As my eldest and I left Richmond theatre just now… a police car chase almost claimed me as collateral damage.
To say it was close is an understatement.
I’d say it was less than 6 inches… the gap between myself and a police car doing 60mph in a narrow street. If you know the roads around Richmond Green, you’ll get it. They’re NARROW.

Amazing quite a few people weren’t mown down to be honest, given a good 150 were pouring out of the theatre.

I saw the two guys on the motorbike speed past me … but wasn’t aware of the cop car following at chase speed.

Another life gone, I’d say.

That’s about 15 now. 😳

And thanks to Suzanne for restoring my faith in online dating sites… after a really good day out at Twickenham stadium and afterwards at The Cabbage Patch pub. Not places I’d usually go, as a Welsh fella but her brother has a big connection with Barnstable Rugby Club.. who were playing in the Papa John’s Cup Final!
Winners get free pizzas for life ( probably ).

Well after a bloody end to end game and a 35-35 draw .. the other side ( Heath ) were declared the winners because they scored the first try?! That’s the rule ..
SHAME! But hey. All the Heath players will be big fat bastards in a few years after all the free pizzas, so it’s better to have lost.

Her family day out .. and I was invited.
Big love to Suzy and her lovely fam.
X

After the bruising encounter with Blankety Blank on the weekend.. I escaped by triride to north London. I got a free ticket for The Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead ( no less ). Bit moneyed up there, tis.
The artwork was pretty cool, I have to say… although not that affordable unless you live in Hampstead.. ahhhh that explains the Fair location! Doh!

Because a park on a hill doesn’t have flat paths ( obviously ) it felt pretty precarious most of the time when in Hampstead parkland.. particularly around the world famous bathing ponds. I felt i could topple over at any second for just about all of the time.

Using a phone satnav isn’t always the best idea for the 13 mile trip home. .. this happens a lot. I set it to WALK directions.. yet it then flips to DRIVE There’s no notification that it has flipped until… you turn onto a major road.

The North Circular in the rush hour wasn’t my plan. Once on i decided to just brave it all the way back…. but I should have got off it asap in retrospect. Too big a road and too many cars and lorries. When you are going at the same speed or faster than the traffic… that’s fine. But when it’s speeding past you, it’s scary tbh.

Not as scary as being in a conversation with Blankety though. Give me dicing with death on the roads any day 😳

I had a date at the weekend. We went to see Peter Kay in the O2. Blimey I bought those tickets in 2019, I think. Then it was the pandemic etc etc and eventually the show was on Saturday.
My date and I enjoyed it. He is a funny fella.
HOWEVER.. and I’m not one to stick a negative on weight loss.. but the funny fat guy is now a bit of a serious looking thin ish guy. He’s got the same voice of course, and the same humour etc but in his particular case .. it’s definitely detracted from his act!

My date did stay for the weekend.. but after she had gone and I then went with my chum Roy to see the Black Keys in (the newly reopened ) Brixton Academy.. I sent her a message saying I didn’t think we had enough chemistry to make a partnership likely… well Blankety Blank ( that’s not her real name ) … got really cross.
Whereas she’d thanked me for a lovely weekend.. now I was ‘ an arse’ , ‘ arrogant’ and ‘ obnoxious’ no less. Well if I was all of those things, why would she have thanked me for a lovely weekend? I think it was because she was a bit f’d off I didn’t tell her she was dreamy instead.
I don’t usually go on dates with ladies who haven’t been mums. Mums are nice and not fazed so much by the ‘ downsides’ of paralysis.
Blankety Blank was a bit horrified by me asking her to transport a bottle of wee ( yes wee ) to the loo when she was going anyway. I mean I can’t actually get into one in my triride so the obvious option is to stick it in a bottle and ask my ( CARER TICKETED ) companion to do that for me.

No more non mums for me! 😂
My error, totally.
Only done it once before and she was equally horrified by the same request actually. Clearly I have faith in humanity and it’s misplaced.

Thanks to Mr Roy for a fun night in Brixton!
I got home via Triride on the 11 mile trip .. 15 minutes faster than he did via vehicular transport. See, everyone should have a wheelchair and a triride.

And great to see my ickle Yukon race chum at the end of his 63 mile jog from Brighton to London..
Good effort young Rob. You didn’t half smell at the end mind.

Thank you to Elizabeth for coming to the theatre to see Stranger Things with me. Neither of us had a clue it was like a cult following. You can optionally swap the letter L for an N.
Anyway it was weird but pretty good. Another ‘ play ‘ that used actors AND a background film footage. Seems to have crept into theatre ! Plays are half films now. Maybe they should be called Flays.

Saw Back to Black with Suzy Sue. Really moving film. I used to work in Camden and it was a bit of a hedonistic time for me tbh! But I didn’t get addicted to all the alcohol I drank and I didn’t take any drugs at all. Unlike Amy. I used to think she was a bit of a skank. Now I don’t. I can see she was supremely talented and just made bad choices which screwed her up because she just couldn’t handle them. I have an addictive personality.. but not to drugs .. mine is exercise.. in the main ( and other stuff I won’t write about .. ) I still exercise for hours a day often but of course now it’s only a few parts I can actually work on. 🤷

Thanks massively to Marky P for all his help with my van. It’s now actually possible for me to drive it safely! Before… well it wasn’t safe at all. Now I have a wheelchair that is attached to the floor of the vehicle so that when I crash.. I’ll stay in the van rather than end up mangled on the car bonnet. And thanks to Toby too, plus to Auto Mobility Concepts of Hemel Hempstead – really helpful people!

And always always thanks to Gina G x

I have observed Mr Dawkins transferring from the chair to the bed fully assisted.
Transfer was
very unsafe. His spasm was triggered by the minimum movement, the spasm presented in an extensor pattern, the paraspinal muscles contracting pushing him into the bed and his legs going into extension.
We have discussed the possible oral pharmacotherapy. I suggested to start Tizanidine at a dose of 2mg QDS and for the dose to be gradually increased over a period of 6 to 8 weeks.
The target dose could be 6mg QDS of 8mg TDS.
I will review him at regular intervals and
adjust further his oral medications..
We discussed the possibility of trialling Clonazepam,
Clonidine, Dantrolene, Methocarbamol but for now he is only going to be on Tizanidine.
Seeing the spasticity today and the spasms pattern I would be inclined to try the botulinum toxin again but to target only the paraspinal muscles this time. I will therefore see him as soon as possible and inject a total of 1500 units of botulinum toxin type A to his paraspinal muscles bilaterally.
OUTSTANDING CARE
HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
DA GREAT PLACE TO WORK
Providine a range of acute and community services across buckinghamsure

My leg rigidity it just so extreme now, they are like planks. Everything is getting harder and harder..
I bloody hope the drugs make a difference

I’m like this because of the dire surgery performed in 2016 by a doctor that I sued for médical negligence. After 6 years he settled out of court. I got a fraction of the what I might have had ( and deserve ) if I had gone all the way to court. However such is the system.. I may have actually ended up with nothing at all.

Then my ex wife went after me for a slice of what I did get.
I think if she actually knew/ saw how much worse it is for me, even her determination to screw me may have lessened..
Then again, perhaps not.

Anyway, I’ve not had the new meds yet. Let’s hope the side effects aren’t to make me really dopey, like some of the other antispasmodics have.

🤦‍♂️

Well I’ve had a ( female ) lodger for a bit.
Guess what? I’ve had to call the police.. she’s a bit light fingered, is young Esme.
‘ Accidentally’ apparently.. packed my possessions into her suitcase after notice was given of parting company.

I’ve been very, very supportive of Esme, this last few months.. she’s not had it totally easy all her life .. but I was warned the other day by none other than her own stepmother that she has a history of being trouble.

Ronnie Kray, I’ll be referring to her as in future. I don’t suppose the police will take any action, as nothing has actually been removed from my apartment… but clearly it’s pretty bloody obvious that that was her intention.

Be warned!
It’s no wonder she didn’t like the internal security cameras being on. Well it’s only the wrong un’s that object, isn’t it?

I went, with my chum Helen, to see A picture of Dorian Gray last night.
It was very good… of course, it being a classic piece of work by Oscar Wilde.

This particular revival of it featured just the one actor ( and it was a lady ) playing Dorian himself as well as all the other characters. That meant her playing about 9 parts.
There were times when up to 6 of the characters were on the stage at the same time. Clearly that wasn’t possible with just the one actor, so they used a mixture of her and video images to provide all the characters. That made it a half film/ half play, you could say.
You don’t go to the theatre to see a film though, do you? So it could have left you feeling a bit short changed in that sense.

As a production though it did work well, and was unique.

Mind you, if it catches on, what does that do to the acting profession? If one actor can play 9 parts and it’s fine to just include a load of video in a play.. then it would definitely make finding work, as an actor, very difficult.

Call me old fashioned, but give me a cast of nine real people, men playing men and women playing women… in a play… every time.

Having said that, go and see it ( if you can afford the tickets, cos it was a fair bit more expensive than it is usually for me )

It made me refresh my memory about Oscar Wilde himself. If you don’t know or had forgotten, he was a literary genius and a gay man. The latter was illegal in the 19th century, and he served gaol time in the notoriously cruel Reading Prison.

Having been released, he died ( in poverty ) at 46.

Hasn’t the World changed?

I saw a fantastic play on Friday.

Hills of California is very, very good!

Go and see it before it ends.
It’s a happy and sad play, happy before sad.
A happy family and then a not so happy outcome.

For me it struck a chord I suppose. I am part of a very dysfunctional family… that in years gone by wasn’t that way. I mean it was never perfect, not by a long way, but it’s nowhere near the sh**show it is now.

Anyway… Happy Easter!
If it wasn’t for paralysis I’d no doubt still be paddling in the Devizes to Westminster Canoe race this weekend. Age is no barrier.. but paralysis definitely is !

So it’s TV and chocolate instead..

Give me the cold, wet, dark Thames anytime.

X

PS
Well this year DW never got as far as W..
The last 26 miles of the race is on the Tideway, from Teddington to Westminster.
Well this year the authorities ( the PLA ) said that the river was flowing too fast so it was too dangerous. Tbh as a canoeist, it’s more dangerous further upstream than it is on that part, so that doesn’t really stack up.
The real reason, I think, was that the river was too turdy. Loads of poo in the water isn’t a positive.
By rights the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race should have been cancelled, on pollution grounds, but obviously that’s far too big a global event to cancel…. TV rights and sponsorship etc etc. It’s not about the health risk to the athletes! That’s a minor issue.
So they let that slide then .. but cancelled the final leg of the ( far harder but far less commercial canoe race ).

💩💩 🛶💩🛶💩💩

About 3 weeks ago I discovered I had, well let’s say, a VERY close relative that I had no idea I had.
That’ll be the perils ( sorry, the joys ) of anyone joining Ancestry.com.

I met him last week.

Lovely man too.

Sometimes surprises are nice ones. Winning the lottery etc.

Given my family is at best dysfunctional… this was a welcome addition!

💥😅💥