I have been away again but this time nowhere terribly exotic I’m afraid. I went just about 3 hours away from home (by car!) which coincidentally is just down the road from where A & T live (remember them?).
I was supposed to be there from Wednesday to the following Monday and had been looking forward to it for months. The event is in the middle of summer and every year so far has been baking hot. You compete, catch some rays and generally have a good time.
Well, I suppose I shouldn’t have been quite so optimistic given the weather than we have had lately but I am a real optimist (have a mentioned that before?) and so with cries of ‘don’t be silly’ to every weather forecaster and ‘it’ll be fine’ to every gainsayer I travelled up to the event. Now it has to be said that a healthy dose of pragmatism does creep into my optimism, so I did pack my waterproofs, but all the same I fully expected the weather to
- be fine or
- be awful somewhere else but not where I was!
Day 1 was fine, bright and sunny and I rolled up my sleeves and watched the pale people turning lobster coloured. I chilled and enjoyed and had ice cream and cake with A&T on an afternoon off. Just as I had predicted, the weather looked lovely!
Day 2 dawned wet and I mean wet. Rain was coming down like stair rods and drops were bouncing 3 feet off the pavement but, since (as I have already said), I am an optimist, I fully expected that by lunchtime (when I had to go out in it) that the rain would have stopped and the sun would have come out. In the event, I guess I was almost right, as the rain did (eventually) stop that afternoon. The only thing was, that it was not before the river (which ran right down the side of the field that we were in) had burst its banks. One minute I was sat out on the field in my wheelchair thinking ‘I’m sure there wasn’t any water on the running track a minute ago’, and the next the water table seemed to be rising up to meet me. In ten minutes, the water had reached me and I was trying to back-pedal furiously. Of course, that is not to say that a wheelchair has pedals you understand, but I was on the retreat.
Now I started to retreat by going forwards (of course I turned round to face the other way first, otherwise that statement would make no sense at all…) and some very helpful chap decided to help by giving me a gentle push. Well, you know that thing where you are trying to be genteel and polite and so you feel the need to stop and you say quietly ‘please stop’, then ‘please stop’ (slightly louder) and then BLOODY WELL STOP WILL YOU!?’ – No? Well, if not, I’m sure you have the picture, it was one of those moments exactly! You see the nice helpful chap seemed to be ploughing some kind of a furrow in the mud with my front wheels and was in danger of hitting bedrock and tipping me out. Now I don’t mind being tipped out of my wheelchair, the BMB has done it and so has hubby and so has even my physio, so I figure I’m fair game, but into the mud – no way, especially not with me with a white shirt on too! After that, it was a bit of very undignified dragging backwards for me to escape the rising tide.
Well, with all these shenanigans, the water wasn’t waiting and as fast as I was back-pedalling (see earlier note) the water was catching me. In the end, the entire field, including the running track surrounding it was completely under 4” of water and yes that is inches of water – deeper too in some places! It took just half an hour from ‘oh isn’t that water’ to ‘OMG abandon ship!’.
I’m beginning to doubt that this really is summer – I think its some kind of government conspiracy where they made us all sleep for 5 months and are now trying to gloss over the fact that they let a deadly hibernation sickness loose in the nation.
So, here it goes, I am going to boast some just ‘cos I impressed even myself last week.
Hubby and I had been out for the day and when we got home there was a car sized space directly outside our house. I was driving hubby’s car which is rather bigger than mine and in my optimistic little way decided that I could get the car in there even though the space looked a touch on the small side. Well, the other option was to park on the other side of the street and we had stuff to unpack and it was raining too – what would you have done?
I reversed in (parallel like) and wiggled back and forth a few times until I seemed to be about in – it was a real ‘thank God I’ve got power steering’ moment but eventually I turned off the engine happy with where I was. I got out and looked at the kerb - both front and back tyres touching the kerb – good! Then hubby peers around first the front, then the back of the car – he looks impressed and then decides to measure the gaps. So, there was 8” at the front of the car to the car in front and 4” at the back of the car to the car behind. That’s a space just one foot longer than the car and I managed to get in it and end up parallel and close to, the kerb. Truly I was impressed.
There, boasting over, I shan’t do it again!
Well, just as a quick update, the FIL is recovering quite well. He’s out of HDU and back onto a regular ward. It seems to be little thanks to the hospital who are largely leaving him alone and apparently just hoping that he will all heal up and get stronger on his own. “What about physio?” we asked last night only to be told that they weren’t going to bother with any. “Oh”, the nurse said airily, “all that can be done once we transfer him to the local hospital”. “And when will that happen?”(We asked) – “Hmmm…” she said. “How long is a piece of string?”
Actually that’s not what she said at all, what she said was that they would transfer him when a bed became available and when they could get transport – presuming of course that those two things coincide – after all, he is ‘on the waiting list’ now…so everything is bound to be alright.
I shall update you in two years when he gets to the top of the list then, shall I?
As is the way of such things, the poor old FIL is back into the high dependency unit. It goes like this, late last week he was pootling along well and making good steps forward (10m forward on his Zimmer to be exact) and they decided that they would transfer him to a small local hospital for rehabilitation and physiotherapy before sending him home. So, he wakes up on Friday ready to get transferred and after a little while the hospital calls us. Now we thought that it would be to tell us when he would be arriving at the local hospital, but no, it seems he had to do things the hard way; the call was to tell us that he had started to bleed internally – from somewhere in the gut but they didn’t know where and couldn’t see from where with an endoscope. Now where all this came from we have no idea as he went in for coronary artery bypass surgery (hardly connected) but they gave us the grim news that his blood loss was so severe that they were taking him down to surgery and did not expect him to survive.
That was it, we all rushed down the hospital and proceeded to wait…and wait and wait and wait. No one told us anything; no one even offered us a cup of tea. We waited and occasionally chased the staff who said there was no news and a doctor would come and see us (soon!). We waited some more and then were eventually told that he had come through the operation fine and was in recovery waiting to be transferred to HDU. A while later someone took us down to the HDU waiting room and we had only been in there a few minutes when we were collected and taken to another waiting room over the other side of the hospital (at ITU). I was not best pleased at all the uncomfortable chairs and long walks all over the place and the MIL was suffering, but you get on with it in these circumstances, don’t you? Anyway, we were told that they would get the FIL settled and we could then go in and see him – hopefully in about 45 minutes. After an hour had passed, hubby went to see what was going on and after a half hour wait at reception he was told that they had never heard of the FIL! Eventually they tracked him down to the first place we had been taken to – we saw him (he was asleep), the nurses said they had no idea what had happened in surgery and there was still no doctor to talk to. By this time it was ten o’clock at night and we were told to go home and come back in the following day after lunch to see what was going on!
The long and the short of it is this – they opened him up and found nothing wrong. The bleeding had stopped on its own so they stitched him back together and are keeping him in HDU for a couple of days to keep an eye on him. So, here he is, nearly 80 years old, being cut open for no reason – I’m sure that’ll speed his recovery up no end.
Grrr, do you get the feeling that I think the NHS really stinks sometimes?
It suddenly occurred to me that I had left the FIL in Intensive Care – permanently it seems….and that you were all out there still holding your breath and praying. Well, I started to fret about this last night – how could I have been so mean to all my cyberspace friends – how many of them were now blue, red or even by this stage (heaven forbid) green…
Anyway, I am delighted to report good news for the family as the FIL responded well (if a little slowly) to all the treatment he received in the Intensive Care Unit. So much so that he was transferred to a regular ward at the end of last week – they had done a great job all ways round with him. Of course, I personally think that to spend a month in Intensive Care is a little bit of an extreme way to get over the initial agonies of an operation, but hey, it seemed to work. His chest has all healed well and the bypass has been a great success. Not bad at all for a 79 year old (albeit one who was pretty active before all this happened). He managed to get some pretty good hallucinations too*1 and has kept us all highly amused with his stories of saving babies from burning buildings and Fred Flintstone appearing in a porno movie!
All this is good news but his progress is very slow. I think sometimes hospitals make it very easy to simply not try hard enough. He is mostly just sitting back and waiting for his recovery to happen to him without putting in any more effort than he has to. For example, he was disappointed after being transferred to the ward that no-one would feed him – despite the fact that he (albeit slowly) was able to manage a spoon to feed himself. If something is hard work then he would prefer to simply not bother doing it or get someone else to do it for him. It’s true, he is still pretty weak from the extended hospital stay, but yet more inactivity is hardly building him up. I personally find it very frustrating – a little over a year ago I was trying to get back on my feet after my surgery and yet every day set myself a new target so that I could improve as fast as possible. Now, I really don’t want to sound harsh or impatient with him and I know that I am younger and maybe this helped me, but I fear that he now sees himself as a permanent invalid. His surgery, which was supposed to give him a better quality of life, and which has been an incredible success, has been sidelined by his talk of “I don’t care if I can’t ever get around without a zimmer” and “I suppose I’ll have to have the optician and hairdresser come to the house now”…
Aaargh! Is it just me? Am I being unreasonable with the guy? I guess the truth of it all is that its hard when you are eternally pragmatic optimist and you come up against a real dyed in the wool pessimist - especially one with 79 years of practice.
*1I was incredibly disappointed with my stay in hospital, which, despite copious quantities of morphine, had no more exciting dreams than usual. So not fair – go through all that getting cut in half business and not even a good hallucination to tell people about!
So, yet again I was away (I seem to that a lot, don’t I?) and early one morning (well, it seemed that way to me*1) we were out in a field in the cold and damp. Now, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about where I go when I am away, sometimes its really nice, like earlier in the year in the States, when all we had to contend with was the searing desert heat, strong wind, cactus spikes (great for wheelchair tyres), snakes and scorpions – but more often than not, it is in some field in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of England and it’s cold, windy and often raining! Anyway, having set the scene before all those ramblings (cold, damp, middle of a field remember?) we were all trying our best to look bright eyed and bushy tailed and not to be too grumpy with each other. MY (being very bright eyed and bushy tailed) did his usual thing of trying to get us all warmed up and somewhat less grumpy than we were before, by getting us to sit in a ring and do some gentle physical exercise. Of course, this rarely works, as when we are cold and grumpy the last thing we all want to do is physical exercise (personally my thoughts turn to duvets and hot coffee), but there you go, it has to be done so we do it. It doesn’t mean we are quiet about it – oh no, there’s lots of moans and groans and MY comes in for a certain amount of abuse, but he gives as good as he gets in return.
So, there we are doing our stretches 
and waving our arms around and MY then leads us on to the torso twist. I ineffectually move my arms around a bit and discover that nothing has changed, since my op I just can’t seem to turn at all. MY (cruel man) yells out – “Come on WW, twist will you?!! Well! I don’t know - anyone would think you had a rod down your back….!”
Hmmm……. very funny MY…..
*1I think that anything before around 10.30 am should be defined as stupid o’clock and anything before 9 is (as hubby puts it) “up at crack of sparrow fart” (which I always love as an expression….)
So, there we were (hubby and I) in bed lazing around one morning with Clumsy and Grace both on the bed with us (I know, I know, its horrible unhygienic to let your cats get on the bed, but its not so easy to keep them off…)
Anyway, Clumsy looks furtively at Grace, hoists his rear end off the bed and did that wiggly thing with it (cat owners will know exactly what I am talking about here) 
and made ready to pounce. Grace, peering out from under her eyelids took rapid stock of the situation and did a quick but cool assessment. As Clumsy leapt up, she swiftly grabbed hold of him, twisted him round and over in a real WWF move, pinned him down on the bed and proceeded to thoroughly wash his head.
“Ah”, said hubby proudly. “That’s my girl – she’s got a black belt in personal hygiene and has had special training in combat ablutions…"
There’s no answer to that really, is there?
That's me at the moment....in out, in out and whilst not shaking it about too much (the metalwork is not conducive to too much shaking) I seem to have had very little time to actually sit down and blog.
Last weekend I was away in Belgium with a large group of my best friends and a good time was had by all...apparently even whilst some people were lurking underground and exploring strange places. Me, I just sat in the sun, drank the BUF's cherry beer and spent time catching up with her which was fab (we've not caught up in ages). So, we brought back chocolate and beer (what else from Belgium?) and have already made mutterings about next year...
In the meantime I am off again but this time only about 2 hours drive away from home. Hubby shall be cat sitting whilst I get on with 'my other life'. I know, I know, more excuses for not updating the blog, but hey, I'll get round to it..... I promise!
Finally, to finish with the theme that I started, I saw this on J the B's t-shirt last weekend:
"what if the Hokey Cokey*1 really is what it's all about?"
...and if you want to know the answer to that, you could try looking here or here or hey - just try Googling it.....(and yes, I know Google is trying to make it illegal to use their name as a verb...)
So, I came back from the US of A to find hubby was quite excited. My first thought was that he was pleased to have me home but it wasn’t that at all…..the drain man had really been. I mean he had really, really been. He had really been here, had really lifted the cover and had really cleared the drain of all its debris. D’you know, you can see water in the bottom of it! And when it started raining (which it did for about two weeks solid) the water ran down the hill and into the drain. OMG, I cannot believe how excited I am that it’s been done and how disappointed that I can’t bake it a cake.
Now of course all I have to do is make sure I don’t drop my keys down it…*1
*1…and don’t tell me that I am the only person in the world who gets a death grip on their keys when they find that they have parked over an drain and have to unlock the car? *2
So you know I went away and you know I flew and you’re all itching to know if my metalwork sets off the arch in the airport. Right? Well, I still don’t know and that’s the truth of it. Yet again, lost in the miles and miles of passageways that are Heathrow airport, I was using my wheelchair to get around and believe me, a big lump of metal like that is bound to set of those detectors, without the added complication of any screws and stuff inside your back. In Heathrow I get waved though with just a cursory body search (which means that that there were no rubber gloves 
or little rooms involved) and that was that.
Coming home from the States, homeland security are a bit more involved, making you take your shoes off and everything so I felt certain that I’d find out something. Well, as expected the arch went off so I went for the pat down. The poor bored lady was telling me I’m going to touch you here and I’m gonna use the back of my hand here and so on and I tried to engage her in polite conversation. I asked her if she was bored with saying the same thing day in day out. I asked her if she was having a nice day and if she liked the hot weather. I really, really tried to be nice to her and then just as she told me I could go I hit her with the whammy question “ can I have the wand thingie?” and she said there was no need. No need? What about my curiosity - isn't that need enough? That is so not fair! - and I still don‘t know if I’m going to set the detectors off. Anyone got a 'Bounty Hunter'??
As an aside to all this, I had to take my shoes off. All my belongings, including my cardigan had to go through the x-ray machine. My wheelchair and cushion were swabbed for explosives and I was thoroughly patted down. Did they discover the pouch that is built into the underside of my wheelchair (and is part of the standard fittings)? The pouch that contains a small tool kit, puncture repair kit and a pump which looks remarkably like the barrel of a gun (when viewed through a steamed up window without your glasses on obviously). Did they heck…..
D’you know, there’s some spooky stuff goes on in the world and sometimes it can happen to you too. I have had 3 things happen in quick succession (well they say things always happen in threes, don’t they? *1) and so I thought I’d blog about them.
The first happened when I was away. There I was, sat on my bed in the middle of the afternoon, having a little rest before the rigors of the evening. I heard a knock at the door, so got up and went to answer it. Outside was my SPF who wanted to rearrange a meeting that we had made earlier. The only thing was, that she hadn’t yet knocked the door, having only just arrived! Somehow, I had ‘heard’ a knock, got off the bed and walked to the door (not the fastest process in the world for me) just in time to coincide with her arrival……oooo!
Then I got home and did a report for the BMB. I emailed it to him and in the ‘send and receive process’ got an email from him asking me to send the report. Scarier still, was the fact that both e-mails had been sent at the same time to the minute*2 ….wow!
Two days later, I phoned A&T to speak to A. I was on my mobile because I had free minutes that I wanted to use up and T answered the phone telling me that A was out. Within seconds of him answering, my house phone rang and I juggled the two phones (one to each ear – don’t you do it that way?) so I could answer it – it was A! Actually, I have to say at this point that I briefly entertained the idea that I could get them to talk to each other, but couldn’t figure out which way up the respective phones should be!
Anyway, all of this was very spooky and as yet I have no idea if it all means anything. In the meantime…..di dee di dee do dee di dee do ......
*2 - I didn’t check the seconds – just how sad do you think I am??
So, the FIL continues to hang on in there. Yesterday he started to take a few breaths on his own so things are looking up a bit and we all stopped holding our breath with him....It's still very early days but we just still have to wait, be patient (not my strongest point) and see how it all goes.
So, hubby and I are back from our hols. We had a week in a cottage in Cornwall and took the cats with us. Yes, I know that this may sound odd to some of you, but they travel well and I’m sure they prefer a two bed cottage to run around in to a 6ft by 4ft space in a cattery (which they’d have to share). Anyway, when we got there ‘Grace’ was straight out of the basket and tail up went running round and round the cottage investigating every little nook and cranny. ‘Clumsy’ was a bit slower to follow but settled in well.
The weather was truly kind to us (especially since I am now typing this with the rain lashing down outside and we got to see all the things that we wanted to see. For those who have the chance, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project are really well worth a visit in my opinion*1. We also explored endless pretty little fishing villages (doesn’t everyone who visits Cornwall), ate Cornish cream teas and Cornish pasties and sampled lots of the local ales. It was just the thing for a nice relaxing break.
Sadly, our week was cut short as we had to return home in an emergency. The FIL had some problems with his heart and was rushed into hospital. After a few days of things getting worse, he ended having an emergency quadruple bypass on the Friday afternoon and has been in intensive care ever since. He’s nearly 80 so it’s all very worrying and we are at the stage of keeping our fingers, toes and everything crossed and hoping for the best. If my blogging is a bit irregular over the next week or so that’ll be the reason why, so bear with us all and hold your breath with us please….
*1Both also have pretty good wheelchair access (if you need it) but take my advice and make sure you have either a power trike or a helper….some of those slopes are wicked! Oh yes, and don’t use slick tyres – they are apt to just slide straight down the hill even when your wheels aren’t going round (….you had to be there to appreciate it!!!)
Just to let you all know that I am going away for a few days so there’ll be no blogging for a bit. Don’t worry…..I’ll be back!
So, we were at the airport on our way home and needed to get a courtesy bus to get us back to the car park and our cars. I was with the SPF and the BMB and they had all our stuff between them on two trolleys because I was in my wheelchair. This is something that is really necessary at airports as its just miles between point a and point b…anyway, really speaking we weren’t in the airport any longer, but I was still in my ‘chair’ so that’s the way it was.
The bus arrived and the BMB started to load stuff into the back. It was not long before he started to wrestle with a particularly troublesome load (probably mine!) and the SPF rushed forward to help him (abandoning her trolley in the process). Now you are probably aware that these airport trolleys have an automatic braking system and that unless you pull up on the handle they won’t go anywhere. Well, the one on the SPF’s trolley was broken….and we were on a slope. I made a wild grab for the trolley and at this point realised two things:
- I was in a wheelchair (with wheels) and
- I didn’t have the brakes on.
It was just at the point that the trolley started to gather pace, that I realised that- I was in a predicament and
- I was heading for the railings.
At this point I let go the trolley with one hand and tried to brake with the other and my frenzied squeaking alerted the SPF to the fact that something was wrong. She caught up with me (and the trolley) and we slithered to a halt – predicament averted!
I did learn that you cannot stop one moving object on wheels with another similar object when there is no braking system involved…….so something positive came out of it! *1
*1SPF, please take note of my positive thinking here….
Please note, no one was harmed in the making of this blog entry. The slope was not a big slope and the SPF did not have to run at 30mph or have her arms ripped out of their sockets trying to stop either me or the trolley. It was amusing tho’…
I don’t know if you know what it’s like when you’re away with a group. You stick together and it’s not always easy to get out so you spend quite a lot of time sat in the hotel lobby at the end of a long day, chatting and waiting for bed time.
There we were again (different night from the teenagers in pyjamas) and we saw someone walking through the lobby carrying a large section of column. It was precisely the kind of thing that supports the tier of a wedding cake, but about 8 ft tall and an arm span around.
In fact it looked so much like a support for a wedding cake that someone commented to that effect and mentioned that it was funny that we hadn’t see the bride and groom. There was a general tittering at the suggestion and at that point in walks a woman in a wedding dress with a man in a tux.
That must have been some wedding, if the cake was that big…
I just realised that it’s 15 months today since I was sliced and diced. Time just vanishes so fast, doesn’t it (does this mean I’m enjoying myself or something?)
So, where am I with the back? It’s good really. I’d love to report that I have no pain with it but I would be lying if I said that. I will say that pain pills seem to work better than they used to and I assume that this is because nothing is under quite the strain it was so they have more chance to work (if you see what I mean!). Funnily enough, I still get a fair amount of discomfort from where they took my ribs out. I don’t know if it’s the ribs themselves (or the lack of them) or if it’s just that your diaphragm doesn’t like being sliced in half and then stuck back together again but whichever it is, I would cheerfully live without it. Of course being the optimistic little soul that I am, I quite cheerfully live with it too but I do wish all those people who said it was the worst bit of the operation were wrong! *1
As to the rest of it, well, I have regained none of the nerves in my stomach or leg but I guess there’s still time. My walking is just the same and I am just as happy and healthy as ever. People are still coming up to me and saying how well I look and the other day I met an old friend and discovered that the 2” I gained in height means that I could almost look her in the eye. In fact – I didn’t realise before that she was quite so short! Hubby measured me the other day too and made me 4ft 11½” which would mean I’d actually gained 2½”, not 2” but then we realised I still had my shoes on.…..still, I feel much taller than that really!
On a cosmetic note, I really do feel a lot less lopsided. I was given the all clear to do core exercises in January and between that, and the fact that I have no swelling left, I finally have a waist on both sides. I know that there are people out there who will understand just how delighted this makes me… I still have the rib hump and I can still see the fact that I have 30+ degree curves inside me but I really don’t think anyone apart from me, my surgeon and maybe some members of the scoliosis forums (takes one to know one) would ever really notice. Amazing, innit?
*1 Actually, I’m sure its not the worst bit of the op, but it does seem to have the longest lasting implications…
There we were, a large group of us, sat in the hotel lobby when a couple of teenage girls walk past us clutching pillows. They appeared to be dressed in pyjamas too, which was odd, but you never can tell with fashions these days so we shrugged our shoulders and carried on chatting. A few minutes later, another small group of girls goes past, again carrying pillows and they were followed by several teenage boys. There was no doubt that some of these youngsters were in nightwear (it was the nightdress that really gave it away*1) and they all headed off in the direction of the ballroom. Now, I’ve been to ‘that kind of party’ where its fancy dress on a theme (pyjama, roman toga, vicars and tarts, you get the picture) but in all my years of party going, I have never taken a large prop like a pillow….
So, this goes on for some time, small groups of youngsters, in nightwear, carrying pillows, on their way to the ballroom. We never counted them, but I’m guessing over the next hour or so there must have been hundreds of them*2. Eventually we cracked and as the manager of the hotel went past, we asked him what was going on – “Oh”, he said “They’re having a sleepover” and went on to explain that they were all members of a local church group.
I tell you, if I’d have known church groups were that much fun, I’d have joined one years ago…..
*1 No, not on the boy!
*2 This may be an exaggeration, but there were lots
So, there I was, away in sunny Arizona and we were out for dinner one evening. I was having fajitas – I like fajitas, all that playing with your food and wrapping up meat and peppers and stuff with all sorts of dips etc. Fajitas in blighty are very nice, but these were extra good ones so I was happy.
One of the younger members of our group had never had (or even seen) fajitas before and so was quizzing me on the nature of the red, white and green dips*1 and what each was called. Me being in a good mood was happy to help and asked her if she wanted to try any of them. “Maybe later”, she said, so I carried on eating.
A little later she asks:
“Can I try some of your Guatemala?”
I felt so mean when I fell off my chair laughing…..
*1That would be salsa, sour cream and guacamole.
Well, I’m back online properly – typing on the big machine with the proper screen and all. Turns out that unless M is right and its all a nasty Microsoft plot to get us all to buy Vista, that my crash was probably caused by little green men….umm, that means no-one has yet figured out why sh*t happens to computers.
Anyway, I called the Packard Bell helpline and expected at least 30 minutes of canned musack so was very surprised to be directed to ‘Dave’ with just a minimum of pressing the * and # keys on the phone. Dave was helpful too and didn’t ask me any stupid questions instead accepting that I knew that it wasn’t a hardware fault and had actually followed all the proper procedures to get to where I was. He diagnosed a faulty partition that even when the drive had been re-formatted hadn’t been properly removed. In order to access it I needed to access the Q: drive – I have a Q: drive I asked? Where’s that hidden? Well, seems its somewhere in my box and so I did as I was told. From there we removed all the partitions and my software and drivers started to load up just as they should.
Whole process (with Dave’s help) – about 10 minutes. So, there you go – there will be more entries later in the week – I haven’t told you about my trip yet after all…..
