A shortie today ...

31 January

Last day of January, Kile is due to go home later today leaving Jan and me to get on a sort out the kitchen cupboards and so on ready for the work to begin on Tuesday. We’re not really short of time I suppose but the real problem is finding space for the kit to go to, even for a short time. As I’ve said before, this is not a large flat and losing a room for three weeks is going to cause a lot of problems. Any type of cooking is going to be a major test too.

This W10 is still kicking up badly and I can’t get it sorted at all. I’ve been advised to use a couple of adware told to sort it, all advertised as being free, until that is it completes its scan and then demands cash to clean the machine up of all the issues it has found. One sensible idea is to take it back to Currys and get them to sort it out for me. I’ll have to look at that one later I think when we are free from workers calling to fill the block with noise again.

I finally got to read AP last night when I went through to bed, not there wasn’t much worthwhile in there to bother with really. Some weeks it’s like that and others everything is of interest. What I did find interesting is a test of the Olympus Pen F, a csc based on the micro-three thirds lens mount. I’ve always rated Olympus kit highly but they are expensive, that’s why I went Nikon when I changed brands before. Their lenses are even more pricy. The other test was of a Tamron 18-270mm lens for the micro-three thirds system. I own and use the Nikon fit version of this lens anyway and it really is a great lens, and at around £370, it’s far cheaper than propriety lenses. Tamron brought out an updated version, 16-300mm lens which stole some of the thunder of its smaller brother, but at a much stiffer price. Again, I bought the lens I could afford. I still rate Tamron lenses though.          

A couple of days ago I made a note, ‘Out Thatcher Thatcher’ it says. I sat for ages trying to puzzle out what it means other than about Daft Dave. If we compare time when mad Maggie was in power and today’s nightmare, the similarities are all too clear. The NHS is in a mess, the police and justice is a mess, benefits are being attacked with food bank usage increasing, homeless numbers are increasing, defence spending is being cut to the bone apart from lining projects … and the list goes on. I wonder where Daft Dave’s ‘poll tax’ lies in wait for him, or maybe it’s there in front of us with the EU referendum. If Daft Dave does get forced onto the back benches, God help us all if IDS get’s the top job!

Sorry folks, I’m cutting this one short here seeing as we have far too much today; not only that but I’m not at all sure when I can write the next one. Today’s photo then …

Cov’s own Times Square.   

Patched-up

0 January

Last night I was sat here in the living room trying to read, but I kept nodding off to sleep. I finally gave up at 8.45, took my pills and off to bed I went, leaving Jan and Kile playing on the Wii. Next thing I know I’m bursting for wee and it’s pitch black in the bedroom, and the clock is showing 5.56am. Far too early to get up so having had a wee I got back into bed. I finally came to properly when Kile is calling us at 10.40 would you believe! I knew I was tired last night, but that is bloody crazy!

One would think that if a billion quid was spent on buying something, it would last longer than three years before it needs fixing. And yet that is what is happening with Royal Navy and its new Type 45 destroyers. It seems the electrical load when at full power requirement can’t be met with just two generators fitted and need a third one fitted. I can see that being not so simple a job as it first sounds. Not being a ship designer of course, but I’m now wondering how they are going to shoe horn that third chunk of hardware in what is already a very tight compartment.

And what of the engine, is that going to be big enough and powerful enough to run three generators instead of two? And how will that effect the fuel usage? Then there is all that cabling laid through the ship; is that rated for the extra power levels? The more hardware will more people be needed to service it and keep it running; where will they be housed on board? And remember folks, this will need to be done on a total of six ships. The added costs involved will be huge and there will be a large whole in our defences while this is being sorted out. I can see the Royal Navy being called the Royal Patched-up Navy before too long.

Don’t forget my friends, we are still waiting for two now 60,000-ton aircraft carriers to be finished, crewed, and tested before being deployed anywhere. And don’t forget that these two ships, the largest ever built for the Royal Patched-up Navy, still don’t have any aircraft to fly off them, and won’t have for several years yet. The replacement for Trident is an ongoing cost to us tax payers, and one that there is a growing debate as whether we need it or not. As a nuclear deterrent I’m not sure, but armed with non-nuclear missiles, they may well be need to help cover the gaps that the missing Type 45s create. So now we have a patched-up navy doing a patched-up task in our patched-up defence; oh my giddy arm-hole … … …

Rant over methinks … for now at least. This ere W10 is driving me up the wall with all the ads that keep getting through. I thought that ditching Firefox and going to Edge would stop it, no chance. As I closed down last night the PC began and update and completed it this morning when I booted up again. When it was finally open Chrome had opened up with it. That’s one I haven’t tried, but as it wasn’t needed at that time I closed it down out of the way. Later I shall open it again and give it a try, because right now I’m not doing half as much on line as I used simply because whenever I try clicking through on a stable page, the ads start up and the only way I have to stop it right now is to close down the browser. So far I’m not at all impressed with W10. If you have W7, stick with it!

Today’s photo I got on a cold and misty/drizzly day in Barrow in Furness …

Three new ships being fitted out. I don’t know type or who they were for but I’m hoping they are better than our current Type 45s.

Still no luck on the funnies but they will return as soon as I can this thing to run properly.       

A shortie

29 January

This weekend is going to be hectic here in Jaronland. Not only do we have Kile with us but we still have a lot of work to do get ready for next Tuesday when they begin the work on the kitchen. There’s a lot of it too. All the kit has to come out, all the cupboards and draws have to emptied as well. The kit will come on out on Tuesday and will be done by the men on the job here, so that not so bad really. What is going to be hard is finding somewhere to put all the stuff from the cupboards and draws. We will need to keep a good amount of it to hand for use during the next three weeks.

Yesterday we had a visit from one of the team doing the work, basically it was to give us a letter. The work will start at 8am on Tuesday and will go on all day, but there’s a clause in the letter telling us that the guys won’t be here all day, every day. There will be days no-one , will be here; days when they only do half a day … and on it goes for the next three weeks. Why they can’t work it out so that one guy follows on from the job before and so on, I don’t know, but hey ho, that’s how they work. Once the kitchen is finished the sparky will move in to do a full re-wire. The one being done upstairs has taken all this week so far. That takes the work four weeks, not three. We will be ready for a holiday by the time it is all done.

I’ve been banging on about waste and recycling for some time, and of course we do recycle as much as we can. Jan came out with a suggestion that we stop doing it for the period of the work. This morning I saw the logic of what she was saying. We don’t have a lot of room for storing the stuff anyway but can manage it, but from now on for the period of the work, we won’t have the room, so sadly, for me at least, we will have to stop doing it for a bit. You see, the recycling bin is some distance from our flat and for either of us to walk that distance carrying a couple of large bags would very difficult, and of course, rather painful too. If it wasn’t for that we do it daily, as most folk do.

This one is going to be a short one seeing as I’m at the Hussy for a 12.15 appointment. Hopefully shall get some answers to my falling/tripping over so often. I’ve been lucky in that so far I’ve got away with only bruises and anything more serious. So there yer go then, photo time …

The origin of the term ‘Legging it’, where a bargee with lie on his back and 'leg they way through a tunnel on the canal system.   

So much to do, so little time ...

28 January

Not felling so good this morning cos me head is on the move again. That’s a shame really cos right now we have wall to wall blue sky and sun shine.  Maybe I stopped taking the pills too early. Back on them now though. Pills or not, we have far too much to do to allow us to go out very far at all this weekend, or for the next three weeks actually. I should mention now that there may well be days when I won’t be able to write a blog over that same three week, so please bear with me.

We spent most of yesterday trying to find space to store all the kit we have in the kitchen. A good amount is going up to Kile’s place for a short while and the rest we will eventually find room for somewhere. Today we need to get on and do a lot more but at same I still need to start today’s dinner, a chicken stew made from the carcass of the last full chicken we had. Kile is stopping over the weekend again and I promised him a stew when he came next. Tomorrow evening we will have a pizza between us, Saturday we will take him out for Big Mac and Sunday we’ll have a braised steak I think. That will get most of the fresh the fresh veg we have in the fridge before it needs throwing out – which you know I hate doing.

Muppet central have a new argument going on now haven’t they? Daft Dave and his cronies have last a case in the high court over the bedroom tax, so they are going to appeal the decision. I can understand why they would want to because a lot of government policy could begin to unravel if they finally lose it. The issue at hand is the so-called bedroom tax which is certainly unfair as it now stands. Although the idea behind it was fine in that it was supposed to encourage people living in a property that was too large for them, to look at moving to a smaller property. The only people it really hit was social housing tenants. It couldn’t be levied against those living in private housing. Jan and I lived in my mother’s three-bedroom house and still received full housing benefit.

The effect was to push far too many of those tenants into council tax arrears and finally to eviction. When it was brought in many people saw the dangers in it, yet Daft Dave and Co would only speak of the need to get people to move into smaller properties. This approach, no matter what the subject, is called the broken record way; that is when someone speaks on the subject they only speak on the part of the record that matters to them, just like a broken record which sticks to just one word when played. Another name for it politics. It is also why I could never be a politian, I will not stick to a party line on anything and will look at and find the right way to go for my voters and my peace of mind. A cousin once said to me that I was too honest for my own good; he was right, I am honest, but too honest? How can anyone be too honest I wonder?

This new lappy of mine is pretty fast machine, or at least it is when I get it working properly. For years now I have been using Firefox browser so I installed it on here, but the lappy wasn’t having it at all. So now I have ditched and moved over onto Edge, the MS browser. The old IE system will stop functioning soon anyway, so why not move now. I kept getting ads coming up along with ‘a virus has been installed on your PC’ message. This lappy has a month’s free trial, even if it is only a very basic version. Yesterday I paid for a year’s cover of MacAfee Internet Security. Once it downloaded and set up it has settled down my machine completely. I was getting more than a bit miffed with it really see as I have never had so many problems with any of PCs. Not that any of that matters right now seeing as our internet  connection has decided to throw a hissy fit. Even the telly service is struggling but as the song went, ‘I will survive, I will survive.’

And so we come to photo time …

The Dorktown Bum Washer.

And today’s funny …

Well, the jokes on me today folks; I’ve spoken too soon and looking for a new joke source I’m getting all sorts of silly things like Java updates, which I don’t want after reading about the company admitting there are serious flaws in it. Sorry guys, I can’t do anymore funnies right now.  

NHS

27 January

First crocus for 2016 is now flowering out in the rear lawn, which is nice to see. There should be a few more soon along with a good few snowdrops as well. None of them were planted by us, so it’s thanks to a previous resident.

The NHS is in the wars again because a child has died through the lack of training and useless systems. I’ve tried the 111 system a few times and in each case the only thing them they have been able to advise me with was to go to a GP or A&E. I already knew that but both involve long waits, and I was looking for help that would prevent that. The boy who died however, is a different situation altogether, but yet again, it’s something that I found out recently when I went to the out of hours service at Hussy. They do not have access to patient’s medical records. That seems to me to be a serious failing. How can a doctor really understand and assess what is happening to a patient they see in front of them without the prior history? What surprises me is that so few instances of the sort of sort of errors as this one have come to public knowledge.

Another Staffordshire Hospital is now in special measures over lack of care and serious mistakes, this time in maternity. I say ‘Staffordshire’ but these days it’s really West Midlands, but it would be the former in reality. There was a serious lack of midwives which now in the process of being rectified by recruiting more staff from aboard, from Italy this time. Time after time we here of health services being short of staff, from GPs to right through the whole service. Staff are being recruited from aboard on a regular basis, and it’s something shouldn’t really be happening because the UK should be training more doctors and nurses from here within the UK.

It’s very easy to blame the current government for the lack, and the current spending cuts are not doing the service any favours at all. In reality though, this has been going on for a very long time, and under various coloured governments. White at school I remember a fairly large number of girls, and in those days it was always girls, who wanted to be nurses. I would suggest that isn’t happening now. So many kids grow up with unrealistic dreams of being famous and having people throw money at them for doing very little apart from being the latest top name, by winning Big Brother or such like. That is a huge culture change and there is little that can be done to change it methinks. Some of those kids then go on to have their health and mental health issues cause even more disappointment in them.

Suicide rates are climbing in the Western world, many of them young people who are perhaps disappointed in what life has given them, and not what they dreamed of. There are of course a lot of different issues wrapped up in this one and it’s never as simple as what I have said here. I remember saying to a friend once that people were using mental health issues as a shield when the do something that other people wouldn’t do. That wise friends was Joy Clark (no relation), who knew a lot more about it than I did at the time.

Poor mental health is a killer whether it’s come from for substance abuse or a physical illness like diabetes. Mental health has always been the ‘poor relation’ within the NHS, something that continues today, and yet the amount of money that needs to be spent on it increases as time goes by. As health budgets are cut, it seems that mental health is the area that feels the axe first and most savagely. Then false tears fall and hands are wrung as to why the figures keep increasing.

Right now Jan is Skyping her sister out in Bangkok and they’ve been on about how poor the hospitals in Ulster are. Our Lynda is having problems with both her gall bladder and her kidneys. Her problem is that each condition is treated at different hospital. She has been on waiting lists for ages while they argue about which operation should be done first. Last week we learned that Lynda saw yet another consultant who did an ultra-sound on her kidneys and it seems that for some reason they are recovering not getting worse. Good job really, seeing as the hospital who was doing her kidneys had dumped her off the waiting list – clever eh, not telling her about it. And we think things are bad here in England.   

Finding a photo that fits such a subject so … 

A wedding snapper.

Today’s funny …

Hello, Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.

If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6.

If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what
you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice
will tell you which number to press.

If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number
you press. No one will answer.

If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware
that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and
about to bite off your ear.

Sumat n nowt

26 January

Guess what? Today is our wedding anniversary; we have been married for 36 years today. Happy anniversary Jan, love you lots.

Well, my desk is now cleared ready for when they charity guys come and collect it. We’ve added a few bits to it as well so I hope they can take those too. Beside me is a magazine rack/table that was full of magazines. I sorted those out too, and there’s 34 of them, of three different titles. I’ve heard of people keeping their mags for years and years, you know, ‘just in case’. I wonder how many actually go back to them to look for something they partly remember from a mag a few years ago? They might be lucky enough to have the storage room for them, I don’t. At least I can now recycle them, and not just throwing them out as I used to.

Later today we have try to sort out the living room so that it can still be used as a living room as well as storing so much of our kitchen kit. The fridge-freezer and chest freezer will live where the desk was; the washer and dryer, will live out in the hall way where Kile’s bed normally lives when he’s with us. It’s not an ideal bed space, but it works. I’m not sure where the cooker will go yet, we keep changing our minds on the one. The small dresser where Jan’s bonsais live will be moved too so that the workers get a free run for coming and going.

I’ve tried a new venture yesterday, reviewing books I’ve read recently for Facebook group For Reading Addicts. They ask for a minimum of 150 words and I’ve done over 400 for Foxglove Summer. This morning I’ve started a second one ready for posting when I’ve finished the current paperback I’m part way through. At some time I shall have to go and pay a visit to The Works in town so I can see what they have on their three for a fiver offer. I’ve bought some interesting new writers that way. Both these reviews are of books I picked up from there. I’ve just thought, there’s a large book stall on the Wednesday market in town, so maybe I could do them both on the same day, that would be fun eh!  

Gene Hackman; I’ve always rated him as an actor. We recorded on of his films, Heist over the weekend but when we tried to watch it last night I was really disappointed in it. It seemed to me that it was mainly Hackman walking around shouting at his fellow actors. He’s retired now of course, same as Sean Connery, and I wonder why at times. Other actors are still filming, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood come to mind. So it can’t be a

Lack of dosh that keeps them working. I wonder if it’s the whole idea of working that keeps them going, the love of what they do. Well, it’s a good job we are not all the same eh.

For a change I thought a bit of public art for today’s photo … 

A pair of swans in Stratford on Avon I think.

And today’s funny …

What's the difference between snowmen and snowladies? Snowballs