As I was telling Lizzy yesterday, and I realised just how funny it is… I thought I’d write it here too…

My Nana Tess ( my Dad’s mum ) died when I was in my 20’s.. but of course my memory of her is still very much alive. She was a lovely woman, always smiling and laughing. A truly terrible ( and I mean really really terrible ) cook, we always dreaded having to eat anything at hers, unless it was biscuits, which she always had loads of.

Anyway, she had very funny expressions, and she used to tell funny stories when my brothers and I were small ( and often she’d tell them over and over ).

She’d call any relative ‘ Our’ followed by the name, so I was Our Russ. If for example she’d thought I’d farted ( as if I ever did ) she’d say ‘ ooh.. I think Our Russ has dropped his pocket money..?!’

She strongly advised that if you needed to fart, you always should, and said that she knew a woman who always held hers in, and in the end it killed her.
Nana Tess swore blind that the woman was buried in a church ‘ up the Garn’ ( that was a place a couple of miles up the valley ) and that on her gravestone were inscribed the following words ..

LET YOUR WIND GO FREE,

WHEREVER YOU MAY BE.

COS THAT’S WHAT CAUSED THE DEATH OF ME.

So remember those words folks when you need to let rip.
Not letting it go might cost you dear…

RIP Nana Tess.

I have had a new lodger for a month.
He’s Iranian, and is a barber. He’s a lovely, soft spoken ( but ridiculously over deferential ) guy. He’s so deferential that he insists upon calling me Sir.
I mean no one til him has addressed me that way… and I’ve been around for quite a long time.
Tonight he came in in the middle of me ( trying to cook, following the Hello Fresh recipe. I don’t know, but my brain struggles with recipe type instructions. I know so little about cooking that none of it seems intuitive to me at all, or at least not yet. I have to read every line about a thousand times. The cooking malarkey is ok for the first 5 minutes but after that all of a sudden you have to do about 10 things at the same time.
Being in a chair and having to wheel about balancing things in my lap ( that I can’t feel or grip with my knees or anything.. ) well anything could fall or spill if I’m not careful, and it’s ever so easy to bump into stuff all of the time.

My music is on really loud ( as I’d just downloaded Spotify onto my clever telly and it’s suddenly playing at REALLY high volume through my amplifier via a fire stick ) and in ‘creeps’ my deferential lodger, as though he’s Gollum and I’m the Dark Lord.
Now it’s like a nightclub in there, and he’s saying something to me. I’ve got stuff on my lap and 4 pans with stuff in all cooking.. I’m not a natural at this, I can tell you. I’m saying ‘ pardon!? ‘ as loud as I can and he’s saying something very quietly ( being deferential ) and sort of waving something brown around near the freezer.
Slightly exasperated I wheel over to the amp and turn it down, with stuff in my lap, and say ‘ what is it you are saying ?’

He says, quietly.. Sir can I put this in your freezer….? ( the ‘ this ‘ being a Magnum lollipop ) I mean seriously… he’s actually asking me that… seeing I’m pretty busy and it’s not easy for me?
I tell him to please not ask me such questions.. and that of course it’s ok … good grief…

I turn the music back up and carry on.

Five minutes later he’s back … speaking so quietly I can’t possibly hear him. Again I go to the amplifier and turn it down. Yes I ask him, what is it?
He says ‘ I have a KFC and I’m asking if you’d like some ?’

I say no thank you… but I’m thinking Who the Actual Fuck do you think I’m cooking for, with all these complicated pans… and who do you think is going to have to eat it … and who would seriously, given the 2 previous, want to also have a Kentucky..?

Well he’s a bit ‘ portly ‘ so presumably him I guess…

After that he offered me one of his little individual tiramisus… that he seems to have an endless supply of .. and that I do always say no to..

Are all lodgers a bit special or is it just the ones I get?

But seriously with this cooking thing… how can a meal for one EVER be worth about 10 pans / dishes / plates, with knives and forks and a grater, and then about 15 minutes of one handed washing up ..?

Give me peanut butter on toast in 2 minutes any day of the week… surely you can’t argue with that one?

And another entertaining dinner at Lizzy’s.

Where her son says to his sister .. ‘ oh my God, you really are a 14 chromosome’r, aren’t you?! ‘

To be fair it was in response to his 13 year ops sister’s revelation that in year 8 she’d asked her teacher ‘ did the world used to be just black and white in the old days Miss ?‘ ( having seen an old movie on the telly the week before .. ).

Not really my place to laugh out loud too much just yet… ? 🤦‍♂️😳😂

Blimey what a day.

Im going to meet up with Roy ( outside, in the grounds of Chiswick House ). When I am halfway there, and thankfully just after I’d turned off the crazily busy road that traverses Kew Bridge, my Triride spluttered and juddered to a halt. Occasionally it has stopped going, but never in a way like this. The Tri hasn’t felt the same since I had the tyre changed at the bike shop. Usually I try to do it myself (tho I need someone else to help me since I just can’t move my trunk enough, or bend into the necessary position ) but it’s not easy and I thought this time I’d leave it to the professionals…
Except… I have to admit that the ‘ mechanic ‘ took a bloody long time to change the tyre… far longer than it’s previously taken me plus friend.
When I wheeled back from the bike shop, and for the following few days, to be honest it didn’t feel right, or sound right. It looked like he’d twisted the cable which goes from the battery panel to the motor wheel ( the wheel is a motor all by itself when supplied by battery power – all very clever ) and having googled the error message that came up it implied a communication fault between the power and the wheel.
Anyway, at that point I’m a bit stuck. I’m on a busy road and unable to go anywhere. I called Roy to explain my absence from our meeting place, and he offered to drive over and help, even though he was working that day. Bless him ( and I’m always grateful I have such lovely mates ) for driving over, buying me a sandwich and a coffee, and then helping me get back.
I always have to think of the best way to get myself out of a pickle, and I seem to do ok at it really. I asked Roy to push me to a bus stop, hail a bus, and then push me backwards up the ramp onto the bus. I had to get on backwards so that at my destination stop I could wheel down the ramp ( with gravity assist and then be less than 600 metres from home. As the first 250 metres is slightly downhill, I figured I’d be ok for that bit. As I can’t bend to push my wheels with any useful force, I just can’t get anywhere fast or uphill using just my arms, but I was ok to get as far as the canal towpath by myself.
Then I knew I’d have to ask someone for a push, or take a long time to get back ( which I reckoned I’d manage … probably )
As it was I asked the first person I saw – an Eastern European fella it turned out ( and actually those guys are ALWAYS helpful, and he pushed me back home. Of course I’m pretty vulnerable – someone could try to rob me without too much difficulty to be honest… but he didn’t. Instead we discussed a decent place for him to launch a 22 foot boat onto the canal ( which actually isn’t easy unless you come through the lock system from the river Thames .. )
I was back at least… phew .. and then called messaged my mates Mark and Toby ( Moby for short ) in the hope that either would be available to help fix the mechanical situation. I also called Colin Flounders, the gent that supplied the Triride to me. He lives in Devon, about 300 miles away from me, but was actually in my vicinity in his van, or at least not more than 45 minutes away. As he too is in a chair, it’s not exactly straightforward, but he always finds a way.
Having got back I managed to get my Triride off, and then by tipping it over backwards and getting my recycling bin underneath the front wheel to raise it up, I undid the wheel bolts and got the wheel off. As I can’t bend or rotate my trunk I have to do everything one handed, but I manage quite a lot of stuff really despite that. The wheel is heavy, and also is attached to the battery supply, but I managed to untwist the cable and get it back onto the fork. When I switched the power on again, Lo and Behold I now had power… proving that the bike shop caused the problem ( which is sad for me, since over the years they’ve been absolutely amazing to me – but this particular guy I’d not seen before ).
Then however I realised that I couldn’t do the wheel nuts up tight. The thread had been damaged, or the axle spindle had moved, or the wheel nut was damaged, or any combination of these.. so that had I used the Triride it would have been dangerous at best.
Was that the bike mechanic too? I don’t know for sure, but it was DEFINITELY all fine when I took it to the shop 4 days earlier.
Anyway, at that point the cavalry arrived.. Colin in his chair ( with van ) and Toby on his bike. They both had a look, and figured it needed proper checking by Triride. Toby pushed it to Colin’s van, and lifted it in, and Colin then drove it to Farnborough, where a guy called Nathan is based. He’s the expert..

Somewhat stuck without electrical power assistance, I asked Toby to help me get my spare ( Chinese version – not anywhere near as good, but definitely ok ) attachment onto my chair for me, to see if it worked. I’ve had it for a year but never had to use it. A lot of buggering about with the complicated attachment system later and it was on, and working too, though I wouldn’t want to use it on a long trip to be honest – not in the winter anyway – too risky.

Having been inspected by Nathan… it’s gone back to Triride in Italy for repairs. I don’t think the bike shop fella can have caused ALL the damage, but he definitely caused some of it I believe. I’ll be without my trusty attachment for a while of course, but at least I’m assured of it being in A1 shape once I get it back. To me it’s like a car is to you… and you obviously need a car serviced regularly, or you’re asking for trouble.

But massive thanks to my mates ( male and female ) who help me out when I’m in trouble, or in need. There are quite a few of you, and you are priceless to me, boys and girls.

I loves ya.

Russ

I got a ( naughty) political advent calendar.

It’s like a normal advent calendar, but there’s a dick in number 10.

I had a Swedish girlfriend once, she wasn’t pretty, she had a face like a Norse.

I read that the Welsh invented the condom in the Middle Ages by using a piece of sheep’s intestine.
The English later improved the design by taking it out of the sheep first.

This virus situation….. we seem in this country to only just have a loose grip on it, wouldn’t you say?

I’ve spent the weekend in Sevenoaks. It’s the same there as it is everywhere else ( including in my own situation ) in that we all bend the rules to suit ourselves, and that ensures that the virus keeps on spreading. That was brought home to me by chatting to a friend of Lizzy’s who lives in Singapore. He was here because he had been given special dispensation to leave the country to visit a sick elderly relative. On his return to Singapore he’ll be sent immediately ( without passing Go ) to a quarantine hotel where he’ll spend a compulsory 2 weeks. After that he’ll be allowed back into society there… except in Singapore they have a complete handle on virus suppression. No one is allowed to visit another household, and you MUST wear a mask ALL OF THE TIME once you leave home. You keep it on even at work if you work by yourself in your own personal office, and NO ONE has an exemption. In Singapore there have been NO NEW CASES for a month, and there in ONE PERSON IN HOSPITAL with COVID 19. One.. in the whole country!

If you break the rules at all, you are immediately arrested and fined ( I think he said it was a thousand pounds ). If you break the rules and happen to be foreign, you are IMMEDIATELY DEPORTED.

Guess what? Mmmmm, everyone obeys the rules, and short of socialising the country has carried on running pretty normally. They’ll do this until everyone has been vaccinated. The population are behind the measures and there’s no dissent. Everyone can see the endgame, and the logic of the measures.

I compare that to here. I’m currently on a train, and was just talking to the Guard. He spoke about the large numbers of passengers who don’t wear masks, even though it’s the law. The Guard has no absolute authority. All he can do is ASK people to obey the law. He can’t enforce it…. unless there happens to be a member of the Transport Police on board, then EVERYONE breaking the law just gets away with it. To make matters worse there are constant announcements over the tannoy that say that many people are exempt from wearing masks. Why? Why is anyone exempt? It’s a flimsy piece of cloth over you mouth and nose. Why on earth can ANYONE here be exempt from that ? In Singapore there are no exemptions.. so are the humans different in the UK? And what, loads of them are different here? People have some kind of aversion to wearing a bit of cloth? C’mon, seriously? Do those same people refuse to wear scarves around their necks and faces when it’s snowing for example? I very much doubt it. Why do we here just pander so much to the whinging minority… I don’t get it.
In the Welsh borough of Torfaen where I come from, and where most of my family live, 480 people have died of COVID. It’s not even a county, it’s a small area. 480 people… twenty fives times the number that have died in the whole country of Singapore ( 29 to date ).

You couldn’t make it up.

As we live in this increasingly vocabulary sterilised world, where the list of banned ‘non PC ‘ words lengthens each day, so that by the time I’m 60 I shan’t be able to say anything at all without being offensive to someone ( and thinking ‘Lordy the poor youth of today growing up to only say the right thing ‘ .. it was with great delight that I heard one of my girlfriend’s ( educationally privileged ) children say to the other one … ( wait for it ..)

‘God I knew you were dumb… but I didn’t realise you were a FULLY CERTIFIED SPACKER !’

It seems that there IS hope for non PC exchanges after all !
The Resistance may yet win the day… who knows!?

And now ( obviously ) I keep saying it! 😂🤦‍♂️

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/ray-prosser-pontypool-wales-dies-19326700

And if Pontypool had a cathedral then this man’s funeral would be held in it. The pews would be full, the aisles would be full, the roads leading to it would be lined with mourners, and the tears shed would swell the Afon Lwyd ( the river that runs through Pontypool).

The hymns sung would not raise the rafters, they’d blow the roof right off and send it into orbit.

And I don’t exaggerate, not in the slightest.
That mass funerals aren’t currently allowed hasn’t affected anyone’s funeral in Britain as much as it will affect Pross’s.

I had the honour of playing for the team under him, and can remember his voice and his smile like it was yesterday.

Another ‘This is the kind of stuff that happens to people like me ‘.
So yesterday I had realised that my catheter that goes into my tummy ( and through to my bladder ) was partially blocked. That meant that my right leg spasmed a lot.
With help I changed the catheter myself, and stopped the consequence of a blocked catheter, which is me pee’ing my pants.

Now I’d also anyway taken a laxative as I was blocked up ( more spasms due to that ) Now I can’t crap my pants because I have a stoma, and any diarrhoea will go into a bag, rather than come out of my bum, making it all ‘ safer’ . The instructions said that you’d go 8 hours after taking it, which was about right. At 4pm there was a watery explosion and hey presto …a bag full of diarrhoea.
The challenge tho was getting that bag off, and disposed of, and getting another clean bag stuck on, before/if there was another explosion, which would have otherwise gone all over my lap/ the wall/ floor/ room, cos let’s face it, diarrhoea is fast moving stuff.
I went into the bathroom to do just that… but having got the bag off, I hadn’t realised just how watery the contents were. I wasn’t ready for the spillover into my lap, or more accurately down my front and right onto / around the ( until then ) sterile catheter that I’d just put in.
The whole thing about catheters is keeping them clean, so getting mine coated in shite isn’t recommended usage.
As I can’t get up to clean or change myself I then had to scrub myself with soap and water and also disinfectant gel to try to kill all the bugs that would otherwise definitely lead to a UTI – a urine tract infection, as well as deodorise myself as well as possible.
I also then took antibiotics as a precaution, rather than risk infection.

It’s all a bit embarrassing, this whole thing, and of course doesn’t happen in the ‘ normal’ world. It was therefore quite cathartic when my girlfriend Lizzy ( a mum of two ) told me this morning that she’d come down in her house to her dog having shat all over her kitchen, which she had to clean up – an unpleasant job for anyone…

The dog had also squirted poo all over its sleep cage, it all coating the steel mesh. Lizzy said that as she was cleaning the cage, she was uncontrollably gagging so much that……… ‘ her pelvic floor gave way’.. ‘and she pissed herself’
…

What an attractive couple we make .. !

I’m on my way to Sevenoaks against today. This time it’s by train. Having had a few mechanicals with my Triride of late, and because it’s raining pretty much all the time… I am going by train. Of course the train sounds like ( and is ) the sensible option, except I’ve definitely developed a fear of being stranded on the bloody things, because a few times now the guard hasn’t appeared with a ramp to get me off… and 18 inches is a bloody long drop in a wheelchair.
You have to question why there should be a step at all really. Why aren’t platforms higher, or trains lower, so that there’s level access? Wouldn’t that have been a sensible design? There must be thousands of historical mishaps due to the height differential, and it’s just harder for everyone when there’s a big step – people in chairs, peeps with prams, people with heavy luggage, getting people off in medical emergencies etc etc.

I had a discussion yesterday with a chap who should remain nameless about Sevenoaks. He talked with a kind of wonder about the town. Everyone male there is a wealthy banker, and they all live there with their amazingly hot wives ( he said ). He talked about going to a pub there, looking around and realising that there wasn’t a single woman in the pub that he wouldn’t sleep with… ( down to the level of pulchritude – that’s hotness ( rather than the degree of male slut he was btw )