3 years in and only now I have Covid.
I do feel rough, fair play. Gagging and coughing and shivering.
And it was my carer that gave it to me!!

Anyway, never mind. Had worse.
Wearing a big jumper and a scarf and sat in front of a powerful heater. Still cold though.

On a lighter note – Shirley Valentine at the Duke of York , with Sheridan Smith… a must see.

Thankfully I didn’t at that point have any symptoms. I feel too rough to go anywhere at all so I’m glad it’s AFTER Shirley ..

My UTI just won’t go. This is new territory and makes me really agitated. It gets a little better, then worse.
I feel really stressed and every little problem I get ( and they are continuous ) makes me feel upset/ annoyed/ frustrated.

I’m on a train to Alexandra Palace.
I shouldn’t be going. I should just quit.
But I don’t.

Not going doesn’t cure anything- that’s the trouble.

Triride back, thank God. Getting around without it, fast, isn’t possible.
As I am going to Alexandra Palace tomorrow, and the closest accessible tube station is miles away… I need my Tri.

And thank you sooooooooooooooo much Gina G for picking it up for me!

They said both batteries had blown. Ouch. At £625 each that’s not funny. I had a second set in any case for such eventualities and I’m using those.
One of the buggered ones did come back to life after leaving it on charge all night so only £625 down rather than £1250.

I think it’s one of the chargers that is faulty. I don’t know which one though, so I’m using a different one altogether now. I really don’t want to risk blowing another battery just because I’ve plugged in a faulty £20 charger to it. I can’t ‘ test ‘ the chargers because I’m not an electrics expert..

Ha! Having said that I’ve just found out how, online, and just ordered a multimeter.
Only £9.99.
I think I’ll be testing all my chargers! I have bloody loads 😂

And a thingy to test if batteries like AA and AAA etc is only £3.99
Well that’s gonna be handy. Let’s face it, you just can’t tell if a device is broken or it’s because of a shot battery.

But hang on, you CAN tell. Here’s something I’ve just learned. Working batteries don’t bounce, but duff ones do. Who’d have thought?! You just hold the AAA a few inches above a hard surface ( not wood ) with the +ve end uppermost, and let go.
If it bounces after impact it’s dead.
Good ones just stay down apparently.

Genius.
No more ‘ if in doubt chuck it ‘ – just drop it and you can tell!

See, you knew there was a reason you read this blog 😂

And now my Triride has broken down again.

Again tho – not whilst in speeding traffic.
Again in a ‘ safe place’.

Someone up there is looking out for me.

Thanks to the 2 guys who were kind enough to push me.

Say what you like about black guys.. but they are all very helpful when it comes to me.
More helpful than the average white fella anyway.

I can now not meet my refugee buddy at Richmond theatre. Sorry Omer.
And he can’t go as my help, if I’m not there

Ffs

I mean he could have tried but he said he wouldn’t go without me. Bless him.

I shouldn’t complain though.
Not while those in Turkey, Syria and Ukraine are going through their terror and grief.

Someone asked me today if my spasms are painful.

Thought I’d post my reply on here as well.

No.
Imagine you’re sat on a plane and there’s a kid in the seat behind that kicks the back of your seat every 30 seconds for the whole overnight flight.
And he kicks it in a variety of ways. Sometimes very hard and sometimes less hard but over and over again.

Imagine you’re In that plane for the rest of your life.
Yes, there’s a tv screen you can watch.

Oh and you can’t get up for the whole flight.
You have to pee into a pot without leaving the seat.
But you can’t feel your genitals and you can’t push your legs apart because they don’t work and they involuntary squeeze together all by themselves.

And the people around you have no idea and get huffy if you show any sign of being ‘ short ‘ with any of them, even once in the whole flight
Well that’s my life, all of the time.

Well having had bad spasms ( and I mean REALLY bad ones ) for a month or so, and altogether ‘ abnormal ones ‘ for maybe 2 months.. I spoke to Doctor Perkins in Hong Kong. He suggested it might be a UTI.
I said, no it’s not that because when I have a UTI I’m always anxious, paranoid and suicidal .. and I haven’t been any of those. I’m cheerful, despite poor sleep and constantly trying to wedge stuff around my legs to stop them moving so much.

But hey, after a night where I was like a lying down cast member of Riverdance, I thought that I’d try antibiotics.

Well bugger me if within about 4 hours the spasms stopped. Doh. I’m glad but feel a bit daft.

On the basis that UTI’s always depress my mood, and taking them ‘makes me happy’ I’m expecting now to be suddenly ridiculously cheerful, because I wasn’t even feeling down.

Hasn’t happened yet tho. Just feel the same but now can go out without shoving a large chunk of hard foam between my knees.

🤷🤦‍♂️😁

I went to see Lemons Lemons Lemons last week.
Now there’s another ‘ stop listening/ blink for 5 seconds and after that you haven’t got a clue what’s going on’ kinda play.

I think script writers should factor that element in, in their plot play out – that an occasional reminder to wtf the play is actually about now and then ( if the watcher has perhaps missed the millisecond of ‘ explanation’ at the start somehow- maybe because the person next to them was coughing, or attaching his wee bag overflow ).

As my friend Sarah was asleep for half of it, it clearly didn’t grip her either.

Anyway if you do go, carefully read the synopsis before you do. I guess that’s what proper theatre critics do.

I saw Steel Magnolias with me refugee buddy – maybe I’ve already posted that ? That was ok, but definitely dated humour. I didnt laugh once, and I’m very easy going, humour wise.

Then me n Kerry M went to see Sylvia at The Old Vic. That’s a musical about Emily Pankhurst, a suffragette and her family, and her daughter Sylvia is the title. Ole Emily wasn’t a black lady in real life, nor was her husband black and therefore not their daughters. Neither was Winston Churchill black.. but all that was ok – black singers are ever so good and it was a musical. When Churchill’s mum stormed the stage with ‘ WIN- STONNNNN ‘ in a Jamaïcan accent, it was very funny.

So I’d go and see Sylvia but give the other 2 a miss.

Russ the say it for real theatre critic.
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