A Precursor to The Para Olympics

Last night the  Olympic flame returned "home" to Britain's first para Olympic village(namely the Guttman centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital), before it's journey to Stratford today.

I know the "village" well.

It was first built for the 1948 Stoke Mandeville Games which was the precursor for the paraolympics and every year the 11 spinal injury units from around Britain still send small hand picked teams of competitors from within their in-patient population to take part in an inter-Spinal Injury Unit games,

This "small scale" mini competition is viewed very much part as a patient's rehabilitation, as it is often the very first time a newly injured individual has to "stretch their wings" so to speak

I remember these times with great affection because they were essentially a five day hard slog and party fest for nurse helpers,physios and patients alike.

At these games, the newly injured, many of whom had never left the safety of a rehabilitation unit, suddenly had freedom to experience new sports and meet new people, in an atmosphere of positivism and normality.

Sheffield's latest team-- patients and staff members

 Risks were taken and to be honest,encouraged. Copious amounts of alcohol were drunk and many young men and women ( disabled and able bodied) had a cracking good time doing what young people from all corners of this country do when they get together, they had fun.

Rehabilitation in our modern  nhs is a knotty  kind of problem I think. In these days of risk assessment and litigation, I imagine it is much harder to justify the type of "seat of your pants" rehab experience we inflicted on our patients in days gone by compared to today's more careful and linear care planned-to-death experience.

Bloody hell, I remember trying to change a patient's suprapubic catheter in the middle of the night after I and he had quaffed far too many cans of cider ( our faces was smeared with half a ton of takeaway pizza btw) and all the time we were  battling with this knotty problem my staff nurse "helper" was throwing up in one of the Guttman's vast disabled toilets!)

Professional? not really

Proper and vital rehabilitation?........ absolutely!

Spirit Lifting

Trelawnyd in the sun

This summer would easily push a sufferer of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) over the edge! I have never known such a depressing summer, and even my usual brusque  optimism has taken a bit of a battering as day after day I have found water inside my plastic over shoes!

Tonight I am on night shift again, and yesterday's blustery storms have given way to intermittent bright sunshine, which has been more welcomed than a fist full of fivers...I have picked and frozen French beans and Broad beans , shampooed carpets with the windows wide open (an ageing Welsh terrier bitch does have occasional accidents) and aired all of the dampness of the past few days clear of the cottage

The sun really does lift the spirits

I took a few photos...making hay as the sun shines so to speak

It IS a dog! She gets her hair cut tomorrow! The dogs resting in bed before our walk

Looking down the valley towards the Sea

The Village from the base of the Gop

One of the cottages up high street with its hanging baskets

The Village Flower Beds ( all work of volunteers)

Bingley :The New King of the field

I have loads more to do today. but as I am working later,all I am going to do is pick some more veg for freezing and watch the masses of butterflies which have suddenly appeared in the early afternoon sun

Gay Icons III

 According to wikipedia qualities of a gay icon often include glamour, flaboyance, strength through adversity, and androgyny  in presentation

Using this "template" and carrying on my Gay Icon Day, I thought I would share my top 10

 

 

Glamour and Beauty -Lady Mary

 Nancy (aka Karen Black) the cross eyed stewardess hero from Airport 75

 

Tragic Carol from The Walking Dead ( Zombies abound and she is still washing the dishes)

 

 Mrs Frazer killing the hun with an axe in Went The Day Well " Gawd Bless her"

 

 Queen Streep

 

Dowager Bette

Is he? isn't he Jeremy Renner

Cher

Posh Victoria from The Great British Bake Off

and my number 10 is?.........

Read All About it Bitch! (II)

I have just lost a rather wry blog entry about gay icons

Blogger is being a bit of a cow at the moment!

It was a product of a wet and blustery Bank Holiday morning where I have holed up on the bed with the dogs as Chris is battling with a knotty research project in his office.

It is pissing down outside

and only the geese are out and about!

Suffice to say that I was going to bang on about how much I dislike Barbra (NOT BARBARA for Christsakes! ) Streisand's 1964 hit "People...People who need People!".....

I felt as though I was about to launch myself into the first line of the song after re reading yesterday's homage to the sweetness of the general public

Don't believe a word of it...I am not THAT nice!

but because blogger has thwarted my writing YET AGAIN!..I will just leave you with a sense of wanting more and  with the peaceful and rather tear strained Olympic Emelie Sande who is one of my more recent of gay icons
The others being.....
Adele, Charlie Etheridge from tv's Road Wars, Lady Mary from Downton Abbey and
Melissa McBride from The Walking Dead

Enjoy!

Pass the tissues Bitch!

See above Blog!

People

I worked last night. Blogger is playing up yet again and my computer is having problems with Google Chrome.....minor irritations of the 21st Century...all of them.

Yesterday we went to Llandudno to get a few "summer items" from Debenhams. In two weeks time we are off to Sitges, to read books and to eat fish.

After a somewhat robust disagreement over a pair of green canvas shoes

"I am not sitting in a nice restaurant with you wearing those monstrosities" he said

We heard the most terrible scream and a  very loud bang.

People from all over the store rushed to the central escalator bank where an elderly lady had fallen head first down the steps towards the ground floor. She looked in a dreadful state, but was conscious and was immediately surrounded by several members of the public and store staff. 

If the woman looked semi conscious I would have immediately gone to help, but there is a sort of nurses' rule that I adhere to that thats if the casualty is being attended to and awaiting the ambulance don't intervene unless you have to, If the woman was losing her conscious level , I would have intervened, that's when an ITU nurse have their uses.......anyhow that is not why I am writing this post,

What struck me the most about this whole terribly upsetting incident was the genuine concern and upset the shoppers showed for this unfortunate woman. In this age of " the walk on by" I got the distinct impression that people were not just taking a rubberneck at the situation, they were, on a primeval and basic level, just genuinely concerned for a fellow human being who had cried out so fearfully , as we all went about our business in those little plastic bubbles we call "self"

I didn't buy the awful green deck shoes, Chris had been right...I did however find a more suitable brown pair. And in the overlong 20 minutes it took me to choose them and before the ambulance eventually arrived to collect the lady on the escalator I noticed that scores of people like myself quietly went over to the store railings to check on the woman's progress.

People cannot quite stop being caring...despite what most of us think in this hard, negative and selfish world

Hey HO!

My previous blog entry and the replies that followed it has made me think.
Not only do I occasionally sound somewhat older than my years (a fact I do in fact have to agree with) but I have only just come to the realisation that I have actually named my blog after a novel in which a rather vivacious Welsh character looks back at her life as she is dying after a stroke in a hospital bed.
There is, of course, an inference here that on some subconscious level I am indeed "looking back" rather than looking forward at things and this fact did concern me just a little....after all I am a young "insanely vibrant" individual that still wears jeans, a walking dead (!) T shirt and who still has all his own teeth.
I am not  ready for the knacker's Yard just yet!
Going Gently, I would like,to think, is less a look backwards at something...it was aimed to be a bit of a reflection at something.... namely the story of a lifestyle change from a city jobs-worth existence to the tale of a country gob shite's hobby farm and the characters within.....
humm........perhaps I am going through a late mid life crisis.....
I will discuss all this with my therapist

Room 101, 102, 103........

Why am I getting more irritated with little things the older I get?
I am not depressed
(well I don't think that I am?)
I have not been slighted by society
I am not an abject failure of a person who blames others for his misfortunes.
I am not a psychopath
I think I am a nice person
So tell me then...why do I get so irritated by the oddest things
(Flexes muscles and stretches laced finger)
Like these.....

This kind of tv advert actually incenses me
The target audience ( 30-40 somethings that perhaps are looking for companionship and a bit of excitement) are waved a carrot that could get them hooked on an online gambling game 
Ok, if you are stupid enough to get suckered in by the visual promise of donkey riding a new friend down Southport beach, well then what I should be saying is good luck to you, you daft buggers....but really my irritation lies mainly with the way that the Bingo company has tried to manipulate and entice

.
My next pet hate may sound somewhat disingenuous , but I do have a specific and deep seated dislike for our local Hospital Radio mobile van.
Now I am sure that in some shape and form, the volunteers that run Hospital Radio stations are doing a sterling job, especially when faced with the fact that most patients have access to flat screen tvs which blare out Jeremy Kyle 24/7... I am not irritated with them per se , I am specifically irritated by the way that this van (above) will appear at any local event and thunder out 80s hits at a level that could drown out a 747 on it's final approach.
The last time I saw it was on the day the Olympic torch came to Rhyl.
There was the bloody Hospital Radio van in a deserted Sainsbury's car park thundering out Whitney Houston's "I wanna dance with somebody"......
I almost went up to it to tell them to "turn it down, no one's listening!"
But I couldn't be arsed.

 I despise travelling on Arriva Trains Wales.
The coastal train breeds a kind of underclass , track suited, beer drinking swaggering type of passenger who really does not give a stuff about anyone or anything.
On my way to Manchester on Tuesday, I had the misfortune to be sat next to a couple of such delightful characters as I waited for the coastal train on Prestatyn station.
It was 2pm in the afternoon.
The woman who was around 40 (and looked 50) was sharing her can of extra strength lager as she bellowed her many complaints about life, love and the universe to her partner and to anyone else in a half mile radius.
Her manners was disgusting and her language was beyond belief  and after two minutes of it, I got up quickly and started to walk away
"Have I bothered you" she called after me in a slurring, sarcastic manner
"Yes" I told her shortly, but I was prudent enough to keep on walking
It's like this every time I travel by train


I could go on....but the truth is, I am now ACTUALLY irritating myself by doing so.
drunks on trains, hospital radio.....tv bingo.......lists of pet hates....
What irritates you?
Answers on a postcard