It has only just struck me that today is the 31 December. In just over 12 hours for me it will be 2023. However, in half an hour in New Zealand it will be 2023. So for all my Family and friends in New Zealand and the timezones between there and here I wish for you a very
I'm not married and haven't been for 30 years.
So I get a tiny bit peed off when married people say to me "It's all right for you you've only got yourself to look after so you have plenty of time."
WHAT!*!*
When I got married my wife said "I do the cooking and the ironing and you do the housework and maintenance." It wasn't negotiable but it worked. I had a bit more of a problem with "...and I don't do nights with the children. I have them all day." Fortunately I didn't need much sleep. It all worked very well.
So when I got out of bed one Sunday in November at 0645 and abluted after I'd taken my Alendronic Acid tablet. (It's taken once a week with a full glass of water and you have to remain upright for at least 30 minutes and not eat or drink anything else.) I decided to challenge the assumption.
Around 7.30 I fed the birds.
I stripped my bed and put the first load of washing on.
Coffee.
I finished a letter to my brother. We don't exchange emails and he doesn't talk on the telephone....at all to anyone.
Yesterday's Wordle was updated with the New Zealand/UK group that I play with.
Breakfast of a banana, muesli and Grapenuts was consumed.
First load of washing into the dryer and second load of washing in the machine.
I wrote a Blog post.
Started on the second and third Christmas cakes (the fruit having been soaked in brandy and Marsala for a week). They were in the oven before 11am.
Cleaned the kitchen and put everything away.
Coffee. Cancelled my Netflix subscription as I hadn't watched it for 2 years and the bank card had just expired.
Had lunch (homemade soup and homemade bread) and did a crossword..
Made bread. Well, I put all the ingredients into the breadmaker.
Third lot of washing and second lot of drying.
Turned the mattress and made my bed .
Sorted my pills for the next two months. Not my favourite job but at lease it's over and done with for another 8 weeks.
Fed and wrapped the cakes.
Ironed the bedding and shirts (I still wear formal shirts and a tie when I leave the house).
Made a curry for dinner.
During all this I had coffees, answered WhatsApp chats, chatted to my New Zealand Family etc etc.
Okay. I'll stop there because I think you've probably stopped reading anyway and are wondering why I am posting this.
The reason is the comment an acquaintance made recently that I started with.
I am 'single'. There is only one of me to look after in the house. BUT there is only one person to do all the chores. There's no difference between cooking for one or two (or four), cleaning a house for one. or two (or four) etc etc.
So to suggest that I have less work is than a household with 2 or 3 or 4 to share all the tasks is plainly absurd. And, as you will now have gathered, it irks me.For 47 years or thereabouts I have walked in the Stornoway Castle Grounds. For some reason which I cannot explain, 99% of the time (perhaps more) my walk has been in a clockwise direction.
Today, after having had breakfast in The Woodlands Café, I decided to walk in an anti-clockwise direction. It felt quite strange.
Anyway I thought that, as it's a while since I showed any pictures of my walks, I'd show you a few today.
The first thing I did was check the rain app to make sure I wasn't going to get soaked because I wasn't dressed for an 'any-weather' walk. I had enough time for the 'Short Walk' which is about 1.3 miles
Yesterday I woke to a splendid, if not that unusual, sunrise looking from my house to the Scottish Mainland West Coast.
Within a couple of hours the sky had clouded over and the Mainland had disappeared in a sky of heavy rain.
Something cropped up recently and a derisory remark was made about someone's poor performance in something completely trivial. It was an unnecessary and cruel remark.
It reminded me of a situation in my life more than 60 years ago in a history class at school.
I was always near the top of the class in English Language, English Literature and did pretty well in Mathematics and Geography and was middling in most of the rest of the subjects. However, in the fifth year I came bottom in the school in the year end history exam. One spiteful little toerag decided to ask the Master who was bottom. I will always remember the History Master's response. "If you have a system where someone is top then there will inevitably be someone at the bottom." That same toerag came to my house before the GCE asking me to help him with his maths.
The subject of top or bottom was never mentioned again.
I'm told that nowadays no one is allowed to be 'top' or 'bottom' in school because it might mean some children having mental problems or low self worth.
The reality of life is that that in itself won't stop kids making fun of those they perceive to be less able in a particular way. If we want to do something about the problem then we have to have a positive system and encourage people to do what they are good at and not necessarily persist with things for which they have no aptitude.
After all when I was in New Zealand an electrician or plumber commanded a much higher hourly wage than a dentist. [The caveat there is that the fee for dental care included a vast amount of overheads compared with an electrician].
I returned home 10 days ago and Anna came with me and has now returned home. My next visitors have called off because of Covid. The last few days I've been catching up with friends here and today I'm trying desperately to catch up with a myriad of emails and letters I owe people.
It's been hampered over the last few days by routine hospital and surgery appointments.
Today the weather is actually good enough to have gone into the garden to get some tidying and autumn/winter preparation done. That isn't going to happen until next week at the earliest though.
I have just been checking my spam folder and have discovered that, not only have some comments gone to Spam when they have been cleared but that my own comments have ended up in Spam too. I haven't looked yet but I suspect some have been duplicated because I though it was my poor memory and that I hadn't commented when, in fact, I had.
Technology is beginning to confound and irritate me.
No comments needed but hopefully I will write a meaningful post soon.
I'm on holiday. I left the Island yesterday for a week in Bishopbriggs (a 'suburb' of Glasgow although its residents would never agree to that description and it is outside the City boundary so a taxi home from Glasgow a few yards over the boundary attracts a bonus fare!). I can't recall when I was last off the Island for a holiday. I am usually off for a hospital appointment even if I have also enjoyed some time with friends down here.
I apologise to some of my readers who have left comments which have gone to spam and which I haven't picked up in good time (I was going to say 'timeously' but the spillchucker was having none of it).
I also had the problem that some of the 'spam' comments appear to have disappeared so if you've commented and it's not been published then I apologise.
I'm hoping that I'll actually get a bit more time in Blogland whilst I'm away
JayCee at The Diary of a Nobody mentioned that her wild flowers were coming to an end. Interestingly many of mine (and I'm also on an island but much further North) are still in flower although a lot have also died off.
For a long time my natural instinct has been to use the 24 hour clock.
I was recently given an appointment at the dentist for a rather odd time 1435. [I erroneously said 1535 in the original post] However the receptionist said to me that the appointment was at "25 minutes to 3.'' Writing it in my diary and so as to keep it on the 12 hour clock I said "Right. That's it in at 2.35". "No" she responded "It's at 25 to 3". I immediately apologised and was just about to erase it and re-write it when it occurred to me that we were just misunderstanding each other's format for the same time. I laughed and, apologised, and asked if we could agree on 1435. Quick as a flash she responded with a smile "Oh heavens, I don't know. I've never managed to use decimalisation for time!".
That's not all though. 1230 can also be "half 12" as in "I'll meet you at half 12" ie at half (an hour) past midday.
In fact 'a quarter of an hour' 'half an hour' and 'three quarters of an hour" are still in common usage in the UK at least.
The problem is that you can't have a discussion with an algorithm. You can't tell it that it doesn't fit your case. Well, that's not strictly true, however if it doesn't fit the algorithm then it will be ignored or spat back at you.
Amazon recently made a rare (in my experience) error. I ordered Bootledrops quantity 150 Price £12. They arrived 18 hours later. Correct product but quantity 50 (usual price £6.20). Presumably either someone had misread a bar code or something had been miscoded.
If this was a human interaction situation one would, for example, go into the shop, explain that they had given me the correct product but the wrong package size. It would be swapped. One would leave satisfied.
Obviously in this case I would have to return them to Amazon and ask for the correct quantity. However having got as far as the return algorithm the only thing the algorithm would allow me to do in this particular case was 're-order the exact same product' (the assumption being presumably that it was damaged or faulty which didn't fit) or order another product.
As it so happens in the 24 hours since the transaction only the 150 size was on sale on the Amazon site.
So I filled in the return form and received the appropriate QR code on the email response.
This morning I went to the dentist. I had an X-Ray during which I had a chat with the dental practitioner who used to be a teenage best buddy of our late son, Andy. That was totally irrelevant but, wotthehellarchiewotthehell. I then went into the post office, gave the lady at the counter the package and showed the QR code.
I arrived home shortly afterwards and received an email saying [actually it wasn't saying anything but it was telling me something] that Amazon had received the item and refunded my Amazon account.
They had.
Then I ordered the items I wanted direct from the company selling them.
It started with my Maternal Grandmother in 1971 at the age of 93. She died. She sat down, her heart stopped and she died. Rather like Francis Garrood's Ernest, nobody had expected it, least of all my Grandmother.
Some years before she died she had had influenza. That was in the days when the doctor would come to the house in the middle of the night and pronounce that the climax would be in a few hours and the patient would either die or, if she got through that, the would be fine. Nana had got through it so was invincible. After that she gave instructions that no black was to be worn at her funeral.
In the nearly half a century I've lived on Lewis I have been to a great many funerals. A funeral is a very important occasion and in the earlier days a thousand people could turn up. I still wear a dark suit, black tie and, in winter, the Crombie I bought in George Henry Lee (John Lewis in Liverpool) I bought around 60 years ago.
At my Grandmother's funeral I wore a tie of red and black tiny diamonds the overall effect of which was a muted red. At the gathering afterwards I was very publicly berated by a relative. Mores hadn't moved forward.
When our son, Andy, died in 2006, he made all the arrangements for his farewell: it was to be a celebration of his life and there was to be no mourning and nothing black. There was a Humanist celebrant: Andy was atheist. The service opened with a song by The Smashing Pumpkins. Apart from that I can recall absolutely nothing whatsoever of the day: not even where we went afterwards. Mind you it was all in London where Andy lived.
At the beginning of this week an acquaintance of 40 or so years died. The Celebration of Life Service was held in the Salvation Army Hall. Those attending were asked to wear bright colours. Everyone made some effort - even those who probably had nothing even semi-bright in their wardrobe. I wore my bright red waistcoat, a colourful tie and no black whatsoever. She had a wonderful send-off with lots of happy moments recounted. The irony of it was that probably more people were crying than I've ever seen at any Lewis funeral before.
When I go, and like everyone else I surely shall, please make sure you are wearing a bright colour to remember me. If you're wearing black and talking of the things that await me, I shall come back and haunt you.
In the past I've made it quite plain that my relationship with football has been a fairly disinterested one over the last half a century.
At school I couldn't play because I had a lung disease. Unfortunately Quarry Bank, alma mater of John Lennon and many Oxbridge scholars, wasn't the sort of school that allowed you to get out of sports just because one had a lung disease and I had no choice but to play. [As an aside they would happily kick me out of lessons because my constant coughing was 'disruptive']
After I had had part of my lung removed when I'd left school and was reasonably fit I decided that I would become an amateur game linesman. I did and was thinking of taking my refs ticket when I became disenchanted by the way the amateur game was going.
I also became disenchanted by the way the professional game was going and I have had absolutely nothing to do with football as a sport since it became nothing more than a business (whatever many supporters dream could be otherwise). However, on odd occasions I have watched the women's game. I have been impressed. It reminded me of the football ethos in the Sixties. The game mattered. There was respect. To me the superstar era has meant that the concept of 'sport' has been totally superseded by money pure and simple: ridiculous money for 'superstars' and profits (or tax sinks) for the billionaires who finance them.
Last night's result was wonderful. It will do great things for the women's' game.
I hope that it doesn't spiral out of control but brings some sense to the finance of sport.
Recently someone in my Blogland mentioned or blogged about supermarket payment systems comparing manned and self-service tills. I think it may have arisen because of the superfast manned tills at Lidl and Aldi. I cannot recall which the person preferred but he/she was very adamant about it.
So far as supermarkets are concerned it all boils down to money. Fewer people = less cost = more profit potential. Lidl and Aldi have limited employment down to a fine art together with easily scanned bar codes and staff who work their socks off.
So far as we, as customers, are concerned a lot is personal preference. Going through a manned checkout is rarely fast. An aside - a wonderful irony used to be that one of the fastest checkout staff in our Coop was also one of the most sociable. People would join her queue just for the craic (Gaelic - enjoyable social activity). Sometimes other staff would be free. However, if you are in a hurry with a few items self-service is invariably the fastest way out of the shop.
So far as society is concerned our Coop (which I believe is the largest in Scotland) employs a lot of staff and is an important employer. The more self-service checkouts the fewer people employed.
Amazon has gone one further with a trial shop, in London I think, which has no payment facilities at all. You register your phone when you go in and as you put something in your shopping bag it is automatically charged to your card.
Of course the fewer the staff and the greater the automation the less attention can be given to 'confused' people (usually elderly) or the disabled who need help.
I do not look forward to a day of complete automation, I'll pay the price and help employment. Am I alone?
The Mum of CJ and I would have been 113 years old today had she not died at the age of 93, 20 years ago.
Flora Edith Irene started her named life by creating a family upset. Not intentionally and in fact she had no hand in the matter as she was only months old at the time. At her Christening her Godmother, Edith, when asked "What do you name this child" answered "Flora Edith Irene" adding her own name in between the family's chosen names of Flora and Irene. Whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong with the name Edith if ever there was a person who didn't fit that name it was our Mum. She just didn't! |
Mum was a lover of peace and nature and eschewed any form of conflict and she was, of course, a rich gift for her parents.
Mum was born into a reasonably well-off family. However Mum's Father's business was a luxury business and the slump and the war put an end to any hopes Mum had of going to Oxford (which had been her Mother's hope) which, academically, she could have done if her Father could have paid the fees.
Mum never complained about missing uni. In fact Mum rarely if ever complained about anything and, like most people of her generation living through two world wars, she had plenty about which to complain.
We could learn a lot if we hearkened back to the time of Mum's youth. Yes. There is a huge amount of real poverty in the UK now but the privations of the slump and war were worse than most people now can even believe never mind understand and public financial assistance was not readily available.
I managed to get this photo with no time to focus, aim or indeed think as I walked towards Mum and she struck the pose. I had the camera at my side and just pressed the button. That it turned out was well as it did was a miracle. It is one of my favourites amongst the very many photos I took of Mum.
Over Christmas and New Year and for a while after that I was not at all well. I isolated the whole time despite never testing positive for Covid. Whether I had Covid or not I'll never know. However ever since then I've had days of extreme tiredness where functioning normally has either been a huge effort or downright impossible. Fortunately it hasn't interfered too much with my life because I'm long past the age of having to work to keep food on the table. So if The Ennui hits me I just grumble and accept it. Fortunately one has to be pretty far gone before one can share a morning with friends over coffee in The Woodlands. On the odd occasion I have simply fallen asleep I've managed to avoid falling off my chair in public and when I wake up I'm just expected to catch up with the chat. That's what it's like with true friends.
When I cam home from hospital last week the airport security was absolutely rammed with people and they were obviously short staffed. So getting through security took the best part of an hour I reckon. My metal work and exterior plumbing is always met with consideration and good humour on both sides but it does hold things up a bit for them. Few people were wearing masks.
The plane was full and only a few of us were wearing masks.
So a couple of days later I tested positive.
Oddly a friend travelling from a different hospital, through a different airport on a different plane arrived home on Lewis the day before me and tested positive the day before I did.
Neither of us is particularly unwell.
However on the too frequent 'Ennui Days' when the feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction is so strong that even thinking about making a meal is an effort, it makes me realise just how many people there are who can't just sit down and say "Bugger it!" are now having to cope with the aftermath of this disease.
When I was flying home last week I was reminded that, however thick the clouds, the sky above them is always clear:
Well this isn't going to plan.
I left home on Sunday afternoon and few to Glasgow and then, given the parlous situation with trains and busses and the fact that I was supposed to be isolating as much as possible before going into hospital, I took a taxi to Ayr and stayed the night in the Ayrshire and Galloway Hotel. It was lovely to stay in a smallish non-concrete, glass and steel box hotel. The staff (yes there were staff) were exceptionally helpful and friendly and the food was excellent. I'll not hesitate to stay there again.
The hotel is unprepossessing and at the end of Ayr High Street which, like many other town centres has, unfortunately, passed its sell-by date.
I went for a walk along its length and got the impression that more that half of the properties were empty.
I came into hospital in Ayr on Monday morning with a view to getting my uretic stent changed and being home and back in harness on Tuesday evening.
I'm still in hospital. The operation went very well. It's always good to see a surgeon who's been working on you looking happy. Mr Meddings looked delighted. So was I. He's been my saviour over the last 5 years.
On Tuesday I started off feeling fine and then went downhill with my temperature going up and my blood pressure plummeting. I slept for 10 hours Tuesday night and woke this morning still feeling less than great. My temperature was higher again and my BP lower this morning but as I write this I'm feeling a bit more chipper and hoping, once again, that everything will sort itself out and I'll be home tomorrow. At least I'm in a hospital and have a bed. The worst possible scenario would be to be discharged and then have to end up in an A & E in another hospital.
The oddest thing about this hospital visit has been being on a mixed ward. I recall when they were mooted many moons ago in hospitals there was a huge uproar. Women wouldn't be able to cope with men in the same room in hospital circumstances. As it happens I'm the only man on this ward. No one batted an eyelid when I was wheeled in. There doesn't seem to be any fuss on any side.
The one thing I have discovered though is that men and women discuss completely different things on my small sample of mixed wards. Women don't talk about football. Men don't talk about their operations or procedures. Women, where they can, race for a shower in the morning. Men don't. Men and women are equally squeamish about having blood removed and needles stuck in them. Men keep asking when they can get out. Women don't. Women are very friendly on the ward and interact a lot (including with the man). Men tend to look for some common acquaintances or past connection with others in the ward and if there isn't one then then football takes over.
I'm feeling a lot better. Hopefully I'll be home tomorrow.
I have just taken a friend to the plane for her journey home to Glasgow. We've known each other a couple of years shy of half a century. It's a very comfortable relationship. Sue and her late husband had lived here on Lewis until 2006 but our friendship remains as close as ever.
During the last week we have been blessed by a few days with stunning weather and we made the most of it to see some of the Island's scenes and beaches that we tend to take for granted.
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| Garry Sands |
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| Traigh Mhor |
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| Uig Sands |
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| Uig Sands |
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| Cliff Bay |
Why are we in the UK so hung up on the use of British English versus the use of American English?
In Shakespeare's time English was totally different to that used today. There was no 'am ...ing', 'is ...ing' or 'are ...ing'. If you read Shakespeare you will read "I go." not "I am going". That's a pretty fundamental change in our language. That's before I start on all the other 'archaic' words and forms of a language as written 400 years ago. I'm sure that there are many books written on this paragraph's subject alone.
No one holds a candle for a return to Shakespearean or even Victorian English.
Years ago someone very close to me was appointing a new PA. He offered the job to an existing employee who happened to be American. He made the appointment conditional on the person ceasing to use the term "trash can" for the waste paper basket. On her first day in the job when he arrived at the office, in the centre of his blotting pad was a small treatise on the origin of the term "trash can". As you have probably guessed it was originally a British term.
There are also many American words in daily use in the English language which originated in America bur are generally accepted in the UK. Some examples are: commuter, double-decker, do-gooder come immediately to mind as do many words of native American derivation. Examples being: avocado, barbecue, cannibal, chocolate, husky, kayak, jaguar, opossum, potato, quinine, squash and tobacco. However my all time favourite is mugwump. I'm sure I did a blog post about that many moons ago.
I recently mentioned Wordle. Some people in the UK really have got their knickers in a twist because the game - owned and published by the New York Times - uses American spellings for some words.
I think that it's about time that we on this side of the pond stopped being so precious about our strange, and often bizarre, spellings.
Well that's one way to start the day. I ate two of my wonderful neighbour's hens' eggs. By which I mean my wonderful neighbour. I have no idea whether her hens are wonderful. Firstly I have never seen them because they live on her croft up the road behind loads of trees. Secondly I couldn't tell a wonderful hen from any other sort. I'm rather glad she doesn't have room for them in the garden next door. If she did have room and they did live there, they would come foraging into my garden and do even more damage to my plants than the dreadful cold winds over the last few days have done.
I was down for my final drugs trial review. The trial is now over. It's been a great success and I'm still on the drug but the NHS is now paying. The best news for me, though, is that I shall remain under the care of the Oncology Prof who looked after me during the Trial. My visits to The Beatson will be fewer for reviews and scans but the intermediate interviews will continue but by phone or video. My August appointment is already in the diary.
My relatively short time in Glasgow was partly because I wasn't having scans and partly because Anna went to the opera in Glyndebourne and partly because I was very anxious not to leave my garden for too long despite neighbourly help watering etc.
I left Lewis after the best day of the year so far on Lewis and arrived home to wind and rain. The photo is me getting ready to feed the birds this morning
I happened to say to my brother this morning that I'd got myself into a bit of a fankle. It's a stoater of a word and I use it frequently and have done for as long as I can remember. CJ remarked that it was a wonderfully descriptive word. I commented that it was like so many Scots words that I use and hear used on an every-day basis. It made me realise just how many Scots words there are that fall into that category but which are not every-day words even in other parts of the UK.
I am assuming that everyone can imagine what 'fankle' means. Can you? Do you use the word outside Scotland?
Dreich (dreek - but the k is gutteral) is another adjective and it's used to describe dreary, bleak weather but no words really describe it better than it sounds.
Having started this it occurs to me that I could go on for ages just with the words that I know and I'm sure there are many hundreds or even thousands more. I'll mention a few more favourites that come to mind.
Wabbit (as in rabbit. Although posh people I'm told say wahbit) is used if one is slightly unwell or in low spirits or 'under the weather'.
Scunnered is a feeling of revulsion or loathing although many people just use it to mean 'fed up'.
Gallus is a word one doesn't hear very often. I have a friend (of my generation) who calls herself Gallus Lass so obviously regards it as a Good Thing (thank you, Sellars and Yeatman). Generally it means forthright or bold or possibly cheeky. I think a lot depends on the context.
Finally 'stoater' which I used in the first paragraph. I think it's principally a Glasgow dialect Scots word used to to mean it's a great example, fantastic, excellent. It's not to be confused with Scots, 'stotter' which means to stumble.
I would be really interested to hear what 'unusual' words you may have from where you live - or anywhere else for that matter.
We all have a vague understanding of the balance of nature. I've been experiencing the balance of nature changing year on year since I moved into this house 3 decades ago and in the half century since I moved to Lewis.
My house sits on a croft which, until around 10 years ago, was full of sheep. The croft is possibly 30 metres wide and runs from the village road to the sea. Crofts were very frequently very long and very narrow. As a consequence they are often referred to as the farming of fences (about which I have blogged several times).
Down the far side of the croft on which my house was built is a stream. When I arrived I was told the stream was an otter run from a loch well above the township to the sea below my house. Despite that and the knowledge that there are otters in the area, I know no one who has actually seen one here in all those years. That all changed a few weeks ago when someone sitting on the rocks below the house saw and photographed an otter sitting eating a fish amazingly near to him. He posted some of his photos on Facebook. With his permission I'm reproducing a few of them here.
All otter photos courtesy of Jason Spinks.
"Do you use Amazon?" came an email from a friend. I checked the email address. It was hers. "Yes" I replied with an uncharacteristic lack of verbosity. A short while later came the scam email. I rang to tell her that her email account had been hacked. She already knew. Unfortunately on this occasion the scammer had got hold of her password and taken over control of her account. It was a Yahoo account so possibly the scammer had got hold of her password from a very old leak when Yahoo had a lot of problems with security.
The outcome is that the spammer has details of everything she has done via email and has locked her out of her email account too. As all her contacts are in it she's lost them as well.
I am often laughed at for my security measures which mean that I use a password app with a very secure password and that no two things requiring a password have the same password. I know my master passwords for my computers and the password app and that's it. I use separate email addresses for different tasks after I learned years ago that the travel industry used to sell password lists.
As I use Apple for all my computing/cellphone etc I rarely have to type in secondary passwords and unlocking my phone and computer are generally by fingerprint and/or eye or facial recognition.
Anyway none of this would have been bloggable but for the fact that I decided the the loss of the rest of the day and evening to sorting out the outfall from the incident was exceptionally irritating.
When I was scammed I immediately went to change my password on that account. Google wouldn't let me. It locked my account saying that there was suspicious activity on it. The only conclusion to which I could come was that a potential scammer had recently tried to get in using an old password from one of the old Yahoo leaks. My passwords are usually changed every couple of years (or when I decide I want to waste a day looking at a screen and getting frustrated) but whatever it was Google decided I was a potential scammer. It took me many hours and a lot of coffee to convince their algorithms otherwise.
With scammers getting more and more sophisticated it behoves every one of us to keep all our passwords separate and secure.
I never ever say 'Never'. Well (to quote from
That is how I started a post last night at about 9.15. I'd had a long fairly physical day. I decided to vacate my usual computer position in the 'kitchen' and take the laptop through to a nice comfy armchair in the living room. I then did something fairly unusual for me: at 21:09 I fell fast asleep and woke up 1 hour and 9 mins later at 22:14.
I must have had something in my mind to write otherwise I wouldn't have started in the way I did. The strange thing is that I have zero recollection of what I was going to say and, more to the point in some ways, which quotation I was going to use.
I have another fairly physical day coming up starting with an appointment for my bum jab and then I go to one of my new "jobs" helping mow the lawns at the bowling club where the two usual volunteer groundsmen are out of commission.
As I have to be in town at the medical practice in 40 minutes this is very short.
This post is boring enough so I'll enliven it with a picture of a sock. It's one of my more interesting socks in the it's not plain and it has a Christmas Robin on it. Over the washing at the weekend it disappeared. Everyone has a disappearing sock story but the effort I've put into finding this far outweighs the importance of the sock. I have looked everywhere including places where I looked simply for the curiosity.
Now I have to fly. Bye for now.
PS This was to let you all know I'm alive and well.
This is, of course, a huge topic on which every one of us who read and write blogs doubtless has an opinion. However this is a very narrow area where I see a lack of personal responsibility which has led to inconvenience for the many.
Like, JayCee, I live on an Island. Off the top of my head I can't think of any others of my readers who rely on seagoing ferries as part of daily life. We need to go to the Mainland and we are reliant of goods coming in on a daily basis for our fresh food etc. In the last year or two Covid has exacerbated the situation by depleting staff and requiring the ferry to get a new crew or to be thoroughly cleaned. The principal problem, however, is the weather.
Almost 50 years ago we had a ferry plying between Ullapool and Stornoway called MV Suilven. She was a boat originally built for use in areas with potential ice floes with which to contend. She was an incredible seaboat and all the Masters I knew sang her praises. She sailed in all weathers and, on occasion, the 3¾ hour crossing could take many more hours. She had been known to run down and hide behind the Shiants because she couldn't get into Stornoway Harbour. Everyone who sailed on her will have a tale to tell. I used to travel quite a lot and have many tales that would put you off ever coming here except in high summer.
Some years ago, I was told by a member of the ferry staff, that there had been a big outburst one day when the ferry sailed and it was very rough and people were sick and, apparently, afraid. I can understand that because I have been afraid on several occasions when the Good Ship Suilven plied the route.
However, it was always our choice as to whether, given the weather, we wanted to sail or go another day.
That choice is still available and anyone who lives on the Island knows the weather conditions and what to expect and, in any case, the ferry company used to post sea conditions at the passenger entrance.
The result of all the complaints received by frightened passengers with no sealegs was that the Masters decided that if the conditions were so adverse that complaints may be forthcoming then they wouldn't sail. It appears to have been thus ever since. So the many suffer because of the decisions of the few (to sail when they could have decided against it).
Isn't this mirrored in every area of life now? Personal responsibility has gone. The responsibility is always that of someone else - preferably of someone "in authority" and preferably someone who is employed by an organisation which can be sued for compensation.
Anyone with an exceptional memory (so that excludes me for a start) might recall that I have bird nesting boxes in the garden. The one that I've shown on the blog in the past was a 'three bay' box sitting on the north wall of my garage and visible from the house window that overlooks The Minch.
I'm sure that the view is the last thing in which the sparrows who occupy my boxes are interested. The old box succumbed to the ravages of the Hebridean weather and old age in a northerly gale at the end of last last year and is no more. The new boxes were too late for last year's nesting season but this year the alpha male sparrow has invited his potential mate to view the property.
"Look pretty much the same to me!"
I'm not sure that I ever got those words on my report cards at school - do schools still issue report cards? - but if I didn't they would still have been very appropriate. I never worked hard at school. I detested school. My parents were good enough to save on other things and sent me (and, later, my brother) to a small private prep school in Liverpool where I was born. The discipline was ferocious. The preparation for the 11Plus was second to none and all but the most educationally challenged (in our parlance of the day 'the thickest') did exceptionally well in the 11Plus for the Grammar Schools or entrance exams to the many private public schools in the area (my apologies to anyone from the US who is probably totally lost in the terminology).
I won my first choice and followed a couple of years behind the exceptionally talented and totally way-out John Lennon at Quarry Bank. Quarry (Motto: Ex hoc metall virtutem - out of this quarry came virtue) was an excellent and very small (680 pupils) Grammar School which concentrated on only one thing - getting pupils to Oxford or Cambridge. Anyone else was a failure and left to drift. I was never Oxbridge material.
My Mother had always wanted me to go to Quarry because she had gone to the partner girls school next door and had loved every minute and left with flying colours and very good academic results.
I could have done better. But I didn't.....then.
All that was by way of trying to say that recently my blogging record has been parlous and, although I have been reading some blogs, I'm feeling a bit out in the cold.
So I'm going to try and do better.
This was the view from my window this morning: clouds dumping snow over The Minch and Mainland Scotland.
I cannot even begin to imagine the loneliness of being in prison.
I am staying in the Golden Jubilee Conference Centre Hotel which is attached to the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Glasgow. At the time it was opened in 1994 as a private hospital it was quite controversial but now it is Scotland's NHS specialist hospital for reducing patient waiting times. Referrals are received from across the country in the specialties and services provided. The hospital is also home to the West of Scotland Heart and Lung Centre.
In the morning I shall be having my MRI scan which will determine whether I had a TIA and whether I will be able to drive and whether the operation to replace my uretic stent will be able to go ahead next week.
To return to my opening sentence. I am fortunate enough to be housed for the night in a large, moderately luxurious in an understated way, bedroom. Because the hospital was originally designed as a private one it had a large hotel 'built in' so to speak. I assume that the reason the bedrooms are the size they are (generous by the standard of many UK hotels) is because it was an American company that was behind the original venture.
When I arrived last night I had every intention of spending the evening catching up with emails, letters, blogs and things I never seem to make enough time for at home. However, all of a sudden I felt constrained, imprisoned almost, by these four walls. The view of the hills from the window had by then disappeared into the night sky. All of a sudden I wanted a glass of wine. All of a sudden I wanted to see other human beings. All of a sudden I wanted dinner. So I left my room and in under two minutes was sitting in the beautifully spacious bar with a (very indifferent) glass of sav in my paw. I ordered scallops with black pudding followed by goats cheese and beetroot risotto. The black pudding was not Stornoway black pudding and was, therefore, distinctly inferior but the scallops were done to perfection and the risotto was tasty and creamy. The malbec was distinctly better than the sav. All was well with the world.
I got back to my bedroom and opened the laptop to write this post when I realised the time and wondered about an early(ish) night in front of that large black screen on the wall. "Bangers and Cash" is on at that time of night! I don't often get to watch it. It's a great programme. Why not? So I did. Hence I'm writing this after my shower this morning. My scan is at 9.50.
So being holed up in a hotel room for the few hours I was actually awake hasn't been so bad. But I know that in a few minutes I will be walking out of the door. I won't be serving a prison sentence in a cell, I won't be incarcerated in quarantine in a hotel room because of Covid or for any other reason. I won't be spending hours and days in a bunker trying to avoid bombs and missiles. I am, for the moment, a free man. I am grateful and I am not taking it for granted.
PS I wonder what this post would have been like if I had stayed in my room and written about 'imprisonment'.
Life has been getting in the way of Blogland yet again.
The Good Thing is that we have had five days of (mainly) sunny weather which has, about half the time, been free of the bitterly cold and strong wind that makes working outside in the garden a bit of a trial even when dressed up to the nines for the occasion.
It has meant that I have been getting up well before 7am and spending the vast amount of daylight in the garden and the polycarb doing hard labour. Well, that's the theory. When possible it's been the practice too. I would spend 12 hours a day in the garden if I could.
It has been helped by the fact that some of my social and other activities (like the gym) have had to be cancelled because I've been forbidden to drive until I've had an MRI scan to confirm that the incident that saw me ending up in hospital in the middle of the night, yet again, was labyrinthitis and not a TIA.
Needless to say people have been very good and I've had lifts to town when needed.
I found some accidental potatoes left in the grounds when I emptied the potato grow bags from last spring/summer.
Over the years I've shown some lovely sunrises from my kitchen window. This was yesterday's view
A few weeks ago I mentioned 'Wordle' in one of my posts here. YP explains more about it in his post here.
I play it each day and so far have been reasonably successful and enjoyed it. I've never been unable to find the word but to be fair that's probably not a great accolade because I only know one person who had not had a 100% achievement record.
I compare results and the words we have used each day with friends in New Zealand, Sweden and the UK. One of us, not me, seems to be just slightly better than the rest who are all pretty much the same standard.
I travelled home on Saturday. I had to plan it on the basis of the snow from Storm Eunice having gone and the lull in the wind between storms allowing the Saturday evening ferry to sail.
Unfortunately my second lot of hospital plans (ie my stent change) didn't quite work out. I was supposed to have the procedure on Thursday but as I was getting into the car to drive to the hospital I got a call from the hospital to say that they had no beds. They could do the procedure but couldn't stick me in a bed afterwards. I'm now scheduled for the middle of March. Hey ho.
The drive from Glasgow to Ullapool was one of the best I've had. There was very little traffic. The sun shone out of a blue sky and the hills, forests and fields were covered in snow. The ferry wasn't overly busy and the sea was reasonably calm.
Unfortunately I discovered that my dashcam had not been recording onto the SDD card so all the fabulous winter footage of driving through the Scottish Highlands doesn't exist.
The weather forecasts all seem a bit out of kilter for us at the moment. The storms don't seem to be coming our way despite the predictions on the various weather apps. However, I don't think I'd be relying on the ferries for the rest of this week notwithstanding.
