Radio silence

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Three months, more or less, since I last posted and to be perfectly honest I have been seriously considering giving up blogging altogether.  As the weeks have gone by it's just become more and more difficult to actually put fingers-to-keyboard to write anything at all.  I've had some physical health issues, which in turn have led to me feeling pretty low ~ hence my lack of enthusiasm for posting here.  Consequently there's not been an awful lot going on around the house and garden to actually tell you about.  Still, here I am yet again so let's see how things go.

I'm sure I've mentioned I have to take medication for high blood pressure, plus I'm very overweight which obviously doesn't help the blood pressure situation in the slightest.  I have to have regular blood tests because the BP meds can adversely affect kidney function.  My last test results weren't that good, plus I've tipped over into pre-diabetes along with raised cholesterol levels.  As you can imagine I felt terribly annoyed that I've allowed myself to get to this stage, and I ended up feeling somewhat depressed because I know that it's all my own doing.  Anyhoo, eventually I pulled up my big girl panties and started on the road to considerable lifestyle changes.

I regularly see a particular nurse practitioner at our surgery and she has been brilliant.  The bottom line is that if my kidney function doesn't improve then I will have to take yet more medication, and if I don't make dietary changes then I will go on to develop type 2 diabetes.  The NP gave me three months grace to make the necessary changes.  I have to be honest and say that the changes have been (and still are) pretty difficult after years of just not really looking after my health.  I've been plodding on, though, making changes, and gradually losing weight.  Still got a very long way to go on that score but at least the scales are going in the right direction!

Fast forward to the beginning of last month and I woke up with the big toe on my right foot feeling very sort of stiff, almost like the joint needed to "click" but couldn't.  Felt the same the next day, then on the third day my foot was swollen and a bit hot to the touch.  By day four, I was in a considerable amount of pain.  I sat on our bed and wept because it was all just a little too much to be honest.  Adrian phoned our GP surgery and got me an appointment with another of the nurse practitioners.  I was in such a lot of pain and my foot was so swollen that I could only hobble along with a walking stick for support, and it was a  struggle to get even a pair of Crocs on.  Our lovely neighbour took me to the surgery as I knew it would be impossible for me to walk to the bus stop.  I'm afraid that I had another little cry when I was with the NP; I was in pain and just felt so down and dispirited.

She examined my foot and was pretty sure that it was gout.  She took a blood sample to measure the uric acid levels and decided that to be on the safe side, I should also take a course of antibiotics just in case there was an infection.  I was horrified by the notion of gout; it conjured up visions of elderly Victorian gentlemen with a penchant for port and hearty eating!  I was very surprised to find that it is not an uncommon affliction, even for someone who may be quite healthy ~ which, of course, I am not.  It was nevertheless pretty disheartening after the efforts I'd been making to change my lifestyle to find myself being whacked by something else.

      I had a telephone appointment with my GP the following day, who confirmed that the uric acid levels were raised and that the diagnosis was indeed gout.  She gave me some dietary advice and prescribed Colchicine to treat the gout attack.  She also decided that I should continue the course of antibiotics, and suggested ibuprofen for the pain.  It was a good 10 days or so before the pain had significantly subsided, and then I was hit with terrible itching all around the toe and over the top of my foot.  This apparently signals that the gout attack is indeed subsiding, so then it was onto antihistamines to help damp down the itchiness!  Thankfully by then I'd finished both the Colchicine and the antibiotics, one or both of which had upset my stomach, and the ibuprofen didn't seem to agree with me either!

So here I am, a month later and still not quite back to how I was before the gout attack.  My toe, whilst not exactly painful now, does still ache a little and tends to stiffen up somewhat overnight.  I had an appointment with my regular NP last week to discuss how things were going, and to also have another blood test to see how my kidney function was faring since Colchicine can adversely affect it apparently.  She told me that it can take a number of weeks to get back to normal after a gout attack.

As you can imagine I've been doing a lot of reading about gout, which it turns out is actually a type of arthritis.  I've also had plenty of time to do some seriously hard thinking about how I'm managing my life outside of the dietary changes I've already started to make.  As this has already turned into something of an epic post, I'll tell you about the other changes that are in the pipeline another time!  

Carefully curated snippets!

image from Clipart Library

Yes, I know I've been MIA yet again since my last post!  My only excuse really ~ as I've done bugger all these last couple of weeks ~ is that because I've felt decidedly unwell, I just couldn't be bothered to even sit at the PC let alone attempt to put my brain cells in gear to write anything 😔 It's not even as if the cold was one of those major 'flu-like things, but it sure has knocked the stuffing out of both of us!  Perhaps it's another of the joys of getting older, and our systems just don't cope so well with bugs these days 😒

Anyhoo, we are both feeling very much better than we were, thankfully, although I am running a few days behind Adrian.   He's actually felt well enough to do some work in the kitchen garden, making slight alterations to the frames around the raised beds.  I'll take some photos when he's finished 😊

 As the title of this post suggests, though, I did take some photos before the dreaded cold reared its ugly head, trying not to show the full horror of the work that needs to be done all round the garden this year as it's more than a little embarrassing that the garden is in such a sorry state again! 

There's not a lot happening in the kitchen garden at the moment, as you might expect, although life is stirring in the rhubarb bed.  Goliath is coming through strongly, and you can just see the Fulton's Strawberry Surprise (moved from the back garden) poking through the soil beside it.  There's no sign of the Timperley Early, the other new crown planted last year ~ I'm hoping that it's just a bit slower than the other two.  

When I took these photos the narcissus and tulips were all coming through nicely.  They are very much more advanced now and to be honest, with feeling so unwell, I've rather lost the opportunity to actually cut some of them for the house and have them actually last any length of time!  I do still have most of them to get to the cutting stage, though, and it's been a very worthwhile experiment that I shall definitely repeat again next year.  

The crocuses were starting to go over when I took these photos, and they've disappeared now.  They are very pretty, cheerful little plants and it's always a joy when they start to appear.

The path border (that we will grass over at some point) was looking very bare but I'd forgotten just how many daffodils are in there!  They were just starting to come through when I took these photos (they are later flowering ones).  I shall dig them out when they've finished flowering and dot clumps around the borders on both sides of the garden.

This is one of the borders that didn't get tackled last year ~ as you can see!  Still, the hellebores don't seem bothered by the neglect, and they have flowered beautifully this year.  I should have waited to take photos until the plants were in full swing 😄

Cute little narcissus poking through the detritus beside the hellebores.

It's always lovely to see the peonies coming through.  These were moved from elsewhere in the garden.  I've often read that peonies hate to be moved, but I've never found that they hold a grudge 😉

The two little holly shrubs that I moved from the other side of the garden last year have made it through the winter, and are looking nicely settled in their new home.

This is the planter in the kitchen courtyard that I grew lettuces in last year.  I planted it with primroses Scentsation Rhubard and Custard, and some clumps of narcissus Tete a Tete.  The primroses haven't fared well, neither have the ones I planted in the old wheelbarrow in the front garden.  I may have to think of a better way to grow them next year.  Perhaps plant them in pots or large trays and keep them sheltered in the arbour seat over the worst of the winter months, then plant them out 🤔  Something to think about, anyway.   

I thought I'd take another photo of the narcissus now that they are flowering.  They are so pretty and are such a cheerful sight from the kitchen window 😊

Being sensible

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Although it's not my natural state of being I have been pretty sensible following on from the very annoying leg mishap of last Saturday 😏 I had a hair appointment on Monday and although we caught the bus down, we actually walked home.  We had only just missed a bus so rather than hang around for an hour, I felt that I could walk home if I took it very slowly ~ which I did.  I suspect that this very slow walk actually helped, along with the Ibuprofen and periods of resting the leg over the last few days.  I've also been able to get out in the garden for a couple of hours or so at a time, albeit with me sitting down to work and Adrian doing the digging!

I mentioned previously that I was moving the strawberries.  Although I managed to get half the bed done fairly well, I managed to get myself into a right old pickle with the rest of it *sigh*  Luckily for me, Adrian came to the rescue and volunteered to do it for me ~ I think he could see how frustrated with my efforts I was becoming!  As you can see, I've only got half the strawberries actually moved into their new accommodation thus far but I'm hoping to finish the bed over the next few days.  It's a job that I can do sitting down so that's an added bonus at the moment 😉

Before "leg-gate", Adrian had finished the newly-extended raised bed in the new patio area.  We started to move the plants from the path border that ~ fingers crossed ~ we will be grassing over next year.  He dug them out for me and I then planted them in their new home.  The soil in this bed was still pretty wet which made it a not-very-pleasant exercise, to be honest.  Still, needs must, and at least we made a start on the job even if our gardening gloves and tools ended up covered with sticky mud in the process!

 

I've also made a start on bringing in my tender perennials.  These argyranthemum Grandaisy Pink Halo were planted in an old wheelbarrow which I had in the kitchen courtyard over the summer.  They grew very well and I'm hoping that they will survive the winter in the greenhouse, ready to be put back in the garden next year.  They are very pretty plants, and flower for months.  I think they are extremely good value for money.

Ta-daaa!  I actually remembered to take an up-to-date photo of Miss Schlumbergera ~ I hope you are duly impressed with my memory 😄  I would have liked to have knelt down to take a slightly better photo but decided not to risk having to get back up again, so just bent my knees as much as I dared!  You can still see how pretty she is looking, though, despite my lack of photographic skills 😊

A self-inflicted lazy weekend

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If only I had been doing something sporty ~ alas I was only changing our bed 😯

Saturday started off well and I was planning to carry on with what I had been doing during the earlier part of last week, i.e. working in the garden in the morning, and continue tackling the mess in my craft room after lunch.  I decided to be a bit sensible, though, and have a somewhat "slower" weekend as we'd both been working hard during the week.  We almost always Komp with my Dad either Saturday or Sunday, depending really on which day suits him best.  This weekend it was to be on Saturday, so I thought I'd strip off our bed and get the bedding in the washing machine whilst I showered, breakfasted, etc.  We then chatted with Dad and as time was marching on somewhat by the time we'd finished, I decided to remake our bed and only do an hour or so in the garden.  So far, so good 😏

I got the fresh bedding on the bed and was just straightening up Adrian's pillow ~ leaning across from my side of the bed ~ when I felt, almost "heard" actually, a popping sensation in the back of my right leg!  Omg, my lovelies, pain shot through said leg and I had to sit down very quickly as I felt decidedly odd😧 I just sat there for a few minutes sort of rocking myself back and forth in an effort to calm down ~ it sounds mad, I know, but it did work!  I gingerly felt my leg and nothing seemed out of place, as it were.  I was worried that perhaps I'd managed to somehow tear a muscle but on reflection I think I must have just given something a good "pull", as I'm sure I would have been in much more (and continuing) pain if I'd done anything more serious.

So as you can imagine no work has been done either in the garden or craft room these past couple of days.  I'm a tad annoyed with myself, to be honest, as I had been on such a roll all week 😒 My weekend has instead been spent alternating between resting my leg with a soothing heating pad and gently walking around the house, coupled with taking plenty of paracetamols.  The leg is still pretty sore, and feels as if the back of my knee/top of calf/lower thigh are bruised.  Who knew that doing something as simple, and everyday, as leaning across a bed could cause such discomfort!

I have resigned myself to doing less than I had planned this week.  I do have a hair appointment later this morning so will be doing more walking today.  I am going to be sensible, though, and get the bus so that I am not walking all the way from our house down to the shops, and will also use my walking stick for a little added support.

As I said earlier, though, it is very annoying 😒 

Anyhoo, enough of my tales of woe!

I'm not sure if I mentioned that our Christmas decorations had been languishing in the store room, untouched, for quite some time?  I kept telling myself that I really must sort through them as we haven't really decorated the house for Christmas much at all since we moved here.  I finally got a "push" when the activities organiser (I can't remember her proper title!) at Hamnavoe House (the residential elderly care home here in Stromness) put out a call asking if folk had any decorations they could donate.  Adrian brought the crates in from the store room for me a couple of weeks back and I went through them.

I was pretty ruthless and managed to gather a fairly large crate of things to donate, plus a couple of larger items that wouldn't fit in said crate.  As we have family coming up this year for Christmas I will be making a concerted effort to decorate the house, and may well decide that some of the things I kept this time can actually go after all😉  

And finally, I thought you might like to see how the schlumbergera is doing.  This photo was taken a couple of weeks back and I'm really pleased that the promise of flowers it was showing then haven't disappointed ~ I'll try to remember to take an up-to-date photo to share in my next post 😊 

Holiday souvenirs...

image from Clipart Library

Yes, I know that I've been MIA yet again but I do have a good excuse this time ~ we've been south to visit family and had to Get Stuff Done before we went 😉

We flew all the way down this time, which is not Adrian's preferred way to travel it has to be said.  Our friend Phil drove us to the airport for us to get the 10.30 flight from Kirkwall to Aberdeen on the 21st September.  Our first port of call was to visit my sister so we were able to book Loganair flights all the way through to Birmingham, which took care of the luggage.  We had a bit of a wait at Aberdeen as our onwards flight wasn't until 14.25, which gave us time to get a bite to eat.

By the time we'd collected our luggage and got over to Birmingham New Street railway station we were starting to hit rush-hour!  We let the first train to Redditch go as it was just too packed for us and our luggage to squeeze our way on ~ to be honest, it was all way too much hustle and bustle and crowded for my liking 😦  Anyhoo we finally made it to Redditch, where my sister met us.

We had a lovely weekend and even though poor Amanda had a cold and cough, we got out-and-about.  On the Sunday Amanda drove us down to Bedfordshire to our parents, where Adrian and I were staying for a couple of days. We all went out for Sunday lunch together, picking up our son, Sam, on the way to Mum and Dad's.

Unfortunately by the Monday I was starting to feel under the weather as I'd picked up Amanda's cold.  I thought I'd better do a Covid test just to be on the safe side as we'd done all that travelling which thankfully was negative.  I spent the couple of days we were at my parents sitting as far away from them as possible!        

Dad took us over to Hitchin on the Wednesday afternoon where we spent two nights before travelling back home again, by which time I had reached "peak cold" and Adrian was just starting to get it too 😟  We usually try to catch up with our friends Christine and John, and Olive and Tony, but because we both had such rotten colds we thought it best not to see any of them this time around 😔  We did have lunch with Sam again on the Thursday though, keeping our fingers crossed that we didn't give our cold germs to him!

We had been planning to get the 08.50 Peterborough train out of Hitchin on the Friday morning, to connect with the 10.18 service up to Edinburgh as we were flying back to Orkney from there.  However we discovered that ASLEF were taking industrial action the next day so folk would be changing their travelling plans from the Saturday to that Friday, as there wouldn't be any trains.  There was also an overtime ban in place (the bloody railway seems to be held together by the staff having to work overtime!), so we took the decision to travel on a very much earlier train out of Hitchin so that we could connect with the 08.18 up to Edinburgh.  This meant us being picked up from the Premier Inn at.....06.20😮  Neither of us were feeling 100%, especially poor Adrian as his cold was really kicking in *sigh*  Still, despite having a longer wait for our flight home, I think we made the right decision to travel before the train became crowded later in the morning.

 Although it was, of course, lovely to see everyone I'm sure you can well imagine how happy we both were to get back home to Orkney, where the lovely Phil was there to pick us up from the airport.

Unfortunately we later found out that my Dad had tested positive for Covid on that Friday, although thankfully my Mum was negative.....until Saturday, when she too was positive.  Adrian and I tested on Saturday too, and despite keeping our fingers crossed, you guessed it, yes, we were both positive as well 😒  Fortunately Sam, Amanda, and Liz are all fine.

Mum and Dad say they don't feel too bad at all really, more like they have a cold.  They had their flu and Covid boosters a couple of weeks ago so hopefully that will be helping.  Because of her health issues Mum is being monitored, and has been given steroid and anti-viral meds to take if her Covid symptoms get bad.

I suspect that Adrian and I have been feeling rather poorly because we've had the double whammy of getting Covid on top of already having a cold; he has been feeling more unwell than I have and had to go back to bed over the weekend.  Although the cold has more or less cleared up I am still coughing, and feeling a tad tired, achy, and lightheaded.  I'll see how it goes over the next couple of weeks or so, and if it doesn't seem to be getting better I'll have a word with my GP.  I don't want to end up with a chest infection and bronchitis like I did early last year!  Thankfully, though, we are both a fair bit better than we were.

It would be really good to have a nice, uneventful, trip south at some point 😄  

Ouchies take 2 *sigh*

image from Clipart Library

 On Monday Adrian and I made a start on The Great Housework Campaign ~ you guessed it we've got family coming to visit, 'cos as you all know by now I'm sure as hell a terrible slut when it comes to housework 😏  Anyhoo, things were going well albeit we were both pretty knackered by the end of each day.  As I keep saying, housework simply doesn't come high on my list of priorities and to be just a teensy wee bit fair to ourselves, the house still looks terribly shabby no matter how much cleaning we do as there is still so much updating/decorating to be done in most of the rooms.....well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it like glue 😉  In view of our advanced years (*snigger, snigger*) we were aiming to do a room a day but unfortunately the very first room we tackled, the living room, over-ran a tad as I decided to take down and wash the curtains ~ then, of course, they had to be ironed before being hung back up again and as they are very long curtains, it all took longer than I had planned!

Tuesday had been designated for the dining room but we had to finish off in the living room 😒  Still, as we knew it wouldn't take as long as the living room we decided to divide and conquer a little.  So whilst Adrian made a start in the dining room, I emptied out and thoroughly cleaned the fridge.....which took me a fair bit longer than I anticipated, if I'm honest 😲

Wednesday was going to be kitchen day but ~ you guessed it! ~ we had to finish off in the dining room first 😄  It's also the day we have our Tesco shopping delivered so very little got done in the kitchen to be honest.  Then came Thursday.....

I woke up about 6am with extremely painful cramp in my left calf, albeit not quite as bad as it had been a couple of weeks previously in the right calf.  I was not a happy bunny as I'm sure you can imagine!  Adrian more or less insisted that I phone the surgery for a telephone appointment with our GP, just to see what she thought was going on.  I couldn't get an appointment for that day as the surgery is closed on Thursday afternoons, but she phoned me yesterday morning.  To cut a long story short, she thinks that because I've been making a conscious effort to eat more healthily I'm not having quite enough salt in my diet (I know, right 😆), and I've also suddenly increased my exercise levels so my body is using up glycogen in my muscles hence the cramps.  She has suggested adding a little more in the way of naturally salty food (she suggested olives would be a good choice) as well as more protein. The annual blood tests I had done back in March (because of the high blood pressure meds I take) were all normal but if I'm still having problems in a month or so, she wants me to go in for more blood testing.  So now we wait and see if things settle down.

Thursday was a somewhat a slow day in the kitchen because of how sore my leg was, so we over-ran into Friday which we had planned would be for cleaning the downstairs bathroom 😖  Because my leg is still a tad sore, we are spreading out the bathroom and utility room over the course of this weekend.....

image from Clipart Library

and we're both feeling rather old!  Ho hum, got upstairs to tackle next week ~ fingers crossed for no more cramp-in-the-night incidents 😉

Ouchies!

image from Clipart Library

This last weekend was a bit of a wash-out to be honest 😒 I woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning with the most awful cramp in my right calf, which lasted for ages before it all unknotted itself ~ it was really horrible😧  I do get cramp from time-to-time and the after-effects don't usually last long, but my leg is still not quite back to normal two days later *sigh*  Still, at least I'd got a fair few jobs done before Saturday so I suppose having a little rest, even if it wasn't by choice, wasn't too much of a bad thing 😉

The plug plants are doing well in the greenhouse.  I shall put the sweetcorn and ornamental bedding out in the arbour seat this week to acclimatise to the cooler outdoor temperatures before I plant them in their ultimate positions. 

As you know we moved the raspberries and funberries from the front beds and as I mentioned previously, I decided that because they spread so vigorously they would have to be contained in pots.  I repotted the raspberries in the largest pots I own ~ they will just have to like it or lump it 😄 The funberries have gone into smaller pots for now.  If they outgrow them, then they too will go into pots the same size as those the raspberries are now in.  Eventually they will live on a stone chipped path along the boundary wall behind the soil mountain ~ which hopefully will be a very much smaller affair in due course, a mere hillock perhaps!

The small pots beside the arbour seat contain red currant cuttings I took last year.  I repotted them as they were growing so well.  

We've made some changes in the front garden, moving the three tubs of herbs round to the back.  It seemed more sensible to have the herbs nearer the kitchen, plus we wanted to use the old galvanised water tank elsewhere out the back.

We've replaced these planters with five half-barrels ~ I'll take some photos in due course 😊

The poor bay tree got terribly scorched by the fierce winds over the winter.  I decided to put it in a pot by itself by the side of the arbour seat, where I hope it will be more sheltered in future.

I don't have a large herb collection, as you can see, but they are herbs that we make use of.  I decided to put the rosemary in a pot of its own, too, as it's getting quite large now ~ it has such pretty blue flowers.  The poor geranium wasn't best pleased to be yanked out of the planter but I expect it will pick up in due course 😉  The parsley is now in its second year, so will be discarded.  I took some houseleeks from elsewhere in the front garden to put in the rusty old bird cage, as the ones already in there had also been decidedly battered over the winter!

The arbour seat makes a rather good "sort-of" coldframe ~ good enough for my needs, anyway 😄

The planter on the kitchen windowsill was looking a tad worse for wear.....

so when Adrian was staining some wood, I got him to give it a few coats too.  It looks pretty smart now and just needs to be planted up with some of that summer bedding I recently potted up in the greenhouse 😊 

Monday morning blues

image from Clipart Library

 

Yes, I know it's Tuesday but nevertheless that's how I feel today I'm afraid 😞

We were supposed to be going south for a couple of weeks on the 1st September but have reluctantly cancelled the trip.  Poor Adrian has been really under the weather for well over three weeks now and although he is somewhat better than he was, he really isn't up to travelling over 700 miles by public transport.  We most likely won't get down until the spring now but will hopefully go in March rather than our usual April/May.

And although I most definitely haven't been unwell like Adrian has, I too have felt a tad under the weather myself these past couple of weeks.  There's been nothing I can really put my finger on, just a lack of energy and feeling a tad "down".  The icing on the cake has been an IBS flare-up this weekend ~ set off by who-knows-what ~ swiftly followed yesterday by a day of constantly sneezing and a runny nose!  Today I merely feel knackered 😒

Oh well, onward and upwards I suppose ~ at least I've used this period of "down time" by getting stuck in to crocheting the first of two blankets I've been planning to make for absolutely bloody ages...every cloud has a silver lining I suppose 😏

Veggie February.....

.....didn't happen.  Well, to be more accurate, it did for the first week but then I let it fizzle out.  I think it was very much to do with the fact that I was relying on ready-made vegetarian dishes rather than scratch-cooking.  I had my gall-bladder removed a number of years ago and get some pain if I eat too much fat, so although I didn't think to look at the ingredients list of the things I bought, I rather suspect that most had a higher fat content than I would usually be consuming with my normal omnivorous way of eating.  I was starting to feel uncomfortable and in a certain amount of low-level pain, so went back to my normal diet.

Funnily enough, I have in the past found it easier (and more comfortable digestion-wise) to follow a vegan rather than simply vegetarian diet.  I guess I eat much more cheese and processed food on a vegetarian eating plan than I do on either a vegan or omnivorous diet.  Of course, it's much easier these days to find ready-made vegan meals than it was when I was following a vegan diet a few years ago.  Back then I had to make most of my meals from scratch and I'll admit that although I felt healthier for those two years than I had done for most of my adult life, I found it hard to be the only vegan in the family so gradually slipped back to my omnivorous diet!

The interesting thing, though, is that Adrian (a proper meat-and-two-veg ~ with potatoes counting as one of the two veggies 😉 ~ man) has suggested we try to have a couple of vegetarian meals each week ~ totally amazing!  So for now, at least, I'm back to my omnivorous diet ~ with plans to spend some delightful hours reading through my small library of cookery books for yummy made-from-scratch vegetarian meals we will both love 😊

I admitted defeat...

image from Clipart Library

...and phoned my GP surgery on Tuesday as I'm still not feeling well, and it's been nearly six weeks since I had that nasty cold *sigh*  Anyhoo, I phoned the surgery just before 12, had a call from my GP for a telephone consultation about 2pm, and she asked me to come in for an examination that afternoon at 3.30pm!  Turns out that I've got a chest infection and bronchitis, so I'm now on antibiotics and an inhaler 😟

I also had to see the practice nurse on Wednesday for blood tests checking liver, kidney and thyroid function, blood count, signs of inflammation, etc.  She had no problems finding a vein but had trouble getting the blood to flow ~ we got there in the end, though.

On the plus side, despite feeling incredibly breathless when I move about, my blood-pressure was perfect (for me) and my oxygen level was 99% 😉

I started the medications on Tuesday and although I am still pretty breathless, I do feel a bit better in myself.  I'm also still coughing but at least it now seems to be "productive" rather than the dry hack it's been up to now.  Hopefully I be back to my old self again sooner rather than later 😊

The traveller has returned.....

 

image from Clipart Library

  Actually, I've been back for 2 1/2 weeks now, but what with one thing and another just haven't had the energy to do any blogging!

We had a somewhat eventful journey on the way down and, thankfully, a slightly less eventful one back ~ with a somewhat scary hiccup the day after we got to my Mum and Dad's!

I mentioned in my previous post that the weather forecast wasn't good for the 26th November, the day we were due to travel.  In the end, after having sat at Kirkwall Airport for three hours listening to announcement-after-announcement cancelling flights, finally it was our turn to be cancelled and the airport was shut by about 1pm, I believe.  Loganair were able to get us booked onto another flight the next morning, this time to Edinburgh instead of our original flight to Aberdeen, the thought being that if flights to Luton were cancelled we could get the train into London more easily.  So Beverly and I got the airport bus back into town, and battled against the wind for the short walk to her flat ~ there was no point in me going home just for the one night.  Originally, we would only have had about a three wait at Aberdeen for our connecting onward flight so by the time all this had happened we were too late to cancel that flight *sigh*  

As it turned out, courtesy of Storm Arwen, the trains weren't running on the East Coast either so we had to book an onward flight to Luton, leaving us with an eight hour wait at Edinburgh Airport ~ which was why our original plan had been to travel via Aberdeen.  Starbucks became our new home for the day!  Thankfully both our flights went smoothly and we didn't have to wait for a taxi at Luton, but it was about 10.40pm when we finally got to my parents' home.  Mum, who had been discharged from hospital that day, was fast asleep in bed, and after some tea and toast (neither of us eat well when we travel) we went to bed too.

The next morning (Sunday), we realised that Mum wasn't at all well and called for an ambulance.  She was very pale and breathless, and it was obvious that she was in more distress than "just" her COPD.  The paramedics were brilliant and gave her a thorough examination.  They could hear fluid in her lungs and thought that she might have a clot or infection.  She did start to look a little better once they had her on oxygen, and off she went to hospital again.  To cut a long story short, Mum spent a week in the Acute Assessment Unit where it was determined that thankfully she didn't have any clots, but did have a lung infection.  She finally came home again, complete with oxygen, in the early evening of the following Saturday.

 Beverly and I had travelled down to help around the house whilst Mum was recuperating from her surgery, and although being back in hospital wasn't the best scenario, at least she was still recovering from the op.  We spent the week spring-cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, and stocking the freezer with some homemade ready-meals so Mum and Dad wouldn't have to do so much cooking when we came back home again.

Despite the slight set-back with the lung infection, Mum's actual surgery went well.  She has to have a biopsy in January and further treatment following that.  It seems that 2022 could be another year of medical worries but we'll just have to cross those bridges if/when we get to them.  

Beverly went on to spend a couple of days with her friend, as planned, then went to Hitchin on the 8th.  I decided to stay an extra day with Mum and Dad and joined her on the 9th.  I was a little worried as I had started to get a dry throat and slight cough, so did a lateral flow before I left to make sure that I was okay.  It was negative, which was a relief ~ mind you, the furthest I'd been from the house in the 10 days or so I'd been there was to walk to the dustbin 😉 Having said that, Dad had been out most days to get his newspaper or bits and pieces from the supermarket, so I think that I must have picked up what turned out to be a rotten cold from him!

Thankfully, although Dad did get a cold too, he wasn't too bad and didn't have the cough.  Plainly I just don't have the resistance to the germs from "down south" these days 😄  I'm amazed that I didn't pass it on to Beverly as we shared a room on the Thursday night and travelled home together, although we were wearing masks to travel of course.  We'd been hoping to meet up with Sam for dinner on the Thursday evening but unfortunately he wasn't too well, so we only saw him briefly.  I also didn't have time to meet up with the friends I haven't seen for a couple of years now, but on reflection it was probably for the best as I wouldn't have wanted to pass on my cold to them as well.

We were slightly early leaving Luton, so had to do another circuit when we got to Aberdeen as there wasn't space for us to land.  We got ourselves a drink and a sandwich, then settled down for the three hour wait for our flight to Kirkwall ~ only for it to be delayed by a further hour as there was a problem with the plane!  In the end a flight from Edinburgh was diverted to pick us up, but we did make up some time and finally got home early evening.  It certainly felt like another long and tiring day!

By the time I got to bed I was feeling pretty lousy, and was very cold and shivery.  The cough and cold really kicked in, and of course I was doing lateral flow tests for the next few days just in case it was Covid.  Thankfully the tests kept coming up negative but I passed the bugs on to poor Adrian, and we spent a good couple of weeks feeling pretty bloody awful.  We are both very much better now, although we do still have slight coughs ~ it really has been a horrible cold 😩  

Still, onwards and upwards as they say!   

2021: another bumpy year

 

image from Clipart Library

It's odd, really, that I've struggled so much more this year than I did in 2020.  Perhaps, like so many folk, it's the cumulative effect of still being in the midst of Covid and all that that entails?  It's also been much more worrying, for all my family, due to various illnesses cropping up this year for both family members and friends.  

Dad was taken back into hospital in May with severe abdominal pain, which turned out to be an incarcerated hernia for which he had to have surgery.  We were all very worried as he's no spring chicken (he turned 85 this year) but he got over the surgery only to be taken back into hospital again in July, which turned out to be pancreatitis.  He was very poorly and it's taken him some little while to recover. 

Adrian and I travelled south in August to meet up with my sister.  It was rather a last-minute arrangement and I must admit that I found the travelling very stressful, especially with the face mask restrictions having been lifted in England.  We travelled by the overnight ferry to Aberdeen and from there by train, with an overnight stop in Newcastle as I struggle somewhat with my back if I have to spend long hours sitting on a train.  We hadn't been off Orkney for a couple of years, so the crowds of people everywhere was equally stressful!  We've been pretty cocooned up here, although Covid cases have been rising again recently.    

We spent a couple of days at my sister's ~ it was so good to see them "in the flesh" again rather than just on Zoom 😍 Then we all went on to Hitchin, where we decided to base ourselves, so that we could spend time with Mum and Dad and help them with various things that needed doing.  It was equally as good to see my parents and spend time with them, but I was a little shocked at how frail Dad seemed to be.  I don't know why, really, after all he is in his mid-eighties and had had a few months of being very poorly.  I suppose no matter how old you are, it's always hard to see your parents aging too.  

We spent the last couple of days of our visit south just in Hitchin so that we could catch up with Sam, who we also hadn't seen for a couple of years.  We didn't want to risk meeting up with him whilst we were still going back and forth to my parents.  Although we did indeed see him, we had a little scare in that one of his colleagues tested positive so it was a flurry of testing for all of us ~ thankfully, our results were all negative.  Coming home we had to make two overnight stops, one in Perth and the other in Thurso, as ScotRail were on strike....as I said, a very stressful trip south indeed and we were very pleased to get back home again!

Having said all that, I am making another trip south next Friday, this time with Beverly.  We are in the midst of having work done in the guest bedroom and whilst we would be perfectly happy to let the guys have a key, it's better for Adrian to stay home in case anything crops up!  Mum is having surgery on the 26th, so Beverly and I are going down to help out round the house for 12 days or so whilst she recovers.  This time, though, we are flying which I confess I am not looking forward to in the slightest 😟  Still needs must, not least because whilst Beverly wants to see her grandparents and brother, she is primarily coming with me because I am nervous about doing the journey on my own ~ and I think I feel a tad better about flying than she does about going on the ferry!  So we will be flying from Kirkwall to Aberdeen, with about a three hour wait to then get the onward flight down to Luton.

I shall be staying with my parents until the 8th December, whilst Beverly is hoping to spend a couple of days prior to that with her friend.  We are then both going on to Hitchin so we can see Sam, and I'm also hoping to catch up with my friend Olive if she will be around 😊  We then fly back from Luton on the 10th and hopefully should be landing in Kirkwall about 6.30pm.

2021 has turned out to be a pretty bumpy year and there is still a lot of ongoing "medical" stuff.  Whilst I admit that I can't help but worry about everyone concerned, nevertheless I am trying to stay positive that all will be well. 

Wow, six months!

 

image from freepik.com

"Wow" indeed!  I can hardly believe that it's been six months since my last post.  I confess that I was feeling pretty low back in January and was really just "going through the motions" every day.  Mentally, I've been in that place before so I did recognise the signs ~ which I think in itself is a step forward.  I took the decision to just try to ride it out rather than going to my GP to ask for a renewed prescription of anti-depressant medication.  I'm not saying that it's wrong to take medication, far from it as I was in fact on anti-depressants for a number of years.  I simply wanted to at least give myself the opportunity of working through my thoughts and feelings under my own steam, and in my own time, without any additional help.  I was fully prepared to go down the medication route if I continued to struggle, or if I felt myself slipping into a darker place.

 Thankfully, this time round I have been able to work through it on my own.  It was a good three months or so before I felt that I had properly turned the corner, and probably another six or eight weeks from there before I was feeling more or less back to normal.....or what passes as "normal" for me, at any rate 😉  I've spent the last month or so debating on whether to resume posting or simply shut the blog down.  In the end I decided that I would carry on with the blog, but not put any pressure on myself with posting.

I am well aware that I have a somewhat "all or nothing" character and I've come to the conclusion that inside this messy, chaotic, mind-like-a-butterfly personality of mine there may well be a perfectionist thinking she needs to get out!  Deep down I think I have a belief that if I can't do something "perfectly" or as well as others seem to do, then I shouldn't even try to do anything as I'll never be "good enough".  It's pretty hard to get over this to be honest (I'm now 60 and still struggling with these feelings), but I am nevertheless trying to just do my best rather than worry about what others may (or as is more likely, may not!) think about my efforts.

So Sam and Beverly turned 30 back in January and I was 60 last month and life as I know it.....just carried on as normal 😉  Daft, really, to get worked up about these things isn't it?  I feel no different now that I'm 60 than I did before my birthday but I have got an added bonus in the form of a bus pass LOL  Hopefully the Covid situation will calm down again soon (we've had a spike in numbers up here since more restrictions were lifted) so I can start to make good use of it.

We've been working out in the garden again, so I shall have quite a few photos to share once I've sorted through them.  It's definitely helped my mental health to be out in the fresh air and sunshine.  It's not been sunny every day, of course, but enough nevertheless to give both Adrian and I a decent tan!  And we've been able to chat with the folk passing by which is always lovely.  Everyone is so interested in what we've been doing with the garden; I think they are as pleased to see it looking nice as we are.

As for my other interests, well, they've been on the back-burner these past few months as I've just not had the enthusiasm to do anything.  I'm finding, though, that my mind is once again turning towards getting stuck into some crochet.  I've also been thinking about my little dolls' house world and I have quite a few little ideas that I shall make a start on as the weather gets less amenable to gardening!

So that's how things stand at the moment.  I can't promise to suddenly turn into a prolific blogger but hopefully I'll get back in the swing of posting fairly regularly over the next few months 😊 

Tired of thinking about it

"It" being dieting/weight-loss/healthy eating plans/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it.  I am 59 years old and thoughts of needing to lose weight have been rattling around in my head for over 40 of those years.  I've been on countless weight-loss regimes since my very early twenties, none of which I have stuck with for any length of time and consequently, of course, none of which have had lasting effects.  And looking at photographs taken of me in those early days, I wasn't particularly overweight anyway!  All I've managed to achieve over the years is to make myself feel pretty miserable around food for much of the time...and when I am unhappy I comfort-eat.  My head has been stuffed full of guilt with feelings of being a failure and hot on the heels of that comes the feeling of worthlessness ~ which leads to the comfort-eating cycle yet again.  I am tired of the whole thing.....so I don't think I'm going to try another "weight-loss" regime for the foreseeable future.  I've got far fewer years ahead of me than behind and I think I've spent more than enough time fretting about "dieting".

All this hasn't come out of nowhere, it's something that has been on my mind a lot over recent months.  I hold up my hands and admit that I've gone through periods when my diet ~ using the true definition of the word as opposed to a slimming campaign ~ has been pretty dire.  To be fair to my parents, we ate well at home.  I think the rot set in when I married my first husband who was a very fussy and unadventurous eater.  It was easier for me to just fall in with his eating habits and I suppose I was too lazy to cook separate meals.  When Adrian and I got together I discovered that although he likes a broader range of foods than the ex, he still isn't keen on much in the vegetable line and really prefers a meat/fish-and-potato diet, with a little portion of a select few veggies thrown in to show willing!  So, as I did with the ex, over the years we've been together I have mostly fallen in with his likes.

I was thinking about all this again as I was re-setting the old clock I have that belonged to my Grandma.  The hands have to be moved manually all the way round the clock to get to the correct time, which is of course 11 circuits, and since it chimes on all the quarters it's a bit of a long-winded process in the autumn when BST ends!  So there I was, sitting there just twiddling those clock hands, and thinking about meals at Grandma's house when my sister and I had holidays with her during the 1960s/early 1970s.....

She made virtually everything from scratch and ate wholesome meals with lots of local ingredients from the shops in the village.  She ate breakfast, dinner, tea and supper, but none of her meals were the mega-portions we have a tendency to snaffle today.  She ate cakes and pastries but they were homemade, small and she only ate one at tea-time ~ no snacking on them throughout the day!  Grandma was a very active lady; she walked or cycled most of her life (she never had a car), worked in her garden and kept her house spotless.  She wasn't just physically active, she kept her brain busy too with all the sewing, knitting, reading, etc, that she liked  to occupy herself with.

I really believe that food was different then ~ I'm sure it's not just "rose-tinted spectacles syndrome".  I don't remember eating ready meals of any description until I was in my early teens; my Mum, like Grandma, mostly cooked from scratch other than the occasional fish-and-chip supper.  Grandma didn't even have a fridge when I was a child; I remember how cool her pantry always was.  She kept bottles of milk in a bucket of cold water and walked up to the village shops most days to buy fresh food.  Meat came from the butcher, wet fish from the fish and chip shop, bread from the village baker, vegetables and fruit from the greengrocer. 

At home we had "proper" dinners each day too, quite often with a pudding, and a traditional roast on Sundays (actually, that's something that Adrian and I still usually have on Sundays).  Breakfast would be cereals and toast or perhaps a boiled egg with toast soldiers, and sometimes a traditional English fried breakfast on Saturday or Sunday.

For tea (or at lunchtime if we were having our main meal in the evening) we would have sandwiches ~ cheese, ham, tuna or egg mashed up with salad cream.  Or perhaps it would be baked beans, tinned sardines or scrambled eggs on toast ~ plus a piece of homemade cake.

I didn't grow up in a village, we lived on the outskirts of Norwich for most of my childhood, so I guess there was access to a wider variety of shops in the city although there was still a group of local shops at the bottom of our road.  There was a little supermarket of sorts in Grandma's village where she bought packet and tinned goods (I remember one of our tea-time treats was tinned peach slices with evaporated milk and a slice of bread and butter!), and household sundries.

The main thing I remember, though, is really what I don't remember: being served large portions.  And yet I can say hand on heart that I don't recall ever leaving the table still feeling hungry.  We didn't eat until we were stuffed, we simply ate enough to satisfy our hunger.  I can hear to this day Grandma saying "I've had quite sufficient, thank you" 😉

    There wasn't much eating between meals, either; if we did want something we would have been offered a piece of fruit.  That's not to say that we never had any sweets, chocolate, shop-bought biscuits or an ice-cream ~ things like that were regarded as treats.

I should imagine that most folk of my generation grew up eating in a similar fashion; our parents and grandparents would almost certainly have eaten those kind of meals, too. What went wrong then? Back then, it was "real" food; no one would have even heard of low fat this/low carbohydrate that/full of fibre the other. People just ate food! What so many of us eat nowadays seems so far removed from good, basic, wholesome food, it's more like something concocted in a laboratory. How can it possibly sustain and nourish our bodies ~ and our minds too, for that matter?

I guess the only logical step is to cook from scratch, using good old-fashioned basic ingredients, as often as possible. I have enough cookery books to open my own flippin' library, some of which belonged to Grandma including her battered old notebook with her own handwritten recipes 😊 Unlike Grandma, I have the convenience of a freezer which makes it so much easier to buy meat and fish on a weekly (or longer) basis. I can also do batch-cooking ~ after all it's no more bother to make, say, a big pan of stew instead of enough for just one meal, and freeze half for those days when we are going to be busy and won't want to be spending ages in the kitchen.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that if I start cooking from scratch my excess weight will just magically melt away. For the first time in many years that's not my primary objective. I just feel that it's time to feed my body, mind ~ and yes, my soul too ~ some good wholesome, nourishing food.

Grandma with my little sister and I sometime in the mid 1960s

I'm rather looking forward to falling back in love with cooking and baking again, and trying out some new-to-me "old" recipes. Be warned, though, I may feel the need to share my upcoming kitchen adventures 😃