Monday 18 February 2013

Come and See!

I'm thrilled and excited to be a guest on Maria's Book Blog today. Please come and say hello!

And also quite pleased to have found this piece on the BBC website about the house I grew up in and in which my mum lived until her death 10 years ago. I had no idea the houses were only meant to last twenty years. The houses were a gift from Norway after the 1953 floods.

The one I lived in was one of the white ones facing the sea, not one of the ones in the BBC picture.

It did make me laugh that they described our house as having "new" white plastic cladding. I remember that being done - in the 1970s and before that, they were painted white anyway!




This photo was taken in the 1960s - my family outside our wooden house on the seafront with my dog Nikki - I'm the small one at the front! My grandad (Pop) lived with us and my aunt, uncle and cousin also in the photo lived in one of the other set of Norwegian houses. Happy days!


Sunday 10 February 2013

Catching Up!


I’ve recommended Colin Cotterill’s fantastic Dr Siri books on here before and I’ve just read number 7 in the series, Love Songs from a Shallow Grave and for me it was one of the best yet. The characterisation is marvellous, the plots rich and once I start one, I just can’t put it down.

And don’t forget if you are reading a series of books, you can find their order on Fantastic Fiction. It’s a very handy site.

So how are the bugs? They’re thriving. The kids have all come down with a new one now – not a sickness bug this time, but a thoroughly nasty virus, their parents aren’t much better. The classrooms are running on half full at the moment.

And Indy? Well the curves haven’t been going well and he’s been steadily losing weight and still getting up in the night. Last week his curve was so haywire (more like a fork of lightning than a curve), that on Monday when I saw Tom, he said he’d like to have him in the surgery to do a curve using their equipment.

So he was booked in the next day and we arrived with the lumpy, hairy old bed he has down beside my desk and the blanket he has in my bed, his food and bowl and his insulin. I also took my glucose meter to be tested.

I went through with him, settled him in his “room” and met the lovely nurse who would be looking after him – and she really is lovely! I gave him his breakfast and his injection, then left with the nurse promising she’d make a big fuss of him.

I went back in the afternoon to take him for a walk and – get this – after his walk he pulled me back into the surgery, went straight through the reception and out to the back where his nurse and the receptionist made a fuss of him.

Then off back to his room without so much as “I’ll miss you, Mum!”

And I’m very glad to say that. It made leaving him so much easier. I think he knows the place so well now with our frequent visits, he feels quite secure there. His test results were just as odd though.

Next step was to speak to an expert who would know the latest about treating diabetes and Tom said he’d do that and phone me in the next couple of days. I was that worried, wondering what would happen next.

So - there is new thinking on the treatment of diabetic dogs and in the case of dogs like Indy who have these odd results, you should forget about doing glucose curves and tests and monitor them on how well they seem! I think it was Frances who said ages ago that surely all that mattered was that he was happy. And as Tom said, it is the common sense approach.

There'll be no more blood tests for a while and we’re going to try basing his treatment around how well he is and not on what his blood glucose readings are.

His sight is very poor now because of the cataracts. I bought some white tennis balls as he just couldn't find the green ones any more and he can sometimes see them IF I throw them at the right height and not too far in front of him. Watching him run down the stairs is heart in mouth stuff though.

Saturday 2 February 2013

The Comments Dilemma


Blogger has always been pretty good when it comes to picking out spam comments – sometimes they’ve been a little over enthusiastic and put genuine comments in the spam folder, but I always find them and put them in the right place.

However, recently I’ve noticed a lot of spam is slipping through. I don’t want to set up the thingy where you have to copy letters and numbers as I know that annoys a lot of people. I could do comment moderation, but I prefer to do it the way I do.

I check up on dodgy looking comments as soon as I see the notification email, then I report them as spam and they are moved to the spam folder.

So if you see any dodgy looking comments here, please ignore them.

It seems that everyone has been affected to some degree by the nasty stomach bugs doing the rounds at the moment. Most of my children and grandchildren have had it – poor Imogen had it particularly badly - and I thought I’d escaped unscathed. Foolish, foolish me!

Normal service will be resumed… well, sometime I hope!