DVT DAY 195

I’m knackered! From morning till night I have been moving all the stuff back that we moved to enable the re-piping. So much stuff and some surprises. One of them was the discovery of a child’s teas set given to us by my parents and told not to let the girls play with them. We obviously took the advice they gave as I found them in a tin tucked away. They are German porcelain by EM Bavaria who were well know for making child’s tea sets. This set is 100o, beyond that I do not know, although they are apparently common. No hidden fortune here I’m afraid.

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I also discovered that I have the Imelda Marcos shoe gene. It kind of creeps up on you is my excuse, a combination of hoarding and liking shoes to go with clothes. I found I had at least three collections which when put together seemed excessive. See below:

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What can I say. I seem to like shoes. Most of the ones in the last picture are bound for the shoe recycle or charity shop. Not the colourful ones.

We kept going through the evening and I went off to the garage to begin to clear some space for the longer term rearrangements. First job was to re hook the tool board and get it filled.

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Its been a full days graft, my back aches so its time for football and the blog before getting some sleep and start over in the morning. Of course being Sunday its weigh in day, lets hope I earn a Mars bar ice cream.

DVT DAYS 193 & 194

Its very simple: two solid days of cleaning and decorating the storage space in which we deposit all the things we cannot bear to throw out. It had not been touched until we had to move everything out to enable the plumbers to do the re -pipe that took care of the first three days of the week. So I bit the bullet and decided to clean the area and paint it out, and of course that led to deciding to insulate the new central heating pipes. Of course if your doing all that then then I thought I might as well sort out the flooring. This I thought was a good idea until I moved the wardrobes and found mould on the end wall. Fearing damp I set about demoulding it and putting on a coat of antimould paint before emulsioning it. So Thursday saw me cleaning and painting. A tricky timing task as I had to host my Open Forum at 1pm. Of course there was the run to the local Wickes to buy the materials fitted in as well. I will not bore anyone with the details of the work but by the evening I was knackered and retreated to a hot bath. It was glorious, I love the joy of having hot water to top up the bath at will. I lay in it for hours and read all of Marshal McLuhan’s The medium is the Massage. I recommend it as a good bath time read.

So Friday arrives and my first thought, almost, was whether the paint had dried on my mouldy wall. It had, so I set to finish the painting of the walls and ceiling. In a moment of inspiration I decide to put a new flooring down and I fixed on a form of decking tile that I had used before. Its durable and I had no intention of ever redoing this area of the house again. So I go to Wickes again, buy the pipe lagging and then found the decking tiles I wanted. I then stood by them and calculated how many I needed to cover the storage area. I cracked it and picked up the required number of packs, and retuned home. I set about putting the first tiles down. To my surprise the space was exactly four by ten tiles, a miracle, no cutting required. The fly in the ointment was that I had miscalculated and was a pack of four short. Such a pain, but I headed back to Wickes and got the final pack of decking tiles. I then spent a tortuous few hours laying tiles and moving two large wardrobes around in a very confined space. It was tiring to say the least but eventually with a little help from my floor laying kit I got it done. With that done I lagged the new bright shiny pipes. Using my new hot wire saw was fun and made cutting the pipe lagging easy, so this part of the work went smoothly. The final outcome looks nothing but at least I know its all sound and will not need doing again for years.

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I cleared away what I could and collapsed in front of the TV, ate tea and then watched rugby. So now I’m catching up with the blog and wondering when I will get time to read my new books on McLuhan.

I am keen to get the house straight again before my youngest daughter comes to visit Sunday for a couple of days. I’m hoping for snow so we can luxuriate in the warmth of our new heating system.

DVT DAYS 191 & 192

Tuesday and its chaos in the household as the re-pipe crew invade us and continue to drill, solder and amaze with their 3D vision. My partner and daughter go to work and I retreat to the shed to write letters and keep myself busy. On the way to and from the shed I snap a red admiral.

One thing I do is frame a picture sent to me in a letter from a friend in Scotland. I hang it in the shed with her other pictures that she has sent me.

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The odd snack now and then and to keep going until my partner returns home and finds the radiators hot. The miracle has happened our heating system works, never before have all the radiators been hot in every room. The crew need to return to drain the system of the cleaning agent they have flushed through it. I am feeling sore and crap from yesterdays injection so take myself to have a bath and read. I wake up naked on the bed with a book laying on my chest, I take the hint and go to bed.

I wake on Wednesday alone, everyone else is up and either working or going to work, the re-pipe crew have just arrived. So I scrabble to dress and retreat immediately to the shed. I take a call from a friend and settle into writing more letters. At least the re-pipe means I am catching up with my correspondence. To my surprise the crew have finished by mid morning. They show me the set up and leave.

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The system is hot from the test and I cannot resist going round the house feeling the radiators. The crew said they had left the system on the program, which was news to me so I googled the program panel and found a video demonstrating the use of the programmer. Its really clever and has loads of options so at some point I need to re-programme the system to meet our household needs as economically as possible. But with time pressing I change into my training gear and hop aboard the exercise bike for 40 minutes. I have very little time before I have to log onto to todays Open Forum. No one turned up except the host and the person doing the technology. We chatted for a while and reflected on the possible reasons for the zero turn out and how the world works. In the middle of the discussion the guy who does some work in our garden turned up meaning that I had to end the season and tell my guy what needed doing in the garden. While he toiled in the garden I tested out the shower that had been acting up for a while. I hoped the work done on the system had corrected the fault and to my surprise it had. It started inauspiciously with a lot of spluttering and upping and downing of the temperature and then it got going. A real pleasure to take a comfortable shower fro a change, it remains to be seen if it will continue to work as well. My partner returned saying that her mother had committed to have a stair lift in stalled. So the visit to the mobility shop had paid off.

I put the lounge back to some sort of order so that we could spend the evening in relative comfort after which I started to write the blog while tea was cooked and continued till it was time to watch more Heroes. Tomorrow the car goes to be serviced and MOT’d and hopefully the nasty rattle at start up will be sorted. My injection is still sore despite exercise and a hot shower, its taking longer this month to ease, it maybe something or nothing I will wait and see.

DV DAY 190

Its re pipe day, the first f three, however before I can enjoy the fun I have to go to the GP for my 28 day injection. Right side this month for the pigeons egg that gets injected into me. It feels sore as the nurse pumps it in and as the day progresses it gets sorer, I feel crapper and I get a thumping head ache. But hey this is re pipe day 1. Four crew members turn up in four vans dead on 8:30 and begin. Luckily we had moved our cars and my partner and daughter went of to work leaving me to retreat to the shed. I am a great believer in letting people get on with their work especially when its something I know bugger all about. I remember how annoying it was in my workman days to have people stand around while I sweated my bollocks off. There is something degrading about being watched working, unless of course you invite people to do so, like when training new therapists.

So I retreated to my shed to check emails and to write letters, where I was joined by an intrusive rose and an inquisitive caterpillar. A strange feeling of being immersed in nature.

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Having written my letters I headed for the post office trying not to hear the noise of drilling and banging. I caught a glimpse of a disembowelled boiler. I hurried on. to my local post box. Mission complete I walked to our village cafe and order a take away bacon and egg baguette, returning home to eat lunch in the shed and quench my thirst with a bottle of water. My head is really aching now but I start to play with my jewelry making kit. Not a success but I had a chance to practice skills and find out about the medium of wax. By the time the crew started to pack up I was napping on the swing seat. At this point I went to see what had been done during the day. It was impressive but there is still loads more to do. Below are some pictures of progress to date.

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We wave the crew farewell and return our cars to the drive ready to start all over again tomorrow. An easy evening meal of pizza as I write the blog for the day. I’m hoping for an early night.

DVT DAY 189

Sunday and the preparations for the re-piping goes on. So straight out of bed and sort out the back bedroom so that the crew can have access to the rear of the bathroom wall. A bit of a huff and a puff with some judicious piling up of stuff and the room is re-pipe ready. The perfect warm up for the regular Sunday weigh in. 95.4 Kilos, down from last week. It appears that I am losing about a kilo a month, so I may be down to 92 kilos by Christmas. If that’s the case I am back at base level and ready to get properly fit. So time to up the game and begin some strength and upper body work.

The rest of the house is almost ready just some last minute stuff to move. Time to head to the garden. Some of the hedging trees are now tall enough to tip out and begin to shape the hedge. I also reshaped the magnolia. Once that was all done I turned my attention to trying to put a low ornamental fence at the back of the garden. Seemed like a good a idea at the time. I cleared the ground line and marked it out but the panels and their spikes were not up to the job so I packed them away and will rethink the idea. I grumpily put the panels away and changed to do some time time on the exercise bike. It was a reasonable session. As I returned to the house I took some pictures of the flowers that are still bringing me pleasure relatively late in the year.

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So now hot and sweaty I head for the shower and the feeling of refreshment. While tea is being prepared I start the blog and anticipate Strike at 9 o’clock this evening. What follows that will be the last preparations for the crew to turn up at 8:30 in the morning. My final act will be to ensure my 28 day injection is close to hand for the morning as I am due at the GP surgery at 8:30. I anticipate being sore for a few days as usual, more so because it is going i to the right side this month,which is always the sorer of the two.

DVT DY 188

I’m knackered. All day we have all been filling and humping boxes. we are preparing to have the heating system re-piped and that means moving everything out of the way so that the three men arriving at 8:30 on Monday morning can get on with the job as quickly as possible. We have so much stuff, it’s a mystery where is all come from, I doubt it will make it back, time to rationalise. So its been all sweat and work which in the midst of my partners mother rang to say she had ad a fall. I bit if a panic but having face timed her and found her sitting in her chair and being quite chipper and her son on the way we resumed the graft. It was lucky we had an almost empty garage.

Finally while my partner and daughter went for a walk I dived into the bath to ease my aching back. While tea cooks I write the blog and plan to have an early night. Below are the fruits of our labour.

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DVT DAY 187

Friday and this is the day the plumber is due to sort out our troublesome boiler so today is a day to get up and be ready for his arrival. He duly arrives and sets to work drilling holes in the wall and drinking coffee. He disappears outside and there is more drilling and the odd mutter. During this time the storage boxes I ordered from Amazon arrive, these are an essential part of the plan to move things to enable the re-pipe that starts on Monday. A few moments later another deliver arrives, this time some low fence panels to install at the end of the garden. It seems the projects are mounting up. Happily the new thermostat I put in the immersion heater yesterday seems to be working okay, so our plan B in case of boiler failure appears to be working. By lunchtime the plumber has finished and we now have a new outlet pipe and air brake in the system so that it will no longer suck water back into the boiler. Hurray, I pay the man and he leaves to be followed by myself and my partner as we head off to collect my partners mother. Todays the day we are taking her to the mobility shop to try out stair lifts. Its a sort of Alton Towers for olds.

We get to the shop and get them to open up the flat entrance as the entrance to the shop has three steps that our 92 year old cannot manage. It strikes me as madness that the access to this mobility shop is so inappropriate, it is such a poor model and insensitive to the needs of the very people it proports to serve. Any way we get in side and set about trying out the stair lifts. The whole place is full of mobility aids including rows of scooters lined up like they are ready for a old fashioned grand prix.

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The technology has come on a long way and the range of available aids is now very different from even a few years ago. A woman in the shop was trying out walkers and noting their weight, height and maneuverability, and ended up unhappy that nothing quite met her needs. We were ushered to a corner so that we did not make up a crowd of larger than 6 people and then we got to try the stair lifts they had in store. Not being able to go up and down stairs or at least thinking that this is something that one is no longer capable of is a challenge, so there were the inevitable discussions about missing walking up stairs and the previous experiences and advice that had been given. However it turned out that the stair lift was easy to operate and even turned you round at the top of the stairs so you faced away from the stairs. After a couple of goes it was clear that it got easier to get on and of it. There was more conversation about the pros and cons of the lift and the practicalities of putting one in and the additional hand rails that might be needed to complete the safety of the environment. Eventually we left with my partners mother having a much clearer idea of what was in involved and with the knowledge that she could use a stair lift and that one adjusted to her in her own home would be even easier to use. We took her home and reinforced the message that it was for her to think about and to decide but she was saying by the time we left that she thought that she had not really got any alternative but to go for one. We shall see how things progress.

Back home I intended to train but never made it as the plumber had left the extension cable he borrowed in such a mess it took me ages to sort it, by which time there was no time to train. So I took the time to dress up to go out, shirt, trousers and a blazer and even aftershave. We go to Softly’s and enjoy a good meal in a socially distanced (sort of) restaurant. The nice thing was that at the end of the meal we did not have to pay for it, or more precisely it was paid for by the Burton Groups gift voucher that they gave us a civil partnership gift back in January. We managed more by luck than design to eat the entire value of the gift including a £5 tip. It was a really nice feeling to have had such a nice meal as a gift from friends.

Home, coffee, blog and the final drugs of the day.

DVT DAYS 170 & 171

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a strange and bitty day. I found my contactless bank card had lost its powers like a Hero at a full eclipse. Apparently I can make it revive by chip and pining something, so at some point I shall be off to the shops. Apart from a quick trip to the local coop I popped into the chemist to pick up my new dosage of one of my drugs and Mondays injection, yep its that time of month again. No one turned up to the open forum at lunchtime so I chatted to the co host and talked about how we move on from this situation. The afternoon was spent in a zoom meeting discussing contract types and tax status, I came away with home work to do. The evening was a quiet one with yet more Heroes to watch and then a boiler cupboard to clear out for the plumber in the morning.

Today started with a coffee and an unexpected phone call from a friend asking how I am. A man turned up to tell us what we need to move in order for us to have the antiquated heating system to be re-piped. We walked around the house with me making notes about what we will need to move in order for them to do the work. By the time we finished the walk I had pages of notes and my back ached at the thought of all the stuff we were going to have to move. It is going to be a challenging weekend moving all the stuff. During the walk of Sisyphus, I got a phone call from the plumber desperate to rearrange our work till tomorrow as he had an emergency call from a woman who had water pouring through her ceiling. No other choice than to agree to a rearranged appointment for tomorrow morning. We waved Sisyphus off and returned to our disappointment about the plumber not turning up. I returned to my chores which included replacing the thermostat in the immersion heater. That was an interesting experience, as I think I found that the last plumber who installed the new tank and heater miss installed the thermostat, which accounted for why it kept tripping out. Anyway, I go the new thermostat installed in time to host my open forum session in to the afternoon. An interesting session, but shorter than normal as our participant had to leave early. I returned to finish off the thermostat job. Then it was the shed for me and a long exercise bike ride. I needed to spend some energy and work he knots in my muscles out. The ride made he shower afterwards all the more appreciated. I cooked dinner and settled down to writ the blog. I have a lot of Marshal McLuhan to read and Heroes to watch.

All this seems mundane and prosaic butit is how life is at the moment as we get set to make the house comfortable for the winter. I sense that people all over the country are doing the same. It is a form of hibernation to avoid the perils of COVID. Winter is coming and its not the dragon and winter walker type of winter that’s coming.

DVT DAY 184

Today is all fairies and surprises. Today we headed off to Trentham Gardens to walk the fairy walk and to see what it had to offer. What it had to offer was a day of lovely gardens, exquisite woods and colourful hedgerows. Situated just outside Stoke on Trent it took about 90 minutes to drive their and found a well organised set of shops as a lead into the entrance of the gardens. I remember that I once or twice ran the Stoke marathon and finished in Trentham Gardens. We enter and see our first fairy:

We headed for the space sign posted to a place to lose yourself and we found a designed “grass stream” winding through some sculptured landscaping. Of course we found more fairies.

I was taken aback by both the surprise of the sculptures made of wire and the prominence of the dandelions. Those that read the blog know that I have for sometime been using the dandelion clock as my metaphor for the time I have to live. My time is dependant on the way the various winds of cancer blow and the dandelion clock diminishes. So it was an interesting experience to be confronted with the symbol so starkly and beautifully crafted.

The gardens contain a huge lake which can be walked round. Around its edge are dotted interesting objects, a few of which are below.

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However the fairies were the special things that caught the eye along with the beautiful hedgerows.

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We wandered around the various attractions and spaces stopping to take pictures and a restorative ice cream. I’ve not really done the gardens justice so I would recommend a visit, the landscaping and the variety of things to see is really worth it.

We drove home via a strange and circuitous route that my satnav made up including the fun of a toll motorway. Once home there was a coffee to have before changing into my training gear and wandering down to the shed to climb up onto the exercise bike for 50 minutes. A late dinner and time to look at the days photos an to write the blog. Amidst the days main activity I also managed to reset the immersion heater, sort out some meeting times and contact the re-pipe man, and keep track of bits and pieces of work. What I’ve not got to is the growing pile of books that I need to read to prepare for a future conference presentation.

I wonder sometimes how I manage to survive, noting that I have two copies of the same book and managed to confuse 45mm with 60mm size blades. A busy life tends to do that.

DVT DAY 183

Monday and its the first day of my partners holiday and a weeks leave for me. While my partner goes to the shop I sort out my drugs with the GP. I had had a letter from the doctor I had talked to earlier the previous week. It was a good call but the letter was less well received given it designated the wrong leg as having had the DVT. Cannot win them all I guess. So a breakfast of bacon bagels and we set of for Barnsdale Gardens, all 38 of them. A unique collection of gardens, all with a specific theme or function.

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We started at the café with coffee and hot chocolate and toasted tea cakes to fortify us for the walk round the gardens. I found my debt card would not play the contactless game, which is a pain I will have to sort out. We wandered round the gardens and fell into the trap of stating “we’ve got that in our garden”. Each garden had a helpful board giving the rationale for it and some history in some cases.

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We walked around and picked our favourites keeping our distance from the other strollers. My favourite was the gentleman’s garden, which combined three areas of flowers, herbs and vegetables complete with hive and greenhouse. It was very neat and efficient. We got round all the gardens and decide to return the café for lunch. They did a good ploughman’s bite, which I washed down with ginger beer. Once we had paid, my card still did not work, we wandered round the nursery which is adjacent to the gardens. Nothing tempted us and it was the same in the shop. The drive home past Rutland Water was pleasant.

Home and I head for the shed in my cycle gear to get an hours exercise in before tea. Hard work at the end of the day. So back in the house it is time to read an e letter I got today and write the blog.