As I’m unable to move laterally ( that’s sideways ) at night in bed, my buddy Mr P, at my request, put up a shelf above my headboard so that I can just reach up and get things there. They have to be on the edge of the shelf and sticking out enough for me to see them from my position lying below. It’s all a bit precarious but it does work.
The trouble is tho that sometimes I get it wrong and reach up in the middle of the night, in the dark, for one of my two( lain flat ) bottles of water, and in my dozy state I dislodge something else next to the thing I want, which comes down very suddenly onto my face below.

That’s 3 times now that I have a cut face/ black eye. A Litre bottle of water obviously weighs a kilogram, and seems to gather a fair bit of speed dropping the 18 inches onto my face. I don’t see it coming, as it’s dark and I’m half asleep…. so a cut over my left eye today is from my powerball arm exerciser which got me last night. I was a bit drunk ( yes, that doesn’t help coordination ) after seeing Alan Price in Barnes with my buddy, Chris No Cats. Alan was really popular in his day, even having his own TV show. He sang with The Animals, with massive hits like The House of the Rising Sun which pretty much everyone knows. He’s blimmin 77 now (!) but he’s still got it! Funny as well, being a Geordie lad who hasn’t forgotten his roots, or lost his accent.

I wonder if I will still be going to gigs by wheelchair at 77….

I don’t get hassled by other road users very much at all. As a cyclist in London it’s a case of near constant harassment by motorists, but I seem to get an allowance for being in a wheelchair. I think it’s a fascination thing, as in wtf is that wheelchair attached to that motorbike thing? I can go at a top speed of 17-18 mph on the flat, which isn’t bad, and doesn’t mean I am holding up London traffic that often, which is good.
Occasionally however I encounter someone a bit objectionable for no obvious reason. The other day I stopped at a traffic lights, after first going past 3 stationary cars. As I passed the first one, I heard a Male voice saying ‘ get off the road ‘ My situation is that without using the Triride attachment I would be a virtual prisoner indoors, so when someone chooses to suggest for no particular reason at all that I shouldn’t use it, I find it pretty, well, offensive.
So I turned around in the road, and wheeled back to this fella in his car and said ‘ what was that you just said to me?’ He said ‘ I said you should get off the bloody road ‘

I said ‘ why? ‘

He said ‘You don’t have a number plate ‘

I said ‘ I don’t have to have one ‘

He said ‘ well do you have insurance to drive that ?’

I said ‘No I don’t. You can’t get it ‘ And then I said ‘ do you have special insurance then?’

He said ‘ for what?’

I said ‘ for being a Cunt ‘

Yes… possibly slightly over the top, but it has made me laugh ever since! It’s funny how your mouth says things without you having even thought them up first, isn’t it?!

One of the numerous things that you didn’t really think about in relation to wheelchairs is how much they F up carpets. My regular tyres do, and the Triride front wheel more so. Well you wouldn’t ride your bicycle around and over your bedroom carpets, would you?

So despite my carpets actually having been replaced ( for free ) after a leak in December, they were already pretty shitty tbh. So I thought I’d replace it with wood in my bedroom. Step up the amazingly practical Rob C, my Yukon partner, who offered to fit my floor for me. All I had to do was give him wine in the evenings, which wasn’t too difficult.

Top man Rob ! Fantastic job, and bugger me a wooden floor does actually make moving around the bedroom far better, as well as all the other advantages.

Just need the rest of the carpets done now… 😉

Thanks to Cressida for last night, and sorry for shouting out inappropriate comments during your speech – my Tourette’s is getting worse?

Good to see Chris B last week too. You can’t beat seeing mates you have known for bloody ever. If I was a spiritual type, I’d say something like I feel the stars are realigning, or something….

And finally (!) the long and drawn out divorce process has come to an end. The last bit was deciding on two relatively small matters, but the judge ruled in the most decent way…

It’s odd isn’t it that a former spouse can have any claim on any ( future hypothetical ) financial award from a lawsuit, where the ‘payout ‘ is for a disabling injury to me, that affects myself and my world, and not hers. That it’s even possible is morally wrong, and that someone could push for it is, to me, reprehensible. But the law allows it totally, or at least it allows for an attempt to benefit from it, by the able bodied spouse. Given any money would be to pay for assistance to carers, and disability equipment or property modifications, it’s surprising that an attempt to take it is allowed at all, but there you go.

If I’m ever back in Court as a follow on to this matter, I’ll be taking a few Welsh lads for protection. That would have been handy yesterday, I was surprised to discover. I’m a bit ( read a lot ) vulnerable in my wheelchair, not that able to physically defend myself. I wish Tasers were legal, as I’d definitely have one. Maybe I can start a campaign to allow their possession by the vulnerable. I could call it Tazers for Spazers.

After meeting up with my buddy Q ( no, not the one off James Bond ) I’ve now decided to keep bees. Not just the odd one I catch, but a whole hive full of my own ( not that you really ‘ own’ bees – they do their thing and you provide the premises ). I may have objections from busy body neighbours around my manor, but they will be strenuously resisted by moi. He explained that you join the local Bee Association and they mentor you in your early years of beekeeping. I’ll start next May, hopefully.

Obviously mine will be The Brentford Bees. 🐝 🐝 🐝

That was a football joke ..

I’m fairly sure this could only happen to me. ..

I do pull ups quite often. I obviously have to do them from my wheelchair, and have to secure my feet so that when I pull up and my legs spasm and want to straighten , my feet don’t shoot off the footrest and I end up on the floor as soon as I release my hold on the bar.

But it’s not just my feet and legs that are the trouble. When I pull up and I lift off the seat, my, er, nuts etc drop down between my legs so that when I sit down again they are clamped between my legs. It’s not like I can feel anything but any guy will tell you that if I did have sensation it would hurt.

So… what I have to do to stop it happening all the time is ‘hook’ the front top edge of my underpants underneath my nuts and that keeps them ‘up’ rather than drop into the SquashZone.

Anyway, all well and good. Except…

Today after my pull ups I headed out.. and as I can’t feel anything, I forgot that, well, I hadn’t rearranged myself.

I was at Kew bridge, only a good mile and a half away, before I looked down to see the first turkey of Christmas still free range in my lap.

I should have just remembered obviously (!) but all ideas to stop a repeat are welcome, before I get arrested.

The first is shows the countries that have most contributed ( caused ) climate change ( in RED )

And the second the countries that will most suffer the effects of climate change ( in RED ) and the countries that will LEAST suffer ( in BLUE ).

So yes, she wasn’t being a baby. She’d had a molar pulled out on Friday, but rather than the pain diminish, it just got steadily and then rapidly worse.

It turns out the whole ( now empty ) socket was infected, full of pus, and all nerves were firing in every direction. Her eye was in pain, and her sinuses were inflamed. If she hadn’t gone to see them then she may have died ( probably ) Typically, Wendy was underplaying it and calling herself pathetic for whinging, but she’s about the toughest girl I’ve ever known ( and I’ve known a few, like my friend Anna McCormack ) – that’ll be why Wendy is a black belt in karate then… It gets worse – the dentist then said that because there was so much infection, anaesthetic wasn’t going to make any difference, so she scraped out her infected socket WITHOUT ANY ANAESTHESIA… mmm that couldn’t have been nice!

Wendy is now thankfully asleep.

Maybe she’ just jumping on my bandwagon, but Wendy has excruciating toothache and has gone to the hospital.

She said the pain was far worse than having her 2 boys, and no, she declined epidurals.

I thought I’d investigate with Google. I found this –

‘Ask any woman if they’d rather endure labour or have a CYST UNDER THE CLITORIS, then I am confident that 100% would choose the former.

One mum told BabyCenter: ‘Imagine your most sensitive ladybits being swollen, throbbing and with no form of relief. I couldn’t walk, sit stand…nothing. I wanted to die.’

Shudder

So now you know. Imagine the woman got kicked in the balls at the same time. Then she’d REALLY know about pain …. 😉

I went to see my Uncle Rich speak tonight ( aka see Richard Dawkins ‘ in conversation ‘ ) at the Southbank Centre. I invited along his niece, aka my daughter Lily.

The lifts were largely out of order, or at least the ones I needed to get me to the 4th floor. I had to name drop to get me help to our destination, and we made it just in time.

Dawkins has been ‘praised ‘ for his ‘irreverence, wit and fierce humour’ it said by way of introduction. It didn’t say which member of the family though, specifically.

He was great. He tells it like it is, as in he subscribes to the scientific version of things, refusing to believe anything ‘ supernatural ‘ in which he includes anything to do with God(s)

He’s entertaining and, I’d have thought, very difficult to beat in an argument!