Baclofen pump refilled

 Friday was stressful! A trip to UCHL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ Getting my Baclofen pump refilled is a  twice yearly event, I had the operation to get it put in last February so almost a year ago 😲 time flies when you are living under pandemic conditions. The pump dispenses Baclofen directly into my spinal cord. I have Multiple Sclerosis and the Baclofen helps my body deal with spasticity. Multiple Sclerosis attacks the nervous system and to date there is no cure. The MS society is a great source of information and always searching for a cure. 

When this is over will it be back to normal

 I am sixty five years old. I my lifetime I have seen strikes blackouts mines disappear and several recessions. We have not been in the EU joined the EU and now got BREXIT done. I have seen interest rates on mortgages skyrocket and collapse, interest on savings ten percent and now savings are worthless. The one constant throughout all of these and many other disasters that thankfully I have managed to forget about is that day follows night. I and hopefully you will wake up tomorrow. I used to work with a Londoner, a real old cockney and his mantra was “ there’s two certainties in this world. Rent day and Death “ and when you boil it down he God rest his soul was right. We all have bills mortgages car loans rent commitments etc and everyone alive will eventually die! 

So getting back to normal! What’s normal? In my time on earth boom and bust has been a seven year cycle! I don’t mean that in the biblical sense I mean it in reality. Every seven years we seem to have had some disaster. And here we are again in the middle of the biggest disaster that has occurred in a hundred years. It is thought that the end of the Great War bought about the spread of the pandemic named as the “Spanish Flu” and it killed an estimated 50 million worldwide. The current COVID-19 pandemic has so far killed over two million people. But it looks as if it may be sticking around for a while so even with a vaccine it looks like we are stuck with it.

So what will back to normal look like? I have no way of knowing, my Crystal Ball 🔮 has got a flat battery 🔋 so anything I type here is just the speculation of my deranged mind. I can tell you here in England that we won’t be visiting Debenhams but who else will be closing the doors never to be reopening them? Well today has seen a first the stock market 📈 has been in turmoil of small investors beating the Hedge funds. I can’t say I understand it but I know some people who have played the game company share game today and come out on the winning team. So social media looks as if it’s going to feature heavily in “the new normal”. It recently played a large part in the riots in Washington DC so let’s hope political riots are not featuring in “the new normal “

I have mentioned recession in the early part of the post and I don’t expect us to get out of this pandemic until we have suffered another one! You may think I am being negative but my take on everything is we ain’t seen nothing yet.

COVID stupid questions from reporters

 I know it’s a news reporters job to as questions but honestly can you believe the absolute stupidity some of the TV news guys? “Minister when will lockdown end? Minister why are children not in school? Minister why can’t you answer my stupid questions?” Then the news editor digs up a stupid woman from the travel industry saying we don’t need to send people into hotels to isolate. Are the news programs all in league with stupid people who don’t get it. We are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. One that has killed two and a quarter MILLION people and more and more will die each day, yet still they want to ask for and end game. Get real stay safe and follow the guidelines and stop listening to the idiots on tv 📺 

Buds appearing Spring is around the corner

 With all of the COVID-19 worries I have found it difficult to find anything positive to blog about but today as I sit here in my wheelchair staring out it feels like spring is on it’s way! The sun is shining and the sky is blue, the birds are busy flying in to visit the feeders and the buds are swelling on the small tree at the bottom of the garden. Yes Spring is on its way😁. As the saying goes ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer’ one bud doesn’t make a spring.

We still have along way to go before I will say spring has sprung but it is definitely closer than it was a week ago.

More needs to be done on Mental Health

 I am often going on about mental illness and I make no apologies for doing it. When I was in my mid twenties I suffered what I now would call a breakdown. In those days mental illness wasn’t even mentioned by my doctor. I was just told take these three times a day and shoved out the door. I will never know how different our lives would have been had someone sat me down and explained what I was going through. The reason I am banging the drum again is I have just read two articles about women being murdered by their partner because of the stress of living under COVID conditions.

Mental health can effect us all and in these extreme times it is just below the surface and waiting to erupt. Yes murder is extreme compared to a black eye or a broken wrist. But talking about feelings can make a big difference. People like the Samaritans are there to help. Always at the end of a phone put them in your contacts 116 123.

Remember that “it’s good to talk “

The last ditch Brexit fiasco

 I have never wanted Brexit but the Brexit that it appears we will have will according to the OBR damage the economy making it shrink around 4%. Add that to the readjust of the Euro immediately after the vote the economic crisis is just getting worse. Johnson can bluster and put on a brave face, mop the brow of the electorate and say a soothing “there there” but even COVID won’t manage to cover up the damage done. Yes we will be okay in the long run but we are not some Gunboat nation we used to sit on the top table but Brexit will not be the one size fits all the tories proclaimed. Yes I put a small t in the front of the name, I can no longer bring myself to say the words. I voted conservative all of my life (yes small c) but Brexit has changed all of that, I am a paid up member of the labour party and until Starmer sorts things out I am using the small letter for them. I have just read a good article by Polly Toynbee in The Guardian that I enjoyed, if you feel so inclined click here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/30/boris-johnson-deal-betrayal-brexiters-no-deal

It just reiterated the way I feel about the shambles of Brexit. It has none of my anger towards Cameron or my dislike towards Farrage  but if you have five minutes give it a read.

Mudlarking with Nicola & British hovercraft company

I have always loved hovercraft since I was at school and once crossed the channel from Pegwell Bay in one when Hoverlloyd were in existence. Another love of mine would be if I was able to, mudlarking. My wheelchair 🦼 is not equipped to use mudlarking so I will have to make do with memories of days when I could walk and was able to search the shores of our coast for treasure. I never found much but each discovery was a real adventure. I still have fossils I found forty years ago! The reason for this post is Twitter, everything starts with Twitter, I follow Nicola White https://twitter.com/TideLineArt and often watch her marvellous videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDQbMQo87F0 is the one I watched earlier today and because it featured hovercraft I was hooked. Nicola had been invited to join fellow mudlarker Simon Bourne https://twitter.com/si_finds on a trip to the River Medway. All of these things and places are special to me I used to work and play in Medway over forty years ago.  This post maybe disjointed but I wanted to mention the British Hovercraft Company https://britishhovercraft.com/  as I said I love hovercraft and once built a model one many years ago. British Hovercraft Company are close to where I live in Thanet. They export the marvellous machines all over the world from Sandwich they are to be found at E: https://britishhovercraft.com/contact/ here is Nicolas Mudlarking video with hovercraft on the River Medway :-E:sales@britishhovercraft.comHere is the video click here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDQbMQo87F0