Home - again.

I arrived home last night. The original plan had been to come today but several texts from Calmac made it clear that the weather could well affect the ferries today and tomorrow and they could be cancelled. As I had to be back this weekend and for appointments at crack of dawn on Monday and visitors arriving on Tuesday, I decided to make a run for it yesterday. I was obviously not alone and the ferry was full of vehicles. The ferry was actually the MV Isle of Lewis which is covering for the MV Loch Seaforth which is having her annual overhaul in Aberdeen.

Today broke with a stiff breeze from the North (the worst direction for the Stornoway to Ullapool ferry) but cold and sunny. As the wind rose the sea swell got worse. The ferry left Stornoway after lunch but it came past my house and when that happens you just know it's going to be a choppy crossing in places. Shortly after these photos were taken I received a Calmac text saying that the ferry would not be coming back tonight. There could be considerable disruption because the supermarket was short of some things this morning and the freight ferry won't be running today or overnight either and they do not open on Sunday.

The picture on the right shows the position of the ferry in the last of the photo sequence below.

Sailing up the coast and towards the rainbow.

Into the rainbow

Turning across the direction of the swell

Turning towards the South and East

Next stop Ullapool (nearly two hours away)

Invictus

Invictus: Latin adjective, "unconquered, unsubdued, invincible."

I'm not a Royalist as such. I'm not a particular follower of the Olympics or of athletics competitions.

However, having watched Prince Harry at the opening of the Invictus Games I was exceptionally impressed by his sincerity (and the fact that there wasn't a cue-card in sight). So I decided to learn something about the Invictus Games which he brought into being after a trip to the Warrior Games in the USA in 2013 when he saw first-hand how the power of sport can help physically, psychologically and socially those suffering from injuries and illness.

For those who might not know, Prince Harry was a member of the armed forces who saw active service and rose through the ranks to be a Captain in the Blues and Royals and served in Afghanistan.

Most of us will never know the full horrors of combat. Many Servicemen and women suffer life-changing injuries, visible or otherwise, whilst serving their country.

 

The Games embody the fighting spirit of wounded, injured and sick Service personnel and personifies what these tenacious men and women can achieve post injury. The Games harness the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and generate a wider understanding and respect for those who serve their country.

"The Invictus Games is about much more than just sport – it captures hearts, challenges minds and changes lives."

 

Long may it continue so to do.

A Funeral By Any Other Name

Funeral: noun,  a ceremony or service held shortly after a person's death, usually including the person's burial or cremation.

I've had an aversion to the term 'funeral' for a very long time. My son, Andrew, insisted that he would not have a funeral to mourn his death. He had made all the arrangements for a 'celebration of his life'. My dear friend Mo (of recent posts) also insisted that no one should mourn her demise but should celebrate the life she had had. I, too, have made such desires known for the inevitable event (long off though I hope it is).

A few days ago I went to a celebration for a life lived. It was quite a long service in terms of physical minutes (well over an hour) but it seemed very short because of the nature of the celebration.

There was so much happiness expressed for a life lived. That is something I have not seen on Lewis.

In fact, therefore, whatever one calls the service the generic term is a funeral and it can be religious or non-religious, a mourning or a celebration as is decided upon.

I was intrigued by the recent celebration I attended which was held in a church and was a religious service. All the celebrants were female: the vicar and the person who conducted the service (who was a friend of the deceased and, I assume, a deacon); and those who delivered the eulogy and the readings (Proverbs - The Hymn to a Good Wife and Roald Dahl's 'Be an Enthusiast'). The SoSo Choir (of which the deceased was a member) were also all-female and performed 'The Rose'. I think the Church Wardens were female as well. As The Dylon said "The times they are a-changin'. ".  I would add "..and about time too."

The service had a very different feel to any other I have attended (although it's by no means the first with a female celebrant).

Last Man Standing

In July I wrote a post entitled Mo about a very old friendship and Mo's demise in June.

In late summer 2012 I drove Mo and her sister-in-law by marriage, Di, from Di's home near Liverpool to a villa in the small village of Belforte in Tuscany via France, Switzerland and the Italian Lakes. It was Mo's 70th and she had treated us, her daughters and son-in-law to a holiday in a villa there. I blogged about it at the time.

Di had gone to Canada for the celebration of Mo's life and her son, Ben, had stood in for me to read the eulogy that I had written. Just over a week ago Di, a robust lady if ever there was one, died suddenly. 

Mo's daughters,  for whom Auntie Di was very special, came over from Canada. I am, coincidentally, on The Wirral less than 20 miles away.

Today I attended the celebration service for Di's life. The church was packed. I don't think that I have seen as many people at a funeral service outside of Lewis.

I've been acquainted with Di for nearly 60 years. She was a lady who was proud to be an 'old-fashioned' wife and mother for whom family was everything. However, today I learned so much about her from the eulogy that I did not know. She was, indeed, a special lady.

The comment that disturbed me, though, was that, of the trio, I was the 'last man standing'.

Di, Fiona, Mo, Heather, Jefferey at Belforte. I'm taking the photo!

 

I'm Getting a Complex

On Thursday Anna and I went to our favourite Bishopbriggs watering hold for breakfast. Café Torino is usually humming and the previous week we managed to get the last available table when we went in. On Thursday there was no-one in when we arrived. I have to say that quickly changed.

When I stopped for a late lunch on Thursday at The Greyhound Hotel just south of Shap exactly the same thing happened. The lunch was, by the way, excellent and very reasonable too.

On Friday morning when CJ and I went for breakfast at Isabelles (sic) in Heswall it was, unusually, empty although, yet again it changed once we'd settled down to our crossword.

 

 And on Saturday we breakfasted at Brunch in Heswall:

Then we went to the 50's Era Museum in Denbigh. It wasn't the best of weather and the tourist season is drawing to a close and we started with another crossword and coffee at one of their period tables as the only visitors. We spent several very enjoyable hours there reminiscing.

By the time we got into the town centre the wind was beginning to howl and we found an absolutely delightful café - Denbigh Secrets or the Secret Courtyard Café - right opposite the car park. Yes, you guessed it. Lunchtime was well over and we were the only customers although I'm sure they were busy earlier on. They served 4 different very wholesome home-made soups and yummy home made cakes too.

In Search of Cures

"It's how you tell them that matters." That's what is said about jokes, I believe. So entitling this post "In Search of Cures" sets minds off on a particular train of thought rather than if I'd said, for example, "In Praise of Drug Companies" which would almost certainly have elicited instant critical debate.

I've just spent three days in Glasgow: Monday and Tuesday having CT/MRI scans and a bone scan and Wednesday having my 16-weekly Drug Trial Review. All funded by drug companies and, in part, by cancer charities.

I don't know how many medical trials there are going on in the world at any one time but it is probably thousands and, of those, the majority will probably involve drugs and, therefore, drug companies.

I am a participant in a trial for a drug specific to the cure and/or prevention of prostate cancer: a cancer for which I was first operated on 20 years ago and for which I have been receiving treatment ever since. I understand that the trial runs for 6 years. I don't know how many countries are taking part but there are a lot of languages on the medicine literature.

The Trial is a 67:33 double-blind trial. A blind or blinded-experiment is an experiment in which information about the test is masked (kept) from the participant, to reduce or eliminate bias, until after a trial outcome is known. It is understood that bias may be intentional or subconscious, thus no dishonesty is implied by blinding. If both tester and subject are blinded, the trial is called a double-blind experiment. The 66:33 means that 67% of the participants get the real drug and 33% get the placebo.

All this is done to satisfy the drug company that the drug is efficacious. If it is then the results will be used to convince the powers that be in the countries throughout the world to licence the drug for general use.

I have absolutely no idea how many scientists and researchers it takes to produce any particular drug nor what a trial and, if successful, subsequent licensing costs. Back in 2013 in a BBC article it was said that patents are generally awarded for 20 years but 10-12 of those years are typically spent developing the drug at a cost of about $1.5bn-$2.5bn. The remaining years are used to make the profit before the drug is made by generic manufacturers. However lots of drugs never get past the trial stage and only a very small number of drugs are 'super-earners'.

I have little doubt that there is much for which to criticise drug companies but I shall leave that to others.

As a beneficiary of their drugs in general and of this particular trial in particular I have to say that I'm not feeling in a critical mood.

Winter

I left the Island on the 0700 ferry yesterday morning. When I left home at 0530 it was dark. Dark! Last time I left on the morning ferry it wasn't just light, the sun was almost up. For me the weather isn't the defining factor of determining when winter starts or ends. Nor is the solstice. So far as I am concerned it is winter when one leaves for the morning ferry in the dark.

Living on Lewis gives one a rather different view of life in so many ways. For me it is not really the weather that defines the seasons. It can rain cats and dogs at any time of the year. Summer gales are (or appear to be) becoming more frequent. The average temperatures in the winter and the summer don't appear to differ anywhere near as markedly as, say, Cheshire where I used to live before I came to Lewis in the '70s.

When I was writing that I wondered how much of it is perception (those long hot summers of my youth and the bitter winters of, say, 1947 - which I can remember!) and how much is reality. So I looked up the averages. What I've not been able to find out is what period of years the averages cover.

The one statistic that stands out of me is the daylight hours. Like all statistics though it they don't tell the full story. There may be only 18 daylight hours on average in June but that doesn't tell the whole story. The sun just dips under the horizon and, on a clear night, one can still read a newspaper at 1am (if one wants to waste those beautiful moments reading a newspaper - personally I'd rather walk along the beach).