These last 6 weeks or I’ve been on an online dating site. The one I’m on is one where the women are, well, I’ll just say it.. pretty smart and ‘ successful’ one way or another.
What that means is that I’ve actually made quite a lot of friends, as well as having the odd date.
And it’s really really dawned on me that having ‘ new ‘ friends ( to complement the bloody brilliant ones I had already, like Marky P, Chris Cats, Leigh ( that’s a fella ?! ) Toby, Roy, Cress, Pia etc etc, and not forgetting those in my family ) has altered my world quite a lot, in a very positive way.
I was already very positive, but now I’m even more so, and life is well, just good. The new ones weren’t there before my injury, didn’t know me when I was dying ( several times over ) or as a sportsman etc etc they just know me now… here in a wheelchair, and well, they think I’m alright.

So I’d like to thank Lizzy ( particularly ), Harriet, Susan, and others, for that extra bit I have now in my life.

And I’m going to recommend to you that meeting ‘ new ‘ people is a good thing! We all have long-standing friends, and maybe we think that we have enough and don’t ‘ need ‘ any more, but well, for me it’s been a revelation to be honest.

Just saying !

And I thought I was non PC..

My help is a lady of 57. She’s a lovely woman and not exactly controversial.
I put the TV on and up came a match between Man Utd ladies and somebody else.
To my shame I said. ‘ I can’t really take women’s football and rugby that seriously..’

She replied ‘ OMG neither can I. Let’s face it, they’re all a bunch of big lesbians anyway! ‘

😳😳

I watched a ( space astronaut) film tonight called Gravity. In the end the heroine doesn’t finish up dead, despite many near misses on her way back to Earth, with all the near misses almost certainly destined to kill her, yet each time rather miraculously she is ‘ saved by circumstances that prevent it’

Anyway, it struck me after it had finished that my own ( life ) story is as about as unbelievable ( but based on Earth ) as the film, and the central character ( yours truly ) somehow lives on…

If you watch it… and you know my story, then do think of me, ok ! 🤦‍♂️😂

And quite how am I supposed to get out of this?

You know when you immediately regret taking a short cut ?

Not written much of late, have I ?

Stuff like online dating has occupied my time for a bit … well something has to!

I’ve met quite a few people doing it, and mostly lovely tbh. It’s definitely one way to make new friends, that’s for sure. Obvs my own dating tales are things I shouldn’t write about much ( or I pretend they happened to someone else ) .. but I now get to hear about other people’s tales… and blimey they really are hilarious!

Most of the funny bits are to do with the sex , or the sex avoidance that goes on.
Anyway I’ll tell more soon.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. I should be in Portugal.. but travelling is complicated enough already for me, without the added virus stuff 🤦‍♂️

And I had my first spliff the other night too?! I can’t say that tobacco is good for my lungs tho. Gawd, in the viral situation I think anyone that is still smoking is mental!

I went to a lecture a couple of years ago, with Marky P, about shockwaves and their effects.
Seeing the absolute devastation in Beirut with cars being shot all over the place and buildings totally wrecked.. its hard to believe that ANY humans in the vicinity survived.
That they are currently alive actually means little though, after listening to that lecture. People suffer damage internally at a cellular level from bomb blasts, and die later.
So that’s going to happen in Beirut, for sure. 🙁

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 🙄