Self Punishment

Well at last after much speculation Tim Henman has announced his expected retirement. Now I guess I could not be described as a sports addict at all, actually I would strongly deny any such association vehemently, but it makes me wonder at times like this how we in this country set our hopes of sporting success so low, that we then are happy with any little win here or there. Here we have a tennis player who no doubt has some talent, but he is being made out to be some great player along the lines of the great Fred Perry which I find quite amusing as he has never won a “Grand Slam” but he has made it to 6 or 7 Semi Finals!! He hasn’t even managed to make it to a Final yet he is the best we have to offer?? Could you see the Americans putting up with the likes of Serena or Venus Williams just making it to the Semi Finals?? I think not!! I don’t want to make a big issue out of it but I suppose seeing as the government are about to waste, I mean spend a load of mine and yours hard earned cash on staging the debacle known as “The Olympics” I see us yet again making a damn good laughing stock out of ourselves yet again, but this time we will be skint in the process.

Okay on a more cheery note, I’ve been out and about over the last weekend and since too. Saturday I dragged my sister into Cardiff for a bit of retail therapy and a nice slap up breakfast of course, well it seemed a waste in not trying out the local fayre. It proved to be more bad than good though as we got well and truly caught in the rain which resulted in a severely bad chest for day afterwards, in fact it still is not right now although it is getting better. The weekend saw me struggling quite a lot just to get enough oxygen in to keep me going and to be honest at times I thought I was rapidly heading, with the blue light disco on the roof to a stay at Heath Towers but thankfully managed to stay put and resist the temptation. I think the thought of all that Savoury Mince, Bran Flakes etc that they pass off as food there gave me the inspiration needed to get my arse in gear and get through it. I did as a result of this take it easy for a day or 2 but there is no tying down Jonny when the sun comes out. I’ve had a few days out shopping etc and generally out and about seeing how many people I can annoy by taking up their space on the pavement with my Wheelchair. I find it amusing to see some people’s faces when they walk straight in front of me until they realise, at least most of them do anyhow, that I am not going to move my joystick for anyone to get out of their way, it’s a case of shock and horror and pain too if they’ve not managed to avoid the nice heavily clad metal front on the wheelchair. Back into Day Care tomorrow too as I had to miss Tuesdays session so a chance to catch up on the goss.

I’ve got a few outings planned this weekend too which I’m looking forward to as well. Saturday I’m off to a local Village Show, full of the usual Sponge Cakes, and Runner Beans and Marrows of alien proportions and let’s not forget the Dry Flower Arrangements too. Sunday if a little different in that I am going to drag my poor old sister out again, this time into a fabulous Farmers Market in Cardiff which is excellent you will find details of it here if you are ever in the area looking for something to do. Hopefully we will get to go for a walk around down in “The Bay” or if like me having being brought up not far from there, The Docks.

An update on the building/grant work too. I had a phone call this morning from the council explaining that I had to now go ahead and employ an architect and after giving me a list of ones they have used in the past I did just that and he is coming out next Tuesday to start the ball rolling. So more progress again which can only be a good thing I guess, I HOPE!!!

See Ya!!

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!!

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!!