Friday, August 3

Jonny5 Is Alive!!!!!!!!

Well after numerous days, weeks of sweat and tears and countless phone calls, on my behalf anyhow as everyone else seemed to forget to ring me back constantly my new mode of transport which I refer to as my “Cripple Wagon” as let’s face it there is no hiding the fact that its sole purpose is to ferry around cripples such as myself, with its bright yellow ramp poking it’s head up in the rear windows of the door and the other small giveaway is the dude sat there in their wheelchair often with a look of shear fright on their face having just been on a ride equivalent to the most frightening roller coaster ride on the planet, often I find too that the driver, Nigel Mansell, has this wicked grin on his face. It is only a hire car for now till mine is ready in around 8 weeks or so but it will be the same, just newer although there are a few little changes internally. Judith has packed the camera away to take with her as she heads off and leaves me in the somewhat dubious hands of family and friends as she plays soldiers for a week with her group of Air Cadets somewhere up north. Just follow the rain clouds and you will find it!! So sadly no piccies of the new motor yet but if you just can’t wait it is one of THESE, only joking, it’s one of THESE. The poor buggers delivering it down from Newcastle to me in St Athan picked the worst day to do it too as the Motorway (M4) was closed from j24 – j28 from about 2.30am to mid afternoon causing tail backs reported to be around 15 miles. It’s a hell of a trip on a good day around 350 miles, 6 hours or so, but they in fact set off at 9.30pm Wednesday night and arrived here at 12.30 lunchtime yesterday. So I am back on the road again and once more looking for some victims to inflict myself on, so stock up on the bacon peeps, I may just pop in to sample some soon. Wait, wait, hold on, why are you all running away so fast?? Was it something I said??

I’ve also had another visit from the delightful OT, Sue this week and she brought a nice chap from the grants department with her to pick his brains about this extension work. She also brought me some ramps so that I can get out a lot easier now and don’t have to rely on Judith having to slot together this jigsaw of bits and pieces of wood to do so. My Daddy will be building me a couple of temporary threshold ramps when he comes up with Mother on Saturday so all will be batter then. Anyway back to delightful Sue. After a lot of wandering around measuring everything in sight including “Puppy”, and a lot of head scratching it looks like the work will go ahead. There is no room in the house as it is to create a bedroom and bathroom for me so they will have to build an extension. It will need to be properly planned and fitted of course with things like Ceiling Hoist, Walk In/Sit Up type bath, Raised toilet etc etc. As you all know by now I have this weird obsession with bacon sarnies and all other cooking to be honest but the kitchen as it is, is not safe or at all practical for me to work in let alone even get out there, so they will adapt this as part of the works too which will make so much difference and help to yet again give me back more independence. They were saying that there is an overall budget for the complete works of £30,000, (£25,000 in England) for the D.F.G and that building the extension alone will cost more than that, which means they have to go to further committee’s panels etc to justify the extra expense but to be truthful they have seen only too well for themselves the real need for me to have this work done, if, for no other reason than to give me back SOME quality of life and dignity. So it is still some way off actually having it done but I feel we are a lot nearer the light at the end of the tunnel at last and things are moving.

Right then I’m off to continue to plan military operations for next week as in what pa or family member or poor innocent guy walking past outside at the time is doing what for me all week, so headache coming on later I think.

See Ya!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good news - hope the committees don't take too long approving the extra budget! O&U!

Anonymous said...

hiya,

good to see movement finally, but did they give you any indication as to the all-important question, When they will finally pull their finger out and give you an environment fit to live in (as is your basic human right?!)

cheers!

a fellow crip

Jonny5 said...

Hiya peeps,

One lives in hope Peter even if it is dwindling by the second.

Thanks crip. Well lets just say it's still "In Limbo" as far as time scales are concerned as they all seem to now bw able to pass the buck onto someone else, whereas before it was down to the lack of OT's. I think, in general the definition of "basic human rights" in their dictionary must be different to mine, maybe it's in Welsh and lost in translation??

Still movement is movement after all and with Sue (The OT)on the case i have the best chance of things happening.

See Ya!!