Having got out all my leather gear – gloves, cap and studded jockstrap, we went to Heaven to see Kimbra.
Leigh ( girl’s name on red blooded bloke ) was there, Bev ( girl’s name on girl ) and Wendy too of course, all appropriately attired ( say no more ) with me in the special box reserved for the wheelchair. Can’t complain, it was definitely a good view from which to see the cool lady herself. She’s pretty out there is Kimbra, and looked as fit as…… in her tassled suit kinda thing- like a walking and singing beaded curtain she was, to an audience probably well acquainted with beads for all sorts of ‘alternative’ reasons. You’ll have to google it if you don’t know, cos this is a family blog….

Kimbra 7/10 for me – great but not my thing really. Leigh ( girl’s name on macho guy ) probably gave her 9 or 10, so yes, she was good.

Russ

My eyes started to itch/ be uncomfortable about a month ago, just occasionally at first, but with spates of real discomfort. I am a qualified but not practicing optometrist, and it is different being the one with the symptoms, but not being able to look at my eyes with the instruments I used to have to examine other people.

So I just bought some Allergan ‘intensive drops for dry eye’ from Boots and they did sort of work, but the effects were short lived. Then I lost those and after another attack I bought some other ones ( Boots own ) They didn’t help AT ALL. I thought that it was quite possible that the mild excema that I get in my eyebrows was spreading to my eye lashes, so I used the special medicated shampoo daily. That did seem to work… but only for about 2 days.

It was getting a bit confusing, and getting worse. I also bought eye wipes that had impregnated tea tree oil in them, and that worked too…but only for 3 days.

I was already taking oral antihistamines btw, so that wasn’t the cure either.

Then I saw my friend Jo, who’s a hospital optom, and she said to buy an Eye Bag for dry eye. Dry eye is chronic and to do with your eyelid margins. It doesn’t ever really go away so I thought I might be stuck with this problem for ever. So I did buy one and it came in the post the next day. You heat that up, put it over your eyes and then massage your lids.

Guess what? Good for 3 days… then suddenly a LOT worse, as in completely distracting and stopping me from thinking about anything else. I started to get large amounts of white discharge, bad but actually for me very useful as a diagnostic clue. It wasn’t pus, it was mucous- that was obvious to me, cos I know this sh**… Mucous is an important tear component, but ought be dissolved in the tear film. When it’s visible it’s because there is overproduction of it. That was the clue as to my problem. There’s an eye drop called Opticrom, which I’ve been recommending for decades to patients who overwear their soft lenses. Those people then became allergic to the build up of their own secretions on their own lenses, was the theory, and the insides of their upper eyelids became quite lumpy, with a consequent over production of mucous by the mast cells in the eyelid tissue. Stopping lens wear and using Opticrom was the fix. The thing is that I don’t wear lenses and it’s not the season really for seasonal allergies yet, and certainly not a month ago, so why did I have an allergic condition? I’ve no idea, but even 2 hours after instilling Opticrom and it was feeling massively better. 24 hours later and I now have no symptoms at all.

I imagine it’s a little used eye drop overall, but Jeez was it effective. Obviously I’m not advising peeps to self diagnose all eye irritations, but this drug is available over the counter for the treatment of eye allergy, and the hay fever season is approaching…

Remember where you heard it first. …

One of my Carers does make me laugh. She was telling me about a time when she went to the cinema with a couple of guys. The guys were playing with names by swapping the first letters of their names around – like Din Viesel and Rulia Joberts etc.

They’d stopped doing it for a while and she went to buy some snacks. When the lady at the counter asked what she wanted, my carer said I’d like Large Cock Porn please…

Oh deary me….

That’s the kinda story KT T ought to have in her repertoire…

KT TUNSTALL…. yes she can definitely sing.

But Christ can she talk crap? After her first ( of many many ) long and irritating ‘ funny stories ‘ I was thinking to myself ‘ God if she was my girlfriend, I’d certainly be asking, if not telling her, to shut up..’ – for her sake more than for mine. She just needs to sing a lot more and talk A LOT less. She has that terrible trait whereby she thinks she’s being entertaining, but doesn’t realise that when only 1 percent of the audience laughs, it is a large clue that she isn’t doing that well… but trust me, that REALLY didn’t stop her.

It dawned on me that all 5 in her band were female, and a quick google suggested that she ‘ bats for the other side ‘ … which is lovely for her, but perhaps she needs a few fellas around to tell her to zip it occasionally. I got the impression that she’s surrounded herself with Yes people that indulge her, rather than ground her. At one point she went round the band and asked each of them what their favourite dessert was… they all looked a bit embarrassed actually. If the audience is all over 8 years old then perhaps think of different questions, KT?

But I’m sure she’s a lovely lady!

The show was supposed to last 2 hours I think but she crapped on so much that when we decided to leave after 2 hours, she was still going strong ( well, talking shite ).

KT’s singing 8/10. KT as an experience 4/10 for me…and I wouldn’t do it again.

Shame.

Anyway tonight it’s Heaven here we come!

I also have extremely sore eyes atm. I have a raging blepharitis issue that is incredibly distracting. At least it takes my mind off being paralysed…!

Good to see Nick H the other night. His older brother was killed by a car, whilst cycling a few years ago. Dangerous stuff, isn’t it ? Nick promised his mum that he wouldn’t cycle again, and he hasn’t. I’d say that’s a reasonable reaction.

As I mentioned before, I irrigate my insides daily to get rid of my bodily wastes..( 💩 ) This is a form of colonic irrigating but I put the water into a hole in my tummy, rather than up my bum. The water then comes out, down a plastic Shute thingy, into the loo. Flush the loo, take off the Shute, throw it away, job done.

I take off the Shute when I think that no more will come out. This is based purely on guesswork, as I can’t feel anything.

Occasionally I get it wrong. I remove the Shute, and then before I have chance to put a ‘just in case pouch’ over the hole, there’s a torrent of shitty water spurting out at fairly high velocity… hitting as far as the wall in front of me. No matter how fast I move, it’s never fast enough, it seems.

When this happens I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I mean I can see the funny side, but it does leave me in a messy situation….

As it happens so rarely, I can’t ever see myself going to the bother of covering everything in plastic sheeting before I start..

Ahhh the joys of a paralysis….

Tonight we go to see KT Tunstall in north London. Bus, Tube, bus probably to get there, then bus, bus all the way back. Buses in London go far faster at night – less traffic, see – so you gotta weigh it up and see what’s quicker/ easier.

Tomorrow it’s a gig at Heaven, which is a ‘ gay’ nightclub in Charing Cross. If we went there tonight, rather than tomorrow, we could see a band called Amyl and the Sniffers. Ha! You have to laugh… and that does appeal to my sense of humour. If you don’t know, you sniff amyl nitrite for a euphoric ‘ high’, but a side effect is that it reduces tightness in your anus, thereby making that kind of sex less painful…. not that I know from experience, I might add. Amyl nitrite is the constituent drug in a Popper, very widely used I hear. Having never used drugs, I have no idea as to the euphoria you get, but I can see the attraction. It’s been almost 6 years since my life changed so much, that euphoria is an extremely unlikely feeling for me. If chemicals are the only way for me to ‘ get there’ then you could forgive me for doing that, couldn’t you? I wouldn’t however, I’m just too dyed in the wool anti drugs ( for myself ) to ever go there, but cannabis is pretty common in the world of paralysis, and im sure far more. An ‘ escape ‘ from that world once in a while is very understandable I think.

Still not tempted however.

To my youngest.

Hard to even imagine times like in the picture.

It’s been 4 years since I saw her or her sister on their birthdays..

But life is better for me, in general, so that’s good.

About 15 years ago I had a tooth removed and I had an implant put there instead. That’s where they drill into your jaw and make a metal peg, and then stick an artificial tooth on top of the peg, with super strong glue. It’s never supposed to come off, either.

A month ago mine did come off. ‘This was as well as the front tooth breaking off… anyway I did my usual and used superglue to stick it back in, trying not to get that all over my tongue and gum… and being partially successful. It did work, but then fell off again after a couple of days. So I tried it again, and the same happened. I think I stuck it back on about 5 times, but it always came off when I ate something sticky.

I then went on eBay and bought some proper dental glue stuff. I did figure that I had to get it exactly right, as this stuff would stick fast pretty quickly, so was careful not to put the tooth on the wrong way round!

It’s trickier than you think this dentistry malarkey, and is definitely best left to the professionals. I did stick it on, but not exactly as it should have been, probably because I used a bit too much glue, so it wouldn’t go on totally properly. I was reluctant to go to the dentist and tell him what I’d done, so thought I’d just leave it to settle. … and hey! It has.

Good as new now…

So if anyone wants any dentistry done, as long as it’s only gluing, I’m your man. Are there no end to my talents… ?

I had my catheter changed just now. I did actually do that myself a few times.. until it went wrong and I ended up in an ambulance. Now I leave it to the medics, not that that lot get it right every time, as I have found out to my eternal expense.

I had my hair cut yesterday. The Turkish lad cutting my hair showed me the video of the massacre in New Zealand. To say it’s chilling would scarcely describe it. It’s as though the killer is in one of those pointless but popular video war games, with him methodically going from room to room to kill everyone. He returns to each room to shoot most of the bodies again, to make absolutely sure. You get the impression that he is totally emotionless in the act, as a player would be in the game, where the targets aren’t actually real people.

I think it’s almost certainly going to spawn copycat shootings, in those that watched it and enjoyed it, and there are definitely going to be a lot of those amongst the disenchanted.

Automatic machine guns seriously don’t have a place in the world, other than strapped to soldiers.

I wouldn’t recommend watching that video btw.

And it was ALMOST the perfect day for a Welsh rugby fan….almost a Perfect Storm.

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