A Lesson Learnt

I have learnt a valuable lesson this week which is closely connected the reason I haven’t blogged all week, tut tut naughty boy jonny!!! I had a bit of a disaster with the power cable for the trusty old Laptop. Well to be honest my beloved daughter decided to see how long she could stretch the non stretchy cable before something give in and eventually it did. Thankfully it didn’t damage to Laptop at all just completely knackered the power lead ending up costing me £23 blinking robbery to replace, no pocket money for a year for her, oh yeah, I haven’t given her any pocket money for years, maybe I ought to keep quiet on that one!! Well, this is where the problems started. There wasn’t much power left in the batteries as I haven’t charged it for a while so when she finished what she was doing on it, using up the remaining battery power off it went till I could get the replacement. Never mind I thought, I will just have to use one of the other 3 computers set up around the place, more so the one I have connected up to 32” Widescreen LCD TV in front of me. Have you ever tried playing games on one of these, its soooo much better!!! So I switched it on as I needed to write a few emails etc and realised I had to go through all the setting up process as I hadn’t ever done it on this computer. Right then, where did I put them details and passwords etc?? Then the penny dropped. Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! All my passwords for everything I do in cyber space is sitting nice and quietly in a file on my Laptop and I have no way of getting to it. Of course Mr Organised here had kept putting off backing up this sort of thing too so I was left high and dry till the new power lead made its way to me on Friday. So my friends the lesson today is “back up, Back Up, BACK UP”

Anyway, catch up time. I had an extremely busy week. As Judith was away for the week with the cadets in Wittering I had been planning the week military fashion for some time and it all pretty much went according to plan. The pa’s both did extra hours, even some unpaid too, but then she is my sister and she loves me. My family have been great and have been around most of the week too helping out where they could. I have sampled many cuisines on offer around the locality although I would say none of them have even come close to my delicious speciality Bacon Sandwich but the sampling was fun. The hire car has been well and truly christened. I will say that the weather this week has been pretty astounding too. It’s been sun sun sun all the way mostly which has enabled me to get out and about a lot more. It’s also made my chest behave itself a bit too, so much so that I haven’t needed as much oxygen this week which is a good sign. I’ve been to “Day Care” as usual this week on the welfare bus Tuesday but they sent a taxi for me Friday in the shape of a properly converted minibus with all the right equipment, at least I thought they did!! It didn’t start of well and it actually just kept getting worse and worse. First things first up the ramp which was as steep as the north face of Everest, thankfully my pa was standing behind me because at the top of the ramp my front wheels were 2 inches of the floor and I was heading for a back flip till she grabbed the handles. Phew, that was close. Well into position to be strapped down. Now for those of you who are not used to wheelchair transportation there are these straps they tie around or clip etc to the wheelchair frame which hold you down firmly to stop you moving around and also you wear a harness or at least a seatbelt of sorts, it is the law after all. There are 4 straps in all, one in each corner. Well because the driver had come totally un prepared he only put 2 straps on me, front right and rear left which mean there was nothing stopping me tipping forward to the left and backwards to the right, pretty frightening. To top it all there were no harnesses and not even any seat belts to out on. I should have got off there and then I know but for some reason I decided not to. The driver obviously knew he had messed up as he drove like a funeral procession all the way to pick up the next client and onto the centre, even so watching the back of the wheelchair in front of me moving around because he had the same set up as me was still frightening. I’d like to point out too that there was no escort on the bus either so if any of us decided to tip over nothing could have been done. We arrived at the next client to pick up and this poor bugger only had one strap on because that was all that was left and it was actually the wrong type for his chair anyhow so it was useless. After a harrowing journey we finally arrived at the day centre. I explained to the driver that he will have to put the wheelchair in free wheel for me and pull me off as I was not prepared to go down backwards when I couldn’t even see the ramp and how steep it was. He made me feel like a right baby. “What’s wrong with you man it’s only a little slope, come on, get on with it” he said. If I had the energy I would have got up and plonked one on his nose as I had lost it by now. When I downright refused to get off the bus he was forced into doing as I had asked and even he nearly led me off the edge of the ramp. So it sort of put a dampener on the day really. After a lot of complaining and phone calls from the staff at the centre who were great they apologised and said it will be different next time etc etc. Well when it was time to go back home it was different. We each had 4 straps on, there was a lift to get on and off and there was an escort in the back too but sadly NO HARNESSES OR SEATBELTS!!

Okay that’s enough for now. I will have to update you later about everything else that happened this week as this is heading for a full scale novel ha ha ha!!

See Ya!!