Going to Glasgow

I'm flying South to Glasgow today.  Hopefully I'll have time, inclination and motivation to blog whilst I'm there.  I still keep saying that I must get back into Blogland.  The stupid thing is that even though I really miss it and keep wondering how everyone  is getting on I keep getting sidetracked with life. Then when I'm back home by the time I've made meals and persuaded myself to eat them (appetite problems not my cooking!!)  I've lost interest in food. Ironically I'm quite a good cook. The only time I really enjoy it now, though, is when I'm cooking for other people. 

Summer Solstice

Yesterday, 21st June, Was the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year.  It did not go dark at all here tonight in the north of the Hebrides.  The Butt of Lewis is almost on the same latitude as the most northerly coast of the Scottish mainland. 

My garden is in full bloom. Most of my plants are perennials but there are some annuals as well.  This is only part of garden part of the plot on which the bungalow is built.  

As for the weather the irony is that I am wearing exactly the same clothes at the moment that I wear in the winter: including my Hoggs of Fife winter lined Bushwhacker trousers. As Victor Meldrew would have said "I don't believe it!"

Caring Less

I frequently hear people saying "I couldn't care less." I have said it myself.

However, when I heard it today it suddenly occurred to me that what was actually meant was that the person could not care (at all). The implication being that if I 'could not care less' then, to make sense, that had to be followed by '...than (some defined level of care).  

For example: 'I could not care less about the colour of your socks' means that I care about them at a defined level. If I want to say that I actually don't care about your socks then what I should say is "I do not care about the colour of your socks".

What on earth started me on that esoteric linguistic train of thought?

Come to think of it I could not care less about the topic of this post.

Back in Blogland - Eventually

It's 6am [Tuesday 21 April]. I'm just home from driving my last visitor to the morning ferry for her journey home to Glasgow. 

For the last month and more I have had visitors. It's been wonderful. Fraser of my New Zealand family and his partner came and stayed for a while and for the last week, Sue, one of my oldest friends has been staying.

John and Sue came to the Island, as I did, in 1974 but they arrived a few months earlier.  We became close friends almost immediately and we have been close friends ever since then although, sadly, John died in 2019. When John retired they moved to Glasgow to be nearer their children. My surviving son, on the other hand, is an Islander through and through and still lives here (although he's away at sea a lot - he's a chief engineer on super-yachts). Working at sea was - and to some extent is - typical of Islanders from here.

The first thing I discovered when I tried to blog this morning was that my absence from Blogland (I assume that was the reason) meant that I had to jump through hoops to get back into my blog. I even had to find my password which was rather frightening for a while.

Apart from having just become Treasurer of the Bowling Club almost my commitments are easing off. I have discovered that I'm not as young as I was although I am, I confess, surprised at how much energy I have lost now I'm in my 80s.

My parents were still walking up Blencathra in the English Lake District when they were in their late 80s and early 90s. In my early 80s I still frequently walk the three miles rounds the Castle Grounds but it's fairly flat and the 'usual' walk is just 3 miles.

I wrote the above on the date at the start of the post and then went out and when I came back I couldn't get into my blog.  I've no idea what happened but it was a bit scary.  All those years of blogging and all of a sudden......nothing.  Until this evening when I tried a different platform and in I got: but I had to use my password. Thank heaven it was stored away somewhere.

So I shall post this whilst all is going well. Hopefully a more interesting post will follow soon.

The Ability to Remember and Memories.

I woke very early this morning. Apart from anything I had cramp.  I got up, walked around and eventually went back to bed. Sleep obviously wasn't an option so I decided to have a thinking session. Thinking has never been one of my strong points. That was my Brother, CJ's, forté. However, I came up with some good ideas relating to a combination of the mundane (practical things like meals for the next few days) to blogging. I lay there writing blogs in what passes for my mind. I decided on a plan for those days this coming week where I had 'free time' (not many!). Then disaster struck. I dozed off for a short while. When I woke I couldn't recall a single idea that I'd had. 

I'm writing this this evening, some hours later.  I'm sure that many of you will have read occasional tales of woe about my lack of a memory. I come from a family with phenomenal memories. 

As an example, in 2001, my father as he lay dying at the age of 94 (when his heart had failed and wouldn't even give him enough oxygen to allow him to raise an arm) was taken into a nursing home. I was at home on Lewis. I got into the car and went for the lunchtime ferry and, with an overnight stop, arrived in Liverpool around lunchtime the next day.

I was saying hello to my father when a lady with a clipboard and briefcase came in. She introduced herself as being from the welfare department. She had come to assess my father for his suitability for a nursing home place (or, presumably, an alternative). I should say that my father had heart failure and couldn't raise his arm or even a hand to his face to give himself a drink.

The welfare officer started asking my father the usual, and to me at that moment silly, questions to asses his mental faculties. At this point, I (who was obviously very tired both physically and emotionally) completely unreasonably berated the social worker for harassing someone in my father's condition. She was rather taken aback but my father saved the day by saying "Oh for heaven's sake stop acting like a couple of children.  I assume you want to know how compos mentis I am. I'm in a nursing facility. We live in a constitutional monarchy."  He then went on to name members of the government and so on until the social worker turned to me and said "Well that's us well and truly put in our place. I don't think I need to bother your father any more. I think we can safely say I have all the information I need to approve the placement".  She thanked my father and said cheerio. 

Dad died a few days later..

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 home' 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.

Blood on the Carpet

Fortunately I'm not particularly squeamish. 

Last week I was just about to get dressed and start the day, when a blood vessel in an artery in my right leg burst. Heaven knows why because the leg and artery have been part of me for over 80 years without any problems until then.

With my left hand clasped around a folded handkerchief stemming the flow I hobbled round the bed to the telephone.  The line was dead. The phone was out of order. Fortunately my cellphone was nearby and I used that to ring the emergency services. Within no time at all an ambulance arrived and, using the keycode, accessed the front door key and came in. It was a blues and twos call so everyone in the area knew that something was amiss.

After an emergency bandage had been applied they took me to the hospital and after more examinations and another dressing I was free to go home. Fortunately friends from nearby were in town and took me home.  A few days later a district nurse came to review the situation and give me advice on bandaging etc. 

I thought that I was looking at a new carpet and an insurance claim but we have a maker of magic who has a carpet cleaning business on the Island and after some hours of work he had the carpet looking almost as good as new. Certainly liveable with without the hassle of a new carpet and an insurance claim.  Amazing!

Missed!

I missed the month of October.  Not really, of course, in that I was here in the Land of The Living. Just not in Blogland. The first time, I think, I've miossed a whole month since June 2007.  When I woke this morning and realised that that it was suddenly November I also realised just how fast my life is flying by now I'm in my eighties.  

 

I'm no longer making promises to myself because I'm realising that I'm not keeping them and I always  used to pride myself that if I made a promise then I kept it, come Hell or high water.

 

What made me realise how out of touch I was getting was an email conversation with a Blogland pal from the early blogging days. It made me realise, too, just how many of my Blogland pals are no more. 

 

The irony is that in my 80s I am now fortunate enough to be busier than ever. Or am I? Perhaps the reality is that I am no busier than I ever was but  everything takes so much longer and much more effort. 

 

A friend has just bought a house in Sicily and is moving there. She offered me a ride there. Given that she owns a Bently that was very tempting. The reality is that I will never travel abroad again because, after my history of bouts of sepsis which have appeared so often and suddenly in the middle of the night, I have lost my confidence. 

 

I am fortunate to have lived what, in my terms, has been a very interesting life here and in New Zealand. So despite what would be an absolutely wonderful opportunity to re-visit Italy, a country I love so much, I am staying put in my Island home. I might, of course, pop down to Glasgow occasionally! Fortunately I am reasonably fluent in Weegie. Probably because of my knowledge of Scouse. 

 

 

In My Case It's Duvet Covers

What is the worst household chore if you live alone?

For me it's changing the duvet cover. 

When I was newly married (in 1970) we started married life with the new-fangled idea imported from The Continent - the duvet. 

My wife was brought up in a mansion. Well a very large house in several acres of garden on the very top of a small hill visible from miles around. It was, like many such houses, Baltic everywhere except in the kitchen and living room. The dining and drawing room fires might be lit in the evening in the winter and when visitors were being entertained.  So she had been brought up with duvets.

Eiderdowns (as we called them - the best ones were originally made from the down of eider ducks because it was the warmest) were commonplace on top of one's blankets in winter for those who didn't aspire to duvets.

The duvet was basically a much improved version of the eiderdown and used on top of a single sheet or, indeed, without a sheet but in its own cover.

Since May 1970 I have never slept (in my own house) under anything other than a duvet.

I love them. HOWEVER, once every week, I always used to hate them at the same time. Because that was how often we used to change our duvet cover.  

To be fair if there were two people doing the job it wasn't too bad but on one's own it was a nightmare. 

Over the years, however, I have perfected the art by using pegs on the corners and it's less of a chore. However it is still one of my least favourite household tasks.

Your least favourite household chore is....?

Oh Dear

I think that I'm depressed. 

Not in the true meaning of clinical depression but just generally peed off with life, the universe and everything (thank you, Douglas Adams). 

With apologies to any supporters of Donald Trump who might stumble across this blog, I think that he is one of the main causes. 

I've managed into my ninth decade and am very grateful for the fact that I still have (to some degree or another) all my faculties. That despite, at the age of 15, having a disease that people still die of today. The remedy was to remove a lobe of a lung and, to this day, I'm grateful for the hospital team involved in what, 64 years ago, was quite major surgery. It was after that that I had a very brief bout of post-operative clinical depression. I used to go walking for hours and hours on end alone with my thoughts. It was very short-lived. That was 64 years ago and I've never had a hint since. I count myself exceptionally fortunate. 

The other thing is that I never was an ideas person. However, I'm very good at executing practical ideas provided they are within my capabilities.

I'm very grateful for the readers of the blog who have asked if I'm okay. Thank you. I apologise (again) for the fact that I've been neglecting my blogging duties.

Have any of my other readers who may be, shall we say, not as young as they once were, found that life takes a bit longer in just about every way?

Short of something really drastic happening there will be another post this coming weekend. 

Hospital

(Written: 20 August and not edited for updates)

The last few weeks have been very full on and quite stressful. Unrelated to any of the other goings on I have just been to hospital for my uretic stent change. It's relatively routine. In 2017 after complications with my cancer my right kidney blocked. Unfortunately it wasn't straightforward and the exit to my kidney had to have surgery and an internal stent inserted. Apparently it's relatively routine. Unfortunately it has to be replaced every 3 or 4 months. So for the last 8 years I have been travelling down to Ayr Hospital for the surgery. It has been a long journey but I've always combined it with a stay with my pal, Anna, in Glasgow. The hospital is absolutely fantastic and a model of what every hospital should be like. As a consequence many of the staff on the ward I have attended for years have been there the whole time. 

For various reasons I have had an unfortunate history of pre-sepsis and, on a few occasions, full blown sepsis. Occasionally after my procedure and usually after it had been delayed. As a result they never allow me to be discharged until they are sure that I'm okay. The medics seem to have found a solution, though, and I've not had any problems for a few years. 

Last November it was decided that, given my age etc, it would be better if I was transferred to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness which is my 'local' hospital. for major things. Our local Stornoway Hospital is excellent but lacks some specialities. Raigmore is a hospital built in it's current form in 1970 with the tower block being opened in 1985. It is now far too small and appears to be understaffed and, probably, underfunded. 

As it caters for the whole of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland patients who are on longer-term treatment are not looked after on wards within the hospital. There are accommodation blocks a few hundred yards away which provide bedrooms (without ensuite facilities) and nothing else. In winter and the rain it's a long trek over the car parks to the main hospital entrance and what passes for a cafeteria which closes at 6.30 pm. It's even longer when you are feeling absolute crap in the middle of treatment. 

Anyway I had my stent changed and walked back to the accommodation block and at crack of dawn next morning went to the airport and was home well before lunch. 

I'm still recovering from the shock. 

Dinner: Eating and Providing

I used to do a great deal of entertaining. Most of it involved food. Usually it involved providing dinner for up to 12 (the number in my 'dinner party circle'). However I prefered 10 which was the number that would fit very comfortably around my dinner table.  As it was not uncommon for a couple not to be able to come there was rarely a full complement anyway. That was all so long ago. Now unless I have visitors staying I rarely cater for more than three or four.

I was wondering to myself the other day whether this was because giving dinner parties has gone out of fashion or because of changing social intercourse.  On consideration there are various factors.  

Many of the social crowd that I was part of have died or left the Island. Most of my friends are of a similar age to me and, frankly, much as we all love getting together and even sharing food together, none of us wants to spend two days preparing and cooking a meal for a dozen  people.  So life is much simpler. 

The reason this subject popped into my mind was that, despite getting rid of most of my cookery books, the remnants still account for 18" of bookshelf. 

I last gave friends dinner last weekend and I am just about coming to terms with the fact that we  thoroughly enjoyed the meal (you can tell when people are just being polite!) and that the wonderful "home made" beef steak pie was 'home made' by one of the local butchers. The three local butchers that I and my friends shop at all vie for which can make the biggest variety and the best beef and steak and kidney pies. Not only that they all make their own lasagnes and all manner of things. It's one of the advantages of having local butchers one of whom at least still has a farm with it's own livestock. 

My First Photograph

This is the first photograph that I took. It was of my father and younger brother (the late CJ).  I was 8 years old.  My father was a keen photographer and a member of the (Royal?) Liverpool Photographic Society which 75 years ago used to meet in the Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool City Centre.  The Society  doesn't appear to exist now although there are other photographic societies in the area.

What really struck me is the fact that my father was wearing a suit and tie despite the fact that we were on holiday and staying at the holiday cottage my parents had. Unfortunately I'm not sure which one it was. My parents had a cottage in or near Mostyn on the Welsh coast of the estuary of the River Dee at one time but also had one on the Wirral coast somewhere around Heswall for a while. I think that the latter one was green (and called The Green Hut) so this is probably the former. 

Last of The Summer Wine Club

Whilst we are on the subject of friends many people, particularly those in the same organisation or workplace who are part of a group of colleagues who have worked together for many years often make friendships which carry over when they retire. Of course some people move away when they retire or do not live anywhere near former colleagues. In my case I live on an island (and, yes I appreciate that Britain is an Island but I think you understand what I mean) as do a significant number of my former colleagues. So getting together is relatively easy.

In my case many of my former colleagues live in and around Stornoway. I retired from the local council 30 years ago. On the first Wednesday of every month we have a lunch club for retirees. We call it The Last of the Summer Wine Club. My readers in the UK will understand that reference. For those who do not there is a television programme which was on television for 31 years from January 1973.  In short three elderly men from Yorkshire prefer to stay young by engaging in "youthful" activities whilst reminiscing about their childhood days.  I enjoy watching it now as much as I did half a century ago - it hasn't dated one little bit.

Friends

I woke up this morning. This is something I've been doing for over eight decades and something I hope that I will be doing for some years to come providing that my mental faculties remain reasonably able to steer me through the day without too much trouble. 

Someone asked me recently if I had any male friends. I thought it was a very strange question and said so and asked why such an assumption should be made. Apparently it was very simple. I have coffee in The Woodlands several times a week at least. All the people with whom I have coffee are friends I have known for many many years (at least two I have known for over half a century). However all my 'coffee mates' are female. Why? Because their husbands are no longer with us.  I do have one male friend and former colleague I've known for 51 years with whom I have lunch in The Woodlands every Friday. His wife died a couple of years ago after many years of illness. 

On a Saturday morning I used to meet my son, Gaz, for coffee in An Lanntair (the local arts centre) whilst my grandson went to his drama class.  About half way through a friend (whom I've met for coffee on a Saturday morning for many years) would come and join us and then Gaz would take Brodie swimming.  Some say that routine is boring. I find it quite comforting.

However that routine came to a sudden end a few weeks ago when Gaz very suddenly decided to go back to sea. He received a phone call on a Thursday offering him a Chief Engineer's job on a superyacht. A job he has done for many years before he 'retired' several years ago. So one Saturday we were coffeeing and a few days later he was afloat at the other end of the Mediterranean. Now he is 'languishing' in Monaco.  It can be a hard life!