(Moral) copyright- Mike Smith

Very Christmas’ y, for sure.

My God.. no sooner do I mention Status Quo in my blog, than the lead singer dies suddenly.

I was sent this moving. (?)’ tribute’ by my my friend, Chris.

RIP   Rick Parfitt.

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I had a truly brilliant time at my work party.

I didn’t get to catch up with a few key people, as I just couldn’t manoeuvre my chair through the right inter table gaps to do that, but nearly everyone else came and had a real laugh with me, staff I knew and staff I’d never met.

Great night!!’

As always thanks to Pia for her Carer duties!

A few weeks ago I ordered  the electric bicycle attachment that goes onto my wheelchair.

Its the one in the video I posted, with the dog.

The dog is an optional extra, which I declined.

My buddy, Dickon Stainer, has gone to Farnborough to have it fitted for me, and will return with it shortly.

Big thanks to Dickon!

The thing goes up to 30mph, which is a pretty mental speed. There are slower modes, thankfully, with the pavement setting limited to 4mph.

I’m going to a Masquerade Ball tonight – the office Xmas party. It’s at Mercedes World in Woking. As they have a test track there, I may take it out on the skid pan after a few vodkas.

What’s the worst that can happen?

My big brother has had his ski damaged eye operated on yesterday, and is now at home. Fingers crossed that it’s gone well, or as well as can have been expected. As he likes wearing an eye patch, I think he might just keep wearing it anyway, just for the look.

Great to see Craig today, who lost his leg after a verbal argument with an idiot driver, whilst innocuously parking his car about 3 years ago, his car rolling into him and crushing him.

Craig and I talked about happiness post trauma.

Its not an easy state to find, but I have proven that it is certainly possible!

Lovely to spend time with Roy, Debs, Dani, my girls, and Nick and Sophie ( the tangerine stealers of Chiswick )?

Deprived of my 2 normal chairs today, I’m currently stranded in the flat, hoping that eventually someone will come back!

But I’m cool.

I’ll tell you who else is ice cool – my mate Chris Myatt on his lawnmower tractor! Think Mad Max in Weston Super Mare, and you’ll be close.

After 6 months of doing no aerobic exercise, through being either in hospital, or banned from gym/ transferring at all, I’ve finally got into my Trike.

The immediate problem was that as I can no longer  bend forward/ crunch any abdominals at all, I was at completely the wrong angle ( declined way too far back ) meaning I couldn’t get any power into pushing the levers.

A massive pillow behind my back was the solution, tho without any ab crunch I am a lot less effective than I was.

No matter, I’ll get used to it, I’m sure.

What was great, was having some bloody self propulsion after all this time spent being pushed.

Additionally, all the jerking around seems to have made me burp about 15 times – and that’s a lot of extra  trapped intestinal gas/air that’s now floating over Chiswick like a Victorian Smog.

Brilliant to see Skippy Watson- a blast from the past – and for an Australian a nice bloke.  He and I have a connection that I won’t go into, well I will unless he pays hush money into my account by the end of the month.

And I went to the dentist and had a massive molar filling replaced – it fell out 4 months ago. They now do white fillings as a default, it would seem? That’s a good development!

We made it,  to see James off.

Danielle’s clever shortcut through Mortlake Cemetary got us there in time.

It was fitting that a lot of people were there – he obviously made a lot of friends, which I was really pleased to realise.

It gets you thinking about how many people would show up to your own funeral.

So I book a wheelchair taxi, for James’s funeral

It comes on time.

I wheel to the lift in my building.

Guess what?  The lift engineers have come to service it.

No notice/no call/no email/no sign put up.

It means a long delay and possibly also missing the funeral.

What is about certain ‘ trades ‘ ? They feel they can just show up at whatever time suits them.

And there’s never an apology..