Joke of the day
March 3rd, 2010Pierre, a brave French fighter pilot, takes his girlfriend, Marie, out for a pleasant little picnic by the River Seine. It’s a beautiful day and love is in the air.
Marie leans over to Pierre and says, ‘ Pierre, kiss me!’ Pierre grabs a bottle of Merlot and splashes it on Marie’s lips.
‘What are you doing, Pierre ?’ says the startled Marie. ‘I am Pierre, the French fighter pilot! When I have red meat, I have red wine!’
She smiles and they start kissing. Things began to heat up a little and Marie says, ‘ Pierre , kiss me lower.’
Our hero tears her blouse open, grabs a bottle of Chardonnay and pours it on her breasts. ‘ Pierre! What are you doing now?’ asks the bewildered Marie.
‘I am Pierre, the French fighter pilot! When I have white meat, I have white wine!’ She giggles and they resume their passionate interlude: and things really steam up.
Marie leans close to his ear and whispers, ‘ Pierre , kiss me much lower!’ Pierre rips off her underwear, grabs a bottle of Cognac and pours it in her lap.
He then strikes a match and lights the cognac on fire. Marie shrieks and dives into the River Seine.
Standing waist deep, Marie throws her arms into the air and screams furiously, ‘PIERRE , WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?’
Our ‘hero’ stands and says, defiantly, ‘I am Pierre, the French fighter pilot! If I go down, I go down in flames!”
Alzheimers Soc launch “This Is Me” leaflet -a very good idea
February 23rd, 2010Today, my wife, Wendy, is involved with launching an initiative from the Alzheimer’s Society called “This Is Me” at a local hospital and I hope this idea will spread and get the attention it deserves. [She is an employee of the Alzheimer’s Society here in Swansea]
The charity, together with the Royal College of Nursing, is today launching the new 4-page A4-sized booklet to give medics and carers information about each patient.
Each booklet is filled out by the patient’s carer or relative to provide basic details such as the patient’s name and address, as well as information about who knows them best, their hobbies, things that worry them, the state of their sight and hearing, mobility and sleep patterns. With the patient’s picture on the front and inside, and sized the same as Patient’s notes in hospital, the idea is to ensure that dementia patients get more people-centred care from Nurses, carers and other medics, who do not receive training on dealing with Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients.
(An estimated 800,000 Britons suffer from a form of dementia - the most common is Alzheimer’s disease - and the number is expected to rise to nearly a million in the next 20 years. yet, despite the numbers affected, there is no requirement for those working in the area to have specialist training. )
It also explains other important things, such as whether their food needs to be cut up and if they can use cutlery or have swallowing difficulties.
Angela Rippon believes the booklet would have prevented or at least minimised many of the problems her mother Edna experienced before she died last November at the age of 88.
‘My mother was in hospital in Plymouth with emphysema three times in her last year.
‘On the third occasion, I had a phone call from a young doctor on the ward to say they were going to send her home, but the address they had was different from the one my mother was insisting she had to go to.
‘She explained to them that she had to give my father his tea. In fact, my father had been dead for five years and she had moved from the family home to a nursing home years previously.
‘But the doctor was taking everything she said at face value because he didn’t have any information to do otherwise.
‘Although I had spoken at great length to a senior nurse about her discharge, none of what I had said had been passed on to him.
‘If the booklet had been at the side of her bed, or hanging with her medical notes at the end of the bed, it would have been factually useful and avoided any risk that she could have been taken to the wrong address. Thankfully, he rang me to check.’[
Actor Kevin Whately has had similar experiences. His mother suffered from dementia for ten years until her death last summer and the condition turned her time in a large London hospital into a nightmare.
Best known for playing Lewis in the eponymous TV detective series, Kevin recalls: ‘My mother was, like many old people, very confused when she went into hospital.
‘Then 80, her mental state was such that she couldn’t explain where she was in pain, and we only knew there was some sort of problem when she collapsed after I had taken her out for a cream tea.’
‘Unfortunately, she caught a MRSA type infection straight after she was admitted and then had to be isolated in a single room.
Kevin adds: ‘The ladies who brought food in for her left it for about 20 minutes and then came back to pick it up.
‘Nobody had told them she was a very slow eater, which meant the food was removed before she had a chance to eat it.
‘Also, although she managed to feed herself in the nursing home, she was so confused and weak that she couldn’t do so in hospital. She lost huge amounts of weight.’
Like Angela Rippon, Kevin found that none of the staff was trained in dealing with dementia.
‘For example, they would ask my mother direct questions such as: “Where is the pain?”
‘But, although she was a former school teacher, because of the dementia, she couldn’t find the words to answer.’
‘She couldn’t even say: “I am thirsty’’, so if there wasn’t water right in front of her she could have got very dehydrated.
‘The dementia and infection combined meant it took the medical staff days to establish that the pain was caused by gallstones and, by the time they did, she wasn’t in a state for them to treat her.’
He believes the booklet should make a real difference. ‘It will help nursing staff understand patients’ needs and difficulties,’ he says. And, until the NHS trains staff in dementia care, it is the only option.
I think this is a brilliant idea - when my Mum was in hospital and then a care home, such a booklet would have saved a lot of repetition of education for those caring for her as they came and went, changed shifts, etc. As it stands we are asking that the home where Wendy’s Dad lives to start using this idea, for use not only by the carers there but also the visiting medics.
I also think that having one of these at home would help when being visited by medics and on-hand for when they go into hospital in an emergency.
‘This is me’ was first developed by the Northumberland Acute Care and Dementia Group and is being supported by the Royal College of Nursing. For a copy of This Is Me, call 01753 535751 or download the .pdf from here, also see http://alzheimers.org.uk/countingthecost
The Bank House, Cheltenham - appalling
February 22nd, 2010Usually we like Wetherspoons if only because they’re quick and cheap. Last night we went to “The Bank House” in Cheltenham on our way back from Redditch. This is the complaint I just fired off to them.
What an appalling experience this was from start to finish. First the sole entrance doorway was obscured by clouds of smoke from a bunch of men who didn’t want to let customers in. Then there was the singing by a bunch of drunks - the repeated refrain to which was “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, you’re a c**t”". Wonderful. Nevertheless, since we only had an hour or so to see our (adult) daughter who lives in Cheltenham, we pressed on and ordered food.
I got an almost cold coffee, a curry with very burnt bahji’s and a soggy nan. I asked our server if the bahji’s were meant to be like this and his affirmative reply raised an eyebrow I can tell you. “They all look like that” he said. Well, no they don’t in any other restaurant. I’ve eaten more than a few, I didn’t eat these..
My wife had the veggie roast which was burnt solid on one side and wet mush on the other. Perhaps the turntable on your microwave failed?
My daughter’s partner had a burnt “crispy” burger.
She had a roast. It was, almost unbelivably, ok.
Having waited 20 minutes for this offering we tried to push on, but eventually gave back the burnt crispy bahji’s and my wife’s meal. As we couldn’t wait another 20-30 minutes for replacements, we got a partial refund but no real apology.
We left through the inebriate smokers once more and drove home thoroughly fed up.
We’ve been to several Wetherspoons (The Potter’s Wheel in Swansea is excellent) but this was a rubbish experience with rubbish food prepared sloppily by people who didn’t give a damn about the “customer experience”.
We won’t be going back, And yes, we’ll tell all our friends.
PS There was no Guinness either. My wife got something called “Mud” as a replacement, which appeared to be Barley Wine with added Mud.
The automated response was quite funny:
We will make sure that if any pub, team or member of staff has helped make your J D Wetherspoon experience that extra bit special, be assured we will let them know!
Well, I suppose it was special. In it’s own way.
It’s that time of year again
February 15th, 2010Many of these in the Brecon Beacons yesterday….
Kidwelly
February 7th, 2010Kidwelly is a lovely little coastal town, with the estuary of the River Towy providing a great habitat for the many birds living there. I caught some over the last few days - on film, of course.
Here’s a Greenshank:
A curlew in flight
a Redshank
and loads of lapwings on the beach
It’s a lovely area, one that I enjoy visiting and I recommend it to all.
My David Cameron Poster
February 1st, 2010
www.mydavidcameron.com is a great site. Contribute your version of this ridiculous poster there.
The End Of An Era
January 15th, 2010My Auntie Lil, also known as Lila, died this week and with her, that generation of my family is no more. At 93 she’d lived through incredible times, been around the world twice, known good times and bad and was mad as a box of badgers.
She and Alice (my Mum) were incredibly competetive and to see them together in later years was to still see the sisters out-doing each other. When Alice had a stroke, Lila announced that she’d had one. No visible effects, nothing, I think she just felt Alice was getting too much attention.
Lila was a force of nature and swept all before her. I remember as a child her driving (VERY badly!) Alice and me into London in her little green Mini and not being able to find a parking space. “Aha!” she exclaimed, “I know where we can park” and drove to Red Lion Square, straight into the American Embassy. A massive Marine peered down at two women and a little boy in a Mini as the driver explained “we’re here to see the ambassador!”. He let us through! And so we parked in the US Embassy Car Park and went shopping for the day. Strange but true, that.
She left her husband and eloped to Australia with her lover, her sons already having moved there in the late 1950’s. Somehow it didn’t work out and she ended up back in the UK with her hubby, then went back to Australia again! She returned eventually and once more set up home with her hubby.
After my Uncle Wal died on New Years Day 1969, Lila and Alice made sure that they kept in contact with his kids and would traipse up to Leicester to see them and their mum, Sheila, on a regular basis. They both had massive hearts and loved those kids to bits. When Corin died at the age of 40, she was philosophical at first, then descended to deep, black, grief.
Before the war she worked in service for one of the Princesses, Beatrice, I believe. She worked into her late 60’s, doing silver service at Ascot and waiting upon the Queen Mum in an echo of her past. She also ran the Haberdashery dept in Bentalls in Kingston for many years and built up rather a good supply of zips etc at home - I’m pretty sure that she still had a drawerful when she died!
She lived with the tragedy of one son comitting suicide and her husband died 15 years ago. A neighbour looked after her for years until he died in 2007 and Alice died on Lila’s birthday that year, which made her very, very low.
Alzheimer’s took it’s toll, too, but through it all her remaining son, Peter, showed remarkable fortitude and helped her stay at home to the end.
Anyone who knew Lila was witness to an extraordinary life. My condolences go out to Peter and the (sadly few, now) people that knew her.
An era has ended.
Hot Cross Buns
January 9th, 2010
A few days after Christmas, I was in my local Tesco Metro getting some croissants and the Saturday paper, when a Tesco employee walked past me, saying “it’s fucking Easter already”. He was pushing a trolley stacked with Easter Eggs of various types and sizes.
Easter eggs were never my favourite part of that festival, Hot Cross Buns were.
When I was a kid, it was a treat beyond compare to go to the bakers on the morning of Good Friday (because, children, in those days HCB’s were only sold for a few days around Easter) with my Dad to collect a dozen HCB’s from “The Oven Door”, a baker’s shop on the Stainash Parade in Staines. These HCB’s were really the nicest I ever tasted. Apparently the baker had gone to prison for burglary at one point and the shop’s buisness had taken a dive, but when he came back, so did the customers.
Anyhow, so, about 1960 is the first Good Friday trip - that I remember - (on a child’s seat on the back of Dad’s bike) to “The Oven Door” to get HCB’s. The queue wound out of the shop and was about 30 people long and it was the same every year until I left home in 1976. We’d take them home, still warm, slather them with Anchor butter and demolish however many were put in front of us, usually 3 or 4 each. With a warm cup of tea, they constituted one of the most fattening meals of the year and it was a family occasion with my sister and brothe, Mum and Dad and me, sitting at the dining table in the dining room with one orange wall.
This morning, almost 50 years later, I saw HCB’s in Tesco, grabbed a packet and took them home. Since cold HCB’s are nowhere near as tasty as hot, I popped them in the oven and scoffed some with a hot cuppa char. The smell of the spice and the steam coming up as I broke the HCB’s open brought back memories of my childhood at 34 Brightside Avenue.
As I reflect upon this again, my eyes are moist and I’ve no idea why, really. Still, I enjoy memories of those days and their evocation is almost always a smell or a taste, as, I suppose, you’d expect.
So thanks, Tesco, but I have to tell you, your HCB’s don’t compare in any way to those from my childhood and they never will. Of course, by the time we get to Easter they’ll be selling Halloween costumes anyhow….
Snow
January 6th, 2010For maybe the 5th time in my life, snow has persisted in my part of the UK beyond 5 days and it seems that no-one out there really listens when they’re told by the Police to not bloody go out unless they absolutely need to have a crash.
Silly buggers.
Powered by FireStats