Reaching the plimsoll line

I was at a party recently – yes, it’s true – you see, I still have some friends…
Seriously, it was a wedding party for P& H who I hope will be very happy together. Anyway, it was a really nice evening spent with friends and I was lucky enough to catch up with a few people who I haven’t seen for ages. Almost every one of them commented on how well I looked!

You see, the thing is, I haven’t seen most of them since very early in the year – before I went into hospital to get the surgery to help deal with my achalasia symptoms (note how I don’t say it was a cure!). At that time, I was very thin (for me) and had been poorly nutritionally supported for almost a year. For 12 months, I had been eating a progressively more and more liquid diet and the last time I had seen some of these people I was living on pots of custard, soup and mashed potato (um, but not all mixed together!). I didn’t feel particularly well and plainly (judging by all the comments on Saturday) I didn’t look that well either. Heck, even my surgeon said I looked “gaunt” when I went in for my op, so I guess that’s not good!

The surgery has been a life saver (in fact, when your body is starving you to death, it quite literally was a life saver!) but as I was told beforehand, it’s not a cure. It’s true, that my stomach valve is no longer welded shut, but I still have no peristalsis and that has its own complications – as does, in fact, now having my stomach valve welded open instead. Regarding my swallow, no peristalsis means that some foods are just hopeless – apples are a non starter (or more a starter and then stick-fast) and lettuce leaves are like little parachutes that just go nowhere once they are past your throat. I am aware of hot drinks in a strange way in that they simply slide down. I don’t go swallow – thump into my stomach any longer – coffee takes a smooth passage and a mouthful takes until a count of nine before it hits bottom!

The other thing that is odd is that my stomach doesn’t stretch when it fills up – with no valve to hold it shut it simply overflows up into my oesophagus and I become very aware of the food level as it approaches my mid chest. At that point, I simply cannot eat any more as I just don’t have space. Hubby has dubbed this imaginary line that it reaches as the plimsoll line as it simply isn’t safe to overload me past this!

The upshot of all of this is that I now eat slower and can’t eat as much so my weight is not piling back on. I have however put on enough weight to stop looking gaunt and start looking well if everyone is to be believed.

Apart from the fact that all this is simply curious, something else nice (apart from the compliments) came out of the party. I actually wore a dress that I haven't even tried on for a while and it made me see how I am now rather smaller as I looked like a small child in big sister's hand me downs! Now you may not think that this is nice at all, but it is! - You see, now I have to go out and buy new clothes...just in case I get invited to any more parties...!

Selling the car on Ebay

We recently sold a car on Ebay – well, actually I sold the car on Ebay but it was hubby’s car, so I guess that makes it a joint effort. This car was nearly 10 years old and it was just a car you know ^*1. It had tax and Mot and no more dents and scratches than the odd supermarket trolley could inflict. It had an average mileage, was an average colour and was fine…nothing to complain about.

I had a slew of e-mails with questions about it…some quite bizarre – does it have (insert famous brand name here) floor mats(!), are the details in the listing correct (well, duh, no, I made it all up!) – all kinds of things and then the phone calls came. People actually requested contact details from Ebay so they could call me. I thought that was a bit off, if I’d wanted them to phone, I’d have put a number!

Anyway, I had two people really interested – one who promised to pay a deposit into my Paypal account within the hour if I only removed the listing and someone else who lived 20 miles away who wanted to come and see it. I waited for my deposit to arrive before removing the listing – it didn’t come – so what was that about? They guy who lived 20 miles away phoned me 6 times telling me when he couldn’t make it before finally telling me that he couldn’t come to see it until after the listing had ended.

I rent my clothes a little and tore some hair out….

Anyway, 7 days went by, the auction ended and I had two bids out of the blue – both for an amount I was happy with. The winning bidder called:

“Can you pick me up from the train station on Monday – I’ll bring cash”.

So, I did and he did and that was that.

I guess the moral of this tale is, if you auction your car, unless the guy is there, with you, waving cash under your nose, then you’d best just sit the auction out as it’ll all come good in the end!

^*1It’s a Gag Hulfrunt quote …ish!

Quick news

So, I sit here at my desk peering at my clock every 20 seconds. I am off again soon and am at that stage of packed and unpacked 3 times..once to check if it would fit in a smaller bag and twice to check everything was in there. All that and I am still not sure...

How does that happen, that's what I want to know. I don't have OCD, I am organised, thoughtful and a great list maker. In fact, I made a list and ticked everything off..twice! I know that this is not uncommon and we all fear that we have left the gas on or not locked the door, but I wish it wasn't true for me for these big trips. (Actually we once went out all day and when we got home discovered hubby had left the front door wide open so it can happen...make sure you check!!!)

On the plus side, I am excited and ready to go. I can't remember being this ready to get on with it - ever! Things haven't always gone to plan this year for me and so you might think that there would be a bit less anticipation and a bit more fear but in fact, all I'm really afraid of is that I haven't packed my knickers.............or have I?

The talents of the talentless

I was reading this blog article (written by a good friend of mine) recently and I was fascinated by his thoughts. In turn, it got me wondering on exactly the same subject…

I guess, because we are both involved with high level sport, we see a lot of people with talent getting to wherever they want to go to with apparent ease. Sometimes you also cast your mind back to when you were in school - there was always the kid good at languages; the guy with the unbelievable talent for mental arithmetic; the person who could draw anything so well (that you were so jealous of); the person who always won the races on school sports day (well that was never going to be me!) and even the person who simply had the talent for looking the prettiest most demure thing who never, ever got into trouble.

In all of these things, I don’t think I showed an ounce of talent. I wasn’t stupid in school but I was never top of the class. I was useless at sports on the whole although I swam pretty well but never to an exceptional standard. In all of life I was competent, adequate and got by.

I look at those naturally gifted people though sometimes and I realise that their talent stops somewhere. They are often the people who have a meteoric rise to success but somehow can’t quite repeat it. They win until something goes just a bit wrong and then it completely derails them – when the going gets tough, they drop out because it’s no longer easy.

I guess this is where the people like me and countless others come into our own – our talent is there all right, it’s just that we don’t recognise it very often. Our talent is for sticking in there, for persevering, for being determined not to give up even when things aren’t perfect. You see, it is in this way that we continue to practice even when times are tough and in this way we are the people who come through in the end - you only have to look at Kelly Holmes to see that.

So, in answer to GOA, we are only limited by ourselves – not by our perceived talent or lack of it, but we only limit ourselves when we dream big but are not prepared to put in the work to get there….

New poll...

Just that....I was doing some wondering (well, it's what it's all about you know) and decided on the subject for a new poll.

Just in case any of you are interested...I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer! Things didn't go quite according to plan there then...but hey it leads to some interesting conversations...!?!

Sorry...couldn't resist!

I am worried about swine flu.
I heard that the first symptom is that you come out in rashers.
Another is that you get the trotts.
But, I woke up with pig tails this morning ... Should I be worried?

• The doctor asked me how long I'd had the symptoms of Swine Flu. I said it must have been about a Weeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
• Apparently my mate's got Swine Flu, I think he's just telling porkies, though.
• The only known cure for Swine Flu in humans has been found to be the liberal application of oinkment.

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy had influenza A virus subtype hemagglutinin protein
1 neuraminidase protein 1

• Swine flu, however, is not a problem for the pigs because they're all going to be cured anyway.

News Flash .... this just in. The world's religious leaders have issued a joint declaration that the swine Flu pandemic is the start of the aporkalypse.

• Swine flu has now mixed with bird flu. Scientists say they will find a cure when pigs fly.

I just heard on the news that, "Swine Flu could potentially be a threat to
every single person in the world". Well it's a good thing I'm married then, isn't it?

• You've got to hand it to the Mexicans. Even Osama Bin Laden didn't scare this many Americans

Crash bang wallop

Some time ago, hubby told me that we had a leak in the bay window at the top of the house (in hubby’s hobby room^*1) and I suggested that we should get a roofer to look at it. In fact, I asked hubby to go next door and get the name of their roofer so that we could get it done. I then promptly forgot about it because:

1. I have been away a lot
2. It’s not my room and I hardly ever go in there (even when dust bunnies roll out the door when it’s opened) and
3. I have been away a lot.

Some time passes…

Hubby tells me that he now has a bucket in the room to catch the drips and I should go and look at it (which I duly do). I am a little concerned at this point as the ceiling appears to be sagging in exactly the way that you wouldn’t expect it to^*2 and I ask about the roofer’s number. It seems that hubby doesn’t have the number (although to be fair, he did ask for it but then his phone ‘ate’ it on saving). It was another visit to next door and then we had a visit from Russ the Roofer.

Russ sucked air in over his teeth (as they do) and quoted a price which seemed reasonable to me (not being a roofer). He told us he could start in 2 weeks (after his summer holiday) and I booked a space in my busy schedule.

Tuesday after yet more rain, hubby tells me that he “needs a bigger bucket” and the drip has now expanded to three. Wednesday I go away and come home Thursday night. Friday we go out for a while and we come in to find a smallish section of ceiling has detached itself from the rest and has landed partly in and mostly around the bucket. The weekend passes without incident and after an exhausting Sunday we go to bed after a nice glass of red.

2a.m. Sunday night there is a loud bang…..

…it’s the ceiling…

…it’s now on the floor…

…we now have 6 buckets on the floor and are awaiting the plasterer as well as the roofer …we need a new carpet and since all that’s going on I think a bit of re-decorating will be called for.. Any volunteers?


^*1Try saying that after 4 glasses of Merlot…

^*2Something akin to the way that spaceships hang in the air in exactly the way that bricks don’t…

It’s true I tell you!

I was recently going to the nearest big town and (as you do) went up the slip road onto the motorway (that would be an interstate or autobahn depending on where you live in the world!)

Anyway, I pulled out into the inside lane just to see some car in front of me start to pull in to the remaining section of slip road (which was by this time starting to narrow) – and I thought maybe he was heading for the hard shoulder with a breakdown or something. He then stopped pulling in, and ended up straddling the dotted line of the inside lane and the slip road and proceeded to drive along this section, while the lane on the left got progressively narrower and narrower. Now, call me untrusting, but anyone who seemed to have so little regard to where his car was actually positioned in the carriageway always needs a wide berth in my opinion and so I pulled out into the middle lane to do just that!

I accelerated past him (my little car may be old but it can outstrip a lot of stuff on the road^*1) and as I cruised past I glanced left to see what kind of idiot was driving. I found myself looking squarely at a dog who was peering intently through the windscreen and in the left hand seat next to him was a man wearing sunglasses! Now, just stop for 2 seconds and imagine what went through my mind.....

....it took me a little while to realise that this was a left hand drive car and therefore the dog was in the passenger seat!

Mind, given the rotten driving it may be that the driver really was blind – and maybe the dog was giving him directions??

^*1 ..which is great fun at traffic lights with 17 year old boys in ‘souped up’ Vauxhall Novas thinking they can burn off the old bird in the even older car!

Some thoughts on wheelchairs.

I apologise in advance for the length of this post and the philosophical nature of it all, but hey...it's been raining and somehow that gets you thinking about deep and meaningful stuff...

Last weekend, I was at an airport and it got me wondering about wheelchairs. Now, this time, I was with a single friend, but normally I am in my chair with a bunch of other people – themselves largely wheelchair users. There’s a group of us, some full time chair users (like E2O), and some not (like me), but all of us relish the freedom that a wheelchair gives us. In an airport it’s the difference between being able to go to the shops, nip to the loo, head out and look out the window, nip back for coffee and then get to the plane feeling fine. The alternative to all this is – arrive at airport, find somewhere to sit down, struggle to boarding gate picking up coffee if you pass one then sitting down at the gate to wait (probably in pain) having hopefully found somewhere to sit down on the way, if you need to be at Gate 103. Hmmm, which would you do then? Which is better, which gives you more independence – more freedom, less pain?

It sounds an easy answer doesn’t it? So why are people so determined to struggle in these situations? What is it about the human condition that makes us say ‘at least I can still walk’ – ‘I can manage!’ Manage, yes, but at what cost? This has been a really hard lesson for me to learn, but I wish I had learned it years ago and now when I look back I think that I was stupid in some of the ways that I struggled to keep up and made myself stay on my own two feet just for the sake of pride.

Wheelchair dancer wrote some stuff on this and she commented on the way that people seem to regard a wheelchair as robbing people of their independence and I hope she doesn’t mind if I cut and paste....

The saddest thing for me is, however, the bog standard wheelchairs. Have you ever noticed that no one who does not own a wheelchair to begin with ever pushes themselves? The chairs are heavy. Yes. So heavy .... I know they're industrial. They're supposed to be functional for everyone. But they aren't freedom machines. They aren't independence devices. They are transport things, designed for the pusher. Everyone in them has this kind of blanked out look.


This is so true – once in a chair people seem to expect to be pushed. They become one with the chair and not in a good way. They are the chair – the chair is a symbol of being incapable, of being abnormal and yes, that is really sad to be that way.

I find that I say to people that I hate my chair when it sits in the corner of my room and looks at me, telling me that I am disabled but I love it when I am in it. I love that freedom. I too am part of my chair (or it is part of me) but I love it. It gives me ‘legs’ that work properly, it gives me speed and balance. It helps me manage my pain – I can go further, I can go faster, I can carry things – it gives me so much I can’t begin to explain...

Another poll...what fun!

Another poll for you...search it out on the right hand side.

Ooo, look at the big green pond over there...

Recently hubby and I decided to clean out our pond which has got quite overgrown by plants in the last year or so. We’ve actually got a lot of fish in the pond as well – originally we had 6 goldfish and 2 ghost koi and over the years most of the goldfish have died, but not before procreating in large numbers, so now we have too many of them to count. Actually, we probably could count them, but they very inconveniently keep swimming around instead of lining up and keeping still to make the job easy – if only I could get them to behave like the miis in the Wii plaza…but still, there you go, I can’t so I’ve given up trying to count them! The koi are still there and have both grown as lot although one has grown more than the other and has (by virtue of being a bully and extremely greedy) become big enough to have earned the name ‘Monstro’!

So, we were cleaning the pond and Monstro (possibly because he could actually see out of the pond without all the plants in the way) was splashing around taking an interest in all that was going on. It was at that point that he suddenly decided to make a break for it and leapt out of the pond, landing on the grass about 4ft away. Now I know we’ve had enough algae in the pond in the past for him to maybe think that the grass might be another big lake-y type thingie, but this really was a jump too far! It was at this point (around the time that he lay there flapping and squeaking about how breathing really wasn’t as easy any more!), that hubby grabbed at him to try and get him back into the pond. Well, large fish can squirm a lot it seems and hubby had a real problem hanging on to him. Monstro was flapping and hubby was struggling and trying to turn towards the pond and Monstro made another leap for it – this time hitting the side of the pond with a thump, falling in the water with a splash and sinking without a trace.

“OMG!” I rushed to the side of the pond – only to see Monstro slowly heading back up to the surface looking a little dazed (and slightly scraped down one side). I decided to act goalie for a bit, just in case he got any other funny ideas, but he was more sensible than I gave him credit for and decided that he’d had enough adventuring for one day!

So, here we are, a couple of weeks on and his scrape has healed nicely (leaving the kind of impressive scar that he can tell the other fish how brave he was^*1) and he is back to his usual bullying greedy self. Long may he stay swimming in water...!

^*1 Reminds me of the ‘call that a scar?’ incident…

The inevitability of change

After a recent conversation with hubby I began to wonder about the way that our lives change over the years.

Nothing ever stays the same, does it? Pets and people grow old (hopefully) and die (sometimes too young). Your health waxes and wanes – even if you just feel run down or pick up a cold in the winter. New technology means that we buy the new TV or camera that has made our old one obsolete and our cars get rusty and prone to breaking down. Actually, that last point isn’t strictly true with my car, it’s old but not too rusty and doesn’t break down – it does however make weird gurgling noises when it rains and the rain gets in thorough the sun roof and gets trapped in the ceiling....but I digress....

Hubby and I were talking about how your relationships change as your time together evolves. When you are young and in love you spend all your time together. For much of the time you are joined (quite literally) at the hip and even outside of that you spend every waking moment together or calling each other. Then life just seems to take over and for many people children happen. Their lives are suddenly transformed into providing a nappy changing, feeding and onwards to taxi service. The couple don’t spend so much time together, they spend it with the children...(we by-passed this and moved onto the next stage (having no kids!)). Then, the kids leave home and the couple want to do all those things that they didn’t have time for when the kids were occupying their time. Much of their time is spent with work and the social life attached to that, some of them join clubs and societies and have ‘a life of their own’ and as a couple they end up spending no more of their time together than they did when the kids were around. Maybe they even spend less as at least they did things as a family when the kids were small...

Time marches on (as it has a habit of doing), something else becomes obsolete and needs replacing and then the mortgage is paid off and it’s time to retire from work. Guess what happens....the couple end up spending every waking moment together again, just like they did in the first flush of love. Isn’t that amazing?

I suppose what I wondered the most about all of this, is that although those changes are bound to happen, sometimes we don’t like the way that time keeps moving on, forcing us to get ever older and making us continually adjust to stuff. But, it’s how we cope with that change that makes us who we are. Should we move forward kicking and screaming, should we be depressed at the passage of time or should we go forward always looking back with regret at what has passed? I don’t think we should do any of those – I think we should look to the future as an undiscovered country – yes it will always change and yes, I will get older, but life is just like that. Since purple is my favourite colour, I guess I won’t have any issues about wearing it when I get old either!

New poll day....

Yes, you got it, it's a new poll day....

Please vote - I promise it will have more effect on the politics of this country than our current system!

Chatanooga ripple....

We went out recently to a Glenn Miller concert. No, don’t be silly, we’re not time travellers, it was a tribute type thingie! Anyway, we took my mother out to this concert because it was her birthday and it was a significant one – one of those ones that starts with eight and ends with zero – not that I’m mentioning her age you understand...

Anyway, we were up in the balcony and (as I like to do) I looked out over the audience and decided that I was plainly the youngest person there (by about 40 years) – ignoring of course PMB, SIL and hubby. The average age in the audience was, um, well, ancient and I reckon the collective age may well have headed into the millions! These were people who probably did see Glenn Miller when he was alive and when they were young and trendy!

So, the lights dimmed and the music started and the whole audience started rippling, grey heads were nodding up and down and rocking from side to side like some mild version of the St Vitus dance – at one point one couple even got up and started jiving in the aisle (although to be fair they didn’t do too much before the gentleman stopped - visibly heaving for breath) – all the same, everybody had a really fab time. Even I had a fab time, and I’m not poking fun here, it really was great to see so many people out there enjoying themselves.

It was halfway through the concert that I looked to my right and there, about 6 seats away in my row was a young boy of about 10 years of age and he was bopping up and down in his seat, playing imaginary drums, trumpets and saxophones. He was grinning from ear to ear and thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. Now apart from the fact that he alone probably lowered the average age of the audience from ancient to merely old, it was just so refreshing to see and just proves that that Glenn Miller chappy knew good music!

In-truder alert!*

MBP phoned me a few days ago and was complaining that he hadn’t had much sleep the night before and so I asked him what the problem was. He started to tell me that it was the SIL, but not quite in the way that you might think....

The SIL was woken at about 2.30 in the morning by a strange noise and she told me she thought it was a large moth. In the way that you do, she lay awake for a bit in the dark, straining to hear what was happening and then heard more noise and began to wonder if it was a mouse. It did seem odd that a mouse might have got in and climbed the stairs just to leap up and down on the spare bedroom bed in order to wake her up, but it's true that odd things do go through your mind at that time in the morning. Added to the mouse theory, was the possibility of revenge, as after mice getting into the garage and munching their way through a spare duvet that had been stored there, traps had been set...I will say no more...!

After a bit more clattering and what sounded distinctly like a meow, the SIL bravely got up to investigate and on opening the door of the spare room spotted a cat who immediately ran under the bed! Now, MBP and the SIL don’t own a cat and it wasn’t one of ours that had smuggled its way home in one of my brother’s shoes so she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She got down on her knees and peered under the bed and yes, it really was a cat! It was back to the bedroom to wake MBP who so far was oblivious to all this excitement.

“Wake up”, she said, “we have an intruder – there’s a cat under the bed...”
“Grummph, blurgle” he mumbled “do you want a hand?” – he said in a tone of voice that really meant ‘please say no and let me get back to sleep....’

The SIL is made of stronger stuff than that and so he got up to give her a hand! They both peered under the bed and she was right – there really was a cat under there. Thus ensued a certain amount of time playing ‘catch the cat’, which as any cat owner who has ever wanted to take their pet to the vet will tell you is lots of fun^*2....and eventually, the cat was outside the front door.

First a frog , next a cat ...let’s just hope they’re not working their way up to bigger animals....

^* Danger Will Robinson!
^*2 ...and is something akin to how to give your cat a pill...

Ah! The annual get-together...

This year we had a party..actually, most summers we have a party and they vary in size and scale depending on whether either of us has a significant birthday! TBH I can’t actually remember how it all started, but I think it was when hubby turned 40. I may have previously mentioned that all our friends are scattered to the four corners of Britain (well, maybe not quite that far afield, but almost) and so we just don’t get to see them as often as we would like. The summer party gives us (and them) that chance - the chance for us all to meet up and just spend a bit of time together. After the first one, the next one was organised for us when the POG ^*invited a few friends to our place for the weekend and suddenly we were throwing another party!


I love it – I love to see everyone and I just wish it wasn’t for such a short period of time. The cost to us is the food (this year barbequed chicken with salad and a cooked breakfast for 15) and in return we gain a significant quantity of alcohol. The equation goes something like this:

3 chickens + salad + coleslaw (made by the VNSO – yum yum!) + sides + crisps and snacks + Pimms and punch + 12 bottles of Carslberg + cooked breakfast = at least 8 bottles of wine + 5 bottles of cider + 11 cans of beer + 5 cans of lager + 2 bottles of cava!

Seems fair to me!

Apart from the food and drink, the only other cost is the work. The preparation is tough on me for a few days before (mostly because I feel a need to clear enough floor space for all the airbeds...) but once the BUF arrives I find myself with almost nothing to do. I’d like to call her a treasure, but she might blush, so all I will do is publicly thank her via this blog! I am really lucky generally – as soon as folks arrive, I no longer have to be the hostess with the mostess – they all run around, fetching and carrying and even making me coffee while I sit down and (on this occasion) put my feet up in the sun. Can partying really get any better than this?

Now, where’s the diary, I want to set a date for next year....

^* Probation officer guy

New poll...

Just that ------look right------ and down a bit.....

A body full of potential

I recently ran into a friend of mine (while out shopping) and he asked me how my hand was. Now, this was because I recently had an unexpected visit to the accident and emergency department of my local hospital with a hole in my hand and whole bunch of carbon splinters decorating it. As it turns out, my hand really wasn’t so bad, but news spreads pretty quick (especially when folks think it’s gory) and he was worried.

“Look” I said, waving my hand under his nose, “it’s not so bad, I’ve just got a sticking plaster, that’s all.”
“Dur”, he said (please note the local dialect!) “you’re hard you are....but then I guess you’ve got to be, living in your body!”

Now, that got me to wondering about this body of mine and how good or bad it is. Now, I don’t mean how beautiful (or not) that it is – after all, like most women, there’s bits of my body I like (my nose is OK) and bits I don’t (who dished out those knees for goodness sake!) but what I mean is the working-ness of it (if there is even such a word!).

There are some times when I don’t like my body at all – the times when I wake up and it doesn’t work properly, the times when I have to lift my leg into the car rather than merely helping it in because its quicker and the times when it just hurts way too much and I think that it isn’t really fair. It’s those times when I guess you do have to be just a bit ‘hard’ to live inside it and put up with all those things you’d rather not.

But (and here’s the thing) most of the time I actually think my body is rather wonderful. My wiring in my legs is all wonky and when I was born my parents had no way of knowing if I would ever walk. Doctors are still amazed that I ever learned to do so and despite the fact that many things have gone wrong with it over the years, it recovers and mends and gets on with stuff. More than anything else this funny body has helped me reach for the stars and has achieved amazing things. It has allowed me to explore a future I never thought I would have and has allowed me to fulfil my dreams and even has potential to achieve even more in the years to come.

So, am I hard? Or has my body really helped make it rather easy for me?

Why is walking so important to us?

I recently heard about Major Phil Packer who crossed the London Marathon finish line two weeks after starting and I began to wonder about his amazing achievement from which he’s managed to raise an astounding amount of money for Help for Heroes.

I spoke to hubby about it as I wondered what it was about walking especially that people see as so essential to life – what it is that makes people so frightened about becoming disabled and not being able to walk. Hubby tried to explain to me that most people can just walk. It’s not a struggle and they learn so young that they can never remember not being able to do so. This is hard for me to grasp. I remember learning to walk and it has never been especially natural for me so I can’t really ‘get’ what it is, that is then so scary about losing the skill. For me it’s that, a skill, like learning to knit or something, and I see that there are alternatives, but I guess for most non-disabled people they cannot imagine a life before walking and therefore can’t imagine one after...

I actually think that in all of this and in Major Packer’s great achievement, I think what impresses me the most (and I suspect many other people as well) is that it’s not that the walking really is the wonderful thing about what he has done, but it’s the fact that it’s a measure of his determination and perseverance. It’s that that I admire the most – walking may be more useful on hills than wheeling, but the fact that he has set out to do something so difficult to raise money for such a special cause is the most important thing in all of this.

Imagine that...?!

It was early in the morning when we all met at the field for yet another day. The mist was gently rising from the mountains in the distance and the sky was deep blue heralding the start of a clear day with the promise of sunshine. It looked as if it was going to be a perfect day, but it was bitingly cold in the wind. It was one of those chill winds that had swept down from the Arctic Circle and cut right through to the metalwork (or bones for those mere mortals among you) and there was no hint that it would let up at all.

I was catching up with a few people that I hadn’t seen in a while when I saw DG coming across the field towards me. She was bundled up in lots of layers; wearing a heavy fleece and had her arms hugging across her stomach looking like she was trying really hard to keep warm. I guess it was because of her posture that I first noticed how large her stomach looked and since I hadn’t seen her for a while I wondered if there was a little bundle of joy on the horizon or if she was just gaining a few pounds....

“Hey, DG! Come here – how’s you? What’s with the bump?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “I’ve just got dreadful water retention!”

...and with that, and with something of a flourish, she pulls a hot water bottle out from under her coat!

We all fell about laughing – especially when she seemed so shocked at how quick she’d been – especially so early in the morning!

This is the way to warm up...