The Quatermass Experiment

I watched it tonight. If you look up the interweb thingy, you will see that the movie version gets fairly mixed reviews. Bearing in mind that it was adapted from a radio series of the same name, I thought they did very well. Obviously, if you are going to put a radio series into movie form, then you should expect a little more than usual dialogue in it. I enjoyed it. They managed to build the tension for the finale very nicely. It was interesting though to see David Tennant playing a doctor that wasn't THE Doctor. Even more interesting to see him enjoying a very un PC cigarette. Somehow though, his Scottish accent seemed a little contrived even though he was born in Scotland..

Well Happy Ho Ho's Everyone

Well, another year is grinding its inexorable way to a shuddering heaving close. Its been a difficult one to say the least of it, but at least we have closure on one issue. We now know what is wrong with Herself. We had our day with the Neurologist on Monday & a very nice chap he was too. He actually asked us if we really wanted his verdict just before Xmas. I did stop short of mentioning Bears taking dumps in afforested areas when I said of course we do. The bottom line is that herself has a motor neuron condition called Pseudo Bulbar Palsy. A very fancy way of saying that she has 3 to 4 years left to live.

The only redeeming factors are that it isn't hereditary, & that she isn't going to develop any new symptoms but the ones she already has. Those will kill her of course. Respiratory failure due to a lung infection or pneumonia most likely. Anyway, we are off to her daughters place tomorrow at sparrow fart or earlier in the morning to enjoy a wonderful family Xmas.



This is me playing Santa at our work Xmas do on Saturday. Merry Xmas to you all. Thank you for taking the time to read this stuff for another year. have a good one.

It don't come easy.

I've just had Herself come to me in tears. If you follow my blog, you will know that tomorrow is the big day for us. We finally get to see, after all this time, a neurologist, who is hopefully going to be a bit more definitive in what ails her. She came to me, I think, for reassurance as much as anything. We are both very tired, & very scared. I personally feel somewhat helpless, as I would dearly love to just wrap her up & tell her its all gonna be alright. I could say the words, but I couldn't say them with any conviction, because I don't know that. I wouldn't lie to her now. I never have yet, so I don't see why I should start now.

Herself's brother came down today to do the Xmas thing. It was nice to see him, but a little awkward for him I think. He didn't know the words to say either I don't think. I'm going to bed now, perchance to sleep, as the Bard said. I don't want to dream, I just want a few hours oblivion.

Jingle Bells

We had our work Xmas social today. Normally, it happens at our depot, an impersonal place at best with dirty concrete floors, trucks, fork hoists, assorted empty pallets & various assorted bits of freight that we somehow haven't managed to get out the door. It also usually happens on Xmas Eve & is a fairly protracted affair that doesn't end until the last of our Auckland trucks come straggling in, although I must admit that it will be sooner, rather than the way later that it has been for the last month. It's been a logistic nightmare getting all the freight down every night, & the boss & all the boys that do those runs have done well, sometimes not finishing till 2.00 in the morning. At least now, they don't have to unload their rigs like we used to. Now we have a 3 man night shift at the depot that does all that & our depot now functions 24 hours a day. We've come a long way.

So this year, our boss decided to hold the function at his home & hold it on a Saturday, which gives everyone a chance to be there & socialise in a very nice environment. The kids are very important too. At this time of year, they don't see their Dads as much as they would like, so todays do featured a bouncy castle, which was an instant hit, even though the boys tried their hardest to tip it on its side at one point, & a visit from Santa, with presents & sweets for all. Santa arrives ensconced in state on the back of the bosses toy, a wonderfully restored Ford Bonus pickup truck, painted white. Santa's arrival is my high point of the day. You see, for the last 3 years, since he started doing it in fact, I have played Santa. It's something I really enjoy doing & if I may say so, I do it well. Kids can be a tough audience & with something like Santa, you have to do it right or not at all, so I give it heaps & they love it.

My highlight of that, was when this drop dead gorgeous little 3 year old girl with beautiful straw blonde hair came up. I couldnt resist it & said to her, "Is it true that blondes have more fun?" Without any hesitation she replied, "Yeth!" Ohhh boy, is she gonna be a handful when she gets a bit older. Her dad is one of my special mates at work & quite often drops round for a chat on the weekend. Her mum is lovely as well. They moved down here from South Auckland 2 years ago & just love it. She earned a special place in my heart today by sitting next to Herself, listening carefully to what she had to say, looking to me for clarification if she couldn't understand & replying to her in a QUIET voice. Its all about dignity you see.

Meanwhile. Herselfs brother phoned. He is back from Japan & will be in Canada for Xmas.. The busy life of an Airline Pilot. He is going to come down to see us tomorrow afternoon. Also meanwhile, the count down is on for Mondays appointment with Neurology at Waikato. Its scary stuff.

Dignity

Is a particularly insightful Dylan track. I was listening closely to the lyrics & a couple of the verses really hit home. One in particular....


Sick man lookin' for the doctor's cure
Lookin' at his hands for the lines that were
And into every masterpiece of literature
for dignity

You see, Herself is concerned to the point of tears about losing her dignity. We talked about it last night. I told her that dignity is an inner thing & she will always carry that no matter what. In this festive season, we are socialising a bit more than usual, in circles that we don't normally move in. I have noticed, I may be overly sensitive on this, but it seems to me that folk that don't actually know Herself & what ails her, seem to think that because she has difficulty speaking that she is also deaf & possibly mentally impaired as well.

I have possibly become somewhat of a bore, as I have espoused the cause of Motor Neuron diseases & their consequences. This is probably because I didn't know much about any of them & I don't think a lot of people do. I wish I still didn't, but I do now.

We had a lovely weekend last weekend in the company of Jude's natural family, which was wonderful. Lovely people who take both of us as we are & we really enjoy their company. A nice break from the worries of life. Finally, thanks to our Doctors persistent phone calls & constant badgering, Herself finally has been given an appointment at Neurology in Waikato. Hopefully, this will lead to an MRI on the day, who knows.


So many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity

Theres Gold in That Thar Hill.

I kid you not. This is a picture of the pay dirt heap at the Waihi Gold mine. The spoil from the mine is carried about 2 km from the open cast mine in town to the Baxter's Road site where the waste is accumulating in the form of a hill inversely proportional to the depth of the hole. When they send the gold bearing ore through, its diverted in the building that you see, up the conveyor belt at the side & on to the heap that you see. I wouldn't bother trying to flog a spoonful or two though. I think that the yield is currently about 6 parts per million or less. This is one of the interesting places that I get to visit in the course of my job..

Quote of The Day...

Or probably the week..... Maybe even the year...... " Y'know a fucking man would do that for a fucking lady." Sorry about the French, but that's the way it went. The lady concerned..... Sorry, the FEMALE concerned, was in the hospitality trade too.. Behind the counter of a bottle store. You see, our contract with regards to this particular customer is strictly door to door, so for this place its all hand unload. We have for years done this at this particular outlet, but a different female was there today & she could see no earthly reason why I shouldn't take it all through to the back of the shop to the stock room & put it on the shelves for her. The bit at the top was one of the less salty bits of the conversation with her. I behaved myself admirably. The words, "If there was a lady present I might consider it" ran through my mind, but I kept my trap shut.

I'm trying to lose weight at the moment. I blimped out a bit while I was on holiday. I have my excuses/reasons, but they don't change the fact that I topped out at just over 120kg's. So far, I'm back down to 115.2 kg's, which isn't bad going for me. Ideally, I would like to get back to under 100 kg's, but we will see how we go. Breakfasts are a problem. I dont particularly like breakfast cereals; My doctor suggested fresh fruit, but much as I enjoy fruit, I can't face it at that hour of the day. I'm a good old 4 bits of toast man. Preferably with a fresh tomato still warm from the morning sun in our garden, garnished with judicious amounts of salt & pepper. Left over stew, a small tin of spaghetti, bacon tomato & eggs, poached eggs all find their way onto the menu eventually. A good brekkie sets me up for the day.

Lunch in my prime was 4 sandwiches. I cut that to two some years ago & recently got down to one. The reason that a sammy is good is that it balances nicely on the engine cowling in the lunchbox lid between bites while you are driving. My cholesterol is up too. I refuse to eat margerine for the same reason I refuse to spread bread with used axle grease. I don't think its very good for you. So now that I have the time to stop for 10 minutes or so to eat, I have started making salads. Its very satisfying to incorporate fresh vegetables from the garden as they come to maturity. I'm looking forward at this point to fresh runner beans, Basil & our own tomatoes. I augment this with small tins of tuna & , a recent discovery, small tins of shredded chicken meat, either smoked or with mayo. I didn't enjoy lunch today. In a burst of dietary fervour, I asked Herself to get me some Tofu.. Yep, you heard right, TOFU. this to give a bit of bulk to my salads without upping the calory count too high. She responded with something called "Tofu Luncheon." With considerable misgivings, I diced some into my salad today. Misgivings, because it looks suspiciously like the roll in the fridge that I hack lumps off to feed our dog. I also found a squeezy bottle of "Lite Mayonnaise" in the pantry. "Cool," I thought. Wrong on both counts. The tofu was bland & dry. The mayo didn't taste anything like a real mayo should.

Vegetarian & diet products are OK, But I see no reason why they have to be bland & tasteless, or that far removed from real taste so as not to resemble the original at all. I have long had a mistrust of artificial sweetners & lite this & lite that & todays lunch has only served to re enforce the prejudice. You see, I like food. I like to taste what I eat. I like robust flavour. I don't particularly like chillies though. A little heat is OK, but I really don't enjoy a really savage heat. I'll go back to my original plan I think. It may take a little longer to get the weight off, but at least I'll enjoy the ride a bit more.

Oh by the way ! You know I said the tofu looked like dog roll? Well I thought, "To hell with it. If it looks like dog food, the dog should eat it. " After all, he is on a diet too, & if it stops moving long enough, he will generally eat it. Well, I put it in his bowl tonight. He looked back over his shoulder at me reproachfully with a look that was eloquent in its silence. I took pity on him, deposited it in the pedal bin & gave him some fresh meat & bikkies instead. The crunch line is that if a hungry dog won't eat it, I sure as hell aren't going to. A man must have some principles you know....

The Day the Music Died

Purists will no doubt protest at my use of that quote to talk about John Lennon. I know that the song was written about Buddy Holly, but I do seriously think that the quote is just as applicable to Lennon as it does Holly. For those of you that don't realise, it's 29 years to the day that John Lennon was shot. A sad day for music & humanity in general I think. I remember well what I was doing when it happened. Me & a Fire Brigade buddy, Bernie, were in deepest darkest Otara going about our lawful business in the way of secondary employment namely debt recovery & repossession. I forget exactly what it was that we were chasing. Either bedroom furniture or carpet springs to mind. Bernie & me used to work together evenings for things like that & cars, that need two people to take the stuff.

Anyway, there we were, surrounded by hostile natives, & trust me, NOTHING can be as hostile as Pacific Islanders when you are taking stuff out of their house that they haven't paid for. So Bernie had just taken something out to the wagon, where we had left the radio on. I'll never forget the look on his face when he came back in. He leaned against the hall wall & very softly said to me, "Someones just shot John Lennon." I think my reply mentioned the act of fornication, but I'm not sure. We stopped what we were doing for a few minutes & talked, not necessarily about lennon, but just to ground ourselves out & provide some mutual reassurance. Bernie wandered off outside again with something else that we had recovered leaving me alone with the family. One of the younger ones wandered past me & to make conversation & said, "John Lennons been shot." He looked at me all strange & said, "Who?"

That gave me pause for thought, & I gradually came to the realisation that I was part of a bygone era. Oh, at that stage most of the young ones knew of Paul Mc Cartney. It was after all, the heyday of Wings, but John Lennon ? The Beatles? Sorry, who are they ? I was there, musically speaking. At the time, music was stagnating somewhat, so it was utterly mindblowing when the Beatles started being played. Part of their success was the fact that they appealed to a broad spectrum of listeners. Grannies were quite happy to sit & rock to their music along with teenagers.

After they split & went their own ways, I must admit that I much preferred the harsher sound of Lennon. Goody Twoshoes Mc Cartney still appealed across the board. Yeah, I do enjoy the music of Wings, but Lennon singing "Stand By Me," still puts shivers in my spine & tears in my eyes. I missed a lot of the music of the early 70's. I was busy trying to build a career & a family. (Cue tears & violins) In my dotage, I seem to have grown out of the mid to late 60's music. In later years, I have developed a fondness for the more urgent sounds of bands like Led Zeppelin & others that I missed first time round. I do own Beatles albums. One of the most prized of my albums is a mint copy of The Beatles "White" album. I haven't played it it yet, & I may never do so. Its worth far too much money. I also have a fair collection of their other works as well that I very rarely play. They just don't have the substance that I need any more. They didn't last all that long anyway. The archetypical bad boys of rock, The Rolling Stones, are still basically doing it, with more or less still the original line up, only missing one of the original lineup. OK, so the packaging is showing a lot of wear, but they can still turn out a damn good concert. Surely far more successful than the Beatles ever were.

My taste in music is fairly variable, depending on my mood of the day, but I can still listen to Lennon no matter what. Sit down & listen to "Working Class Hero" sometime. I mean sit down & REALLY listen to it. We miss you John..

Dive ! Dive ! Dive!

Its a long time since I have sat down & watched a reasonable WW2 submarine movie. I think it was just about one called "Das Boot" which was excellent. Tonight, however, I sat down & watched one called "U571" which was good enough to keep me up till 11.00 pm to see the end of it. I don't think I have seen it before, but if I have, it doesn't really matter, because I don't remember it anyway. It was notable in that it had Harvey Keitel playing the gritty old chief, & John Bon Jovi playing the engineer on an American Pig Boat, who sends a boarding party to capture a German U Boat that is lying somewhere in the Atlantic, disabled. Now there is summink curious. Have you ever noticed that submarines are traditionally called "boats," while surface vessels are called "ships." Just a small aside to give you something to go "Hmmmm....." about. Anyway, it was an OK movie, with plenty of action & drama &, believe it or not, not a woman in sight.

We went to see our local Xmas Parade today. Herself really wanted to, & as our other plans didn't come to fruition, we went. She is determined to do the full Xmas thing this year & who am I to stop her. We don't know how many she has left. I'm not really a Xmas sorta person, but its nice to see Herself enjoy it.

Our GP has extracted a promise from the Neurology Department at Waikato that Herself will get an MRI scan sometime in the next two weeks. In my heart I think I know what the answer is going to be. I think we both do really.

Ups & Downs

We went to the Doctor on Friday. Herself's test results were in. After all the shagging around & possibilities, we are left with two options now. Either a stroke or Lou Gehrig's disease. If you want to know about the latter, look it up for yourself. It's not pretty. Our Doctor is calling in all sorts of favours to jump the queue to get herself an MRI scan. That should finally tell us. Meanwhile, our next appointment with the Hospital surgeon is 9th of January. Him I'm not happy with. Aside from him not answering a letter from our GP requesting some assistance & info, he is also the one that definitely told us she had Bulbar Palsy. You really don't want to know what its like to go through the grief process that a diagnosis like that involves, only to be told a month or two later that it might be something else. We've been through a lot of diseases & conditions to get to where we are now. She is also supposed to see a visiting neurologist at Thames on, I think, the 11th of January, although what use that will be without an MRI scan I really don't know. Will keep you all posted anyway.

Well, that was the down. The up was we went fishing Saturday morning, two & a half hours & we had our limit. Herself didn't really want to come in, but we had to watch the tide a bit as we were using Te Puru ramp, & anything less than half tide makes it a bit tricky to get The Dog on the trailor. We had a good day. Today was blob day with 2 hours of Star Trek. I did get a bit of work done round home though. Tomorrow, back to work & hopefully news of an MRI scan, who knows................

Offending everyone

Every once in a while there comes along a truly funny story that is original in concept & most importantly offensive to just about everybody. This is one such joke......


A bloke from the bush walked into a Sydney antique shop.



After looking around for a while, he noticed a very life-like bronze statue of a rat.

It had no price tag, but it was so striking that he decided to buy it anyway.

He took it to the owner and said: 'How much is this bronze rat?'

The owner replied: 'It's $12 for the rat, and $100 for the story.'

The fella gave the owner his $12 and said: 'I'll just take the rat, you can keep the story!'

As he walked off down the street, he noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the drains and begun following him.

This was a little disconcerting, so he started to walk a little faster, but within a couple of blocks the swarm of rats had grown to hundreds, and they were all squealing and screeching in a very menacing way.

He increased his speed and ran on towards Sydney Harbour and as he ran, he looked behind him and saw the rats now numbered in their MILLIONS, and they were running faster and faster.

By now very concerned, he ran down to the pier and threw the bronze rat as far out into the water as he could.

Amazingly, the millions of real rats jumped into the water after it .........and were all drowned.

The man walked back to relate all this to the shop owner, who said,

'Ah, you've come back for the story then?'

'Shit no!' said the bloke. 'I came back to see if you've got a bronze Muslim, a couple of Asians, a Poof, anything Aboriginal, and an Indian spin bowler.

Feel free to tailor it to which ever location & ethnic minorities that you want.... Enjoy.

Isn't it ironic.

We deliver a considerable number of pallets of the type of circular. You know the ones. If you have an open fire, you use them to light the fire with in the winter, but they aren't even much good for that. Usually they are printed on glossy paper. No good for wiping your butt with either. Nothing sticks to them, even with extensive & vigorous crumpling. Don't ask me, I just know this OK ? Anyway, they don't burn well because of the huge amount of ink in them. They do make pretty coloured flames though. In the summer time, when the weather is hot, you chuck 'em in the recycle bin. Some of you even get annoyed enough to post a very prominent sign on your letterbox that reads, "No junk mail" or something that displays similar sentiments. I personally don't like delivering said pallets, because I don't like receiving them in my letterbox. I have stopped short of posting any signs, however, as you just never know. One of these days there JUST might actually be something worthwhile there.

The only consolation I have, is that none of the contents of the pallets that I deliver actually end up in my own letterbox. I'm glad of that. it could present all sorts of moral dilemma if I should have to.

Anyway, what is ironic about all this diatribe ? Try delivering a pallet of this stuff to a house that has very prominently on its letterbox, " NO JUNK MAIL."

We had a good day today.

We went fishing. I was planning on taking one of my workmates with us, but he decided against it. It wasn't a problem really, Herself & I went anyway. In retrospect, I'm glad we went on our own. It was one of those really wonderful day. One of those lovely balmy spring days, the tide was right, the weather was beautiful and the fish were biting in spectacular fashion. I worked my butt off looking after Herself's rod; baiting up, taking fish off etc., etc. I think that the day has given us something special to remember as partial compensation for some of the horrors we have been through lately. Nice memories for her anyway.

It would appear that Herself isn't the only one that's falling to bits. Blood pressure's up, Thyroxine levels are all to shit, Cholesterol is at an unacceptable high & I have finally admitted defeat & gone back on anti-depressants & very grudgingly agreed to counselling. I'm not sure that it will do much good & that is probably not a particularly good attitude to go into it with. I know that I shouldn't have a preconceived concept like that, but counselling & I don't have a particularly good relationship, but for Herself's sake, I will do my best with it.

We had a good day today anyway.

Doctor Doctor tell me the news

I wish. The conjectures as to what Herself has grow wilder & wilder. We now have just about everything to choose from. Stroke, MS, Bulbar Palsey, Lou Gehrig's disease, (Not particularly nice one that) & Most things in between. We think Myasthenia Gravis has been ruled out as she lacks one of the classic symptoms. About the only thing they aint having a serious look at is Beriberi of the Bronchial Bone. Our new doc has written to the hospital doc to get him to throw his not insubstantial weight behind a request for a neurologist & an MRI scan.

Meanwhile, in other news we had a lovely night out at a surprise 80th Birthday party last night. The company was good, the food average, the bill a little on the high side.

In other other news, we are going fishing this morning, so I better get my ass into gear I guess. wait for the next exciting installment....

Well, I'll be ducked

We was home last night doing what we do at night. Don't be nosy, OK ? All of a sudden, there was this penetrating piping noise & in marched these two little tackers

All of about 2 days old they were. They just marched in the back door proclaiming their presence. After I trapped them, Herself took them down to a neighbour who is in the bird breeding game. She even has an incubator. I'll spare you the gory details, but neither survived. While on the avian theme, you have heard me mention Mr Bird, the Thrush that supervises all out door activity's here & even dines out of the dog's bowl in the back porch. He very nearly met a very sticky end yesterday. Fattums came round the corner of the house proudly carrying him in her mouth. A few words of praise from herself & one proud miaouw later, he was on his way at warp 9.

On a serious note, tomorrow is the 11th day of the 11th month. Take a minute of time at 1100 O'clock to reflect on the sacrifices made by my Grand Parent's generation. My Grand Parents lost two sons in that dreadful conflict we remember as World War 1. The war to end all wars. So please, take a minute of your time to reflect to this track by a Canadian singer, Terry Kelly called' " A Pittance of Time."

Erection 08

So America has its first black president. My how they have grown up. wasn't that long ago he would have been whipped & put to hard labour as "An uppity nigger." Its nice to see that the Leopard can occasionally change it's spots. We will just have to wait & see now what this Leopard's appetite is like. Also, anyone want to guess on how long it's gonna take before some recessive inbred redneck goes after him or his family with a gun or some homemade explosives ? After all, as one particularly duelling banjoish individual pointed out quite seriously in a TV interview,"His middle name IS Hussein ya know.."

Well enough of that. On to the real news. Helen's out, Johns in, Winston's gone in 60 seconds. He could always get a job selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Tauranga pensioners would queue up in droves to buy them from him. Wonder if National will improve funding for health ? Would be nice for herself to get to a neurologist, & maybe get her MRI scan. Opens window & checks for flying pigs & can only see Winston hurtling through the air from the general direction of Tauranga.

WE went fishing yesterday on doctors orders. I kid you not. Its nice to have a GP with a balanced set of priorities. We didn't catch a lot & herself caught the lion's share, but its always nice to be on the water. I got my relax coming back. A full speed beat along the coast about 500 meters off shore. There is always great satisfaction to be had for me overtaking cars on the road. Every time I go out, I learn something new about the boat. This time I found out where the grease nipple is to grease the steering gear. I had noticed that the wheel has been getting stiffer. I'll do that today, along with removing a few old fittings that aren't needed any more. All just part of a general tidy up so that the Dog looks pretty for the annual poker run on Lake Karapiro later this month. We had a ball last year, but suffered the ignominy of having to limp back to the ramp at reduced speed because of a loose petrol pump. That aint gonna happen this year. The Dog is gonna be there ready to rock an roll & foot it with the best of them.

Once more unto the breach dear friends

Well, it's Monday night. That means tomorrow is Tuesday. That means gentle reader that herself has her next appointment with our new nice young American doctor at Te Korowhai. I like going to Te Korowhai, There's a sense of coming home, even though its herself that has the Maori blood not me. They are all nice people & the place is very family oriented. I like that. What it means is that hopefully, the results of the tests he ordered up last Thursday will be through; hopefully, the long awaited results of the tests sent overseas will be there as well; hopefully too, we will at least have some form of closure as to what is actually wrong with herself. You never know, we may even see the odd flying pig outside the surgery as well. god this waiting is tough on both of us.

I talked to you earlier about the hammering my faith has taken over the past few weeks haven't I? Yes of course you have you fool, get on with it. Well, Herself came home from the hairdressers the other day, nothing strange in that, she usually does, but she had an interesting story to tell. You see, the hairdresser is part of the "spiritual" community & is actually a very lovely lady. But sometimes, she suffers from a lack of putting brain into gear before engaging the mouth. She came out with this little gem the other day, "Oooohhhh.... Spirit must really want you back to do all this to you.." What a load of absolute crap. While I consider it to be the biggest load of irresponsible crap that I have ever heard, and had no hesitation in sharing this opinion in very gentle form with herself, it did have one very big & beneficial effect on me. It had the effect of galvanising my thoughts back into action. It made me realise with a jolt that I still do actually believe in self determination. For that, in absentia, I thank her. For putting rubbish like that into Herself's head, I could cheerfully rip her arm off & beat her to death with the soggy bit.

Anyway, enough of that, as the actress said to the Bishop, back to the main event. I'm not sure how I feel about tomorrow. Part of me aches for closure & at least the knowledge of what it is that the two of us have to stand shoulder to shoulder & contend with. All of me is terrified that it may be the worst of the 3 case scenario's that we have been presented with so far. All of me remembers the agony that we both endured when we were told that her condition was terminal. I for one have no wish to endure that again as, I would hazard a guess, neither would Herself. Being the confounded optimist that I am, it's very easy to take hold of one or the other soft options & run with it. Its not a thing I should do & I know that I'm probably setting myself up for a fall of monumental proportions, but still I do it. I guess I'm a bit like the optimist that fell off the top of the Empire State Building. Apparently, somewhere about halfway down, he was reputed to have said, "Well, so far, so good." So far, its been a helluva fall, with some very strong updraughts. I'm not sure what's at the bottom & I'm not sure that I really want to know what it is, but I do hope that the landing is a soft one. We could sure use a little clemency in the fates department at the moment.

101 Uses For a Dead Bath Tub

For a while now, there has been basically a brand new bathtub doing nothing at our depot. It was in saleable condition right up to the point that some numpty dropped a stack of pallets on it & did a lot of damage to the enamel on it. Exit stage left to the Flatcattery, where the fishpond that I made about 4 years ago has sprung a leak. Getting the connection yet ? I finally got around to asking the Boss what they were going to do with the bath at work & she said , "Take it." So I did. After some TLC with a tube of white silicone sealer & a mornings hard work hauling the old pool out, this is what I ended up with..

Its not fully finished yet. The tub is a little shorter than the original hole & needs filling in & covering with weed mat, but that will happen when I dig out some more dirt from mowing strips. That will cover up the raw end that you see. Meanwhile, no job is complete until the resident Clerk of Works issues a certificate of Approval.


Here is our resident Engineer checking the underpinnings of the bridge. It met with Fattum's approval, so she passed on my application to the Clerk of Works, TiggerPuss who is seen here taking care of the paper work..



So, pending infil of the two ends, which constitutes a hazard to small furry felines & suitable donations of tasty treats, I think I have approval.

Meanwhile, it's been Labour Weekend. For those of you that live outside of NZ, we have the monday off to commemorate the introduction of the 40 hour week. Remember the 40 hour week? I think I vaguely remember it. The main significance of it now is that its the first long weekend of summer. Well, usually anyway. Well, maybe not usually Labour Weekend is renowned as being the final tantrum of capricious Spring before the weather settles for Summer. This weekend was no exception. Herself's two sons came down on Saturday & went home Sunday. We had hoped to take the boat over to Cooks beach & give them a look round Mercury Bay. Winds of 50 knots or so put paid to that. Sunday afternoon, we went to the 60th birthday party celebrating the birthday of a lady that I grew up with. Her Dad & mine were in business together. We had a lovely time. Her & her husband have this beautiful old house that looks out over the local golf course, & round across the Hauraki Plains. Add to this, beautiful well established raised Rose gardens beautifully laid out & you have the idea. The most surprising thing of the whole afternoon aside from a rather intense hailstorm, was meeting an elderly lady that not only knew my Grandmother, but also knew Jude's as well. She came from Taumaranui originally, & her husband was the first man that my Dad worked for in Thames.

So today we put in a good morning redoing the fish pond,(see above) back to the grindstone tomorrow I suppose.

Oh by the way, I think I have a reasonable idea of the lesson that I'm up for this time round. I think its got something to do with humility. You would never guess that I have a problem accepting help from others. All my life I have been used to doing for myself. My Dad brought me up with the principle of cutting my own track, & I have always done that. Now I'm faced with a situation that I just can't cope with on my own. All of a sudden I am having to say "thankyou" to a lot of people. Some that I don't know, & some that are very dear friends that I guess I have helped out in the past, & now I guess the circle has turned full turn. I must say that its a hell of a lot easier to give than receive, but it's wonderful & very comforting to know that there are people out there who will help. I guess its been a pretty good weekend all round.

Values

Its funny how values can change over the years. When I was at High School, the most priceless things anyone could have given me would have been a self winding watch with a calendar function & a 10 speed bike. Aaah, the naivety of youth. My values have I guess, changed a lot over the years. I have had a lot of experiences, good & bad in my life, & some have said I should write a book, but this is, I think, about as close to that as its going to get, but two days ago my sense of values changed dramatically.

At the head of the list is still the outside hope that whatever Herself has is going to be treatable. Two days ago my dear old Mum had her operation to remove a cancerous growth from her foot. I had an absolute crap day at work caused mainly, I guess, by me worrying about being so far away if anything went wrong. Herself, as usual, carried the brunt of things signing all the forms & seeing her off to theatre. I shot straight up to the hospital after work & ended up having about 5 minutes of lucid conversation with my Mum. The first time in about 3 years. She told me she loved me, & also took on board the fact that she has a great grand daughter & another one on the way. later on when rang my sons to tell them about all this, my eldest son called me "Dad" & told me he loved me. You can't buy moments like that with any amount of money.

Ya Gotta have Faith..

George Michael said a lot more than he realized here. Firstly, let it be known that I am NOT.. repeat NOT a George Michael fan. I would rather see myself off by repeatedly dragging my throat across an extremely blunt & rusty saw blade than be stuck on a desert island with only him &/or his music for company. But you do. You have to have faith in something, from the Atheist's blackness to the holy rolling Godbothering full choir of angels with accompanying St Pete soloing on Pearly Gates or hell fire & damnation if you've been naughty.

I have, for a long time now, leaned towards the idea of self determination; that life is a progression of lessons through stages beyond this earthly plane, eventually becoming one with the Godhead. The lessons we choose to learn on each incarnation are up to ourselves, that we set our learning to experience what we need to know in order to progress. The reason that we don't remember our past incarnations is so that we don't just accelerate the learning process so that we can get our lesson over & done with in the shortest possible time & check out, a bit like the difference between walking around in the dark at home where you know where everything is & blundering about in a dark strange hotel room.

Well, it's like this. Lately , my life has become a very dark & very strange hotel room. If you have been following my blog, you will know what I mean. I find it extremely difficult to believe that those that I love are choosing to experience the sufferings that they seem to be undergoing at the moment just so that I can find out what it is like to lose loved ones by particularly nasty methods. I hope that I'm not really that selfish. The fickle finger of fate seems to be following me right on my heels at present. At the moment, I'm leaning more towards either the Insh'Allah precept as followed by the Arabs or a God with a particularly mean streak of boredom at the moment. For some reason, I keep thinking of the story of Job in the Old Testament, & Gods bet with the devil regarding his faith. Well, I'm not Job & I'm not interested in boils on my arse as a means of testing my faith. OK, good things happen as well, & I really do savour them a lot more at the moment as a means of escape, but it would be nice for those around me to have something nice happen. Like my dear old Mum just die peacefully in her sleep rather than go through having bits cut off her & the black beast eat her from the inside out. It's all the more unjust for her, because her mind is mostly gone & she really doesnt understand.

It would be even better if Herselfs condition was non terminal & treatable, as much for herself as much as any selfish reasons that I can come up with. My Dad had Alzheimers & died of pneumonia after he fell & broke his hip. The only one that has had a dignified death so far is my big sister, Karen. I think that as much as anything, she was just worn out, & died in her sleep. If any of you that read my blog are into prayer, I think we could all use a leg up in that department.

Reading this, it all looks very black & self pitying, but its not really intended to be. I'm just trying to sort out at this point if I really believe what I have so glibly eschewed to myself & anyone else who ever cared to listen. Maybe all this is designed to sort out what I really do believe. I believe at this point, that a good nights sleep is probably the best thing that can happen to me, so I believe I'll go snuggle up to Herself in bed until she gently tells me to roll over & stop snoring, so God bless & good night.

Livin Next Door to Alice..

We had an out doorsy sort of afternoon today. Conscience got the better of me & I dragged out the old Mk1 grass smasher & decapitated the lawn. Then I made up a brew of weed killer, did round the edges & killed off the bit of lawn that Herself wants to add to the vege garden. Less lawn for me to mow. Then I planted the grape vine that Morty so kindly grew for us. Then I saw silly old Fattums basking in her favourite spot in the rock garden. You remember my Alice in Wonderland rock garden?

Being of that frame of mind to piss about with the camera a bit, I activated a function called "solarise" This is what it does. Makes your photo's look like paint by numbers. I think it looks cool. Really Alice in Wonderlandish.

Where wild things grow

I went there yesterday. It was scary. Herself went to stay with her daughter, which was absolutely great for her. She had a great time. I didn't. It was as well that she went though, because things got pretty scary for me, & I don't think that it would have been a good thing for Herself to witness.

Once again my old mate Hawkeye came up trumps. You see, he's met the wild things. His wife died of a fairly obscure crap take no prisoners, give no remittance sort of disease. It cut him that deeply that he couldn't stay & watch her die. You know when you are talking to someone that has been down that track that you aren't going to be served any helpings of hearts & flowers or optimism. Its cut him that deeply that it has destroyed any faith in any sort of God that he has ever had. Still, a healthy dose of hard arse realism served up by someone that has been there done that is definitely better than anything else on the menu.

A long long time ago, in another galaxy, when my first marriage was spiralling rapidly down the toilet, my then wife pressed me into going to a councellor. I grudgingly agreed, if only as a means to try & keep my marriage together. Councelling isn't easy for me, as I am normally a private sort of person who doesn't easily share his innermost feelings. So I sat across the table from this kid about half my age who blandly assured me, "I know what you're going through." needless to say, it was a case of "Exit stage left." I'm happy for anyone who has done the yards to sharetheir knocks & how they dealt with them, but "I know what you're going through ?" No thankyou.

Anyway, I survived. Some heavy support from my two dear sons helped a lot when I was slipping a bit. It's not easy telling your sons that their Nana , whom they absolutely worship, is probably riddled with cancer. The only consolation for me, is that at least with her mind gone the way it is, that she is spared the horror of knowing what is wrong with her. I have no idea really how Herself is reconciling things within her head. It's not really something that we have talked about at any great length. I think we are mutually holding our breath till we find out the results of this latest blood test.

She was supposed to go to an MND support group meeting & lunch in Paeroa yesterday. She went to Auckland & took her grandchildren to the movies instead. I think that was a good choice.

Physician heal thyself

Well our family physician has had a complete mental breakdown & his practice is closed indefinitely. I feel for him. His surgery has looked after my family for 3 generations. The bitch of it is that its a really crap time for it to happen. Now we have to find someone else to go to & explain all the shit that is presently happening in our lives. Did I mention that my Mum has a particularly malignant cancer on her foot that has possibly spread throughout her entire body ? No, I guess that one slipped by me a bit. Its a selfish attitude I know, but we are waiting on some very critical blood tests to come through. Herself, among a zillion other things today contacted the Medical Center & got them to inquire on our behalf regarding the results. They have all come back normal except for the one that was sent to Canterbury. I think that is probably the one that will tell us if Herself's condition is treatable or not.

I saw an old work colleague in the street today. When Herself was first diagnosed, him & his wife made a big deal about wanting to be there & to be involved, inviting themselves round for a cuppa & a chat. We stayed home that afternoon specially. They didn't turn up. We did get a phone call 2 days later ; "Sorry, we forgot." Haven't heard from them since either. He bounced up to me all smiles & says,"Gidday mate, hows Jude?" I nearly said, "She's fucking dying. How do you think she fucking well is?" but reason prevailed & I behaved myself.

I did something new today. I took a load up to a place called Whenuakite on the crane truck. I've never operated the crane truck before. I have operated Fire Service aerial appliances & done a course at the waterside training facility in Auckland, but that was all a very long time ago. I did alright too, sliding 2 pallets of floor tiles in through a door with literally only an inch of height to spare. I felt really great, right up to the point where I came home & found out about my Mum.

Herself is off to Auckland tomorrow to take the grand kids to the movies. That will be really nice for her. I've told her that she is not to come home on the same day though. It would be way too tiring. So an overnight stay it is. That will be great for her. The shit of it is, that I don't actually want her to go. Entirely selfish reasons ; I feel very old, tired & worn out at the moment & don't really fancy the thought of spending a night with only my own company. I haven't told my boys about their Nana yet . I don't have the heart to. Especially my youngest son. He has just found out that his wife is pregnant. I don't really want to drop crap like that on his head at the moment. I don't really ever want to drop that sort of stuff on either of them, but I guess if I don't tell them, nobody else will.

Life looks fairly bleak at the moment. It seems like every time we have something nice happen, like Herself's birthday, something even heavier drops on us. Right at this point in time I have just about had enough. I'm not really sure how to cope with this all. Maybe the bloodtests will come back with something positive, but I'm not counting on it.

Happy Birthday

And indeed it was. The party at Sharon & Richards place was a roaring success in more ways than one. Some really nice family stuff happened & Herself had an absolutely fantastic time, which was really the whole point of it all. What was even more touching was the amount of people there that quietly came up to me & inquired how I was dealing with everything, & offered support. That was wonderful, & quite unexpected. Here is a lovely pic of Herself with her three children & two grand children. Sort of says it all really this pic.


This one is Renee after swiping her Poppa's beer. She didn't drink any of it, but its a cute pic what with her Dad looking on in the background. I'm saving this one for her 21st birthday. I think it's beautiful. Just so typically her.

Notice the gap in the front teeth? She is starting to get all grown up with all her new teeth coming through. God time flies. We both love being Grand Parents so much..

Happy Birthday my Love

Its Herself's Birthday today. Its been a hell of a year for her in one way or another. For both of us I guess for that matter. If you've followed my blog you will understand what I mean. Still she has survived with her head still held high. Her big brother came down today & took her out for lunch. Even her ex husband rang & wished her Happy Birthday today. I took her out for tea tonight, nothing flash, just the local Chinese Smorgasbord. We're going to her daughters place tomorrow for the weekend, as her daughter wants to throw her a big party. I'm very proud of her for that.

God, I love that lady

If it keeps on rainin'

The levee finally broke tonight. I've known all along that herself was scared. You don't share your life with someone for some twenty odd years & not get to know them fairly well. The symptoms have been there a while. She has to be either constantly doing something, in her case, gardening, walking & knitting, or sleeping. Sleep has long been her way of making bad stuff go away for a while.

She didn't pick a good time to want to talk. Right in the middle of the season final of Dr Who to be precise, but we got there. It's good that she has opened up, because now we can talk a lot more openly about things. You see, I'm terrified as well, & its been hard trying to put a brave face on things when you are faced with losing the most precious person in your life. I'm trying hard for her. I'm finishing all the projects that I have been promising her for years. This weekend saw the spouting repaired that has needed doing since we moved in. I didn't realize how badly I have been sleeping & how much it has affected me over the last couple of years until I got some sleeping tablets to help me smooth out the current bumps. The doc isn't all that happy about me using them long term, but for me, its a case of what ever it takes to get by.

Next weekend, her daughter is going to put on a birthday party for her in Auckland, so hopefully, I will be able to bring back lots of pics & herself will be able to add to her store of happy memories.

I really do hope it rains. If only for the satisfaction of looking out the kitchen window & not seeing Niagara Falls there. I really have done a damn good job of it all even though I say it myself. Oh & by the way, if you missed it , the season finale of Dr. Who was an absolute ripper. It really is going to be a hard act to follow next season.

I've had a good day..

Herself scored some nearly new spouting from a building renovation site this week. Today I started putting it up where the old stuff had rotted through. The two worst places were in the courtyard, & over the kitchen window, running down into our vege garden. Its that bad there, that in the winter time, I generally have to chase off various Asians who want to plant rice there.

I decided to start with the bit in the courtyard, as its a relatively short span of some 4.6 meters. Just a straight run with a down pipe at one end. Rip the old stuff out, cut a new bit to length, graft in a PVC end cap because I can't be stuffed soldering a metal one in, marry it up to a PVC collection box & graft the whole lot on to an existing metal down pipe.. Walk in the park stuff for a seasoned handyman like myself.

And it would have been too, apart from the fact that the space to put it in is very limited, & not having arms like a gorilla, I had to keep shifting the ladder from end to end to get it all set up right. Plus we are talking new technology here, as PVC & steel fittings are similar , but not exactly alike. Praise be to Allah for silicone sealers is all I've got to say on the matter. Now that I have the technique down pat, the existing run along the front of the house should be a walk in the park hmm..

What complicated things was that one of my workmates had asked for my help to fix a leak from his toilet cistern. It was a result of shoddy replacement of an old cistern with a bodged bit of pipe putting strain on the plastic bit of the ballcock. I could have just done it for him & saved myself at least half the time that it took for me to explain what needed doing & standing back patiently while he did it himself. That way, he has learned a new skill & acquired a bit more self confidence. When he had finished, he looked at me & said, "Y'know, you're like the father I never had." It took the wind out of my sails somewhat. Nobody has ever said that to me before. It made getting behind with my spouting well worth while.

Herself went to a meeting of the Red Hat Society today. I think we both hoped that a little bit of silliness would help take her mind off things a bit. It didn't. They were far too noisy & trivial for her. She much prefers the quiet & companionship of the patchwork group.

Straight as they come

I do like someone that delivers what they promise. I seem to be surrounded by them at the moment. I have some very staunch personal friends who have offered of themselves unconditionally if I need them & that is very comforting. Through one of those said friends, (thanks Morty) I eventually made contact with the MND support lady from Waikato Hospital. Not only is she Scottish, but she comes from Inverness, & more amazingly, she wasn't one of the famous four & twenty.

She promised a lot of things for us, which I took with a grain of salt, but it all happened within two days, including a talking machine & a meeting with all sorts of ologists at Waikato. For a Lassie that is only paid 20 hours a week, she gets around. I got to see her having lunch with a client when I made a delivery in Waihi the other day.

I had a good day at work today. I got to go to Hahei, Cooks Beach, & Hot Water Beach. Nice day with nice people to talk to....

RIPLEYS BELIEVE IT OR NOT...

As opposed to the Russian version, Ripskey's Believe it or Else. We actually got a helpful letter from WINZS the other day. They have told us that we can claim quite a substantial amount from them to help towards Karen's funeral, & that they will help us do it. I remain to be convinced that its that easy however

R .I. P KAREN JEAN LESLIE

Well, my big sis has finally solved the big mystery. She was 68 when she quietly slipped away at a local rest home. She had developed leukemia in the last 12 months. I thought I knew what responsibility meant when I had to choose for her between the options of subjecting her to the pain & indignity of chemotherapy or just to keep her comfortable & let her slip away with dignity. It's relatively easy under the circumstances to choose the latter, but the realities of seeing her slowly ebbing away are different.

You see, it wasn't a choice that she was capable of making for herself. Karen was born mentally & physically handicapped, to a frightened 20 year old whose new husband not only brought the Rubella virus home from military training camp, but also had to leave to serve his country in Egypt, as he had already volunteered for the army. It wasn't as if Dad didn't try hard not to go. He cut off his trigger finger with an axe in an effort to stay home with his new bride. It didn't work, so off he had to go, being invalided home after 3 years with chronic dermatitis & amoebic dysentery. He was , I guess, one of the more fortunate ones, as his battalion was absolutely decimated at Crete.

It took 10 years & my Dad threatening to leave before my Mum overcame her fear sufficiently to consent to trying to have another child,me. Because we lived in the country, I didn't see my big sister as different. She used to go off on her own every morning on the school bus to school, which I thought was pretty exciting. She also used to read me stories every night, running her finger along under the words, to keep her place on the page. Because of this, I could read quite well before I started school.

My Dad finally got sick of nurse maiding trout & wanted to get back into the bush, liking the look of Thames, so off we went. Karen by this time was 15, so Mum & Dad elected not to carry on with her schooling, leaving me to try & become the family genius. Karen stayed home, doing odd jobs to help Mum & churning out dolls clothes on an old hand operated Singer sewing machine & adding to her ornament collection every Xmas & birthday. She soon became a favorite with all the younger girls on the block who loved to play with her collection of dolls, both the paper cut out variety as well as the conventional type as pictured above.


Time passed. Karen turned 50 & Mum turned 70. By this time, Karen had been enrolled in "Occupational Therapy" & used to be collected & go to "Therpy" every Thursday afternoon, sometimes going down to the old folks home at Tararu. When the time came that Mum was too worn out to carry on caring for Karen, the transition to the home was an easy one for her, & on family gatherings when you went & collected her it was heartening to hear her say, "I'd like to go home now please." And home it was. I've lost track of how many potential suitors she outlived, even asking Mum on one occasion if she could get married. For 18 years she made it her home, still very proud of her family. Whenever you went to see her, if there was a lull in the conversation, as there often was, you would be introduced yet again to whoever happened to be within earshot.

In these more enlightened times, Karen would no doubt be introduced to the supported lifestyle system & be integrated into society a bit more, but in those days Mum was given the choice of caring for her at home or institutionalising her in an insane asylum. It says a lot for my Mum that she elected to take the tough option, namely care for her at home for 50 years.

So , she has now gone on, probably to catch up with Dad & all her suitors & all her other friends that have gone on. It was a lovely service. We didn't expect a lot to attend, but it ended up with round 30 people who came to pay their respects. I was even more pleasantly surprised at the number that wanted to stand up & pay their own tribute to my big Sis after I had said my bit. Normally , at such time, there is an embarrassed shuffling & maybe one or two will get up & say a few words. I was nearly killed in the rush. I didn't realise that she had had such a positive impact on so many people's lives.

Goodbye Sis. You set very high standards to follow. I never knew you to drink, smoke, swear, tell lies or say anything derogatory about anyone. Thats a tough act to follow. May the sun forever shine on you, the breeze be fair & warm & the path be smooth & easy. I love you Sis, goodbye.

End of the Golden Weather.

Well, that's it I guess. It's back to the Salt Mine tomorrow. I shouldn't grumble, I've had 5 weeks holiday. More than I have had in one hit for years. Not that I didn't need it. Even before we had the bombshell of Herself''s condition dropped on us, I needed it. In the 12 years or so that I have worked there, I've not had more than a week or two off at any given time.

It's been good in a lot of ways. It's meant that I have actually been able to be with Herself for support during a couple of scary examinations & a couple of other specialist appointments. Not that I don't intend to be there in future for her. Its been good to spend some quality time with her, as the last few weeks have been a fairly scary time for both of us.

As you know, we also had our week in Dunedin with my boys & my grand daughter. That time I wouldn't trade for anything. It is a great comfort to know that even though we are separated by quite a distance they are still there for me if I need them. In fact, its quite humbling to actually find out how many are there for me if I need them. I still feel out on a limb a little family wise as I still have a mother & a sister, but neither of them even recognise me let alone have any comprehension of what is happening in the world. Speaking of my sister, I had a call from the nursing home today to tell me she is failing fast. We went down to see her this afternoon. She just looked so old & frail it broke both our hearts to see her.

On the good side, I finally finished Herself''s Shade house. She has been busier than a bee with a bum full of honey ever since. I also took the unprecedented step of doing a bit of weeding for her. Do you know Dock Plants have tap roots that go down at least a foot & unless you get it all they will grow back ? And did you also know that they are about the only bloody thing that will actually grow through weedmat ? Scary isn't it ?

This is the finished shadehouse in all its glory. Have I not done well?

Talking 'bout my Generation

This is three generations of us. As you may have guessed, I have finally managed to download the photo's from my camera to my computer. This my eldest son Sean, (A very proud Daddy) myself, (A just as proud Poppy) & Anna Jayne, who you can tell by the pic is either going to be a hellfire & brimstone preacher, or a politician.



This is herself getting to know Miss Muffet a little better. Aren't they both beautiful? I got a text from Sean yesterday telling me that she is crawling properly now & has cut her first tooth. God it makes me feel old. Old, but proud. Oh, if I didn't mention it, today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me. 58 years of undetected crime. Sighhhhh.......

Home is the hunter

Well, its fairly evident that we are back from Dunedin. We had a great time. The only bad bit was when they wouldn't let herself take her knitting on the plane on the trip down, but we survived that. I took about 300 odd photo's but due to a glitch with the camera at present, this is the only photo that I took that I have managed to retrieve. When I figure out how I did it , I will probably bore you all with a lot more.

This is two very proud Grandparents having their first of many cuddles with Anna Jayne, Our precious wee grand daughter at the Dunedin Air terminal. She is so cute, but I'm probably biased I guess. We had an absolutely wonderful time. My boys did us proud. Sean looked after us wonderfully & was extremely generous in sharing his time & his wee daughter with us. he took us to a place called Macrae, about an hours drive north of Dunedin where there is a huge open cast gold mine & a little further on, an old mining town, complete with a stamper battery. From there we went up to Moeraki, to look at the round boulders on the beach. I thought there was heaps of them, but they are only on a small part of the beach. I will show the pics when I figure out how to get them out of my camera.

We stayed with Ian on the weekend, & celebrated his wife's birthday the day we arrived. We had dinner at the Speights Brewery Restaurant, a wonderful place with incredible atmosphere. Again , pictures to follow. Ian works part time as a bouncer at various night clubs in the city & Saturday night on the grog with him was a real eye opener. One of the places he works is called "Monkey's Bar" & is an old church. Its under the Historic Places Trust, so can't be altered. Picture the organ pipes at the back with the disco gear in front of them. Very dramatic. Like something out of a Goth Vampire movie. He took us to the Chinese Gardens on Sunday. They were prefabricated in China, shipped out & assembled by teams of little Chinese men with wheel barrows. A lovely place. Again , photo's to follow.

The trip home was interesting. Too much cloud for sight seeing, but it didn't matter. We were sat next to a fascinating lady called Camelia, no kidding, who is a psychologist from Transylvania, again, I kid you not. It's actually part of Roumania, but you knew that, & she was there during the fall of Communism in '89 & did she have some stories. Touch down in Auckland was almost a let down she was so interesting. The final nice thing that happened was my boss rang Friday & said I could have another week off, maybe two so I might get some fishing & concreting done after all. Well, thats the Readers Digest version of our week away. More to follow when I can retrieve my photo's

Leaving on a Jet Plane

But I know when I'll be back again.. next Thursday probably. We be off on our big OE tomorrow. Firstly up to Auckland to overnight with Jude's brother who is going to take us to the Airport on Wednesday morning, then to Dunedin via a half hour stop over at Christchurch. We be flying friendly skies with Virgin Blue.

To tell the truth , I'm more than just a bit nervous about it. We are staying at my eldest son's place so that Herself can spend some quality time with our newest grand daughter, Anna Jayne Leslie & also so that myself & my two sons can do a little fence mending between us. I'm very proud of the pair of them the way that they have rallied around their old Dad. I just hope I don't stuff it all up...

See ya next week.

Eight Miles High

At least thats what I felt like this morning. Not sure why. It could have been for a variety of reasons. For a start, i didn't take my sleeping tablet till late last night. About half an hour after I turned the light off & I didn't go to bed till quite late, & read for about half an hour. I was going to try a night without them, but I chickened out. See, my old mate Hawkeye rang about twenty past seven last night & we talked till after ten. It seems that yesterday marked two years since his wife Jen, passed away. Hawkeye has had a major heart attack since then & I think he is feeling his mortality a bit.

The conversation eventually degenerated into the usual "Remember when" session. We both agree that someone should write a book, but also agree that nobody would believe half the stories anyway. Add to that, some of the stories would probably break marriages & occasion law suites, so I guess not. Its always good talking to Hawkeye. We are old comrades in arms from Fire Service days & we seem to fit each other like a comfortable old pair of slippers. Even the fact that he really fancies his chances with Herself is Ok as well. Herself regards this with a sort of bemused bewilderment tinged with a little amusement. I know Hawkeye is all shit & feathers anyway & would rather cut his drinking arm off than offend me.

Night before last, I talked on instant message to somebody who I prefer not to associate with, but she is lonely & basically has a good heart. Aside from offering any help she could for Herself & I she also told me some horror stories about my thyroid medication. Being the level headed sort of bloke that I am, I checked it out with both the Chemist & the Doctor. I have nothing to worry about, but it turns out that I have been taking my tablets at the wrong time of day for the last 20 odd years. I have been taking it in the evenings & am supposed to take it in the mornings half an hour before eating, so I changed today. That might also be another reason for feeling so weird.

An aside from this is that the chemist who looked after my family for years has sold his business & set himself up as a natural health practitioner & he just happened to be filling in at the Chemist we now go to. I filled him in on what had been happening with regards to Herself, & also queried about my Thyroxine. He rang back about an hour later with some very good council on both. He also phoned later that evening & asked us if we would come down to his clinic as he wanted to run a few things by us. We went out to Kopu, got some really lovely fish & chips, took them down the coast a bit & sat & ate them before going in.

What actually happened was that he gave Herself a consultation that lasted about an hour & a half & then refused to charge her for it. What he said made an awful lot of sense. Apart from cutting bits out or off, modern medicine can't actually cure anything. All it can do is mask or lessen the symptoms till they either become bearable or go away by themselves. he made a lot of sense. he also wrote it all down for us. We are going to give it a try at the least. At the best it could prolong Herself's time here. At the worst, she will die healthy. At least we will know that we have tried.

Some Days are diamonds

This is Herself with our eldest grandson. We went to Auckland on Sunday to visit him, his Mother & Father & his little sister. Coincidentally, her two sons were there as well, & an old friend, an ex sister in law made the trip from Titirangi to Albany to see her. We had a really great day & a good trip home.

Yesterday, we both got into the back garden & hauled a trailer load of weeds to the dump. Some other good stuff happened too that helped restore our faith in human nature, but that is gonna have to stay confidential at this point. Even with all this, which should have made for a really good day, I took Herself out for lunch as well, I had a dreadful day. It ended with me holding Herself like there was going to be no tomorrow & sobbing my heart out.

Like the song says,"Some days are diamond, some days are stone." Sunday was a definite diamond day. Clear , pure, sparkling & full of hope & happiness. Yesterday for me, was a cold, hard, stone day, with the stone sitting very heavily in the pit of my stomach. I haven't decided yet what today has been. I haven't done a great deal apart from fix a pot for herself so she could plant it, & muck about in the garage a bit pretending to clean up.

Oh I finished an excellent book by Joe Haldeman called 1968. Its the story of one young conscripts time in Vietnam, his return home & his integration into society. Its a sad book, but I guess it was a sad war.

Its not dark yet

Says Mr Dylan. This song says it all for me at the moment.

My oldest & one of my dearest friends Kathy rang from the States, (Texas actually) last night. She & I have been corresponding since we were both 12 or so. I'm not gonna tell you how long that is, because that would give away her age & a gentleman NEVER does that. We don't actually talk to each other per se that often, but we do keep in touch via email & here. It was good to talk to her. She asked me some very searching questions that I had to come up with answers for. They were mostly things that I had filed in the "Too Hard" folder under the subheading "personal stuff that I'm not ready to cope with yet." I know that if I had said I don't wish to talk about this that she would have let me off the hook, but I hung in there . Kathy, thank you for your love, concern & prayers.

Its hard for a resident comedian like myself to be humble & just say thank you to people but damn, I seem to be doing it one hell of a lot at the moment. Its so good to know that there are folk out there that actually give a damn. Morty, I know you have issues of your own to cope with, so that makes the love & concern that you have for Jude & I so much more cherished. Cwnda, you somehow have knack for saying the right thing. Thank you for being there. There are a hell of a lot of people in Jude's circle of friends out there that are there for us as well.

Well, thats really enough of the sad soggy bits for one day. We be going to sit up half the night & watch the opening of the Olympic Games.. Gosh, I wonder if Tibet will be represented...

Eight days a week

At least that's what it feels like. Its a week to the day that we found out about Herself's problems. Well what else can I call it .. Disease ?? Illness ??? Incapacitation ???? Anything else you can come up with ? All I can say is that it has to be a problem shared if the offers of help & support that we have had in the last few days are anything to go by. How many of those will continue to be there in the cold light of day when they are asked is anybodies guess, but I know that there is a solid core of friends there that will stand up & be counted no matter what the cost or inconvenience to themselves.

We had Jude's youngest son & his wife come down for the weekend, which was wonderful. They are both towers of strength, & it was wonderful to have them here. They gave so much positive support. Thanks guys. Today we had our dose of optimism in the form of a trip down to Tauranga to see Morty. Now there is more than a friend. If you follow her blog, you will be aware that she has her own problems, both short & long term, but Jude & I know beyond the remotest shadow of a doubt, that when the excrement hits the revolving air mover, she will be there for us. Her positive & practical outlook is very comforting, & actually leaves me feeling as though I might actually sleep tonight without waking up with this incredibly cold ball in my stomach.

Jude's natural brother Brian rang last night & was absolutely devastated on two counts. Firstly for Jude, as her loves her dearly, & is such a loving gentle soul, & secondly because as he told us, his ( & Jude's ) mother, died of pretty much the same thing, so we surmise that heredity is a factor. He is coming down to see us this weekend, which will be great.

Bewilderment Rules

It's 7.17 AM on Saturday morning. I have just finished work for a month. Herselfs youngest son & his wife are coming down to spend the weekend with us. My two sons in an amazing act of generosity & reconciliation have offered to pay for our airfares so that we can go down to Dunedin, spend some quality time with them both, get to know our new grand daughter & help my youngest son's wife celebrate her birthday. Apart from the weather, surely a time for celebration & rejoicing.

Unfortunately not. Let me explain. You see, for some time Herself has been exhibiting symptoms of having had a stroke of some sort, but we just put it down to other things such as ill fitting teeth. Finally a dear friend insisted she see a doctor about it, so we did. He sent her for Xrays & a CT scan, the Xrays being to rule out Parkinsons disease, which they did.

So on to the specialist, which we did on Tuesday. Since then, we have been struggling to come to terms with the fact that my beloved wife & best buddy has got a condition known as Bulbar Palsy, & as a result is going to have an extremely shortened life span. Since then, we have existed in a state of shock. The only bright spot is the support, offers of help & general compassion that has been freely offered from friends, loved ones & workmates. Thank you all

Now for something completely different

That Song is drivin me crazy

Well, not exactly crazy but this particular version of this song does evince a very powerful reaction from both Herself & Me.

You see, I have it as part of my CD collection on audio, although I have a cunning plan to add the DVD to my collection as well. Let me explain. I have the cd as part of my collection of copied discs that I drag around in my work bag, for occasions when I'm out of reception for what I believe to be an acceptable radio station when I'm working. I haven't listened to this one in a while, but I've been in a country/folk/bluegrassy mood lately, so I gave it a spin Monday. There is a few songs that evoke an emotional reaction for me, most of them are Irish. One other song is the ballad of Pancho & Lefty. Another is City of New Orleans. This particular version of this song came out of left field for me as emotive.

I happened to take herself with me yesterday. I told her to pick a CD to listen to & she surprised me by selecting "The Best Of The Band" After that had finished I dragged out this CD which is, if you were wondering, The Pete Seegar Tapes, by Bruce Springsteen. When this track came on, I surreptitiously wiped some rain that had managed to get into my eye through a closed window. I happened to look across to see herself having a good old blub as well, which really surprised me, as she is usually fairly fire proof to this sort of music.

Out of curiosity, I asked her what the pull of the song was for her. She told me that it conjured up memories of being a small child & spending time with her Grandmother in a small township down the line called Mangaweka. It would seem as though her Grandmother was really the only one of her elders who actually gave a shit about her & really loved her. From this woman , a little girl learned to love gardening, patchwork knitting & hand hooked rag rugs.

I can't say for certain what it does for me. It's a sad & gentle lament of a boy taken rudely from a home that he loved & thrust into the horrors of a civil war. He is pining for his river & his woman. Both unobtainable. I guess thats the commonality of it all. We are all reaching for things that are out of reach & sometimes out of sight. I'm not certain as I said, what it is in my case, but I think I know. I think it has too do with Grandparents that I never met. You know the continuity of the whole thing. Also I think it has to do with children & a grand daughter that live in another Island. The grand daughter I haven't met yet. I feel deprived I suppose of the whole family continuity thing. The only thing my father really passed on to me was a love of the out doors. None of the skills & interests that he really wanted me to have were of particular interest to me. That doesn't mean I didn't try; I just couldn't put my heart & soul into them. The things that consumed me as a teenager, namely reading & music, he just couldn't care less about. Family wise, I feel as though I am in a bit of a social vacuum.

Don't get me wrong here. I have two wonderful grand children in Auckland, but they function on a totally different level. I cant see them being interested in many of the things that I am. I will happily stand to be corrected though

Happiness is a hot Pipi Sandwich

I haven't had a decent feed of Pipi's for a few years now. Mainly because there has been a ban on collecting them from our particular part of coastline. The reason being that the stocks have had a hell of a hammering over the years & needed the time to build up again. Also nobody seriously heeded the limit of 50 per person per day, but is enforced more rigorously now. The big problem is that collecting pipi's is an addictive pastime.

You spend a frantic hour or so racing the tide, scrabbling round on your knees in the sand unearthing the damn things. Its addictive in the sense that there is always a few more of them in the next handful of sand that you just HAVE to have. So you usually come home with more than you actually need. Not from a sense of greed, but just because the damn things are there.

This makes it hard when you get home. You see I'm the only one that eats 'em, so I have to cook em & shell 'em. Thats the tedious bit. The good bit is when they are in a bowl with some malt vinegar & a little black pepper. You then scoop up a handful & arrange them artfully between two slices of fresh bread spread liberally & eat. I had 4 sandwiches like that for tea & I still have enough for another sammy for supper. Its a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

ON THE HEAVY SIDE....

I see that the Pope has formally apologised to all the victims of sexual abuse by his priests in Australia. Well whoop de fucking doo. Thats really going to help the poor souls that have been used & abused by these hypocrites. I guess though, that you can't really expect normal behaviour from a group of people that are expected to live their life in a celibate state. Its an unnatural way for man to be, so I suppose that you can't really expect much else.

Ok,so we only caught one snapper

But we saw about half a dozen Little Blue Penguins & we got to see how they harvest mussels from the farms, & even saw the mussels we saw being picked on their way up to Auckland for processing. We burnt probably $50.00 worth of gas just mooching around enjoying ourselves. We had a good day.

Did I mention that I have all this week off bar one day & also pretty much all of August as well ? Never mind. I do anyway....

I get high with a little help from my friends

I found this little gem of a clip when I was trolling You Tube last night. It sorta fits with my previous post as two out of the three of them are gone now, although Gerry Garcia did last longer than Joplin. Rick Danko is still doing it. From what I can gather this clip was shot while they were on tour in Canada..
Groovy huh ?

Only the good die young

I had time on my hands after seeing what the final score from the rugby was last night, so i went for a stroll down memory lane on You Tube. I found some absolutely blinding live performances by Led Zeppelin there, & came to the conclusion that they were at their utter best playing live rather than in an impersonal recording studio. To me, the mark of a good artist is being able to successfully jam during the instrumental breaks, & damn.Led Zep could do it with style. I also came across such curiosities as a band featuring Eric Clapton, John Lennon & Keith Richards playing some knockout blues. I'm not going to give you the links for this stuff. If you are sufficiently interested, go find it yourself. It's there. I also found Gary Moore & Eric Bell (lead guitar for Thin Lizzie) doing the most amazing version bar none of Whiskey in the Jar that I think I have ever experienced.

All this got me to thinking about how some people have shaped the course of rock music simply by dying. What I mean , is that their deaths have either radically changed the sound of the band, or affected the other members of it so badly that they have stopped playing altogether. in the latter group, the name John Bonham springs readily to mind. John Bonham , as we know, was the charismatic & agressive drummer for Led Zeppelin. He was only agressive behind his skins though. I have seen an interview of his with Billy Connolly where Billy was hard put to get more than two words at a time from him. The details of his rather pointless death are well documented all over the net for those who don't already know. needless to say, his death affected the other members of the band that much, that it was only this year that they performed in public again, & then with "Bonzo's " son on skins.. A nice touch I thought.

The Who sort of lost their impetus with the death of Keith Moon for a long time & subsequently "The Ox" Although Townsend & Daltry seem to have recovered heart on the wave of popularity follwing the Live8 concert & subsequent use of their music in a TV show.

Lynard Skynard lost Ronnie Van Zant in 77 & never really reformed. although a tribute band featuring Ronnies brother Johnnie is still playing. To my knowledge though, as a tribute to Ronnie for a long time when they played Freebird, nobody would sing the lyrics, leaving it to the Audience.

"I used to play my guitar as a kid
wishing that I could be like him
But today I changed my mind
I decided that I don't want to die
But it was a normal day for Brian
Rock and Roll's that way
It was a normal day for Brian
A man who died every day"

Thus wrote Pete Townsend on the death of Brian Jones. His estrangement from The Stones & subsequent death are well documented by better scribes than I. Just let it be said that his musical genius provided a depth & range of instrumental ability that was breathtaking. I'm not knocking Ronnie Woods here, because he is a very capable axeman, but it was said of Brian Jones that he could pick up any instrument & be able to play it well within half an hour. Wikipedia has this to say on the subject....

Throughout his career, Jones showed exceptional musical aptitude, able to play an array of instruments on Stones' recordings. As soon as the Stones earned enough money to record in professional studios like Olympic Studio, the RCA, and Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, and influenced by The Beach Boys 1966 album Pet Sounds and The Beatles experiment with Indian music (notably George Harrison's sitar and tamboura), Jones started experimenting with wind and stringed instruments.

Throughout his years with the band, he played stringed instruments (guitar, sitar, tamboura, Appalachian dulcimer), keyboards (organ, mellotron), wind instruments (recorder, harmonica) and several other instruments such as the xylophone and marimba. In fact, sources say that Jones could pick any instrument and learn to play it in less than half an hour. [14]

Jones' main guitar in the early years was a Gretsch Double Anniversary in two-tone green, but Jones is known for his signature teardrop-shaped prototype Vox Phantom Mark III. From late 1965 until his death, Jones used Gibson models (various Firebirds, ES-330, and a Les Paul model), as well as two Rickenbacker 12-String models.

Jones contributed to the 1960s sound of the Stones, playing slide guitar on "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Little Red Rooster" and "No Expectations", harmonica on "Come On", "Dear Doctor", "Prodigal Son", "2120 South Michigan Avenue", "I Just Want to Make Love to You", "Look What You've Done" and "Not Fade Away", tambura and sitar on "Street Fighting Man" and "Paint It, Black", organ on "Let's Spend The Night Together", "Complicated" and "2000 Man", marimba on "Under My Thumb" and "Yesterday's Papers", recorder on "Ruby Tuesday", saxophone on "Child of the Moon", appalachian dulcimer on "I Am Waiting" and "Lady Jane", accordion on "Backstreet Girl", harpsichord on "Sittin' on a Fence", harpsichord, saxophone and oboe on "Dandelion", harpsichord on Lady Jane, mellotron on "She's A Rainbow", "Stray Cat Blues", "We Love You" and on "2000 Light Years from Home", tambourine on "Can I Get a Witness" and "Tell Me (You're Coming Back), and autoharp on "You Got the Silver".

There are others that I could talk about, not only band members, but individual artists that have succumbed over the years to the temptations offered by sudden stardom & a free & easy lifestyle. I just can't help but wonder at the music the bands that I have mentioned have produced while at the top of their game & speculate in vain what they would be turning out now IF they had survived, & IF the members of their respective bands had managed to weather the turbulence that their lifestyle engendered. Damn, there is gonna be some big reunion concerts in Heaven.....