Listening to The Fate of Rome on Audible. .. it’s so far all about plague and pandemic. and that’s what ended that period in history. It’s all a bit timely and familiar sounding.
For sure though, back then they had it far worse than we do! There were various strikes of plague and for 25% of everyone in the affected region might die. Some plagues may ( because they don’t know for sure ) have killed 25 million people.. and there were a lot less people around back then. Death was normal, in all levels of society, even in one case mentioned, that meant that only 2 of 14 kids born to the emperor’s wife surviving.

The infrastructure of the Roman Empire with its roads and routes meant that disease spread fast ( sounds familiar ) and it was the men who died more than the women ( also sounds familiar ). Back then they didn’t understand how it spread, so it did, and fast.
Now we DO understand how it spreads, and yet still we let it happen..? Not good, is it?

Dipping my toe / wheel back in the dating pond. Ahh what fun .. 🤦‍♂️
At least I sort of know how it all works now..

With far less places to go, and social distancing.. it doesn’t make it any easier, does it?

No foreign trips this year either. I can’t see how that’s very sensible just now, and you just suck it up, don’t you.
Am I one of very few that isn’t stamping my feet and how unfair it all is, that I can’t go to a foreign beach.. ?
Well no actually, and that’s not ONLY cos I can’t actually move my feet in order to do any stamps..

And big love to Leigh ( Male ) n Bev for coming for dinner, and for my mum for actually making the bolognaise sauce (!) and leaving it in my freezer, after their visit, so that I didn’t have to give Leigh n Bev just crisps , which they might have had otherwise.

Socially distant and outside, but still lovely.
As was the same environment ( distant and outside ) with Chris the Cats, and Russ S, and Q n Rik in recent history. I think im more used to the antiviral behaviour than I am to the hangovers I have very recently had!

Gawd, watching the Viral spread around the world with a morbid kinda fascination. No stopping it now, is there? You can still try to avoid it, and help reduce its likely effects on you by getting in the best shape you can be ( ASAP ) but it looks like, once again, we are all gonna be quite likely to be exposed.

As my outside space has a fair bit that’s inaccessible to me ( and no, the developers wouldn’t stump up to make it so ) im having the path up the side bit widened.. which means I can wheel up there and have a vegetable area on raised planters. It’ll be like The Good Life, once i get the pigs n chickens. ..

As I got stuck in the mud ( again ) and actually had to shout HELP last night… it’ll not be too soon for me. Thanks to the fella upstairs ( Rob ) for coming down, then scaling the railings to then pull me out.
Why is it I went into the muddy hole the only time in recent memory that I didn’t have my phone on me..

And gigs n stuff I’ve either just missed, or am about to, due to the virus shutting venues ? …

Beck in Brixton

Billy Eilish in the O2

To Kill a Mockingbird in a theatre in town

The Kings of Leon

Vanessa Paradis

Gabriella Cilmi

Darwin Deez

Fletcher

Gabrielle Aplin

and Sir Ranulph Fiennes talking, tho my buddy Rob S did tell him about me, and my various misdemeanours. And you know what ole Ranulph said ? He said ‘ blimey, I ought be the one going to listen to Russ speak !’

Bless him. Apparently he’s a great bloke, Rob said.

and lots of others!

Doh 🙄

And for the last time…. Wendy and i went our separate ways.
Im sure we’ll always be friends though.
And I hope she comes to visit the budgies!

It’s two years today since Wendy and I met.
What an amazing woman she is for sticking around this long, I say.

❤️❤️❤️

My mate Paul and his blind dog Bolt have now started ‘ starring’ in TV commercials for Blind Dogs.

I said to Paul

I knew from the moment I saw Bolt that he was heading places.
What you gonna do Paul once he’s the new Lassie and livin the dream in LA ?

Paul laughed…
I said .. I can see it now …

‘ what’s happened Bolt ?’

‘ Paul’s fallen down the well !?’

( barking )

‘ What Bolt, you told him he should be more careful, the blind fucker ?’

I’ll keep going, eat more food ( or I’ll disappear ) and do more resistance work ( ie same effect as using weights.. which I can’t pick up )

Ok then.

So I had a UTI raging inside my body for I imagine no more than 72 hours. In that time I managed to be argumentative on Facebook, be snappy to my girlfriend, not want to go and meet up with mates and think about suicide a fair bit.
As none of the above count as habitual behaviour, I can conclude that a UTI is an INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE thing for me. I was aware in my interactions over a few days that my impulse was to see the negatives in any situation, and that my responses ought be/ were justified in being, negative. I was aware of my thought process, wondered why to myself at first ( but didn’t stop myself ) , then once I realised I had an infection had the thought, analysed why, put it down to my infection, but still couldn’t stop me being adverse. As the antibiotics took effect, I’d have negative impulses, but found myself able to now rationalise those impulses, realise they weren’t helpful, and suppress them from being expressed.

So now put this situation into a TWO YEAR PERIOD where I either had a UTI, was getting a UTI, or I was ‘ recovering’ from a UTI. Two years, 830 days of it. And not even bloody realising the connection between my negative mindset ( which trust me isn’t ‘ me ‘ at all ) and an infection. They don’t tell you at the doctor’s, or in the hospital. The psychiatrist ( well several) I saw asked all about my medical history, but didn’t once make a connection and EXPLAIN it to me.
So there I am, freshly paralysed, beyond sad about that, but also now in the grip of a mind and personality altering, unbeknown to me, internal fever that I didn’t even know I had to try to control at all costs.

Rétrospectively it’s no surprise to me that in that 2 years I lost my marriage, my home, my business, many friends, and my children.
And the thing is that once people form an opinion of your personality, they are generally pretty unforgiving. I bet the vast majority of people reading this have fallen out ( quite possibly permanently ) with a friend or acquaintance because of just ONE comment/ incident. So imagine if you knew me, met me 20 times and every time came away thinking
‘blimey, that wasn’t much fun, can’t he just cheer the F up, it’s not like he’s dead ‘… well to be honest there’s not much impulse to meet up with me a 21st time, is there? And once you’ve ‘decided ‘ about me, then that’s generally it. The next time you see me and I smile at you, the smile makes no difference, because you have already ‘ decided’ about me. The next 20 smiles also make no difference, and now actually the one at fault is you… and bear in mind that the smiling person ( me ) doesn’t actually realise what he’s guilty of… because it wasn’t deliberate. He’s then bewildered by your coldness to him.

The only person who unfailingly ‘ stuck by me ‘ through it all ( out of the people that saw me day in day out, that is… because to ‘know’ you do have to see it all )

‘ whatever the weather’ was Pia. She always had time to help me, and yes, it was help without which the consequences would have been terminal on many occasions.

UTI’s can massively affect the moods of people who have dementia onset, the elderly in general, and take it from me, at least some of those who have trauma to their spinal cords.

So the lesson here, in general, and not specifically about me at all, is to understand that the reaction of a relative, friend or colleague in a certain situation, is really really NOT necessarily at all a deliberate one, or a spiteful one, and not necessarily AIMED at you, but could be simply due to events or illness or medication that have temporarily adversely affected that person’s disposition.

Please do your best, after a negative incident, to FORGIVE… and not condemn, and not throw away a friendship.

Neither of you benefit from the loss.