Adrian very sadly died in his sleep this morning with his parents at his side. It was in the end inevitable but the news is no less shocking or sad for that knowledge.
I of course never met him, I only knew him through his blog but he was one of the most inspirational and courageous people I am ever likely to have the privilege 'knowing'.
My thoughts are with his much loved family and friends, he was a truly special man and one who leaves an amazing legacy that we now have the honour of continuing. Rest in peace Adrian...you were one in many millions.
.....is not a secret anymore! I can tell you now what it was that I was blethering on about the day before yesterday. I am sooo excited!
We all have, if we are very lucky, a friend or two in our lives who we can really really count on and I have been very lucky to have always had good friends who have stood by me despite my not always being the er... the 'easiest' of people to deal with along the way sometimes, but I have one friend who probably knows me better than almost anyone else on this planet.
For almost five years now we have shared just about every aspect of our lives on a daily basis, the ups and downs of what have for both of us been a pretty turbulent period in our lives one way and another, I doubt we have any secrets from one another and no matter if it's 3 in the morning or a more civil hour, if I need her or just want to share something with her she is there!
We met via blogging, a chance in a million (or however many blogs there is out there in the blogosphere these days) when she posted something about a cat and I mailed her a response instead of commenting...and that was that, we became friends. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at how many emails we have sent between us, on an average day it can run into tens, it has been literally a five year ongoing conversation, almost everyday about everything, no matter where we are one way or another the wonders of technology keep the 'conversation' up and running!
Anyone who knows me well knows who I am talking about, even the few individuals I know who can be pretty skeptical about the 'validity' of internet friendships, refer to her and enquire after her, as though she lived just down the street but she doesn't, she lives in Nebraska in the U.S and for those of you who don't know who I am talking about it is LISA, she of Lisa's Place....and what's all the excitement and secrecy about?
Well, circumstances and luck have conspired and worked in our favour...... and one very early morning at the beginning of October she will land on a flight from the U.S. at London Heathrow and finally we will meet!!!!
I am just sooooo excited! Ever since it began to look like it might actually happen I have been bouncing up and down like a small over-excited child, I can't believe it! We always planned to meet up but life being how it is we never imagined that it would happen anytime soon but it has, and much plotting and planning later it looks like we can finally have a conversation over a beer instead of over the internet and real American pancakes for breakfast!!!!
(I know that will make a nice change won't it!).....because I have to go sleep.
Last night's itinerary;
Out for early dinner and a beer, early night (no smut please) in readiness for a 4am start today to get Fletch on his flight.
Easy.
WRONG!!
The actuality;
Early dinner and a beer, very relaxing in readiness for the 4am start. Bed early....all went horribly wrong.
Bed collapsed, making big scary cracking noise (honestly we were sleeping), spend hour trying to fix in sleepy miffed state, couldn't fix, grumpy and very unrelaxed. Back to now very sloping and unstable bed, much rolling downhill, no sleep until 3.30am, up at 4.00am, drive to Luton, fight annoyingly happy Tenerife/Malaga hordes. Drop off very tired Fletch dragging bags through heavy rain to terminal, drive home in still very heavy rain, struggle to stay awake, miss last turning (bugger), do extra 20 miles, make it home, get tool box, mend bed (no mean feat)!
Moral of the story: Don't buy an Ikea bed!
Sleep, I need sleep........
*Update;
Fletch's flight delayed, missed connecting train, stuck in middle of nowhere waiting for next one...two hour wait. Total estimated travelling time Luton-Scotland: 10 hours!!! This week is starting well then I see.
Well, I made it through the last week relatively unscathed, it had it's tough moments, it presented one or two extra problems along the way and the original issues that were concerning me on Monday are in some cases still ongoing and of great concern, but on a much happier note, one in particular is well on it's way to being resolved and with a much, much better outcome than I think anyone involved had dared to hope for.
So, it's onward and upward. Some of the issues may well be present for some time to come but there is nothing I can do to affect the outcome of most, there is something however I can do in one case and that one I am dealing with thus far successfully and in the knowledge that in two weeks time life will take a definite upturn for a while, the problems might not all disappear in a puff of magic but some pretty cool stuff is about to happen!!!
Firstly, in two weeks time Fletch and I will be in Positano on Italy's Amalfi coast, well in actual fact we won't have made it all the way there by the Sunday of that week, we will be en-route driving the 1500 miles or so from Calais, to attend a family wedding. After the wedding we plan to make the trip back by a more circuitous route and various camp sites. We have no fixed itinerary and Fletch has three weeks off work so we can stop and go as the fancy takes us. Sadly we won't be taking the bike, she's ill right now and time and money have conspired against us in getting her well again but hey, even in a car it's gonna be good, if a little tame!
But for all I am looking forward to the holiday it is not the thing that has me jumping up and down like an excitable child and wishing away the next few weeks at the moment. The real 'biggy' is something entirely different! Something I thought might never happen, something hoped for over years and finally, after much plotting and planning it is going to happen soon after we return from Europe.
Yes, I have a secret, a big fat super exciting secret........ ;o)
I took this while we were camping recently, I had no intention of doing anything with it but once I saw it I couldn't help but laugh....
it kinda sums up what an odd pair Fletch and I are, from an aesthetic point of view at least!It's something that hasn't gone unnoticed by those around us and had been commented on in mirth frequently, physically we are two extremes and the sight of us next to one another is I suppose quite amusing!
Why? Well, he is well over six foot tall while I barely scramble to five foot and am about level with his elbows, he has loooong flowing curly locks, I have short cropped very un-flowing hair, he is built like a strapping rugby player and over twice my body weight, (oopss, did I just say that in an out loud voice?) whilst I am pathetically small in build.... and he has feet the size of landing barges (no coarseness please) while mine still fit readily into children's shoes!
Yeah, ok, I can see why people laugh!
On a more serious note though it is quite a revelation to someone like myself who is small. Small people get used to being walked into on the pavement, to being overlooked in queues, to not being able to get served at a bar because the staff just don't see you there. We get used to being the one who has to move out of the way because passers by look straight over our heads and to feeling pretty vulnerable in a physical sense.
The revelation is this this and something we short people just don't imagine; None of that happens if I'm with Fletch. We get served at a bar in an instant, no-one walks into us, we can make it in a straight line along a street without being barged out of the way and no-one gives us any kind of aggravation! It's all pretty peculiar to me, who for instance if a drink is spilled onto me barely gets noticed let alone an apology, whereas if it happens when I'm with Fletch, profuse apologies are always forthcoming!
Being big it seems carries with it some degree of presence and respect, whilst being little makes one almost invisible.
Yesterday was something of a harassing day one way and another and left me questioning what on earth has happened to professional integrity and customer service. What seems to be apparent is that they just don't figure any longer with any degree of importance in the worlds of corporate and economic gain! I've split this into two posts, this and the one below.
After much research I eventually found a dentist yesterday that is taking on new NHS patients, so despite my fears I called them having been told by my doctor that I have to get the abscess situation sorted out properly. The conversation that ensued I find pretty concerning!
I was informed by the receptionist that before I can be considered for acceptance onto the dentists list I have to have a dental x-ray performed! Yes, I said 'before'. I queried why this was and the reply was somewhat vague and confusing I have to say. She seemed (I say seemed because she was so vague it was hard to decipher any real meaning in the conversation) to be suggesting that if the x-ray indicates I need much work I won't be accepted! Now forgive me here if you are a dentist reading this but it smacks yet again to me of dentistry in this country no longer being about care or integrity but being about making the buck! I know we all have to make a living and I appreciate many of the issues dentists have had over recent years with the government but at some point I wonder if they could stop in-fighting and consider us, the patient stuck in the middle!
But I digress. I questioned the receptionist further as to what I could do should I be denied treatment and was told I could visit the local emergency dental access service. I told her I had tried that but they could only deal with the initial presenting problem, i.e. prescribe more antibiotics in this case and along with my doctor had said I must have the underlying dental issue treated properly by a dentist!
Her response was that "I would be ok with more tablets"! I pointed out again that was contrary to all other information I had been given and that even those of us not medically qualified are now only too well aware of the problems of resistance in the over prescribing of antibiotics. I was met with silence...which I suggest says it all!
So, let me get this straight. The dental and medical professions say I have to have this dental problem dealt with by a dentist properly. The doctor says I can't have more antibiotics I have to see a dentist. The one dentist I can find wants to take the very odd step of x-raying before they accept me with a view to not accepting me if I need much treatment and has referred me to the emergency access center..... and the emergency centre tells me I have to see a dentist!
Where does that leave me....up the bloody dental creek without a paddle is where it leaves me and still with an underlying problem that isn't going to just fix itself! The doctor won't (and rightly) just keep prescribing willy-nilly, the access centre can't help and the dental profession is yet again sitting in it's ivory tower while our teeth rot and we suffer the pain.
I am so f*cking angry and fed up with all this.! I've had this hassle with dental treatment now for over six years on and off and it is part (though to be fair not all) of the reason I am now likely to lose my teeth before time. Come on guys, we are a nation who were lucky enough to have the education and facilities to have healthy teeth, this is not a third world country and it would be kinda cool if you could all start showing some integrity and stop trying to turn it into one dentally!
I've had enough now of the excuses and of understanding how hard done by our dental professionals are, we all have to live within the constraints our laws and governments decisions inflict on us but we don't all have the power to inflict continuing pain and discomfort on the poor sods caught in the middle! Where's the pride, integrity or professionalism in that?
If dentists still have an issue with their 'terms and conditions' take it up with those who impose those terms by all means but stop using the likes of me as a bargaining chip because it's unfair, inappropriate and does absolutely nothing to help the cause...which I have to say, when all this began years ago I supported.
I don't any longer.
Just sort it out and start behaving with at least some degree of care and integrity please!
And yesterday's other 'delight' in customer issues....
After much fobbing off and mis-information, Virgin Media, my ISP finally admitted that my lack of connection when I awoke yesterday was a fault at their end. This admission alone had not been an easy thing to achieve and in fact I only discovered it when having visited my local computer shop in an effort to buy the part I was told I needed the proprietor said that he had had over twenty customers during the morning all with the same problem and all with Virgin as their ISP!
Of course, Virgin's half-witted helpline staff didn't bother to inform me of the problem at any point in the proceedings and despite having promised on five occasions to call me back, not one call back did I receive. The last time I spoke to them a guy who appeared to have less technical knowledge than even I do told me it was my modem at fault and by the afternoon the helpline had 'conveniently' switched to a recorded message telling me that the fault would be rectified by 15.00 hours. In fact it wasn't up and running until gone 18.00 hrs but that I can accept, we all know that fixing this stuff is a pain, what I can't accept is Virgin's inability to take responsibility for the problem at the front end and to just be honest with the customer. It's not that hard is it to just adhere to a few basic principles of customer service??
Whilst I was wasting my money on their expensive phone lines I decided to also tackle the long standing 'phone line' issue we have. When Virgin originally installed our cable facility 18 months ago, it was to include TV, broadband and a phone line but they had problems installing the phone. They promised to return and complete the job....but despite numerous calls and much beating of one's head against a brick wall they never did. Yup....for 18 months we have been paying line rental for a phone line that doesn't work!!!! My patience already worn thin finally snapped and I made my feelings on the subject of the whole debacle of an operation abundantly clear....the result, in theory at least someone will be here Tuesday to at last connect our land line and the process has been set in motion to recoup the line rental over the time it hasn't been operational. However, if their thus far apparent 'form' and speed of service continue, by the time we actually receive a refund it will probably be worth pennies at current inflation rates!
No wonder Mr Branson is so well off! He (and those like him) have us by the proverbial balls, we can't migrate our custom elsewhere because they make it so damn difficult to do so and even if we have the fortitude to fight that fight it seems that none of the big providers are much better. In a corporate world where the benchmark is so low and where we have no real choices there is little to motivate these companies to behave with any real integrity!
Do you detect a note of sarcasm there in the title of this post? Today is not going well... Fletch is away on business and I have 24/7 alone to try and occupy myself. I don't know anyone in these parts, I don't have a job to go too and too much time on my own is NOT my forte. Now to add to that I have another and particularly well timed (not) issue. A clue is to be found in the format of this post perhaps. When I have all this time to fill I really rely on my computer to keep my mind occupied... And what has happened? My bloody internet connection has dropped off is what has happened..... and after much expensive time on the phone to the halfwits at the ISP's (un) helpline it would appear that it's not likely to be restored anytime soon! I am not chuffed to say the least. In fact I am particularly un-chuffed! The halfwits have fobbed me off with a new modem which will take days possibly to arrive and which I have to wait in to sign for... though of course they can't even tell me which day it might deign to arrive on, so I cant even go out! On top of that I have a sneaking suspicion that when it does turn up it's not going to solve the problem. Un-chuffed is an understatement!.... and the clue in this post? I'm reduced to blogging from my phone. :-/
Now on top of everything else I have a tooth abscess! It hurts, I'm hungry, I can't eat and I've got the right hump!
The quack was finally persuaded to prescribe me some anti-biotics this morning after much ado and 'words' about dentists, which incidentally, even if I could deal with the financially motivated oral professionals dentist malarkey right now I can't find one yet again who has any places on a list,....but I've done the dentist issue here til I'm blue in the face so I won't start that one again!
Yup, I've definitely got the hump today....and I can't even eat any chocolate. ppfftt.
This coming week is one I am entering without much relish, it's one of those odd weeks where a number of difficulties and worrying situations have managed, in their inimitable way, to come together all at once and I am faced with a week of feeling I will very probably be picking my way on a daily basis, through a confusing maze of emotional contradictions and practical difficulties in an effort to get to Friday unscathed.
There is no guarantee of course that everything will be resolved by the end of the week, I am merely focusing on Friday in an effort to break down the possible time span into manageable pieces. Very few of the situations are within my control at all, within any one's control in fact, they are just the crap bits of life 'happening', I can only stand by offering support and hoping for the best outcome for those concerned.
One however is within my control to a greater degree and that one I am endeavouring to face full on and with a positive attitude. I won't go into detail, that would only serve to make it harder for me and in reality it is something many wouldn't find a problem, but it is something I have battled with for years and as a consequence I intend to approach it with a positive outlook and as a chance to prove to myself and others that I can 'cut it' when I really need to.
The post title 'Is it Friday yet'....I know I shouldn't wish my life away, one of this weeks issues brings that home to me very starkly and really I am not wishing it away, I hope I will make best use of the days, but when Friday gets here I can't deny it will be a relief!
I think in my dotage I am becoming completely witless!
We have all heard others use the wrong words when trying to articulate something or laughed heartily at someone else's misfortune when they get so tongue tied that absolutely nothing coherent comes out and we have all, I suspect, done the same ourselves on occasion, but as I get older it seems to be a slightly more frequent occurence, along with the inability to think of the right word I want at the moment I need it.
Friday I surpassed myself in the stupidity stakes!
Fletch and I were watching the news and a clip of Chinese president Hu Jintao making his Olympic opening speech. I turned to Fletch and in all innocence and without a trace of apparent confusion said "Oh...I like his rectum"! FFS!
The look on his face, along with a very slight niggle in my own mind, that something was not quite right in the claptrap that I had just uttered warned me I was about to become the butt (no pun intended) of much derision and amusement!
Please someone, tell me that the words 'rectum' and 'LECTURN' at least sound slightly similar!!! Ugh, what a donkey!
I suppose I should only be glad that it wasn't me in front of a lecturn!
You know how once in a while you are reminded unexpectedly of something so acutely you can recall every last detail, the sights, the sounds, the emotions, even the smells, well yesterday, as I perused the BBC's coverage of the Olympics this year I was suddenly transported by a short clip of video back to my childhood. This clip, as it transpired, was to literally change my life. (Below is a version of same but the linked BBC version is much better.)
It was 1972 and TV wasn't encouraged in our family (despite it being my father's lifetime profession) but the Olympics were apparently different and relatively unlimited viewing time was allowed.
By chance I was sat in front of the dreaded 'box' when Olga Korbut did her winning floor routine for the gymnastic finals and unusually for me (Ms.limited concentration span here) I was absolutely transfixed.
Almost immediately my mother found herself with the task of finding one small daughter a gymnastic club that would allow her to 'try out'. As mothers do she found one post-haste and I was given my chance to 'impress' them a few weeks later. Oh, the confidence of youth, bear in mind here I had not had so much as a moments coaching thus far and other than watching Korbut I knew nothing whatsoever about the sport.
However, my confidence was rewarded. As the club put me through my paces for a day and instructed me on each move it began to be apparent that I might just have found my niche, whatever they asked me to do I could, it seemed and I won my place already able to perform much that the long standing members could.
I can still now remember the feeling, the realisation that 'Ms Average 11 year old kid' had found something she excelled in naturally, the attention I got from coaches and onlookers that day felt tantamount to adulation at my tender years and I felt like I was famous in my little world!
And that was the start of it, the next however many years were to be spent in a gym every waking moment I wasn't being schooled, weekends and evenings were spent competing at various levels and I often made it home with a winning result to my name. Remember that we are talking the 1970's, gymnastics, like all sports, was in comparison to current standards in it's infancy, but to the those not familiar with the finer points, I would have appeared at least, to have mastered much that my inspiration Korbut was competing with by the time I had been coached for maybe only a year.
Unfortunately to those with a practiced eye, namely the judges, I had a way to go and my dreams of getting into the British squad were just that, dreams, and realitically it wasn't going to happen. Yes, for the era, I was good if I say so myself, but I wasn't that good and as the years progressed and I repeatedly started to place second or third or even lower in the competition arena, the obsessively competitive kid in me began to lose interest. Spending all my time in a gymnasium with a coach barking orders at me and with most parts of my body bruised, bumped, twisted or injured in one way or another began to seem something less than the fun my contemporaries were by then engaged in....namely the usual teenage interests of partying, discos, boys and booze.
I was sweating it out and they were out partying, they wore fashionable clothes and I couldn't even get my way too big and un-feminine calf and thigh muscles into the narrow jeans of the day, they were developing a girly shape while I was looking more akin to a short version of Charles Atlas and they were building stamina for late nights while I was building stamina for day after day bandaging torn muscles and ligaments!
You can see why the interest began to wane!
Winning awards and medals might have had it's pull once but the little perfectionist already in me felt it was pointless if I wasn't going to make the grade. This coincided with my losing my coach (long and not very nice story) and being unable to find another as good..... and so almost as fast as I had started the whole malarkey years earlier, I stopped it and walked out of a gym for the last time at around age sixteen. I spent a few years fending off those trying to persuade me to become a coach but somehow it wasn't the same, my time in a gymnasium was well and truly over.
But it did change my life, it filled much of those odd early teenage years, it gave me direction, it taught me stamina and it gave me confidence, at least some of the time and it's the reason my asthmatic lungs have thus far had the capacity to let me breath normally despite my smoking!
Annoyingly in the longer term it's the reason I have the painful joints now of someone much older, being uber bendy and pummelling ones body to within an inch of it's life for years eventually takes it toll and though I don't understand the physiology I will never give Dolly Parton or Jordan a run for their money, the only part of a gymnast's chest that becomes 'well developed' is the pecs! ;o)
Strange what one little video clip can bring back!
It would appear that my ability to resist the temptations of any mindless pass time is sorely lacking!
You name it, Facebook, Twitter, Friends Reunited, each time a new way to 'socially interact' appears or a new 'lowest common denominator' TV programme is scheduled I promise myself I won't get sucked in...and each time I do, despite my best efforts to ignore them all initially.
I have had my mouse on the Facebook delete button a thousand times but I never quite manage to hit it. I stopped paying for Friends Reunited so I couldn't use it....and then they made it gratis and I got sucked back in and Twitter....hell Twitter is the real killer, Twitter have hit the spot, quick, easy and simple, completely irresistible and should one get bored with merely 'Twittering' there is of course all the different apps. to access it with to investigate and play with too!
I could go into the long, drawn out psychological reasons these things get us (or me at least) and how the marketing guys win us over but I won't, you know all that stuff already no doubt and the fact is simple, they have us by the balls, they know what makes us tick and they have powerful tools to infiltrate our psyche, it's pretty clever stuff really,it's more my ability to resist it, even armed with that knowledge, that annoys me!
However, it gets worse! I have a confession, I resisted for three whole years but I have fallen off the waggon again this year and have become victim to that which is the horror of all humankind....Big Brother! Another mindless carry-on and this one not even requiring the ability to do more than press the 'on' button and stare idiotically at a screen! Not even a mouse to take control of!
You know it's bad when you wake up on a Friday morning and mention with copious amounts of glee to a horrified partner that it is 'eviction night'....and worse still find you are having trouble understanding why that happily imparted piece of information doesn't fill him with the same glee and is met instead with a silent and pitying stare!
The sometimes intermittent account of one woman’s bumbling and somewhat unorthodox life….where things often go spectacularly awry and where the heart rules the head.
Here you will find honesty, stupidity, miscellaneous codswallop and a life lived in a manner it was never planned to be.... but lived!
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