Sweet Sixteen

I'm thinking of suing the National Health Service (NHS). I had a hospital procedure on Friday in which I was injected with Botox. I had hoped to emerge looking less like a 75-year-old and more like a young Sweet Sixteen. Looking in the mirror, I look exactly the same, so I want to make a complaint. The fact that the Botox injection was into my stomach valve via a gastroscopy (which I mentioned here) is neither here nor there. Botox is Botox, right?

Seriously though, the procedure at St Thomas' Hospital went well and I always love seeing my consultant as she is just a lovely human. As she injected the sedative (I won't have a gastroscopy without a sedative), she said "here comes your gin and tonic". I was out for the count for the rest of it, but knew there were five people in the room, four of them nurses and one consultant, looking after me, monitoring my blood pressure, oxygen levels and making sure I was in the right position for the gastroscopes to go down.  A prerequisite of the hospital agreeing to give me sedation is that I must be accompanied home and have someone stay with me overnight in case I do something stupid, like walk in front of a bus or leave the gas cooker on at home. One of my choir friends very kindly collected me from the hospital at lunchtime after the procedure and made sure I got home safely on public transport. My daughter Kay stayed with me overnight to fulfil the 24-hour rule.

Meanwhile I'm meeting an old friend for lunch today who lives in Ireland but happens to be in London for the weekend. I haven't seen her in 25 years. Do you think we'll recognise one another? We'll certainly have a lot to talk about.

Rochester, Kent

Over Easter, Kay and Darcy came to stay with me a couple of nights. On Good Friday we went out to my favourite Italian restaurant where I always order the same thing - Razza or, as we English say, skate wing. You never see that fish in supermarkets and can only get it in fishmongers. Few restaurants ever have it on their menu either, so it is  real treat for me to have it in that restaurant.

On Easter Saturday, we took the train to Rochester in Kent. Although not far from where I live in South London (about 25 miles) I have never actually been there, so decided it was now or never. I was quite surprised by how quaint the High Street is. I suppose I was expecting a modern drab sort of city centre like any other, but the High Street was full of old buildings dating back to the Victorian, Georgian and even Elizabethan times.  It was home to Charles Dickens for many years and featured in his novels. There wasn't a chain store in sight, but many coffee houses, charity shops and sweet shops. We wandered along the High Street stopping at some of the older buildings to take photos.

Elizabethan Eastgate featured as Westgate in various Dickens' novels

A town crier on his rounds

Look at the front door on this - not at all straight - in fact the whole building is listing to one side

We moved on to the Cathedral which is literally off the High Street. 

Unlike a lot of cathedrals and high churches these days, there was no entrance fee and you could wander around at will. I suppose being an Easter Saturday helped too, as no doubt Good Friday and Easter Sunday would be busy. There were lots of elderly ladies arranging flowers around the Cathedral and decorating a scene from the Garden of Gethsemane at the entrance.

The High Street is in the foreground

Peaceful cloister garden

The choir

aerial view from the castle

After grabbing a snack of coffee and cake from one of the many cafes in the High Street, we moved on to Rochester Castle, also a stone's throw from the High Street. This was quite impressive and took a lot of stamina to climb the many stairs - most of them cobbled and quite steep in places. The inner floors of the castle have crumbled away so the stairs in the corner turrets are the only way to reach the upper storeys and see across. It was built just after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its history is fascinating - including the Barons' Uprising against King John in 1215 and also the place where in 1540 Henry VIII first clapped eyes on Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife, as she travelled from Germany to London to marry him.

no floors exist

You can get an idea here of what the stairs looked like. It was quite lethal coming down them.

After such a busy day on our feet for most of it, we decided to take the late afternoon train back to London and feasted on a Chinese takeaway for our supper.

Alcoholic Daze - Chapter 2

The continuation of the alcoholic saga which was first written in 2008 with some minor amendments.....

He has not always been an alcoholic. We were married in 1976 and knew one another for 5 years before we married, so we were together in total for 39 years when he died in 2010 . We met as students studying German at university and we married in the very hot and humid summer of 1976. I should have known the omens were not boding well when we picked our honeymoon in Cornwall - the only two torrential rainy weeks of that summer. Some people joke that for a honeymoon it shouldn't matter what the weather is doing. Then, it didn't!! In retrospect, that was a sign I should have heeded! Until 4 years ago, the majority of our 39 years together had been fine. It had had its ups and downs, like I suspect most marriages, but we never doubted we would stay together forever. We had so much in common, both before we met and afterwards. Too much to lose if we drifted apart. It would be like losing a leg. Little did I know that the concept of legless would take on a different connotation!

As soon as we married, we spent the first three years in Cologne, Germany, where Greg was employed by a major German broadcasting company. It was the done thing, certainly in those days in German households to have a crate of beer in the house, to drink with a meal, or if guests called unexpectedly by in the evening. If we turned up at German friends' houses, beer was offered to us too. Or we would go out in a group to a Bierkeller or jazz keller. For a change we bought Rhein or Mosel wine as it was ridiculously cheap compared with what you have to pay for wine in the UK. We did not over-indulge, but it was there all around us in abundance, if we wanted it. We hardly touched it. We were young, living and working hard abroad, making a wide circle of German and English expat friends.

When we returned to London in 1979, we were busy settling down into our new jobs and starting out belatedly on the housing ladder. I had returned to my former employer, but in a different office. Greg was working for an entirely different employer, but still in broadcasting. We were in our very late twenties. It took quite a few years to nestle into our professions and acclimatise to being back in Britain. It took many (too many) more years, after giving up all hope, before we were blessed with a beautiful healthy baby daughter at long long last (in my fortieth year). We were gloriously happy.

Greg's job was getting more and more stressful and he had to cope as a matter of routine with deadlines at hourly intervals. His newsroom had high standards to keep and every word had to be checked and double-checked, as a mistake in the reporting could literally mean life or death to their audience abroad. For this reason, he was very pedantic at home about the correct usage of words and would shout at the TV when the national news was on, if they got something wrong - in his eyes. He found it very difficult to switch off from work when he was at home and in any case, the very nature of his job meant keeping abreast of international news all the time. His office was run in three shifts (mornings/afternoons, afternoons/evenings or nights) and he had to work a week of night shifts once a month on a rota, as well as bank holidays. He worked four shifts and then had four days off. It is a well-known fact that shift-work can play havoc on your health, particularly night shifts, and he seemed desperately to need his days off, particularly after night shifts, to get back on an even keel again. There was a staff bar in the building and it was not unusual for him and his colleagues to gravitate there during the lunch-hour. Or they would slip across the road to one of the many bars in the area. After a night shift, he would often come home at breakfast time and have a glass of wine or a shot of whisky. It was his way of relaxing and winding down ready for bed. On the last day of his night shift patterns, he would often stay up during the day instead of going to bed in order to acclimatise to the day shifts again and do some DIY which he found relaxing and therapeutic. We had just moved to a house which needed a lot doing to it. Rather than call in professionals, he liked to do the work himself. Often he would have the door of our integral garage open and would potter in there with his designs and work tools with a glass of wine or whisky in his hand. Often he would emerge from the garage and do some carpentry on the forecourt in front of the house.

One day, I was driving home in the early evening with my daughter from a Brownies (Girl Scouts) meeting, when a neighbour who lived opposite us approached my car as I was parking it. I barely knew her, except to nod good morning from a distance or comment on the weather. She was clutching a small leaflet which she shoved hastily into my hand, so as not to alert my daughter's attention to it. "This", she said, "is for you. You might need it because of your husband." She scurried off across the road, before I could say anything to her. When I got inside, I took off my coat and looked at the leaflet. On the front title page were the words "Alcoholics Anonymous. Advice for families living with an alcoholic".

April Fool

I couldn't let April Fool's Day (admittedly yesterday) go by without posting this clip from a television programme back in 1957. It was aired on a programme called Panorama - which still exists today - and covers all manner of topics but always serious and political.  This particular item was broadcast on 1 April 1957. The date should have given a clue to its authenticity, but so many people believed it was true. I suppose in those days, pasta was a relatively new concept to us Britons and the BBC was a highly revered institution that couldn't possibly be telling untruths.