Friday, October 26, 2007

Oh dear

Since I got back from my travels (and my 12 hour flight), my back has been pretty stiff and sore and I have had a couple of sessions with my physio to try and get it all unkinked. It is now starting to improve and she is very pleased. I did have some news for her though this week since she’s had to work so hard on me:

Me: “Um, I can’t come to see you next week as I’m going on holiday with hubby”
PT: “Oh yes, somewhere nice?”
Me: “Oh yes, hopefully guaranteed hot and sunny..”
PT: “Ah, and how long is the flight?”
Me: “Er, 8 hours?”

D’you know, I’ve never actually heard anyone say “Hrumph” before…..
Grumpy

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Cats and their tricks

So, while I was away Grace (our lady cat) seems to have learned a new trick. It’s probably not true to say that she learned it while I was away, as its to do with the washing and hubby didn’t do any while I was away*1 but I’m sure she must have been planning it for weeks because she is very good at it.

I did the laundry yesterday and being a nasty damp time of year it didn’t dry outside. Now we don’t have a drier (as our only attempt at owning one turned into a minor fire) so its airers and radiators in our house that get to do all the work over the winter. In this room with the PC we have a big radiator*2 and over it at the moment are several t-shirts and polo shirts.

So, Grace reaches up inside the neck of a shirt, gets a good grip and tries to squirm her way inside. Mostly they fall to the ground as her weight is just too much and so she curls up inside a warm, dark, damp nest. I tried to catch her at it and thought (in my wisdom) that if I grabbed the shirt and held on, that she would fall out the neck. Right? Nope, wrong! She wedged herself in, bridging the neck hole with her feet down each arm and laid out across the shoulders – now I have her in a kind of hammock and I can tell that she doesn’t want to move. I shook and shook the shirt but she just hung on in there (no doubt getting her very own mini version of Alton Towers) until I finally managed to dislodge her. She ran away then but has been back since and is as I type this looking at first me then the shirts sideways as if to say “Fancy another go?”
Cat 5
*1Although he did clean the house for which I am supremely grateful
*2In fact we have BIG radiators all over the house here – some of them are about 10 ft long I think – I think the previous owner got them off the back of a lorry and mixed up imperial and metric measurements or something. Anyway, they are ridiculously large!


Cat 5

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

More airplane stuff….

So, hubby and I were sat watching the news on the goggle box last night and I was manfully trying to keep my eyes open when the announcer stated dee dee dee deet breaking news…..breaking news….(Actually I lie here as there was no dee deeing at all, no ticker tape and nothing exciting really, he just looked at a piece of paper instead of a teleprompt so that was noteworthy in itself). Anyway….

“Breaking news, there has been a collision between two aircraft at Heathrow Airport” (he is handed another piece of paper), “We are receiving news that people are being evacuated from the aircraft”.

Evacuated! No sh*t! What else are they gonna do? Is the pilot going to say “Hey, let’s just take to the air and see if the wing falls off, shall we?” Is he going to say “I wonder what’ll happen if we try and get this baby up to 35,000 feet today then?” or even “Ah, never mind, it’s only a little dent – it’ll be fine…!”

I just love the news – always guaranteed to make a statement of the bleeding obvious…!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Well, hello there…!

Well, as you can see, I am back. Although I am thoroughly jet-lagged and still fighting the urge to drop off to sleep at 8 o’clock in the evening. I have discovered that two match sticks, strategically placed between my eyelids is doing the trick at the moment!
Asleep 3
It seems incredible to me sometimes to think that we can travel around the world so fast, although the barmy world of time zones completely befuddles me. When I left it was Sunday lunchtime and I arrived at 10pm Monday night (boy that’s a long day!). I emailed hubby to say I’d arrived OK and he got it Monday lunchtime – supposedly 8 hours before I’d sent it. Is this making any sense to you? Yes? Well, lucky you ‘cos it confuses the hell out of me!

On the way back, I left at 6 am and finally arrived home at 10pm the same day – how does that happen(?) – especially when according to my watch I’d been travelling for a straight 24 hours – how do you fit in 24 hours between 6 am and 10pm? I know they say that time flies when you’re enjoying yourself, but it wasn’t even as if I was having a good time.

I so do not recommend long haul flights if you have any amount of metalwork in your back. They shape airline seats to fit tall people with bendy backs, not short people with rigid rods…and what makes it worse is that I have such short little legs that my feet don’t reach the floor properly. Woe betide if they give me a seat with extra legroom, all I do is slide forward and down off the seat when I sleep and end up having to be rescued from the most undignified of positions. Give me a seat where your knees are in the back of the person in front any day. Wedge me in – please!!

Now, before I go, I just have to tell you about turbulence – imagine (if you will) a 12 hour flight where there was turbulence for about 10 of the 12 hours. Now I was told no roller coasters, no white water rafting and no hot air balloons (!!! ...yes, that’s what I said…) when I got my rod fitted – but they never said anything about turbulence – but I reckon now, if I can do 10 hours like that then its Alton Towers here I come…*1

Aeroplane

*1Well, maybe not really, as I wouldn’t recommend it from a pain level point of view….but hey, nothing broke (I hope!)