from Thailand!!!   The conversation seems so wrong in so many ways.

Completely surreal.  Totally bizarre.

Embrace the moment

Life is for living, wouldn't you agree? There are times when opportunities arise either to embrace moments of life or look all embarrassed and shirk away from them. Last night I was presented with one of these opportunities, and had one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I had come out of my PGC memoir writing class and was somewhat thoughtful after a couple of the exercises we'd done, but I was fairly cheery nonetheless, because I've been enjoying this module immensely and finding it very stimulating. I'd left the university grounds and was making my way down Northumberland Street - the main shopping street in Newcastle city centre - in my electric wheelchair, when I was challenged to a race. That would be an odd occurence in itself, but what made this particularly surreal was that my challenger was a man dressed as a nun driving a small, white grand piano, adorned with spiralled, blue rope lights, making it look quite magnificent as it came up the street in the dark, blasting out its variations of pop music (of sorts). It has to be said that I was a little bemused by the sight, but also thought it was wonderful with a particular kind of craziness. So having been challenged to a race by this 'nun' I had quickly to decide whether or not to embrace the silliness and possible embarrassment. I was on my own, but the street was still vibrant because the shops were still open, and it being 7.15 on a Thursday night in Newcastle there were more than a few who were already starting their weekend celebrations. They, and many others had heard the nun ask me if I'd like a race and there were guffaws all round, which then developed into whoops of incredulous pleasure when I decided to embrace the moment and accept the challenge. I had to do a little negotiation though as I'd been whizzing down the street and the nun had been driving his piano up the street. At first he was reluctant to go in the direction I wanted to go (I'm not sure why), but when I said that I needed to be heading vaguely towards my bus stop then he relented, and he did the race going backwards. I have to say that I've never before raced a man dressed as a nun who's driving a small grand piano blasting out pop music, but it was great fun. It was, I'm sorry to say, a very short race, but I won all the same :oD And the spectators cheered and laughed and enjoyed the sight of a nun driving a piano racing a woman in an electric wheelchair. And I've been smiling about it a great deal ever since, so I'm particularly pleased that I embraced the moment of silliness and lived that little moment of life, when it would've been so easy to give into the fear of embarrassment.

I've done a Google search on 'my nun' and I've found that he's called Sister Ruth, has her own website, and travels the country doing all sorts of gigs and parties. Great fun! Live life and embrace the moment!

Master Chef meets Krypton Factor

You may know that I have a lot of allergies, most of which are anaphylactic, and many of which are to foods. The main things I'm allergic to are preservatives and colourings, and you'd be surprised at what you'd find these in, even in so-called healthy foods. One of the consequences of these allergies is that I can't eat any ready meals so I have to have all my food cooked from scratched. Yes, real cooking! I quite enjoy cooking, but I'm very limited these days in how much I can do because of my tendency to pass out when standing due to the POTS and vasovagal syncope. It's not very safe to faint whilst standing over a lit gas hob so these days I have carers come to cook for me three evenings a week. It can be a bit tying sometimes if I have things to do, or I want to be out, or if they turn up early, and I've never been the best at planning meals ahead so sometimes I get a little frustrated at having to be organised with this kind of thing. It's made a little trickier by the fact that they come at 4.30pm, which is far too early to have dinner so I need to think of things that I can either re-heat quickly later on or that take a long time to cook. Last year W bought me a slow cooker and that's been a god-send with these carers as they can do all the cooking bits then set the slow cooker away to do its stuff so that a few hours later I can have tea at a much more sensible time. Marvellous. All I need do is provide the recipe and ingredients...

It would, however, seem that cooking is an alien concept to many of the carers who come to me and the tasks I lay before them are akin to those on the Krypton Factor. Now it's not like I ask for anything particularly complicated - in fact that's another challenge for me as I have to try to find simple recipes - except that the mere thought of cooking anything other than a ready meal or heating up a takeaway appears to be very complicated. I have several different carers come to cook for me and I only really have confidence in one of them. They're all lovely people, yes, but you wouldn't find them on Master Chef. I had one who, on her first visit here, told me that her father is a chef so I optimistically thought that he may have passed on some of his culinary skills to her. Nope. She had to ask me how to cut the leek I'd put out with the ingredients for my dinner. On one of the days the following week a very sweet young carer (maybe in her late teens or very early twenties) came. She pointed at the pile of ingredients on the bench, made her face Dali-esque and squawked, 'What's that?!' It was a sweet potato. The day she came and I had a raw beetroot I'd been given on the bench I thought she was going to run away in fear so I had to reassure her very quickly that it wasn't part of that night's dinner; it was just on the bench as a place to put it. I then had to explain that it was a fresh beetroot, and no, not all beetroot comes pickled in jars. Bless her ... and God help me!

I guess I don't mind so much if the person who comes is honest about their cooking ability. I can allow for inexperience. I can prepare myself for perhaps not the tastiest meal I've ever had. So long as they make sure all the veg etc is suitably washed so that they don't accidentally kill me then I can pretty much let them off. It's when they're 'misleading' about their culinary skills that it gets me. I had one woman come - another friendly character - who, when I explained about my allergies and therefore the need to do 'from scratch' cooking, assured me that she was a good cook. She told me that she'd been married to a Morrocan man for seven years so had cooked all his meals from the raw ingredients and was quite experienced. After tasting the soup she made me I wonder if she's still married to the Moroccan man or if in fact he's dead. I set her the challenge of making me butternut squash and carrot soup with a little ginger and chilli. As always I'd set out the ingredients on the bench. As always I presumed she'd follow the recipe in terms of quantities, and I even provided scales for weighing out any ingredients she needed to weigh. I went off to have my bath (the heat of a bath or shower makes passing out more likely so I have a bath while the carer's around in case there are any problems) and left her to make the soup. When I returned to the kitchen I discovered that she hadn't actually fried the onions, garlic, ginger, chili, or any of the veg before adding the stock (homemade stock as I can't have the bought stuff); she'd simply chopped it all up, put it in the enormous pan, and filled said pan with all of the stock I had. And it was only after she'd left that I realised she had no discernment at all regarding quantities. She had used a whole green chili, a whole root of ginger, and a whole bulb of garlic! I let the thing, the concoction, the pot of poison bubble away in the hope that maybe it wouldn't be so bad really, but after I'd blitzed it in the liquidiser and tasted the tiniest of tiny amounts there was no fooling myself into thinking that this was edible. It had somehow transformed itself from appetising and tasty fresh vegetables to some kind of anti-food. I think I had boiled egg that night instead. The next time she turned up I lied that I was going to my dad's for dinner that night, but I still needed her there while I had a bath. I don't remember what I ended up doing for tea in the end, but I couldn't face sampling her cooking again, that was for sure. On the bright side, as she wasn't cooking for me that evening she offered to do other stuff so she did my ironing. The carer who comes on a Wednesday morning is supposed to do my ironing as well as the cleaning, but the one I've had most since my regular Wednesday carer left the agency is rubbish at ironing, doesn't like doing it, complains all the time she is doing it, and doesn't do very much of it. Needless to say, there was rather a lot of ironing to do. It all got done and I also didn't have to suffer her cooking. Bonus!

I had yet another carer come tonight. I have to say that she was ever such a lovely person, and she did in the end manage to follow the recipe and produce a very nice dinner in the slow cooker for me. However, I also have to say that it is quite miraculous that she managed to follow the recipe and produce a very nice dinner in the slow cooker for me. When I told her that she'd be cooking from scratch she looked terrified, aghast, distraught. She came clean that she doesn't cook. I told her not to worry as I'd put all the ingredients out along with the recipe, and assured her that a slow cooker is really easy to use. She'd never seen a slow cooker before. She doesn't even use a conventional cooker. She lives off sandwiches. This was going to be a challenge ... for us both. Right then, time for some education. I introduced her to the concepts of fresh vegetables, cartons of butter beans, and uncooked wholegrain rice. I gave her her first sighting of saffron, and explained that she should use only a very tiny amount as it's so blooming expensive. That scared her. I got her a pan and showed her how to light the hob. I showed her the recipe book. I thought she was going to collapse with repressed hysteria. 'Oh,' she squeaked through tightened vocal chords, 'I've never used a recipe before. I'm not sure that I can. I mean, I'll try, but I'm scared. I've never done it before. It looks so complicated.' We read through the recipe together, and I explained that yes, she would have to use the hob a little bit to brown the leeks ... and I explained what 'browning the leeks' meant, and I reassured her that she'd be fine, and I went off to hide in the bath. After a while I could hear a lot of clattering and I could smell burning, but I figured that being in the bath surrounded by water was perhaps the safest place to be if the carer was going to accidentally set fire to the flat, so I stayed put and hoped I'd still have a kitchen by the time I plucked up the courage to get out of the bath and back to the carer. Thankfully I do still have a kitchen, and despite the burning smell I see no evidence of there having been any flames. When I reappeared though she did say that she hadn't washed the butter beans, and asked how she was meant to do that so I said to use either the sieve or the colander. She looked at me blankly. I showed her what a sieve looks like.

Splosh and crunch

I got out of hospital on Friday as I thought I might :oD It's been great to be free! I went back to Mum's for a few days and had some wonderful TLC, and then despite Mum's (understandable) worry about my coming away so soon after being so poorly, I made it to Lancashire on Monday with O for some of our curtailed holiday.

When I left the hospital on Friday I was still very much inflated with copious amounts of fluid retention, which was making me terribly tender and miserable. It does appear to be shifting now, thanks to the furosemide, although I'm still sploshing about in my own body somewhat, but nowhere near as much as I was. It's such a relief to have got rid of some of the water :o)

So O and I set off from Edinburgh on Monday afternoon and had a very lovely drive through the countryside along the A702 and A74, in bright sunshine and with pretty views. Just as I was feeling that I could do with some lunch and a rest we happened upon the Annandale Road Chef, which, being a motorway service station, you wouldn't expect to be anything special, but it was extremely lovely! How often do you hear that said about motorway service stations?! As we drove in there was a small gaggle of white geese on the grass verge, peering in our direction and looking rather welcoming, and then as we sat in the coffee shop inside we had a lovely view over a lake with ducks washing and preening themselves, and dipping in the water, and swimming about. We didn't make use of it as it was a bit chilly, but there was a patio area next to the lake that looked as though it would've been a nice place to sit out in the summer. It really didn't feel at all like a service station, and was most relaxing and refreshing :o) When we went back out to the car we were greeting by one of the geese and several ducks. They were extremely tame and followed us right up to the car. In fact, at one point I thought that perhaps they were going to jump into the car to munch on any crumbs they could find on the floor (which would've been quite a lot as it needed a good clean out). We sat for a while with the door open as the ducks and goose came up to say hello, and nibbled my fingers. I've been nibbled by ducks before, but I think that was possibly the first time I've been nibbled by a goose. It's not unpleasant ... not something I'll take up as a hobby, but it didn't hurt. After the goose had had a little munch on me and it was seen off by drake that wanted his turn, I was about to close the car door when I noticed a tiny chaffinch sitting on the wing mirror, which promptly hopped onto the door frame and sat watching us. As it leapt up there a wagtail popped itself on the wing mirror and it too watched us, although a little less intently. The chaffinch was so tame it almost let me touch it. I didn't want to frighten it off so I stretched my hand out ever so slowly, and I must have got within 10 cm of touching it before it got a little too nervous, but it didn't fly away; merely hopped sideways along the door frame. It was beautiful and so delicate. I could see every tiny little, rusty-coloured feather, and the slight up-turn of its beak at the very end; it's beady, little, black eyes keeping an inquisitive eye on me, but generally unafraid. I think it only flew off because it realised that we didn't actually have any food to give it, but I did enjoy it while it was there :o)

So we drove on and the A74 turned into the M6 when we hit England, but the far north end of the M6 isn't too bad and the traffic wasn't horrendous so the drive was okay. O and I had half arranged to meet a friend who lives in Cumbria at the Tebay services just past Penrith. As it happened this friend was too busy to meet up (very sad, but maybe we'll see her tomorrow), but we decided to stop for a cuppa anyway as we'd been told that these services were also particularly nice. They are. There's a farm shop; a lovely cafe with huge windows that look out onto a view of a pond with ducks, beyond which is an expansive field that gives way to rolling hills of green and purple. Although the sun was beginning to set by now the day had been bright and cheery and I could feel myself begin to relax into holiday mode as I sat there drinking a decaf latte and breathing in the life of the countryside. We had a little mooch around the farm shop before heading off for the last 45 minutes of our journey to Barnacre Cottages where we're staying in The Piggeries (how ironic given my recent illness with swine flu ;oP ). Although Barnacre Cottages are only a short way off the M6 the road between them is so small, twisty, and turny that it must take about 15 minutes to drive up here, but it's worth it because it's lovely.

So we arrived, and I pulled in to the little parking alcove for The Piggeries, and I reversed to straighten the car up, and I crunched the car into the wall behind, and the back windscreen smashed into smithereens, and the boot panel was dented in a big way, and the windscreen wiper was ripped from the car. I wasn't best pleased with myself. After a little frustrated cursing at myself I got myself into organising mode and began with phoning Motability, through which I lease my car. They were terribly helpful and sorted out an appointment for us with Autoglass to get the windscreen fixed that night. Unfortunately the only time Autoglass could fit us in on Monday night was 'sometime between 11pm and 1am.' No problem, they were going to come out to us to fix it ... except then it turned out that they couldn't do that because it was too damp in the open air for a new window to stick with the heat-fixing system (or whatever. It was all very technical and I'm not up on fixing car windows, funnily enough). So it turned out that we'd have to go to them, and they were in Bolton, which turns out to be almost an hour's drive away from Garstang (the nearest town to where we are). We had a call from them around 10pm to say we could start making our way over, so we piled into the draughty car - now with a perfectly clear view through the back on account of there being no window - and drove back along the twisty, turny, and now very dark road from the cottages, and then on to Bolton. It's slightly disconcerting driving along a dual carriageway/motorway with no back windscreen, and the strange sucky sounds that whistle through the car when another vehicle overtakes. Thanks to sat nav we got to Bolton and found the Autoglass place without a problem, and were promptly greeted by a friendly guy who sat us in a warm office with a TV, remote control, and free coffee machine, while he got on with replacing the back windscreen. It wasn't how I'd planned my first evening of the holiday, and I'm sure it hadn't been in O's plan either, but given that it ended up being in the plan it was okay. And then I noticed a sign that said that after you'd had your windscreen replaced then you couldn't drive at high speed. What constitutes 'high speed'? I asked the friendly guy, explaining that not being able to drive at 'high speed' could be a problem as we had to go on the motorway to get back to where we were staying.
'Where are you staying?'
'Not far from Garstang.'
'Garstang?!' He sounded incredulous, and aghast that anyone would stay anywhere near Garstang.
He sucked in air through his teeth and tutted. 'Well, hmm ... I can let you drive up to 60 miles an hour, but definitely no faster than that.'
You know, it's actually really rather scary driving 60 mph and less on the motorway, even at 1am when there isn't a great deal of traffic on the road. Mind you, the scariness wasn't helped by an ever-thickening fog that began to engulf us as we drove back. In fact, once we were off the main road and back on the dark, narrow, twisty, turny road heading towards the cottages the fog was so thick that had it not been for the sat nav showing the existence of a road ahead I would've doubted there was one. It was a very gothic drive through the tree-lined, fog-laden country roads, and a terribly, terribly scary one given that I couldn't actually see the road more than a foot or two ahead of me. Funnily enough, driving at high speed wasn't a problem at this stage, with our maximum speed being something in the region of 15-20 mph, but we did eventually make it back, and I didn't immediately reverse into the wall and crunch the car again.

As you may imagine, Tuesday was a day of doing very little, although I thought some sustenance was required so I made flapjack, which my grandmother always called crunch, so it seemed particularly apt. I like crunch, and I like making crunch because it's so quick and easy yet scrummy. O also seems to like crunch :oD In fact I 'had' to make more crunch last night to make sure that we've had enough for today and tomorrow (and although O doesn't know this yet, I'll give her some of it to go home with too).

I'm afraid the saga of the car continues. It's all been terribly complicated. As I mentioned before, I lease my car through Motability, one of the benefits of which is that I get a new car every three years. On Sunday it'll be three years since I got my current car and you may remember my blogging back in November about getting a new one. Now then, a new car doesn't need an MOT, but once a car gets to three years old it needs its first. I was supposed to get my car's MOT done before Christmas, but on the day that it was booked in the car was snowed in so I had to cancel and re-book. I re-booked for a couple of weeks ago, but then of course I ended up in hospital in Edinburgh so once again I had to cancel the MOT. Time has been pressing on though, the MOT needs to be done, the lease on the car expires on Sunday unless it and the insurance is temporarily extended by the garage from which I'm getting the new car. I booked another MOT for this Saturday, except then I was told by Motability that if it were done at the weekend then the paperwork wouldn't go through in time for the lease/insurance to be extended, so they then decided that I'd have to get the MOT done while I was away in Lancashire. They booked the car in to a garage in Preston for today. Fine, except that the guy from Autoglass wasn't sure that the car would pass the MOT after its crunch on the wall because of the big 'dent' and the ripped off windscreen wiper (the car can't fail on a feature it doesn't have, but apparently if it does/should have a feature that doesn't work then it can fail). It has to be said that this has been causing me a considerable amount of stress, as it suddenly occurred to me that if the car failed the MOT then not only would it bugger up getting my new car, but O and I would be stuck in Preston as we wouldn't even be able to drive it back to the cottage until any work that needed doing was done, and who knows how long that might take. Now I know that God has a load of very important stuff to work on around the world, but this hasn't stopped me from praying hard about this situation over the past few days, and during most of this morning's drive to Preston I was praying the fairly basic prayer of 'Father God, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease get Tommy Crotchet through his MOT. Pleeeeeeeease. Amen.' It's just as well that prayers don't have to have to fancy language, because as you see, this one really didn't have it. However, God is good, and a little after 2pm I received a call from the garage telling me that the car was ready to be picked up and everything was okay. Hurrah!

Having ventured into the centre of Preston on the bus we had to find our way back to the garage on the bus, but unhelpfully it turns out that you can't just go to the bus stop on the opposite side of the road to where you got off the bus in order to go back to where you came. Not in Preston. No. You have to go to the other side of town ... and get a different bus. We went to the tourist information centre for help, where the woman helping us went to ask a woman for help on our query, which didn't instill confidence in us. She returned with the information of which bus to get, but seemed a little unclear as to where the bus stop might be so advised us to go to the bus station, but only a short way up the road we say a stop for the bus we wanted, and sure enough within minutes there it was. We clambered on, I got out the map and followed the route, we got so close to the garage and I was feeling chuffed with myself for my clever thinking of following the map when the bus turned off into a housing estate and, upon leaving the housing estate, turned away from where we needed to go. I rang the bell for the next stop, but the next stop was ages away so we ended up having to walk quite a distance back to the garage. We eventually made it, we picked up the car, we set off on our way back to Barnacre Cottages, and the thick fog rolled right back in. The North West does a good line in fog. If you want to come somewhere and not see where you are then I recommend Lancashire in January ;oP Another gothic drive back through the twisty, turny, country lanes and we arrived back at The Piggeries, where I didn't crunch the car, but did collapse in an exhausted heap in the comfy seat with a cup of tea and piece of crunch as the stress of the day and the saga of the car melted from me. I have phoned the various people I had to phone; the lease can now be extended; the car is booked in for inspection of the repairs that need doing, and the garage doing this are going to come to my house for this; the guy at the garage from where I'm getting the new car was ever so nice and told me not to worry, that it'd all be sorted, I just need to keep them informed as to what's happening.

Now then, will somebody please remind me how one is supposed to holiday? I'm sure they're not meant to involve things like swine flu, near-death, hospital admission, crunching cars on walls, MOTs, and exhaustion. I'm going wrong somewhere, aren't I? Maybe I'll get a rest when I go home tomorrow ;oP

Escape route

It's been a wee bit chilly recently. You may have noticed. The two to three feet of snow was the give-away. Oh, and the icicles, which my neighbour knocked down in case they speared someone through the head whilst they stood at the front door. That was probably a good thing, although I was rather enjoying their loveliness, and amazed at the speed at which they were growing. They're gone now, as have the mountains of snow, because of the tropical temperatures we've had over the past two days. It's reached the amazing heights of 6C ! That's a whole 17 C higher than it was only a few days ago! Mind you, we're told to expect more chilliness and brrr-y weather next week.

It has to be said that I'm not a fan of the cold, and it does nothing for my lungs. They tend to seize up and complain, a bit like the rest of country when it snows, I suppose. Anyway, they didn't have a lot of opportunity for seizing up in the cold over the past couple of weeks as most of the time I was trapped in the house. This was in part due to the fact that I managed, somehow, to pick up yet another chest infection. I wasn't sure which way it was going to go, and it was looking increasingly like I was going to find myself slipping towards the Freeman again, but with the aid of domestos-strength co-amoxiclav and cillit bang-strength ciprofloxacin (both antibiotics) it looks like I've escaped hospital this time. Hurrah! I'm very tired still, and not up to doing very much, but at least that makes me sit still and get on with some catch-up OU work.

The other reason my lungs haven't had much opportunity to seize up because of the cold is that I haven't actually been able to get out into the cold very much. My electric wheelchair can't get through the snow, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago. I needed to go to the shops, so I wrapped up warm and set off out the backdoor (where the wheelchair access to my flat is), only to get stuck at the bottom of the ramp, three feet from the door. I tried going forwards, but got nowhere so I tried going backwards. I crashed into the wall and then got stuck again. I managed to slide a couple of inches forward once more, only to get trapped in the snow once more, and find that I was then well and truly stuck with wheels spinning but not gripping onto anything, and the kerb-climber getting completely wedged in the mountain of snow ahead of me. Luckily I was right beside the shed box and remembered that the padlock was merely an inelegant ornament, so I reached sideways, heaved the lid with it's weighty foot of snow on top, rummaged with one hand amid the paraphernalia, managing to avoid slicing my hand on the mitre saw that lurks somewhere in the depths of the box, and pulled out my spade. That was enough to get the old breathing bags complaining, but sitting out in the snow and -11 C temperatures was going to make things a whole lot worse, so I got stuck in to digging myself out. Not an easy task when you're stuck between a shed box, a wall, the side rails of a ramp, and a mountain of snow, but half an hour later I made it the three feet back to the door and was safely inside again. Great. Except that it made me realise that I was pretty much trapped in the house, possibly for the duration of the winter. However, the following evening W came to the rescue and dug me a path all the way from the bottom of the ramp to the back gate. Hurrah! I could go out! I could be part of the outside world!

I decided to make use of my escape route the next day, so once again got all wrapped up and set out to the shops and the post office. No problem getting out the back door. No problem getting through the back yard. Big problem once I got to the back lane. Two feet of snow covered the lane and Taz (electric wheelchair) had no chance of getting through it. I tentatively tried to go forward, but not having my spade to hand I was wary of going too far, which is a good thing as my front wheels very quickly got very stuck. Thankfully, the chair is powered through the back wheels and they were still able to get enough of a grip on a small speck of concrete that W had unearthed (unsnowed) to allow me to reverse. Full of disappointment I trundled back inside.

You'll know by now that I'm not one to be easily defeated, and this situation was no exception, so after sitting a little despondently for a couple of minutes in the middle of the kitchen I got the long-handled broom from the kitchen cupboard. Brush in hand I left the house again, whizzing through the backyard and stopping just before I got stuck in the lane. I started to try to clear a path up the back lane with the brush, but I didn't get very far, and decided that I'd have to get the spade instead. I returned to the house once again, dumping my bag because I figured that I may be sometime on this mission I was on, got the spade, scooted back to the lane and set to work shovelling a path through the snow. I made slow progress clearing the bit of road in front of me like a snow plough, moving myself forward as I went, but progress it was, albeit hard work and hot work. Being the stubborn sort I was determined to get to the shops, even though this meant clearing a path through the snow for 200-300 meters. I did around 50 meters before my arms were aching from the weight of the shovel and I was getting a tad warm (not to mention a wee bit short of breath and tight-chested), so I sat back for a breather (aka wheeze), just as a car passed by the top of the lane along the lane that runs at right angles. A few minutes later, just after I'd got back to snow-clearing, the car reversed and a woman in the passenger seat asked if I was okay or if I needed any help. I said that I was okay, but if they had any time, even a few minutes of help would be great. The woman got out of the car and lit up a fag, the daughter who was about 10 started scraping away some of the snow with her welly-booted feet, and the dad got a shovel out of the car and set to clearing my path for me. He made much more rapid progress than I had been making, and although I'd been planning on joining in with snow-clearing, I couldn't get to the bit that needed doing as this lovely man was directly in front of me. The woman took my spade from me and with a half-hearted effort moved a bit of snow around in front of the man, then stood back, smoked more of her cigarette, and watched her husband build up a sweat as he worked hard clearing the snow. I decided that there really wasn't any point in having my shovel out as I could no longer get to where it was needed, and the woman obviously wasn't going to use it (although she was very nice, chatted, and was the one who had originally asked me if I was okay), so I took the spade back inside and picked up my keys and shopping bag again.

As I arrived back in the lane the lovely man was joined by the estate agent from up the road. She'd got her enormous snow shovel from her car and was helping clear the snow. They'd got to the junction of the two back lanes, and although some of the base snow was compacted into ice (though the top snow was still too soft and deep for me to pass), they pressed on valiantly. Sue, the estate agent, then had to go as she had an appointment to get to, so she went off and the lovely man was left on his own again ... but not for long, because within minutes two lads who I think were students, came dashing out of their upstairs flat, from where they'd seen me out of the window. They were both wearing jeans and t-shirt, but also both brandished big shovels and big smiles, and immediately got stuck into the snow-clearing activity. The lovely man must have been exhausted by this time, having cleared 150 meters or so of snow for me, and he'd been beginning to wilt, but he seemed to get a new burst of energy from the appearance of these jolly student-types. Between them they got to the end of the lane within minutes, and saw me up the dropped kerb (once they'd located it under the snow) and onto the pavement. The lovely man left. Thankfully the student-type lads turned round to check I was okay before they headed back inside, because I promptly got stuck in the snow on the pavement. The lads leaped back into action, and dug a path for me through to the council-cleared section of pavement. I was able to get on my way and go to the post office, but I am ever so ever so grateful to my good Samaritans.

It snowed again that night. Heavily. My escape route was covered over and once again impassable. Still, I'd made it out, posted what I'd needed to post, and got some milk. The snow couldn't go on forever, surely. Hmm, well it soon felt as though it was going on forever, and I was becoming unwell so would need to find a way out once again to get to the doctor. I didn't have the strength to start digging through another couple of feet of the white stuff, so I sat and I thought. And I thought and I sat. And I came up with the idea of phoning the council to see if they could help. The woman in the council offices was very kind, but also very apologetic - they wouldn't be able to help as they usually would because the snow was so bad that all their resources were being taken up by clearing the roads and making sure the main routes to the hospitals and the main shopping areas were snow-free. Oh. Okay. I understood, and it wasn't her fault so there was no point in getting frustrated with her. I decided I'd sit tight and see what happened over the next day or two, but what happened was that the sky continued to fall in and the pond life in my lungs were taking more of a hold. I really did have to get out and get to the doctor.

I'd left it the weekend to see how things were going to pan out, but by Monday evening I could feel things getting a fair bit worse, so somewhere around 6pm I emailed Greg Stone, my Lib Dem councillor. I explained my situation, I said that I understood that the council had to prioritise roads and main shopping areas, but that I'd much rather see my own GP as soon as possible than end up in yet another life-threatening situation. I also pointed out that I'm 36 and need to be able to live a life beyond the walls of my flat, and that there's no way I can spend the whole of the winter shut indoors if the snow is set to stay with us till then. Within an hour Mr Stone had rung me back, saying that he was concerned to hear about my situation and that he'd get straight onto the case. At 8.30 the following morning two council workmen were at my back door with shovels, digging me another escape route all the way up to the local shops. They came knocking on my front door when they were finished, which wasn't until around 11am as they'd done an amazingly thorough job, getting right the way down to the tarmac, and ensured that the path was plenty wide enough for the wheelchair. They'd also gritted the whole lot to minimise any refreezing if it snowed again. I wanted to offer them a cuppa, but after apologising for the quality of the grit (!!!), and saying just to call if I need their help again, they were on their way.

There are some lovely people in the world, and all the good Samaritans who have helped get me through the snow deserve medals.

Toilet humour

I pressed the bell to call the nurse to bring me the commode. Commode brought. Marvellous. I sat down and did a wee (I'm sure you wanted to know that ;oP ). Marvellous relief. I realised then that the toilet roll was on the other side of the room. Bugger. I had to negotiate my way around the table, the chair, the bed, the oxygen tubing, the drip stand, the computer wire, the bin, my shoes, and the wheelchair, all with my pyjama trousers around my ankles, in order to get to the damned toilet roll. And then, of course, I had to do the whole thing again in reverse whilst keeping hold of the toilet roll. And of course this was the time that my blood pressure decided to drop again and I very nearly ended up head-first in the commode pan with wires and leads and trousers wrapped around my ankles. Luckily I managed to avoid giving myself a wee facial, but this wasn't my finest hour, it has to be said.

In the news

Last Thursday Asthma UK published a new report on severe asthma, and more specifically about the discrimination faced by many with severe asthma and their specific needs. The report is called Fighting for Breath and you can read it here. It's an important document because so little is understood by the general population about severe asthma, so anything that highlights the condition is a good thing. With this need for publicity in mind, Asthma UK put out a call for people with severe asthma to contact them if they'd be willing to help the cause. I responded to this call, was then asked to tell them a little more about my 'story', and consequently they phoned me, and asked if I'd be willing to speak to the media. They'd sent out a press release to various places around the country and in the north east they'd had responses of interested from BBC Look North (local TV news programme), BBC Radio Newcastle, and BBC Radio Teeside. At first I wasn't all that keen about doing TV as I'm so self-conscious about my weight, but I had to remind myself that the cause is the important thing, so I put my insecurities aside and agreed to do both the TV and radio programmes. Radio Teeside never got back to me, but I was on the 'Alfie and Charlie at Breakfast' show on BBC Radio Newcastle at 8.25am on Thursday, and on BBC Look North on the 6.30pm programme. I have to say that the Alfie and Charlie at Breakfast programme was rather early for me, so unbeknown to the listeners I did the phone interview lying in bed in my pyjamas. Tee hee hee. I think it went okay for the most part, although I kept losing my train of thought and at the end I kind of petered out, but I think I got over what I wanted to say ... mostly. Mind you, it would've been helpful if they'd kept to the questions they'd said they were going to ask me and had sent me on Wednesday. It was, however, helpful to think through all they asked in these questions, and I was able to incorporate some of my thoughts on these into answers to the questions they ended up asking me.

At 10.30am on Thursday the reporter/interviewer from BBC Look North came round. Joanne was lovely and helped me to relax and lose some of my nervousness. We started off with a chat about my asthma, how it effects me, experiences in hospital, how my daily life is effected, my need for carers, the rubbishness of the benefits system and their lack of understanding of severe asthma and my experience of that (I had an horrendous experience with the benefits system a few years ago). She then set up the camera, sat behind it and asked me some of the same questions again while the film was rolling. That was a bit weird, because my response then wasn't spontaneous so oddly wasn't as coherent as first time round. Overall it went okay though, and in the final cut they had some of what I said as voice over as they showed me around the house, because after we'd done the interview bit Joanne spent a while getting visual shots without sound. We went into my bedroom first and she filmed me opening my drawer of medicines by my bed, taking out the box of prednisolone and popping three of the tablets onto the bedside cabinet. Then she wanted a shot of me using my nebuliser, but as I'd already had my morning dose she was afraid that if I put any medication into it then I'd overdose (I thought this was quite amusing given how much salbutamol I have when I'm ill, and I was aptly having a fairly rubbish morning with my lungs too) so we didn't actually run the nebuliser - I just put the mask on and sat there looking at the machine ;o) After that, Joanne wanted some film of me using my wheelchair so I spent a while going in and out of the flat as she filmed from different angles. When she was behind me she saw the stickers I've put on the back of Taz (electric wheelchair), one of which says, 'Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.' The other says, '0-60 in 15 minutes.' She liked them a lot, filmed them and they ended up on the telly, as did Zach (the cat) because she took a liking to him >^..^< Tee hee. When I was outside she wanted me to run my fingers through the fresh herbs and then pick some of the basil. She took a while filming this and I was a little anxious that I was going to end up with no basil plant left ;o) Thankfully there was plenty left, but I also had plenty to go with my tomatoes and mozzarella for lunch :o) So that was pretty much it, and an hour after Joanne had arrived she went as she had to have a snippet back for the lunchtime programme at 1.30pm, with the longer version ready for 6.30pm. It was awful seeing myself on telly, and watching it I couldn't really concentrate on what was being said, but I think it was okay...

While my carers were here on Thursday and I was in the bath I missed a call from a guy in the Look North news room, but he left a message and I got back to him this morning. He'd had a call from a company in Harrogate - EnviroVent - who'd seen me on the telly. They make air filter machines that are supposed to combat humidity, condensation, dampness, and ultimately dust mites, and they think that their products might help me, so they're offering to install one of their machines into my flat for free! Apparently it usually costs around £800!! This is an amazingly generous offer of them, and anything that has potential to help has to be tried, so I've jumped at the chance. Of course, EnviroVent want some publicity, which is likely foremost in their mind when offering this to me, but that's fine by me. So John from the BBC Look North news room got back in touch with EnviroVent after he'd spoken to me, and within half an hour I had a call from them to talk through it. As I live in a property owned by the council then we may have to get permission to have the machine installed, but since I don't know who to get in touch with then EnviroVent are contacting them on my behalf, and I'll get in touch with the council then if I need to, guided by EnviroVent on who I need to speak to. Apparently EnviroVent have put one of their machines to one side for me, and can fit it almost immediately when they get the go-ahead. The only delaying factor, after the engineer has been to see where would be best to have it, and any other products that might be helpful, is that Look North want to come and film the machine being installed so that they can do a follow-up item. I guess this is dependent upon it being helpful to me, but it could mean that I end up on the telly again, which isn't good for my insecurities, but is brilliant for publicity about severe asthma. Both EnviroVent and John from the news room have told me that the machines are endorsed by Asthma UK and have also had recommendation by some hospitals/NHS Trusts, so this definitely isn't a gimmick or untested. How exciting! Okay, it may not help me, but there's a chance that it might, and it's a very long time since there's been any suggestion of anything that might help.

I'll let you know what happens.

A different perspective

It was last Thursday that I first started to notice the oedema (fluid retention) in my legs and it was starting to get uncomfortable. I mentioned it to the nurse and she decided to do something with the bed to raise my legs. I think there's some kind of platformy thing under the matress that can be lifted up in addition to the knee brace, and it was this that she was trying to do something with, but she'd never done it before so didn't know what she was doing. She fiddled and fumbled, and yanked and pulled at stuff under the matress, but couldn't get it to do what she was hoping for. Instead she ended up folding me in half. This wasn't particularly comfortable, it has to be said. Nor was it very condusive to breathing. She gave up trying to do the leg-raising thing and unfolded me.

As the day progressed so did the oedema so that by night time it was very uncomfortable, to the point of hurting, and my legs were so swollen that I could barely bend my knees. The swelling was spreading to my whole body too and I getting miserable. I lay in the dark feeling sorry for myself when I remembered that the bed controls at the end of the bed (the ones meant for staff use, as opposed to the patient ones on the side of the bed) had a tilt button. Perhaps I could tilt the bed so that the whole thing was slightly head-down/feet-up and this might help the swelling in my legs. Now you need to remember that I still had the drip in my right arm, and that this arm was still fairly incapacitated by the shoulder dislocation the other week (it's getting better now, thanks to the enforced rest). Right then, I was setting out on a mission.

I shuffled as far as I could up the bed, hampered not only by my fairly useless right arm, but also by the limitations of relatively short oxygen tubing. So I was as far up the bed as I could get, with my head pretty much turned in the opposite direction as the oxgen mask was pulling on my face and it'd be a bad idea to lose it all together. And it wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference to be facing the right way anyway as it was dark so I couldn't see very much. With my good, left arm I flailed about trying first to locate the bed controls that I knew were hanging on the end, and then trying to get hold of the controls. This was not an easy task, and was made more difficult by the coiled wire they're on having got caught on something. I eventually got hold of them. I found the buttons. Well, I found some buttons. First of all I found the button for the back rest, which wasn't much use to me, so I fingered my way down the control panel and found what I thought was probably the tilt control. It wasn't. It was the horizontal up and down control. So I spent a while going up and down, up and down, trying to get down, stay down and find the next set of buttons whilst keeping hold of the controls and still facing the wrong way. Success. I found the tilt buttons. I tilted the bed...first of all the wrong way, which threatened to have me slide down the bed in the wrong direction, pulling the oxygen mask from my face and the drip in my arm that was now quite painful in the shoulder area from the awkward position. I tilted the bed back again in the other direction, and kept tilting it so that the leg end was raised...only I tilted it too far. I slid down the bed, lost hold of the controls, the oxygen mask pinged onto my face where it had been pulling, all tension went from the tubing and from the drip and I was getting on for being upside down. I tried to scrabble my way back up the bed, but mountaineering wasn't my thing, and my useless right arm wouldn't let me pull on the bar at the side of the bed to help. What to do? I lay back and contemplated my situation ... an almost upside down situation. Right then, there was nothing for it. I was going to have to call the nurse with the bell and come clean about my antics in the dark. Great. I reached up to where the nurse call bell was and discovered that I couldn't reach it. I did some more one-armed windmilling in an attempt to get hold of the bell, but to no avail. I lay back, and I discovered that being upside wasn't actually very helping with the whole breathing thing. At least I could reach my own bed controls from where I was so I raised the back rest a little, which was kind of okay, except that now I was upside down and folded in half. Not too comfortable. It then occurred to me that I was not only stuck, but very stuck and not able to get unstuck, so I resigned myself to my situation, developed a new appreciation for bats, and comforted myself with the fact that I'd be checked on at some point and my (upside down) position would be noticed and rectified. I'm certain that I was checked on through the night, because everyone is, several times, but they must only have peeked through the window of my little room, seen that I was still there and failed to notice my predicament. I spent the night upside down and folded in half.

The nurse came in the morning to give me my meds. 'Oh my, what's going on here?'
'Hmm. Yeah. Morning ... Ya see, I'm a bit stuck...'
Lucy gave me that quizzical sideways look that says, 'I want to know how this happened, but I so don't want to know how this happened.'
Without a word, but still with that look, Lucy untilted me, unfolded me, and the blood rushed away from head where it had been pooling all night. What a relief.
'Go on,' she said, 'I have to know.'
I tried to explain.
Lucy fell about in hysterics and became incapacitated by the mirth.
I was somewhat embarrassed, but relieved no longer to be patient origami.




By the way, the whole thing failed to do anything for the oedema. Typical!

Saving my bacon

I was supposed to have my swine 'flu vaccination at the GP surgery on Tuesday. I went along to the appointment, the nurse went through the usual precautionary questions, and then we went through the ingredients of the vaccine and it turned out there was something in it I'm allergic to - a sulphate. She went through to speak to one of the doctors who said that in light of this, they couldn't give me the jab without my first speaking to my asthma consultant, especially as it transpires that a lot of people with multiple allergies are having adverse reactions to the injection. I came home, rang my consultant and left a message with his secretary, who phoned me back on Thursday saying that Dr H (my consultant) had weighed up the risks and decided that I should have the swine 'flu vaccine, but that they should give it to me in hospital, so I went up to the ward on Friday morning. It was a very strange experience waiting to be injected with something I knew I was allergic to - planned anaphylaxis ... very odd. I wondered if it was something similar to being on death row, although for very different reasons - ultimately to have my life saved, rather than certainly ended.

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Dr. H came to see me before the ward round, went through the risks (i.e. anaphylaxis and death!), got me to sign the consent form, and then had the F1 put a cannula in so that I could have IV chlorphenamine (Piriton) before being given the vaccine. This would hopefully stave off an allergic reaction, although it would also make me sleepy.

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J, the Charge Nurse, came with the IV and the jab, asked if I was ready, pumped me full of chlorphenamine, waited 5 minutes for it to whoosh around my body, then stabbed me in the arm with the potential killer jab. All we could do then was wait and see what happened, but at least I hadn't blown up into a Becky balloon and dropped dead immediately. After a while my lungs started to get tight and my sats dropped to 91%, but they were sorted with a couple of oxygen-driven nebulisers, and everything else was okay, thanks to the prophylactic chlorphenamine. I stayed on the ward until just gone 7pm to make sure all stayed okay (there can be a delay in the occurance of a reaction, and if there has been a reaction (which the lung-grumpiness was almost certainly due to) there can be a second wave reaction later), and then I was free to go home. It was a weird experience walking onto the ward in the morning as I'm usually gasping and struggling to breathe at all when I arrive on Ward 29, and it was even weirder to walk off the ward the same day ... a good experience though :o) And hopefully, I'll now be safe from getting swine 'flu :o) My bacon has been saved!

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The same cannot be said regarding the whole passing out thing, which is still going on. When I was discharged from hospital the week before last with this the doctor had said that I should get an appointment for the falls and syncope clinic for two weeks time, which would mean I ought to be seen next week. This being the case I was expecting an appointment letter sometime during last week, but nothing came so I phoned the clinic on Thursday to ask what was happening. When I explained what I'd been told about getting an appointment for two weeks time the receptionist laughed and said that there was at least a nine week waiting list. She then went on to tell me that the consultant hasn't even put the referral in yet! The swine! Not only has he not done what he said he would, but I was told porkies about the time-scale, so now goodness knows how long I'll have to wait. I'm going to call the consultant's secretary on Monday to ask when I can expect the referral to be sent, and perhaps say that I'm not impressed that it hasn't been sent all ready as it's really not good to be passing out practically everyday, and not safe either - I fainted while I was cooking the other day, and it could've been really bad if I'd fallen onto the hob ... although it may have speeded up the referral, I guess ...

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On a positive note, I have got an appointment for the 24-hour ECG, which may throw some light on what's going on, but only if it's something to do with my heart. Anyway, I go for that next Thursday morning, and then obviously have to go back on Friday morning, but I don't know when I'll get any results from it, or even who the results will be sent to as the referral to the falls and syncope clinic hasn't yet happened and I'd thought it was going to them. I might ask if it can be sent to my GP so that I can at least know it's going somewhere, and somewhere I can access them.

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Now then, keeping on the theme of pigs - having my bacon saved from swine 'flu, swines of doctors who don't do what they say they're going to, and flying pigs for getting appointments - I was sent an email the other day that made me laugh a lot. I thought I'd share it with you so read on for a giggle. Oh, and apparently it really was sent to David Milliband.

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Nigel Johnson-Hill

Park Farm

Milland

Liphook

GU30 7JT

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Rt Hon David Milliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

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16th July 2009

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Dear Secretary of State,

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My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

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In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

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I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Sadlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

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As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

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My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

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If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradeable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

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Another point: these pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

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I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current DEFRA advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

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In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

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Yours faithfully,

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Nigel Johnson-Hill