Morning started rainy but improved later so we went for a extended version of the "short walk" to the Central Park Cafe for coffees. The quite large car park we use for this route has just one disabled space and luckily it was available, meaning we didn't have to pay the £5 charge that would have applied otherwise. It really needs another two or three disabled spaces, and I feel a letter to the Council may be coming up.
Nothing else to report today - including no driving incidents...
Went to Marks Hall Arboretum in the hope of a good walk and some autumn colours. Leaf fall still far from over, lots of yellow-gold but not much red around. Probably too late for that to develop now.
Not a good driving day for me. Started by going out with the wrong glasses on - had to go back to change them. Then, on the way back there's what's always a tricky right turn onto a dual carriageway. There was a combination of bright low sun affecting visibility, someone stopped to give way on his "outside" lane (it is marked!), someone else coming up his "inside" lane that I just didn't see (perhaps blocked at the critical moment by the car giving way, and - of all unlikely things - a cyclist riding towards me on the wrong carriageway. I made my turn and then crossed into the inside lane too soon, getting some angry horn and sharp braking from the car I hadn't seen. And should have seen, or waited for. My mistake, no question about it. Then, with my mind still on that, I took a wrong turn off a roundabout and nearly went wrong again on another one. Despite the sat-nav. Some thinking is needed - maybe I need to remember that at 72 I'm older than I was and need to adjust my driving style a bit. And there is the disease and the meds to consider. It was a dex morning and I've noticed recently that the sleeplessness is much better than it was but there's an element of "dex mania" taking its place. Perhaps that played a part.
This is what to avoid!
Here's a little video from yesterday at the ford on the River Can just outside Good Easter:
My walker was parked a bit out of shot on the left!
Didn't do a lot this morning (apart from take my first 10mg of dex for the week) but Sue went into town and confirmed that all the car washes are closed under the current lockdown. So after lunch I got the big Karcher pressure washer out and we did the cars by hand. Took a while to remember quite how the pressure washer worked for the detergent stage, but got there in the end. Also - because some hose fittings got thrown out in the Great Clearout that perhaps we should have kept, I had to cannibalise some bits from another hose reel in order to connect the washer up to the outside tap...
After that, and before I lost the energy (or perhaps with a touch of dex mania), I took Walter for a walk along to the post at the top of Marks Hall Lane. Got involved in a conversation with a couple of residents (socially distanced, of course) and had to explain what Gigaclear are doing all over again... More importantly, the tyres remained OK and I've passed both Trionic walkers fit for longer expeditions, as long as they stay OK overnight - thinking of the autumn colours at Marks Hall Arboretum tomorrow.
Had a very pleasant walk down to the Good Easter ford yesterday morning
We both really like it down there - it's very peaceful and tranquil and good for healing the soul. Very much a favourite place.
After getting home from that, off to Springfield for my four-weekly Zometa drip. The appointment was for 14:00 and I was bang on time with my mandatory face-mask on. 75 minutes later, one of the nurses started getting the canula in. The waiting time has gradually got worse from almost nothing before COVID to this. I'm not sure whether it's the extra time needed for anti-COVID precautions between each patient, or increasing pressure from NHS patients diverted into the private system or what, but the waiting time just gets longer and longer. Anyway, we got the drip done and I collected my stack of meds for the next cycle of maintenance.
On the way back home, a big white van had been close on my tail for about three miles. Approaching home I indicated right (18:02:23 0n the video) and started slowing gently before turning into our drive. He also indicated right within a second or two and overtook (while I was still indicating right), then had to get back to the proper side of the road rather quickly because of oncoming traffic. My thoughts about his driving are recorded for posterity on the dashcam video... (text lifted from a Facebook post)
Had a phone call from the NHS about my Parkinson's referral. I'm now officially on the waiting list, and Broomfield will contact me when an appointment becomes available. That's all I know.
There was noting wrong with Walter the Trionic walker when I put him back in the car after Hylands Park, and I left him in there overnight. But yesterday morning when I opened the car to put some other stuff in before leaving for Oaklands Park, I noticed that one of his back tyres was flat. So I heaved him out of the car to go in the garage, and found the other back tyre was flat as well. Hylands is clearly more dangerous than I knew.
I put Victor the Veloped (off-road walker) in the car instead, and off we went to Oaklands. I parked in one of the disabled slots, Sue went off to get coffees from the cafe, and I started getting Victor out. Only then did I discover that he had a flat back tyre too...
The good side is that I did the walk around the park with just a stick. I've been feeling for a while that it's about time I had a decent walk with a stick rather than a walker, but you can get rather dependent on the extra security and stability of a walker, and it becomes hard to let that go. The problem at Oaklands is more mud than uneven ground, so it was quite a good place for the experiment, and it went well. I must now do more like that and build up the confidence a bit - but remembering that with myeloma-weakened bones a fall and a fracture would not be exactly welcome...
Puncture repairs occupied the afternoon. These small wheels with chunky 12" and 14" tyres aren't that easy to do and really need at least three hands on the tyre levers. I actually had four punctures across three tyres, and removed two small and viciously sharp thorns. Couldn't find a cause for the other two. I threw out the inner tube with two punctures (for some reason the patches refused to stick well) and replaced with a new one, and patched the other two. Now I wait to see if they'll hold air overnight. And I suppose I'd better order up some more spare tubes from Trionic, and another puncture repair kit from Amazon...
Going to Maldon today, and taking Rolly the original Rollator, who's good enough on paved ground and has solid tyres making him puncture-proof! The tyres I repaired yesterday are still holding air OK but I haven't checked the pressures yet and won't entirely trust them until I've had a couple of short local walks first.
