Having listened to Dumb and Dumber doing their first Presidential Debate…. I think it would be best all round if COVID got em both
Trump is a fool for thinking he can’t catch it.. and with a bit of luck ( for the world ) will, well…. die.
i didn’t realise that he’s such a big fella. He’s 17 and a half stone. He’s 74. Doesn’t exercise. Gulp.

🤷

As my Help hasn’t exactly ‘ mastered’ the art of cleaning, and there’s an awful lot of that that I can’t actually do.. I employed a cleaner. Today was her first visit.
She came in for a recce.. and I excused myself when I saw Alexa glowing green/yellow – which means she wants to tell you something.

So I say ( out loud, in front of the lady cleaner ) ‘ Alexa, what’s my notification?’

Alexa says ‘ a shipment, including French knickers, has arrived’

Given I’m a single male in a wheelchair… I’m a little surprised the lady, who would have no idea about my present buying habits ( and who did look a little startled ) actually took the cleaning job!

🤦‍♂️

And another Unfortunates night last night.. at my flat. Paul the Blind man makes his way across town on the bus with Bolt the dog. Given he can’t really see much ( he has still a clear very central area – dead small ) he is reliant on his 4 legged pal to lead him, literally.
Now given Bolt had only been to my flat once before, maybe 6/7 weeks ago… isn’t it quite extraordinary that when their bus stopped in Brentford and they got off.. Bolt immediately led Paul to my flat. I mean it’s not like Paul told him where they were going ( because a dog can’t talk or speak English ) .. yet Bolt just seemed to know, and also remembered the way. I mean there are plenty of humans that would have struggled with route recollection, so how can a labrador be that smart?!

Anyway they got to me, Paul then had to do a almost blind Zoom call to the cub scouts on the subject of Blind Dogs, and then eventually the able bodied Chris arrived.
Between us we made dinner, Paul chopping up salad stuff and not realising a fair bit wasn’t ending up where he hoped it would ( fairly funny really ) , me cooking a chicken ( well that’s literally a first ) and Chris generally doing his bit, including opening wine etc.

The chicken went down well… and I discovered the delights of feeding a very enthusiastic Bolt the scraps. All but the chicken bones there really was zero left at the end. All the plates had even been licked .. and why not! He deserved it. ✅

The conversation varied from the perils/ delights/ pitfalls/ hilarity of online dating ( both Chris and I ) to impending and inevitable total blindness and the gratitude for having just a little sight that works at the moment ( as opposed to feeling sorry for himself for being almost in darkness ) Disability certainly gives Paul and I much common ground – the different but similar challenges we both face, and the anything but certain futures ahead. Happiness isn’t guaranteed, that’s for sure, but for now both of us are laughing quite a lot of the time.

Chris in the meantime has a mixed bag of being probably less in demand work wise ( blimey, that’s gonna be a common thing shortly due to the pandemic ) than he’d like, but being far more in demand date wise than he’d like. Keeping lots of balls in the air at the same time ( and yes, I do relate .. 🤦‍♂️ ) is difficult and complicated. He’s discovered that a mixture of Tantric Sex and baking cakes ( what a combination that is.. am I the first person in the world to write those 2 together…? ) are 2 ingredients that make a killer cocktail for the well heeled ladies of London. Myself, I have come to learn of the voracious sexual demands of women over 40. …
Yes, not common in marriage that one.. but outside that blessed union… blimey it’s an eye opener. Chris realised quickly that it’s better to ‘ choose’ … and he has. It makes life simpler that’s for sure. Even when you are a combination of Sting and Paul Hollywood.

Im not convinced there is much proper social distancing in the online dating world… at all! I think a lot of women out there could be called Super Spreaders… for one reason or another 😳

Anyway, we had a laugh. Still hoping that Deaf Mike is gonna make his first appearance to increase our Club membership by a third.

My talented daughter starts in Oxford University this weekend too. I don’t see enough of her to miss her ( well you’d have to see a lot of someone to qualify for ‘ missing’ ) but of course I’ll try to talk to her as often as I can, and possibly make the odd visit, if that’s allowed. Personally I think kids should go to Uni and forget about home pretty much for 3 years. That’s how you change from child state to adult state. I can’t say I went home a lot when I was in Uni. I even stayed away for most holidays and got various jobs, rather than not have much to do in a quiet village in South Wales. ‘ Helicopter parents’ – that’s what the colleges call the parents that persistently and insistently hover around their children whilst they are supposed to be learning independence… are not a positive ( however good their intentions )

Personally I think that the current students that are in lockdown with strangers/ new friends will look back upon this time with lots of affection. Cmon.. at 19 what would you choose, locked up with 200 other teens like you, or be at home with your parents and irritating younger siblings?
I think i know what MOST would opt for. It’s not gonna be that bad, that’s for sure.

But of course I look to the positives. Cos that’s what I always have to do. Me and Blind Paul both.

Having got to Sevenoaks then by train… and there’s another story…I then followed my date.. she in her car ( a large ‘ car’ that people in the ‘ country’ have ) and me following behind in wheelchair/ Triride at 20 mph up a hill .. and 💥 – the front tyre explodes ( literally ) As I was going up a hill at the time, I slowed rapidly and stopped.

How many times have I been going along in a country lane with no other cars around?
Never

How many times have I gone up steep hills that a burst tyre would then naturally lead me to stopping slowly ?
Hardly ever.

How often am I in busy traffic, at 25/30 mph, with cars in front and behind me, and lorries coming the other way ?
All the time.

How often do I have someone in a car driving along and looking in the rear view mirror to check I’m ok?
Never. It’s the first time ( ever ).

So how often would a burst front tyre on my Triride whilst going along on a road have led to me crashing?
Well always.

How often would that crash have led me to being run over by the vehicle behind, or veering into the opposite carriageway and being run over by an oncoming vehicle, quite possibly a lorry ?
Nearly ALWAYS.

Looks to me like YET AGAIN then i ‘ got away with it’ and cheated death.

Do I feel any sense of relief…?
No of course I don’t! 😂🤷

But it’s almost unbelievable that things happened today like they did. You have to admit that the chances of me being alive to write this.. are slim.

A film called ‘ Any one of us ‘. It’s on BBCi player.

it’s about all the people that find themselves suddenly paralysed, and their lives after that.

About half way through I realised I was crying. Not a little bit, but a lot. Properly, properly sobbing.

The film does have some ‘ hope’ in it, some people get some recovery of functionality… but most people with spinal cord injury don’t get a lot, and plenty ( like me ) don’t get any at all.

After the deep depression you are in for many years comes an adaption, an adjustment to the severely compromised ‘life’ that you now have. It’s one that you’d do anything, anything at all to change. Except you can’t.

Is life still worth living when you are paralysed? Well sometimes it is, but I can honestly ( HONESTLY ) say that I’m completely indifferent to life ( and death ) all of the time. That doesn’t mean that I wheel around not smiling. because I smile most of the time actually, and I’m not pretending ( any more – because I did for years and years ) but it’s the smile of someone standing on a precipice, who’s indifferent to the strong gust of wind that might blow him onto solid ground, or blow him off the edge, and there’s not really a preference in my head for either of those two.

Please believe me when I say I’m not ‘ depressed’ because I’m not. I imagine a soldier running into gunfire that may hit him or kill him has the same mindset. It could go either way for him. He has to be cool about it, or he’d never run. He’s trained to be cool about it, and that’s me – my mind is trained to accept how it is for me 24/7 ( though in reality it’s more like 23 and a half / 7 because I defy anyone like me to just ‘ be ok ‘ all of the time. Most totally normal people are 23/7 about everything, at best, I reckon. But if they knew, just for a single day, what it’s like to be paralysed… then they may think differently..

From that song ( The Streets of London ) ‘ how can you say.. you’re lonely.. and for you the sun don’t shine … ‘

‘ let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London (ok the paralysis ward ).. I’ll show you something… that’ll make you change your mind ….’

So the other day… my blind mate came round.. with his wife and her paddleboard.. with the intention of borrowing my paddleboard and going out together. I mean it’s not like paddleboarding is difficult to do, on a canal. It’s not exactly the open ocean, and is actually about 3 feet deep if you fall in, so it’s very unlikely you’ll drown or anything.
Anyway between them and my date, who was also there, they got the ( for years unused ) board over my railing and down onto the towpath… and off they went, all romantic like, into the sun…

When they came back, my date helped Mrs Blind with her board back to her car, leaving me and Paul with the other ( my ) paddleboard, and the challenge of getting it back up over my railings.

So we’ve got a fella in a wheelchair giving verbal directions to a blind man with the objective of getting a 9 foot paddleboard up over a railing 10 feet above the towpath, safely, without either of us being killed in the process.

I ( literally ) had to tell him ( exactly ) where to step/ grab/ pull/ climb over… whilst I at one point had the end of the board on my head , with the other end up on the railing, whilst at the same time telling him what to do with his arms and legs.

It wasn’t like either of us thought it would be a better idea to wait til somebody able bodied and not blind came along.. we just got on with it. And that’s the thing… we did it and nothing went wrong either.

But F*** knows what a person watching would have made of it… cos you couldn’t really make it up!

😂

I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix today.


Wowser, that’s a must see.


Watch it and then delete all your social media accounts… or at the very least turn off all your notifications from those ( unnecessary and almost certainly not a positive in your life ) social media accounts.

Lizzy, thanks for the recommendation. ❤️

So a friend of mine knows an air hostess. And her best passenger story…?

An Indian guy who has his digit firmly pressed on the call cabin crew button, says to her in a broad Indian accent ..

‘ Missus .. I am fingering you for a LONG time.. and still you are not coming..!’

True story! 😳😂

Had an Unfortunates Club night on Thursday.
There’s a bylaw in Richmond I think that says you can’t hang around on Richmond Green drinking ….because you might start causing trouble.

Interestingly though, the Feds didn’t move us on. See, if only criminals could see that all you have to do to get away with breaking the law is to get couple of bottles of fine red wine and some M&S snacks ( and a wheelchair and a Labrador ) and you can do what you like after that !

🤷😂

From one of my best friends…

Sam who you have met has set up a company called Pot Gang—I think I may have told you?

Its all about growing veg at home for those who don’t have a garden.

He is delivering 3 lots of seeds plus soil and pots for growing this weekend and is at 45 orders but wants to get to 50—do you know anyone who may be interested or would you be?

Here is a link to his website https://www.potgang.co.uk/

Cheers ,

Mike.

Have a look folks and maybe even sign up !