Laughing Horse Awards

I was up very early (just after 6am) this morning and I've just been wondering if I could find something to blog about today. Sunday is my 'get everything done at done' day. It also tends to be the day when I have people to dinner (an evening meal for me). 

For some reason YP's Laughing Horse Awards popped into what passes for my mind.

I've never been particularly imaginative - the result, I always say, of having, more than half a century ago, studied public administration and law at university and had a career as a bureaucrat. 

Of course it may well be that it was the other way around and that it was because I was unimaginative that I became a bureaucrat. 

However, I managed to find topics that kept my blogs going for many years so it should not be too hard to keep things going a bit longer. I miss not spending as much time in Blogland..

I think many of my readers also read YP's blog entitled "Yorkshire Pudding". (Clicking on the words in parenthesis with take you to the blog.).

I've never quite understood how YP managed to come up with all the topics he's blogged about over the last 21 years or thereabouts or, indeed, found the time particularly as he spends so much time out wandering with his camera. It has shown a single-minded approach. I often wish that I had had that dedication (to anything!).

It's a Good Day

Firstly I apologise for the paucity of my posts. Some friends have become concerned and, despite emailing me, appear not to have had a response and have taken to communicating with one of my close Island friends. Many apologies to all to whom I have caused concern.

I woke up this morning. Therefore it is a Good Day. One day I won't and I will be really pissed off (Apologies for the vulgarity: translation "very upset".). I usually wake up and get up within a few minutes once I have confirmed that it is 'getting up time'. If it's not I turn over and return (or attempt to return) to the Land of Nod. By that I do not mean a biblical location where Cain was exiled after killing Abel, but my metaphorical term for sleep or dreamland.

Going back to the phrase "or attempt to return" I should say that there was a time when that was not only a certainty but it was also instant. Unfortunately I have discovered (and I know I'm not alone in this) that now I'm in my 80s sleep is nowhere near as automatic if one wakes up in the night. In theory the body must need just as much sleep as ever IF one expends as much energy during the day as ever. I am very fortunate in still being very active.

Sometimes I wake either in the morning or at random times during the night and I spent a good while thinking about Life, The Universe and Everything before possibly returning to sleep.

Today was a fairly typical day in that I went into town this morning and did odds and ends and met a friend for coffee. This afternoon I, and another friend, went to visit a mutual friend. I have known her since November 1974 when we both arrived on Lewis. 

I came to work with Comhairle nan Eilean (the local authority for the Western Isles) and Mutual Friend was married to a very close colleague. He has long since left the Island but Mutual Friend stayed and we are close and firm friends of over half a century. 

The Joys of Island Life - Another Flight Postponment

Don't get me wrong. I love living on The Isle of Lewis.  I have lived here for just over 50 years and if I didn't enjoy it I would have left long ago.  Of course if I suddenly after half a century decided that I didn't like it then that would just be hard luck. There's nothing I could do now that I'm in my 80s.  But I do love it, so no problem.......   most of the time.

Last Thursday evening I, and probably 40 others, were in the airport lounge waiting for the plane to Inverness to board.  It was sitting there temptingly. 

Then an announcement said that the flight was cancelled. .......... WHAT !

Inverness Airport - the principal airport for the Scottish Highlands  - had no lights...........WHAT !

How can an airport - especially a principal one - have no emergency backup lighting system?

It transpired as we all stood in the queue for our ticket refund or whatever, that there were quite a few of us going over for surgery or treatment on the following day (Friday). 

At least one or two like me had already had at least one postponement/cancellation. Because of my propensity to get sepsis I had already had dire warnings not to miss yet another appointment. 

On Friday they couldn't offer me a new date but hopefully I'll get one in the next few days. This time I'll make sure that I'm at least one flight in hand which means flying a day early and wasting a day in a hotel or hospital accommodation. 

O joy!

Before The Dawn

This morning's pre-sunrise view of the Scottish Mainland from my kitchen window.

Hospital.....again....or not!

I woke yesterday morning all prepared for the afternoon flight to Inverness and an evening in Raigmore Hospital's "accommodation block" called `Kyle Court  I had already thought up the blog post on the joys of 'Kyle Court',  hoping that I might eventually get a meal in the hospital (several hundred yards walk away across a gravel car park possibly in the pouring rain) and return to my room (not even with en-suite facilities) and, hopefully, sleep until this morning when my uretic stent was due to be replaced. 

However, early yesterday afternoon my cellphone rang. "Mr Edwards. where are you?"  Panic. Had I made a mistake? Was I supposed to be in hospital in Inverness having my operation? I answered that I was still at home just about to go to the airport for the afternoon flight to Inverness.  "Thank heaven for that!" was the reply. "Your operation has been postponed." It would appear that there was no theatre available because she then said that she would have to phone the surgeon (who was apparently not in Inverness) and tell her the operation had been postponed. 

I had already been told that it was important that the operation took place "on time" because of my "habit" of getting sepsis if the operation was delayed.  Not that long ago when the op was delayed I had to be flown on a Sunday afternoon by helicopter across The Minch to Inverness and have an operation the next morning before the infection really set in.   

So here I am a day later waiting for a new date when I should be resting after surgery and contemplating another 3 or 4 months before the next stent change, 

Ah well, c'est la vie. There is nothing I can do now but wait for the new appointment date. 

2026 - A new start

I WISH A VERY HAPPY AND, ABOVE ALL, HEALTHY 2026 TO ALL MY READERS

.....assuming that I still have any.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I have just realised that it it is two months since I last posted on this blog.  I'm pretty sure that's the longest gap since I started the blog in 2007 - 19 years ago. In some of the early years I also had my New Zealand blog for half the year.

Life has been very busy and despite still being able (thankfully) to keep going from getting up around 7am until bedtime, usually between 11pm and midnight, I haven't had to resort to afternoon naps yet. Which is a good job because more often that not I'm not at home! Falling asleep in shops or when visiting friends isn't a good look.

I am also finding it more difficult to find something interesting to write about. Perhaps it was always like that but my standards of what was interesting were lower. Who knows? Is there anyone left out there who cares?

What is worse, is that I'm losing touch with all those in Blogland whose blogs I also used to read. After all, that is, or was, what blogging was all about and so many friendships have been made over the last couple of decades. 

This morning as I write this I am also listening to (and sort of watching) the New Year's Concert from Vienna on the television. Wonderful. Oh how I miss the years when I was between 16 and 30 and had a friend (now very long dead despite being of an age with me) with whom I used to go every week in the season to the wonderful Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in Liverpool's superb Philharmonic Hall.