Saturday 7th September 2019

Hebrew: שבת 7 בספטמבר 2019

02:45hrs: I stirred awake, shivering with cold, and forced myself to evacuate the Brother-in-Law Pete damaged while he was flat-sitting, when I was in hospital, as he fitted new CCTC cameras, and searched for my valuables, which he found and took, I still haven’t got them back yet four-months later, £300, second-hand, near-dilapidated, gungy-beige coloured, c1968, sometimes working, uncomfortable, rickety, rinky-dinked, rattling, rusty, resurrected, reconditioned, recalcitrant, recidivating and rotting-away recliner, and get the dressing gown on my goose-pimpled gross body. Brr!

Taking a wee-wee in the unused overnight GPB (Grey-Plastic-Bucket). Which caught me out with its USBUWSS (Ultra-Slow-But-Uncontrollable-Weak-Sprinkly) nature! Also, my whipping down the PPs without thinking, and the dried blood from Little Inchies leaking fungal lesion got torn off, and the blood flowed afresh! (I believe a silently cursed, using language that I usually wouldn’t have, with the shock of the pain!)

While cleansing things and tidying up, I had a moment of… what’re the words, erm, err… ‘Feeling a bit sorry for missen’ I suppose! This was not good. But all the things going wrong, and carrying on from last night, just got a bit much for me, I reckon. I decided the therapy I needed was to get some work done. So I decided to sort things out, and then get the kitchen windows cleaned as best I could. So, off to the kitchen.

Got the handwashing I’d left soaking overnight, rinsed and refreshed with the ylang scented Wilko stuff. I needed a new bottle, so I hobbled (painfully, the RAI (Rheumatoid Arthur Itis) was still giving me grief), to the junk room mark two, to fetch a new bottle.

Clouting my elbow on the door handle on the way back, and dropping the container, which landed on my right foot. At least it didn’t burst open! I got the clobber on the stand-up airer. Had a wee-wee of the freakish BOBSL (Blasting-Out-But-Short-Lived) mode.

When it came to taking the morning medication, it came to light that I had missed taking last night’s! So, the getting to usual lately performance of trying to identify which were the tablets to not duplicate was done, and both doses were imbibed. 

I set about getting the things out to do the windows with and had to divert to the wet room and the Throne. Under-‘rotten’-believable! What an evacuation. Right back to the solid, flesh-tearing, wait-for-it, mode! Argh!  My spirit and determination were wavering now!

Back to the kitchen, took a picture of the wonderful sky.

Then moved the gear away, and got the spray and kitchen towels nearby. Up the stepladder… then fell off of it, backwards! No idea why, but I didn’t have a Neuropathic Schuhplattler dance from the leg? As I was struggling to get back up, so I could nurse my head, that I’d banged on the way down, I thought: What can I do? The chap who Jenny got in touch with said he was coming to see me about cleaning the windows last Saturday, but did not arrive. Maybe he meant another Saturday, and I got it wrong again. I came out of the Accifauxpas in remarkably good condition really. A little bang on the arm and the clout on the head was all I suffered. But the body was aching a bit in places.

Mind you, the nut was throbbing away!

I checked out the legs for ant damage, and to my utter amazement, apart from a tiny bit of a mark on my right ankle, they looked just fine?

I began to question my ability to live a normal life.

I left the mess in the kitchen after making a brew, (I really wasn’t interested in doing anything in the cleaning up stakes, now) and in a morose frame of mind, I got the computer on to update the Friday blog.

On selecting the photographs to go on, I put the wrong one for the nosh on the post. This is the one that should have gone on! Fancy me making a mistake. Humph!

A confirmation email from Amazon arrived, to inform me that the two tomatoe slicers I’d ordered were due to be delivered this Sunday. How I managed to order two, I just don’t know. But, thinking about it, I am surely assured that I will either lose one or break one, so it might yet prove to be a good idea? Oy Vey!

Anything to avoid any more cuts. Especially with the Sherrington Park Medical Practise, currently impossible to contact, I tried nineteen times on the phone this week to contact them, fifteen times in one day!  And leaving me in a right state over their lack of interest in my Warfarin INR levels, or arranging any test! The last time I heard from them, by email, they wanted to know if I still wanted a nurse to call to take the blood; if so, they will arrange for it. I sent a reply message saying yes please and thank you. That was three weeks ago. Now I can’t even get to ask them why no nurse arrived, and I do not know the level or how many Warfarin tablets to take! Warden Deana was busy with the opening of the Winwood Court and burying of the time capsule (Last Monday). So, no help there. I still do not know if or when the next test is due after the missed one! Am I so hated? Why are they ignoring me? Have I too many issues and ailments for them? Why am I asking these questions?

Anyway, with so many surgeries shut down through not coming up to scratch, I imagine they are getting an influx of new patients. Which will probably result in the Grim Reaper taking me earlier than I would have liked, but who is interested? I’m not coping well at all with the hassle and lack of concern. Let him come!

I pressed on and got the Friday post finished. The hands and fingertips are not so bothersome at the moment. The head still aches, Hehe!

Made a start on this blog, and then stopped to get the ablutions sorted out. Just in case the window cleaner man might call. Mmm?

Things must be improving, the shave, teggies and shower session, held only two dropsies!

Gave up. Decided to go to Sherwood to see if any of the shops had any shortcrust cakes in stock.

I got the trolley and myself all ready, forgetting to take the black bags I made up in the kitchen and left, to find the three-flats foyer in darkness. The new light put in by the same electricians who cut my power for nine-hours, when putting in the Fire-Alarm sprinkler system I’ve little confidence in them working!) Not the NCH men who gave me the floods and destroyed my clothing in the airing cupboard, that people are even less interested in than my Doctor is in missing my Warfarin blood tests. They probably don’t even know it’s happened. I can’t get through on the phone to them. Oh, I’m getting niggly again! 

I wobbled through the cut-through passage to Winwood Court.

I checked to see if the broken locking mechanism had been mended yet, on the door out to the alfresco benches. No!

I got outside via the new Winwood Court Extra Care foyer door and made my way to the bus stop.

I made the queue into three of us. It soon grew to about twelve of us. I enjoyed a nattering session. Despite my struggling to hear everything, as I had failed to put my hearing aids in. Malcolm told me how to get up to the rooftop seating on top of Winwood Court. There is a dedicated lift up and down! I thought I’d see how I was when I came back if well enough I might have a nip up take some photos?

I thought about going on the outward-bound L9, in search of the flaky pastry biscuits. When the first bus arrived, without even thinking, I got on, to find it was the inward bound bus! Surprisingly this did not seem to bother me. I just thought I’d go to the Aldi store then, on Mapperley tops. I got off and took a photo to the left then right. And a zoomed-in one of my new destination.

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I came out with, a BLT sarnie, rice-cakes, caramel bars for the nibble box. Sourdough baguettes, walnut halves, ham off-cuts and eight kitchen rolls. The kitchen paper was bought cause it was on offer. Carrying it home caused a bit of a kerfuffle, as it filled the spare carrier. In fact, the young man on the till packed the rolls into the carrier-bag for me. That was kind of him!

The highlight of my mini-hobble home came as I got on the main road. A pavement cyclist also leaving the store stacked all his purchases in a carrier bag, on his little bar at the back of his bike’s seat, and rode within inches of me as he passed. A hundred yards or so further along Mapperley Top, his things fell off! It made a right mess for him to sort-out. In the end, he had to walk pushing his bike. There is a God!

Somewhat perked-up, now, I wobbled on and down Mapperley Rise. Where I took this photographicalisation. Regrettably, it came out looking nothing like how the eye saw the distant parts of the scene! Shame!

Limping down the hill, turned out to be little more arduous than I wanted. The three-wheeler really doesn’t like going downhill on uneven ground. And the pavement got worse, more irregular dips, rise’s and pot-marks, the further I travelled. There was a couple of near-trips and falls en route, but I managed to stay on my now, painful feet. The brakes are not very useful on this trolley.

When I reached the corner of Sherwood Vale, where I had to cross over, the road surface is as bad as they come. My closest call to a fall happened here. I did go down on one knee which pissed-off RAI (Rheumatoid Arthur Itis)! But no injuries really. As I was trying to get up, a bloke who’d stopped his came over and asked if I was alright. Another humanitarian gesture! I thanked him and said I was fine, thank you.

I took this picture as I walked down to Chestnut Way and the Winwood Heights barren looking person-less area.

The planning as not be thought out too well. To avoid all the high pavements safely, would mean going onto the road all the time and back again.

As I neared the Gulag, I mean, flats, I decided I would have a walk up to the Extra Care Winwood Court sitting-out area, now Malcolm has told me how to get up there. They have a games room, with a sink, power-sockets, seats and tables, and a kitchen as well. I got in the one-stop lift, and a lady in there, sat at a table, gave me rum-look and said something, but couldn’t hear what she said.

I went out onto the terrace-top. There were no chairs as you will in the photos that I took  ad-lib:

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Inside of Winwood Courts dedicated lift, on my way back down. I didn’t see anyone at all on the walk home through the linking-passage to Woodthorpe Court.

I stopped for a while, something was not right. What was it? Ah, the silence! No banging from the flat above, no laughter, no fridge rattling away, no mystery whining sounds, no wind blowing through the holes in the wall and floor, courtesy of the builders and repairmen… still, you can’t expect it sound just like inside your Woodthorpe Court flat, can you?

And of course, it’s the weekend, many people going to see their families or being collected, that’s another reason for the lack of Winwoodonians about.

I got in the apartment. No wee-weeing, no Porcelain Throne requirements, no new ailments acquired. Apart from a little bruise on the head still there from my falling off the stepladder earlier, and an even smaller injury-come-graze, on the knee, from the mini-fall on the road.

I got the fodder stored away.

I got on with updating this blog, for hours, but the finger-ends were making it slow work. Eventually, the CIDP won, and I gave up working on the computer.

I got the nosh prepared. The oven in the chips… now there’s a cock-up! I meant, Chips in the oven, and got the tomatoes sliced. Sliced the finger as well! Not really, just a knick under a fingernail again.

So, there I was, limping around in the nude prepping the meal, and the Intercom light flashed (I couldn’t hear the pathetically week chiming it is supposed to give out). When I pressed the answer button, the picture of the caller, disappeared, and the picture screen came up ‘Picture Fault’. I pressed the door open button, but I was not sure if it had done so or not. Pushed the reset button, then the answer button, and got the picture back. No one in view. I assumed they had been let in by someone.

I got the dressing gown on sharpish, and the door chime rang out. Guess who it was? It was the tomato slicer delivery from Amazon, that was due to arrive on Sunday. I thanked the lady and took the box into the kitchen and had a look at the slicer.

A shame it didn’t come half-an-hour earlier, it would have saved me losing the blood. Hehe! I just had to try it out. So I cleaned it, and sliced another tomato with it, and added it to the plate. Works alright, I have to be wary when cleaning the fixed blades.

I got the handwashing done and hung.

Then sorted the meal out. I overdid the quantities, and could not eat it all, but what I did eat was flavoursome, a taste-rating of 7.5/10.

Got the washing-up done, and settled to watch some TV. Staying awake to see the England v Bulgaria Euro qualifying match. When I say stayed awake, I mean mostly. Half-time I drifted off.But came back to life when the match restarted.

At long last, the RAI (Rheumatoid Arthur Itis) was easing in the knees. It should just about have got to a bearable pain level, in time for Tuesday, and the next crippling, blood-curling, agony-ridden, depressing, After-Stroke physio session! Haha!