ganching

March 11th

Well, it looks like I won't have to book a flight to Switzerland after all.  I am feeling a tiny bit better and I even managed  to go to work for a few hours.  I did come home relatively early and finally  got round to changing the sheets on my bed.  After a week spent almost entirely in my pit it was fairly grubby.  As soon as the bed was changed I climbed in and spent an hour watching another episode of Game of Thrones.

This evening I also cooked for the first time in weeks.  I made a butternut squash risotto which is very superior comfort food and it was very good. After dinner Traybake came up to shout at Newsnight. He is very pass-remarkable about the presenters.

"Did you notice how that one sounds exactly like Satan?"  "Satan" is the journalist, Mark Urban, who TB seems to have taken against.

Now I'm back in bed and thanking god it's Friday.

The 52 Week List 8/52

The 52 Week List 8. Find A Window Cleaner

 This is the view from my living room window.  The fact that it is lashing with rain hides the fact that the window is absolutely filthy.  It is around 5 years since we it was last cleaned on the outside.  I live in a conservation area which means, in planning terms, that this area is considered worth conserving due to the architectural merit of the housing.  It is not very well enforced though and many people have replaced their original Victorian sash windows. with double-glazed Upvc ones.  This has not happened in this house and while I love how the windows look I hate the fact that I can't clean them and they need lots of work done to them to stop the gale force winds that blow through the gaps every time the weather is remotely winter-like.

I spent another day in bed and I am now very,very bored.  Around 5.30 the door bell went and I answered it assuming it was either Traybake or a Jehovah's Witness.  I was not sure which would be least welcome.  It was neither.  A young man was on the doorstep and he wanted to know if I was interested in having my windows cleaned.  YES, YES, YES. This was was the most welcome caller I've had for months.  Sebastian, as he shall be known on this blog, is coming round next week and if I like what he does he shall be coming every month.  This has cheered me up no end.  If only I could find a builder in the same way.

I am going to go to work tomorrow as I am beginning to feel a lot better.  I shall only go in for a few hours.  I have absolutely nothing planned for the weekend which I am very happy about. 

 

The 52 Week List 7/52

7. 52 Week List - Watch An Episode Of Game Of Throne

At work I am fond of telling the young people interesting facts about myself. One of these is that I have met more people in real life who have appeared in Game of Thrones than have seen episodes of the programme.  In fact up until today I had never seen any episodes of GOT whereas I have met the actor who plays  King Robert - my sister used to know him before he was famous - and I have met two people who are extras.  One of these is a wilding and he is also the partner of my niece.  I am not sure if their children are aware that their Daddy is a wilding.  I suspect their Mummy will not allow them to watch GOT until they are at least 16.

I have been listening to people talk about GOT for years now.  I'm also aware that some of it is filmed in Northern Ireland and there has been a big surge in the number of tourists visiting as a result of it.  If you go and visit this road now there will almost definitely be a minibus of young people on a GOT tour also visiting.

I quite enjoyed the first episode.  I knew in advance there would be lots of gratuitous sex and violence and there certainly was no shortage of either.  I suppose the first episode was very much about scene setting and it introduced a huge range of characters.  Not sure if I will continue with it though.  We shall see.

International Women's Day

I have celebrated International Women's Day by taking to my sick bed.  I have had to give up daily blogging as all I could think to write about were my long and varied lists of symptoms.  Even I would find that boring.  Today I tried to sort things out by visiting both the dentist and the doctor.  I can report that the doctor's waiting room is much nicer than the dentist's waiting room.

I was prescribed antibiotics by the dentist and the dreaded root canal work was mentioned but not needed just yet.

At the health centre I saw a GP who I had not met before.  He looked like he had stepped straight out of a 1960s edition of a Mills and Boon novel, tall, dark, well-built and utterly charming.  He was very sympathetic and couldn't believe I had suffered for so long without asking for help but, as people know, I'm not one to complain.  He gave me a good through-putting and apart from me having quite a fast heart rate (the Mills and Boon effect?) couldn't find anything that serious.   I am having various blood tests done including checking for Coeliac disease.  If I find out I am not allowed to eat proper bread or cake I will be very, very upset.

This afternoon I wondered how much this would have cost if we didn't have the NHS.  In total I paid around £27 for my visit to the dentist which included having an x-ray and my prescription.  I suspect that in the US or Australia or Ireland for that matter this morning's visits would have caused me at least ten times that amount.

I have taken today off as sick and I am taking tomorrow off as well. 

I have now watched all the episodes of  Trapped on iPlayer.  I shall probably have to get up soon and make myself something to eat.  I might just be up for something eggy on a tray now.

I hope all of you have marked International Women's Day in some way or other.  Every year I enjoy Richard Herring's Twitter account on this day when he replies to men who tweet things like:  "So if there's all this equality how come there isn't an International Men's Day?".  Well worth looking at.

March 5th

I took this photograph this afternoon while in bed.  I had felt well enough earlier in the day to go out for a short jaunt to an exhibition on post-war public art at Somerset House followed by lunch with my friend Kerrs Pink.  It was a really good exhibition and KP and I are planning some days out to visit Harlow and Coventry Cathedral inspired by what we saw today.

I came home and went to bed for a couple of hours.  I have decided that lots of rest is what is needed.  My sinus problem seems to be getting slightly better although every so often I do get some pain in my teeth and I have realised that my sudden onset deafness is probably also related to this.  In the chemist yesterday they recommended I buy something which sounded remarkably like crystal meth*.  It came in a tiny container and they assured me that all I needed to do with it was put some of the crystals in a bowl, add boiling water and inhale.  I did what they told me and it almost blew my head off.  I don't know if I used too much.  I now have a really persistent cough.  I have worked out that the various medicines I have been taking for the past few weeks have actually caused a number of my symptoms.   I am so fed up with this.  

The Surly Niece is now looking forward to getting home so that she no longer has to listen to me moaning.  One thing about being unwell is that it has given me an opportunity to catch up with some television.  Today I watched another episode of Trapped which is so good and two episodes of The Night Manager which is tosh but as Olivia Coleman is in it you can be sure it is very superior tosh indeed.

*Its real name is crystal menthol.

One Thousand Things February 2016

In February I de-cluttered a big, fat zero nothing.

I don't know what happened to February.  Well I do.  I have been unwell for almost three weeks and I have also had the Surly Niece staying for the same three weeks.  This means that I have been completely out of my routine, such as it is.  I feel a little sorry for the SN as she came here to be distracted and instead has had to put up with me moaning about my ailments.  I now have a sinus infection which is giving me excruciating pain in my teeth.  I am feeling very sorry for myself.

Today I came home early, around three and went to bed and slept for a couple of hours.  I am still in bed but have just watched an episode of Trapped.  It is very good and makes me want to visit Iceland but not in winter.  I am about to get up, eat some home made lentil soup  and then I am going back to bed.

Hopefully I will get back to normal soon. 

 

 

March 2nd

It was a horrid day in London, grey, bitterly cold wind and with rain that kept threatening to turn into sleet.  I had to be in work before nine to attend a meeting which I was a little bit anxious about.  As a result I woke up at five and managed to get to the office before anyone else.  I usually slope in around 9.45 a.m. and assume that all the others have been there for hours.  This is clearly not the case if this morning is anything to go by.

The meeting I went to lasted for 20 minutes!

In the afternoon I managed to almost finish something that has been hanging over me for months so I was quite pleased about that.  Due to arriving at work in the middle of the night I left earlier than usual.  One of my colleagues is leaving tomorrow and I decided that we would buy him a voucher for the English National Opera so caught the tube to Leicester Square. ( I am in denial about his departure as I will have to cover all of his work for the 3 to 4 months it will take us to replace him.) After leaving the Colosseum I had a little wander round Covent Garden.  I was most upset to see that Cos was closed. Not sure if it was for a refit or it is turning into something else. I had to go to M&S to buy tights as I was so ruthless in throwing out old and tatty ones that I actually only have about 3 pairs now.

I got the train home from Charing Cross and at the station picked up a copy of the trashy Evening Standard which had a headline about trains changing where they stop after the passengers are on board. This has happened to me once and it was very, very annoying.  This evening I was busy looking at Instagram thinking important thoughts when there was a garbled message from the driver announcing that she would not be stopping at the scheduled stops but would instead let us out in some godforsaken station in deepest south London miles from where we were meant to be.  The passengers on my carriage were so cross that they actually started talking to each other.  All of this added an extra half hour to the journey home.  Happily there were leftovers for dinner and I have the place to myself as the Surly Niece has gone out with her friend, The Fictional Character, to see some obscure, foreign language film.  Traybake is coming up later though for a cup of tea and a discussion on how to script a vlog.