21/06/23 Southend

Went to Southend for a bit of a walk along the front and some lunch. There's only one lunch to have in in Southend so we went to a place we've used several times before for fish & chips. Disaster! Chips so underdone as to be close to raw in the centre. We had to send them back.
Then took the train to the end of the pier. At 1.3 miles long it's too far to walk these days. I thought this photo was worth posting:

And when we got back to the car, we had a parking ticket. For parking outside a marked bay. Well, the markings were so faded as to be near invisible. We have photos and are challenging the ticket...

17/06/23 Anchor

Nothing new of any significance, just some warmer weather and lunch today at the Anchor on the banks of the Crouch. Excellent lunch it was too. I had a fancy mushroom fusili, and the Eton Mess in the photo was Sue's not mine. I had the out-of-focus blueberry cheesecake in the background. All photos by Sue, and taken from a Facebook post.

11/06/23 Marks Hall

 Just some photos from a beautiful day at a favourite place.

080623 Numbers

I now have a collection of five hospital numbers from five different hospitals, and that doesn't include Princess Alexandra or Guy's. I probably have numbers for them as well somewhere in my records, if I didn't shred them when we moved. So a possible total of seven from adult life, eight if we go back far enough to include Poole - that one definitely lost in the mists of time, if I ever had one. Another sign of getting older, I suppose.

08/06/23 Appointment

My appointment at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital came through - October 9th. Rather longer than I'd hoped for but that's the way the NHS is these days. Perhaps I'll get lucky with another cancellation. One slightly worrying thing is that the orthopaedic surgeon I'm seeing has his specialities listed as sarcoma and metastatic disease. I don't have the slightest reason to suppose I have either of those and if a hint of one of them had appeared in that recent CT scan, my unofficial medical adviser has quite rightly pointed out, I would be on a 2-week urgent cancer referral. But the stupid worm of doubt in my mind won't accept that...

Boules at Towe yesterday went quite well - played two, won two on  a very difficult stony "terrain" where a lot of the throws went off at 45 degrees (or worse) on first bounce. Fortunately my partner was a very good shooter, and that's invaluable on such tricky ground.

I was not put into a good mood on arrival, because the car park had been re-decorated, courtesy of some morons and the local foxes:

Also had a copy of the clinic letter from the Springfield orthopaedic surgeon. He says I should continue using a stick and avoid putting any extra load on my left leg. I had worked that out!

31/05/23 CT and bus

Had a phone call yesterday offering me a cancellation appointment (another!) for a CT scan at Broomfield mid-day today.

We thought moving to within a short walk to the bus station and regular buses to the hospital would make life easier….

Had an appointment at Broomfield Hospital. Checked the options out on Google Maps and on the First Bus app. Experience of the previous two times told me the bus supposed to arrive outside The Ship never does (or not on time, anyway) so went straight to the bus station for the C1 shuttle, due to leave 11:48 and arrive at the Hospital 12:07. The digital board said 11 mins, so I took a walk around the station and by the time I got back it was down to 4 mins. It stayed on 4 mins for 5 mins, then went down to 3 mins and eventually 2 mins, after which it went back to 4. No hint of anything other than light traffic. Eventually it changed to “Due” for a while and then disappeared altogether in favour of a couple of other buses in 17 mins and 60 mins time. Then back to 4 mins and then – without any further change, the bus appeared at 12:13, 6 minutes after it was supposed to arrive at the hospital…
The information on the app was equally disconnected from reality as far as I could see.
For the first of the two previous hospital trips, the bus never appeared at The Ship so I walked to the bus station and found another bus which eventually deposited me at the hospital after a long and intricate journey around the housing estates. That made me 15 minutes late for an MRI scan. Second time, no bus at The Ship again, nothing at the bus station, so no option but to spend £16 on a taxi. At least I was on time for another MRI. Today I was just in time for a CT, but only because I left home over an hour before a journey that shouldn’t have taken more than twenty-five minutes.

This is with all the supposed benefits of modern technology. GPS tracking, electronic boards at the bus stop, apps on your phone. Put them together and what should be a seamlessly integrated and perfectly efficient system falls into chaos. The old system with bus conductors, punched paper tickets, and printed timetables worked better. Further, this is no way to get people to abandon their cars for public transport. If I’d had my car keys in my pocket I’d have walked back home and got the car. As it was, the extra few minutes needed to go up to the flat and get the keys then go down again made me hang on that bit longer at the bus stop, and if that bus hadn’t finally appeared it would have been a taxi again. Could be temped to think that the whole thing is a conspiracy to get rid of the expensive bus services and drive everybody into the arms (or car doors) of the taxi operators…

 I wasn't in the machine more than a few minutes but by the time I got home - a much simpler journey - I had an email from "Alliance Medical" asking for feedback and for me to 'tell them about my experience' and 'would I recommend them to a friend'.... One of the many curses of modern life!

29/05/23 Wall

No more myeloma developments. My left leg is still attached and now I've got over the initial shock of that X-ray I'm 95% back to normal getting around, just being a bit more careful and definitely not heavy lifting. Nothing yet from the National Orthopaedic Hospital or from Broomfield about a CAT scan. Hoping to hear something this week.

Some photos. First one is the usual Maldon view but this time with then tide as low as I've ever seen it. Sausage roll for lunch, naturally.

Another walk, this time in Chelmer Valley Nature Reserve:

Would be good for e-biking, if we still had the bikes...

This is the garden at our new place, starting to look good now:

And the "living wall" at the other side, next to the traffic. Installing this was a condition of planning permission. It's supposed to improve the air quality.