Be Excellent To Each Other

I am very fond of my Hope Street Irregulars

We’re doing an 18th birthday party barbecue for the daughter of the Ukrainian family we know.
It’s more yay, than nay as the weather is perfect and they are all loving it, but I’d still rather they hadn’t had to leave their home.

It’s a huge nay but also a huge yay. Hang on to the fact that they are safe and have found friends and comfort in your kindness x

It was a really rather excellent afternoon. I don't want to put pictures on here, but I'll send you a couple direct.

I’d love that! I’m so happy that I’m such dark circumstances this family have found a welcome and even room for some joy x

You're a good person DrZ.

Thanks.
Not always, but I do have moments when I try.

Yay! The extractor fan in the kitchen is working for the first time since we moved in. Nay! Not before grandad electrocuted himself whilst repairing it (he’s fine, just a bit shocked)(lol).

Not (yet) bought the really useful trolley for carting shit and kids around a field so using the bike trailer next weekend.

A few running repairs and upgrades explained here

https://twitter.com/MaliciousA/status/1 ... 4761072641

Running repairs and upgrades on the bike trailer used for festivals. Stuck the foam back on the handle, improved the counterweight system, improving access to the smuggling compartment, and a bit of anodized bling. pic.twitter.com/NBJ5r1EnBt

— MaliciousA (@MaliciousA) May 22, 2022

The smuggling compartment is well named. I had not thought of it like that.

i have a feeling my two youngest may now be a bit too big for the trailer as I haven't used it for about 2 years.

Nay: I got bitten/stung by an insect on my foot a couple of weeks ago and I’ve had some kind of bad reaction to it as my whole foot swelled up and has been bruised and itchy since.

Nay: I had to have (unrelated) blood tests yesterday.

Yay: when I asked the practice nurse yesterday who I should see about my foot (doctor/nurse/chemist) she said the clinical pharmacist, but as I was leaving she said ‘let’s see that foot’ and looked at it for me, and prescribed me some antibiotics without making me make another appointment with someone else.

Yay: and the swelling is down today and my foot looks much better, even though I haven’t taken the antibiotics as they only arrived this afternoon, so I may not even need to take them.

Heh, that's often the case. By the time you get a doctor's appointment you often feel.better.

I'm glad you're on the mend though.

Yeah, I’m glad it’s sorted itself out too. It wasn’t bothering me too much (apart from being sore and itchy) and I doubt I’d have actually made an appointment, and probably would have just kept an eye on it a while longer. I was mostly happy for the nurse being so kind and making that time.

As the band I wanted to see began to play, we reached the entrance to the tent. "I'm hungry, very hungry" said Hazza. "I'm not" helped Mazza. Wazza told me to go and get Hazza, not Mazza, a hotdog.

In the queue for the hot dog, on the other side of the field, I was second from the front. A man ran over to tell his friends how great the band were, and how they had just finished playing. I looked at Hazza. She looked at me. Hazza then knew i had a favourite. "Would you like anything with your hotdog?" The lady asked me.

"Just Mustard " I said, sadly.

They are playing in the 'Pool late Sept, so that's ok, and a ticket is cheaper than two hot dogs.

I like these short sketches

The family tent we’ve had for 10? years and just used over the weekend is showing signs of demise. Water dripped in over the ‘lounge’ bit, carbon fibre pole needed tape repair and inner elastic hangers for the bedroom are perishing so it’s time to say goodbye really.

Some friends we went away with had a super posh Berghaus 8 man Air tent that they’d bought for £800 (rrp £1200!) and obviously I’ve been looking at a replacement for our trusty old timer. So I was delighted to see the same one online for £599.

Arriving Monday.

600 quid! That's 2/3s of a Warlord Titan! Like Dave. He has a little balcony on his back with a man on it.

This tent has a balcony. And I’m taking Dave with me.

Yesterday I opened my loft and a huge spider fell off the hatch and ran off on the landing carpet. Being the manly man I am now, I picked up the spider with my bare hands and took him outside and let him free in the garden... Where he was probably eaten by a bird or something.

This is a Nay because of the spider but a Yay because a few years ago, I'd have never even been able to go near it let alone pick it up!

Congratulations! I am in a state of total denial - I think I'm fine with spiders until they come near. Beetles, too. I've seen a couple of incredibly shiny ones recently, then got up close and recoiled.

I didn't like spiders until I moved into this house, and now i'm used to there being 3 in every room.
Something to do with being near the river apparently, I guess it's good bug hunting ground for them.

I'm totally fine with spiders unless one appears suddenly, then I jump like a cat faced with a cucumber

Nay:

The Crash on the way to our holiday, and then 36 hours without a car suck in the middle of nowhere really.

but Yay:

The rest of the holiday was pretty darn good, any holiday where I get to swim in the sea on 5 consecutive days is never bad, and the rest of the stuff in and around Swansea and the Gower was quite nice too (although there is an awful lot of rubbish in the countryside)

Holiday - recovered! Glad to hear it

Thanks, it's good to have WiFi and mobile signal again. Sorting out a crash, insurance the AA, a new car etc with barely any internet connectivity (the on site pub/restaurant had WiFi, but neither of us had phone reception and I had 4g on and off - 5-10 mins on, 20 mins off in our caravan)

Extra yay, the taxi driver who took us the last 15 miles (we almost made it there before the crash) basically went car shopping for us. Driving around Swansea Second hand car dealerships looking for 7 seaters. He then picked us up free of charge and drove us to the one he found.

The dealership offered him a finder's fee, and he insisted that they just take it off the price.

(I mean they might have done a backhand deal, but they both seemed above board)

That is an extremely good effort - all of that sounds like a massive pain. All we saw here was oops crash... new car!

And that taxi driver sounds outstanding. So long as the car's still working in six months, I'd take that as a huge win. And very heartwarming.

Just had physio. The lady is brutal, so will be an evening of resting. I have lost a bit of shoulder muscle as I was injured for so long.

She said swimming will build my muscles back up. Which is great news.

nay - Openreach came to fix a problem at a house up the lane... Which apparently involved cutting the fibre to the 3 houses at this end of the lane. No broadband and therefore no landline, since the digital cutover.

yay - Bt however have got an engineer coming out tomorrow morning and in the meantime I have unlimited data on my mobile SIM, plus they're sending out a minihub also with unlimited data. The latter is clearly their system expecting multiple days between report and visit, so a bit of a waste, but still.

I really should have pestered Helen more to sort her mobile out, she's got 2 SIMs she pays a fortune for and now doesn't benefit from "broadband backup" because she never merged her btmobile account into the one with broadband.

The minihub arrived before the delivery window opened at 10am... Which was still not in time to beat openreach fixing the broadband. Thinking about it the delivery driver probably *drove past* the openreach engineer.

I'd much rather the previous person hadn't disconnected/cut the fibre but the repair turnaround was pretty impressive.

We still managed to get through over 8GB of mobile data that I'll be eagle-eyeing the next couple of bills for. Reckon I could've tried harder.

By crickey I’ve had a rough couple of weeks.

A couple of weeks ago either Bean or Russell bought a cold home with them, and everyone got it, including me. I just lost my voice completely, but it’s been there the whole time, bubbling under the surface. Then I stopped sleeping, and it knocked my mental health so badly. Then yesterday a fever hit me, really suddenly. I was talking to Russell out of the front of the house and I had to walk away and lie down. I had a really, really rough night, as my temperature got worse and hit 41.3°, which I think is fully in the danger zone, and 5° more than my usual 36.3° temperature.

I had a really rough night. No sleep, periods of deleriousness, my ectopic heart beats going crazy and my heart beating so damn fast.

At 7am it had dropped a tiny bit to 40.8°, but around 10am I think the fever broke, my temperature normalised and it’s not so scary now. I’ve just had some soup and managed to get downstairs.

People can be really cruel to me when I try to explain that colds affect me in a different way to most people because I’m immunocompromised, but man, that was a scary night. I think people tie it all in with the need to get back to ‘normal’ without remembering that this had been going on for me a couple of years before Covid hit, and it’s just how my life is. This was such a mild cold for everyone else, but jeez I was scared last night.

Anyway. I feel terrible (nay), but I hope I’m over the worse (massive yay).

I am somewhat disappointed, though. I’ve watched enough period dramas to know that when you have s delirious fever there should be AT LEAST three women sat around the bed dabbing my head with damp cloths and spooning me soup.

Bloody hell, that’s sounds terrible! You don’t have to explain yourself to other people, don’t feel bad about that. Glad you’re on the mend.

Thank you x

I felt a bit better for a spell yesterday, but my fever came back on last night, not as high, but boy was I sweating. I mean… have to change the bedclothes level of sweating. Luckily I managed to get my body into the shower today, but I think that’s my activity for the day over and done with. My heart rate seems better today, so I think I’m at the start of getting better.

I have just popped on here to check out the podcasts thread to see if there’s something I can listen to as I rest.

I have been getting really excited about a band called Lankum who are at GreenManFestival this summer, and really enjoying their music all week.

Just discovered that Alexa had misheard me and I have been listening to some fellas called Lanco instead.

That's brilliant!

What a wanco.

Nay: Due to a mix-up with Direct Debits and such, turns out we've been paying insurance for our cat Esther who died in 2019

Yay!: The insurance people have issued us a full refund!

Nay! Last Monday night in my sleep I apparently had a stroke, because I woke up and my left leg didn't work. Like...at all. So I've spend the last eight days in the company of our wonderful NHS being looked after and poked and prodded and basically taught how to walk again. Oh and while there I was diagnosed as diabetic

Yay! I am home again, with a bulging sack of drugs, some funky four legged walking sticks, and on my sofa. I'm not at risk of another stroke, I'm mostly healthy, but it'll be a good few weeks or months of physio and rehab before I'll be walking again properly. Anyway, I wanted to wait for the yay bit before posting

Fark! Scary stuff Cras. Did they have any idea what caused it? Glad to see you’ve got a mostly positive outcome.

High blood pressure and the undiagnosed diabetes would both have contributed to the likelihood

Sorry to hear that Cras. Glad to hear you're on the mend.

Fuck dude, that sounds rubbish. Hope you get back to normal soon.

Jeez Cras. I’m so sorry to hear this but super glad you’re back home and recuperating. I can’t imagine how much panic that morning must have been but am so glad you’re getting good care.

Actually I figured I'd slept wonky and pinched a nerve or something and figured it would sort itself out

The blokes approach to health care.

Mend well mate, speedy recovery x

I mean, in a way I’m kinda glad to hear that. Less immediate freak out.

I’m so glad you have been cared for so well. Your post made me want to hug the heck out of you.

So, how is hospital food? Grandad’s just got back from 2 or 3 weeks in hospital and he’s been saying how great the food was. Two hot meals a day!

Must not make stroke joke....

Get well soon, you ginger monkey!

Glad you're back home Cras, hope the recovery continues apace and that you're up and running (of sorts) in no time at all

Sorry to hear about the stroke mate.


All the best people are diabetic. Are you are type 1 or 2?

Glad you're safe and home Cras

Type 2