Last Night

Due to animal care needs I don't usually do two 12 hour shifts together! Tonight is my fourth! and I am buggered! Last night I had a change of a patient and looked after two high dependency chaps! Both brain injured through different traumas!

Got home at 8am, walked all the dogs and sorted the birds out! and thank god for Carole round the corner, who took Meg, William and Maddie for the day! George came with me! Got under our patchwork quilt at 11.30 am and I knew nothing until 6pm!

Luckily Chris came home at three, picked the dogs up, made my tea (risotto in Bed! bliss), locked the birds up and brought me a cuppa in bed!. Last night tonight

Good Luck to Mike

I have just had an Awful 12 hour shift! this time with an elderly burns and smoke inhalation victim. The unit had 2 assaults and one RTA! admitted and the seven staff never stopped for a minute! At least I have most of the tomorrow daytime off to do "outdoor" things before night shift tomorrow night.
Richard, the father in law comes on Thursday until next Tuesday, so at least I have some time away from work to look after him. Having said that I aim to get him working on the parsnips and new veg patch, so there will be little r and r! Bless!

Friend Mike starts work tomorrow after a long break! good luck matey! Forgot to say on the phone tonight that we need to organise a meet before Christmas!

10 days to New York!

Needy Meg.A good death? Janeaway,Piccard or Sisko?

Of all the characters that are our pets, Meg always seems to me to be the "saddest". I know this anthropomorphic view of animal personality traits is rather misleading at best, but in her case, it does feel rather a truism. She is a a nervy little dog, who is most content sitting on my knee, being silent and cuddled. Whist the others are lying in untidy heaps on the kitchen floor, she has sneaked onto the couch with me, and is still and comfortable.

Today, I have been at work all day, and will be at the hospital all day tomorrow as well as Monday and Tuesday night shifts. I have missed being outdoors, but have had some consolation with working with a delightfully close family of a patient who sadly died today. As readers of this blog may have picked up already, I am not a fan of intensive care work. I prefer the slightly gung-ho nature, general rehabilitation has to offer. Mind you, ITU does have it's own positives to nurse and patients, and to me the most important is it often allows the patient to receive a death with as much dignity, an overburdened health system has to offer. This was the case today! I had the time, support and the opportunity to ensure that the family received good end of life care for a much loved husband and father. Hard work yes........but worth it.

On a lighter note! Yesterday I was thinking about STAR TREK! Now I am no treker by any means ( I may be slightly nerdy occasionally!); I will watch a film if it on the television, and have been amused with the story on the BBC of the new proposed Star Trek film starring Simon Pegg as a young Scottie!, but I don't know the Kingon for Traitor! and have no idea the difference between a foton Torpedo and a fazer burst!. Voyager ( the forth of the series), is being shown on Sky and I must admit I have actually ENJOYED it second time around!
Janaway (School marm with a hint of smoulder) is a great heroine, with Busty seven of nine and semi lesbian B'Elanna Torres heading a strong female cast! The men led by Red Indian Commander Chakotay and pretty boy "Tom" Paris are more supporting brotherly characters, and the "family" cast even has a funny set of Uncles in the shape of alien Neelix and the hologram doctor!
Yep we have see all these characters before, as all the crew are just reincarnations of each other from the very first Trek films and series! but in Voyager there is an odd sense of those cardboard characterisations I have always loved from those 1970 disaster films. A motley group of souls, facing the unknown and disaster! This time instead of pretty people in dinner jackets and party frocks, we have humans and humanish aliens with figure hugging uniforms, 1990 haircuts , all backed by a stirring score by Jerry Goldsmith! all great fun!..............ENGAGE!


ps. Chris is smoking again! hey ho

Barter,Blanche,Beatrice and Rose

Went up to a smallholding at Flint mountain to see what he has to offer (I bought the black hookers from there a few months ago). It was sad to find out that the owner was selling up due to ill health. We chatted for a long time as most of his stock had already gone, but at least I have provisionally agreed to buy his incubator equipment when it is repaired, which is a bonus for me and him(I did refuse his offer to take his old Turkey which was absolutely huge!!!!).
As I was leaving he asked me if I would like to take his last three hybrids for nothing which was a nice gesture, especially as I had already helped myself to a nice old wooden coal scuttle he wanted to get rid of as well.
The new girls are a little moth eaten at the moment, but will blossom into good looking birds. As a tribute to Tenko, I have named them Blanche (Cockney Louise Jameson), Beatrice (Stephanie Cole the Doctor) and Rose ( Stephanie Beecham).

Flushed with "getting a good deal" I took an old wooden chest and some other oddments down to a local craft shop this afternoon and swapped the smaller oddments for some lovely cushions made from old Welsh blankets. The owner will sell the chest for me, which will pay for a few Christmas gifts!

Emma Thompson and the Helen Bamber foundation........being careful

I listened with interest to an articulate, informed and passionate Emma Thompson, when she guested on Radio 4 today. She is the president of The Helen Bamber Foundation which works with survivors of genocide, torture, trafficking and rape who seek safety and refuge, and she highlighted with a quiet intensity, the plight of 4,000 or so women and children, who are trafficked into the UK each year and forced into prostitution.
The Body shop is leading the foundation's goal of ratifying the European Convention Against Trafficking which could give these women protection. Add your name, to their petition, and be sure and buy a postcard from The Body Shop, the proceeds of which will go directly to the foundations ! Even though the subject was shocking and rather sad, Thompson made the whole thing vital and important. A very charismatic lady.

New York is looming, (as is Christmas) so I have been watching my expenditure like a hawk! It is so easy to fritter it all away on, bollocks! so in a sort of a social experiment I am watching the pennies very carefully
Personal Expenditure so far this week:

I bag of Chicken wheat.............£6.99
Dog Collar...............................£4.95
Chicken tick powder................£6.99
Pigs Ears..................................£4.00
Sub total.................................£22.93

Egg sales (projected)...............£16.00+

Sub total.................................£6.93-

Cinema Ticket.........................£3.50
Petrol.....................................£21.50
2 bowls from junk shop...........£0.50
Antique Magazine...................£3.30
diet coke.................................£5.09
chardonney............................£4.95

Total £45.77

Not Bad eh?

Claire Wenger 's comments on Glan Clwyd Hospital didn't surprise me! This makes an uncomfortable but necessary read! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/7057733.stm

Tell no One, simple pleasures and Glen Close R.I.P?

Tell no One (French title Ne le dis à personne (2006) at Theatre Clwyd this evening is a cracking French thriller Hitchcock would have been proud of producing. François Cluzet is Alex Beck ,a happily married doctor, whose life is shattered when his wife is brutally murdered. The police always thought that he was responsible and get re involved eight years later when amongst other strange happenings Beck receives a series of e mails supposedly from his wife. Sounds interesting and it was! with more twists and complications to keep the most avid thriller fan glued. François Cluzet was perfect as the grief ridden and confused hero, Kristin Scott Thomas great if a little underused as his lesbian sister-in-law and a sassy Nathalie Baye almost stole the show as Beck's expensive lawyer. It is a long time since I have seen a film that actually keeps you guessing until the final two minutes. A great 9/10

Chris wanted a scary pumpkin in the cottage window, so I had an enjoyable hour preparing one this afternoon. I realised that I had never ever made one as a child ( my parents were a typical 1970 mum and Dad who never encouraged fun activities!), so at 45, I am (as always)... a tad late

I always remember a line from The Towering Inferno, spoken by a fireman when he is loading the scenic elevator for its fateful decent. "We're still a lady short!" he states as Shiela Mathews clings to her husband! I thought of the line today when I was performing my usual daily head count in the chicken coop! Yep we were a lady short! Glen Close has disappeared. No patch of feathers, no break in the fencing, no panicked birds. She has just vanished! Fox? perhaps, Buzzard? who knows! suffice to say I am reinforcing the fencing and am going to buy another transformer to double the charge. I hope she is the last lady to cop it.

Postscript! (edited later) - Glen Close is back! god knows what happened =perhaps she was asleep under the coop, anyhow we are no longer a lady short.........

Bariatric problems

According to the media 50% of the population will be clinically obese in the near distant future. Already people in Scotland are only one behind the Americans for being as James o'Brian from LBC would uncharitably call Fatty,fat fat fats!
In the same vein, health and safety's gone mad!a Denbighshire company has designed an obese dummy (28 stone) for the emergency services to practice on! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/7046128.stm

In my experience 28 stone is not heavy enough! as we have had to move and handle several over 35 stone patients recently. Love the dummy, he looks totally fu^Ked!

Worked last night, and busy yet again! have coasted through today a bit! normality tomorrow! V excited as booked to meet up with Nu just before Christmas! we are off to see Mathew Bourne's Nutcracker! and the Henry Moore sculptures at Kew Gardens..............lovely!!

Ed and Fallon

arhhhhhh!.................. well typical of The Archers. the storyline of Fallon's unrequited love for bad boy Ed is not the most realistic of tales, but finally the two of them have "got together" after being "mates" for such a long time. I know the storylines have a tendency to dovetail together a little too easily , but it's nice to see the younger characters have a bit of normality! Out of the younger members of Ambridge Ed and Fallon are perhaps the most likable. Will (Cain to Ed's Abel) is irritating, Kirsty and Brenda ( how many 20 year olds do you know called Brenda?) are just foul, and don't get me started on butter wouldn't melt Tom Archer!; yep at least Fallon (Joanna van Kampe) sounds as though she has some depth! Strangely Van Kampe actually looks exactly as I would imagine Fallon to look! God help us when the storylines start with some gusto to the goody two shoes Pip and spoilt brat Daniel Hebden Lloyd..........