David Gillon

Expanding on the previous post...

My trip north went largely as intended, though I got the distinct impression I wasn't on the booked assistance list at Kings Cross. They still got me on the train, though not without a frown or two. The train itself was surprisingingly empty for a week before Christmas, but the rest of the trip was trouble free I was picked up from the station at Bishop Auckland by my sister, who immediately spotted my new Kunzli boots and remarked "They look a bit, um, specialist". I had to admire her word choice. I'd actually considered leaving them at home to avoid family reaction to the orthopaedic look, but in the end they're just so damned supportive I decided to go with them. And the family can always be talked around by a good bargain, such as getting them at 75% off ;)

Visiting the family has become quite strange, because of the situation with my dad I'm left alone in the house from 2PM until somewhere between 7:30 and 8:30PM, while my mother spends the afternoon and evening with him at the care home. I went along once and walked home (I can't manage much more than about 45 minutes with him because of seating issues), but after that it was decided* I was better off going along in the evenings with my sister as I can get a lift both ways.

* Apparently I don't get a vote in the matter. The family is still a bit inconsistent in handling my walking limitations. At times they'll be overprotective, and at others they're pushy.

Dad is very variable. Some days he's very much with it, and capable of making jokes about the immediate context, other times he sleeps all day, or is awake, but pretty out of it. It's clear that not having the aggressive physio he was getting in rehab has caused him to regress physically, but scheduling it for his good days was and is impossible. His speech is still very much affected, and not helped by him mumbling or whispering, or his insistence on using a sentence where a word might do. OTOH it's a lot clearer when he's annoyed! Apparently I'm now referred to as 'Goldenboy' by my sister, because he can always remember my name even if he hasn't seen me in months, whereas he can't always remember my sister's, even though he sees her daily. Whoops! Fortunately my sister takes it in relatively good heart, and her devotion to him, and, especially, my mother's, puts my efforts to shame.

We had our Christmas Day lunch at the care home as the only way of managing to get the whole family together. I thought it was a little sad that out of their 60-odd residents, only one other relative did that (though a few residents were visiting families for the day). I think my mother was a little stressed over how it would turn out, though given she'd normally be stressing over the cooking that wasn't too much of a change from normal, but in the end it was fine. The food was good, better than any works Christmas Meal I've ever had, and if the portion wasn't huge, it was more than adequate. And Dad was on fine form, so that was a result.

New Year's Eve was less of a success. I went along to the local club (as in working men's, not night-) with my sister and her husband, which we've done in previous years, and we even got my mother to pop in briefly when she came home from the party at the home, and while the beer was fine and there was a ridiculously large buffet laid on, there weren't the people who've laid on entertainment in the past, or even my brother-in-law's drinking cohorts, so it just died away, and when someone decided to stick MTV on for music, rather than say Jule's Hootenanny or one of the other New Years programmes, it just killed it (I didn't object to the music myself, but it was completely wrong for the evening and most of the audience and no one had the sense to claim the remote back and change it). So we left before midnight and I was actually in bed by the time the New Year rolled in - sad!

And the next day I came down with a savage cold, which managed at various stages to cover all the traditional woes: streaming nose, hacking cough, up to and including feverish chills. The most annoying part of it was the randomly varying pressure in my inner ear, with associated randomly varying hearing loss, which was just plain irritating. Every time I tried to watch something it was alternating can hear him-can't hear him-can hear him-can't hear him. I think that was actually more irritating than just not being able to hear at all! And it's still doing it ten days later, even though I'm over the worst of it; there'll be a sudden pop and I'll suddenly be able to hear much more clearly. Unfortunately I gave it to my mother and possibly my sister, though neither got it quite as badly as me. And of course it meant I had to stay away from Dad for the last week I was there rather than risk giving it to him, though I was well enough to see him the night before my trip home.

I had meant to be online while I was up there, ordering a 3GB data sim, which should have been more than enough to last me while I was away. It took a few days to arrive, but when it did I hooked it up, did a little light catching up (mostly DW and webcomics), and after 3 hours it announced I'd used up my entire data allowance. I was not impressed. I was initially cursing myself for not turning off Windows Updates, but after a little poking around the system Windows told me that even with updates enabled I had only used 740MB of wifi in the last month, less than a quarter of what Three were claiming I had used in three hours. Not Impressed! But it's an impossible argument to win with the mobile companies. I could have bought a top-up of course, but I was understandably loathe to risk throwing good money after bad. And when I did finally risk their cheapest deal, a) their website crashed, b) Firefox took offence to Kaspersky's ebanking functionality and blocked access to my bank. *Headdesk* *Bah, humbug!*

Being stuck without net access meant I couldn't do the literary agent research I'd been promising to do over the holidays, though I did manage to work my way through the Acknowledgements pages of most of the books of my Kindle - surprisingly few authors credit their agents. On the brighter side it meant I was able to concentrate on writing instead and I'm now 15,000 words into the new novel with a much better idea of where the plot is going (Answer: Underhill).

My trip back worked even better than the trip up, this time everyone knew I was travelling and all the assistance was waiting for me when needed - in fact I had three separate people turn up to get me off the local train at Darlington - driver, guard, and passenger assistance! The only slightly worrying moment was when I came down the ramp at Kings Cross and even with my hands clamped on wheels it was steep enough the chair skidded. (In a masterpiece of not thinking the issues through, the train stops with the exit from the carriage with the wheelchair spaces right next to where the new escalator lands on the platform, meaning there's only just room to get off the ramp before hitting the side of the escalator, and if a passenger chooses to step into that space at the same time you're skidding down the ramp... well, it's just as well she had good reactions...). My subconscious was so completely thrown by booked assistance working without a flaw for once it keeps hitting me with dreams about missed connections!

Weatherwise we escaped the flooding that afflicted most of the North. It was decidedly soggy, but the worst of it was east of us, then south of us, and finally north of us (and of course being a couple of hundred feet above the river doesn't hurt). I saw an awful lot of flooded fields on my trip south, though fortunately nothing to disrupt train travel. Compared to previous years, when we've had to worry about trains being cancelled due to snow, it was positively uneventful.

And so that's Christmas done for another year. Same time next year?

 A longer post to follow when I'm home and in reach of a better keyboard, but we finished the sailing portion of my holiday on Friday and today was back to Athens from Poros.  Itinerary was Poros to Ermioni to Tyros to Navplio(n) to Navplio(n) to Ermioni to Poros. The double Nafplio(n)/Navplio(n) leg should have been to Astrous, but was diverted because we had a slight rudder casualty with me at the wheel* that necessitated the owner of the yachting company driving 4.5 hours to get to us, doing running repairs in the dark and then sailing us on the emergency tiller back to Nafplio and mooring us at first attempt (impressive stuff) ready to get parts rebuilt the next morning - whoops.

* Me: We've lost the rudder!
Everyone else: No, we're turning just like you want
Me: We're turning to port, I've got the wheel hard over to starboard.
Everyone else: Oh shit! Oh fuck!

We also got a lot more use of my wheelchair than I'd anticipated, but not for me...

After the last minute scramble to get my Pitchwars submission in I got to sleep sometime after 6AM and woke up at 9:30AM. This wasn't really enough.

Today was supposed to be a reasonably leisurely day before heading into London in the evening for a drink with friends, then various things got concatenated together.

Pitchwars
The holiday prep I'd meant to do yesterday - a wheelie friend has strongly advised me to get my booked assistance with Ryanair for the flight home changed from 'to aircraft' to 'to seat', reminding me Ryanair are too cheap to use airbridges, so it's likely to be bus out to the middle of nowhere and climb an airstair in the middle of all the other passengers. She says she was literally trampled on the stairs once. This seems like a good idea. I'm probably not going to bother with changing booked assistance Aegean for the flight out as I'll have a friend on the flight and they used airbridges last time IIRC.
Printing out everything I need printouts of - hotel bookings, directions of hotels, where we're meeting etc, only I need new ink cartridges, and if I need to spend £20+ on ink, then I just happen to have a £40 HP voucher (for the laptop balls-up) that needs spending in the next couple of months - so new £80 HP Envy Inkjet to await delivery of (paid £30 with voucher and £10 off), which of course got scheduled for today.
Trains to from airports to book, with assistance.
Holiday cash to pick up from Post Office (ordered online yesterday. available after 1PM today).
Needed to get to cash machine to get cash for night out with uni crowd.

I was clearly running sluggish this morning, so decided to concentrate on what absolutely needed doing today.

Spent time waiting mugging up on a little Greek.
Printer delivered at 1PM, quickly up and running - reasonably impressed.
Headed into Rochester about 2PM to hit the cash machine and pick up my Euros from the post office

This is when things went wrong. I'd adjusted my footplates on the chair last night - I lowered them the other week and while more comfortable they've been catching on too many gutters etc, so they needed shifting up. The new multitool I bought didn't have the grip to unbolt them, so I used an adjustable spanner to loosen them, did the adjustment and deliberately didn't tighten them as hard, with the idea of being able to use the multitool if they needed adjusting again. Bad idea.

Right-hand footplate swung out of position within 10 metres, tried pushing it back, but it kept doing it, so I flipped it up and crossed right leg over left.
Got to cash-machine, out of order - took me three tries to notice because the screen is angled back - fine if you're reading it from above, not so great if you're reading it from chair height.
As I headed for second cash machine, left footplate similarly swung out of position, so flipped that up as well and curled my crossed legs back under the chair. This really doesn't do the efficiency of pushing any good.
Got cash, decided not to bother with Euros today (did I need the email notification or just my card? still need to check that, plus opposite end of highstreet with no footplates)
Got back to car, drove home.

Just short of home (fortunately last 100m), head starts spinning, clearly tiredness, by the time I pull into the drive I'm completely light headed. I got into the house, couldn't work out where the car keys were and turned around to find them sitting on the path outside. Absolutely no way I was fit to take a train journey into London.
So I sent a message to say I wouldn't make the get together, and was sound asleep in bed by about 3:15PM! 
Slept til sometime after 8PM or was it 10PM - I've got a bit of a blank between the two, so may well have woken up, then gone back to sleep.

Lessons learnt:
1) Fasten the damn footplates tighter
2) Get enough sleep!

And still got all the printing out and booking etc to do!

I've been meaning to write-up my trip North, though I'd anticipated being slightly quicker about it.

I booked the train tickets at Chatham Station the Sunday before I travelled, made it clear I'd be travelling in my wheelchair, and was assured that wheelchair spaces and assistance had been booked for every leg of the journey - three there, three back. I'll be slightly more skeptical next time.

( Longish and very mixed experience! )

The situation with my father seems to have calmed down somewhat, with the rehab unit admitting he's gone far beyond where they were predicting - the latest I heard was he's progressed to walking up and down the corridor, with one physio helping his leg along and another following with wheelchair. But there's still the problem that they may push him out of the unit at some point in the near future, which is putting my sister under a lot of stress in trying to identify a suitable nursing home that we could access quickly, and not helped by individual members of the unit staff being complete arseholes to her. (Difficult to think of another term for someone who says 'there are people waiting for his bed you know', or 'my staff are scared to talk to you' when she's never said anything to the junior staff). Plus there's the finance side of things, complicated by it not being clear whether he's sufficiently well enough we can get away with a power of attorney, or whether we need to go through the Court of Protection. I had a very useful chat with a fellow bendy friend whose family has been through similar and, even though we could probably do the Lasting Power of Attorney stuff ourselves, that confirmed for me that we really should go through a solicitor because of the potential Court of Protection angle - doing CofP ourselves would cost a minimum of £500 just to submit the paperwork, and possibly well over £1000 if they decide a hearing is required, so it's worth getting the professional input/advice to get it right first time

I had to talk myself out of jumping on a train north on Tuesday, and went and booked myself a doctor's appointment instead. I'm going to be no help if I'm out of play from my own health issues. I've pretty much concluded the ongoing shoulder issues are a torn rotator cuff, which my bendy friend tells me is a bendy rite of passage - yeah, right, one I could do without, thank you very much! But she's right in saying I need to see about getting it treated, and to arrange things so that it isn't under the stress of me using crutches all the time - which is why I booked a double appointment with the GP so I can say 'shoulder's buggered, 1) I need it fixed, 2) I need a wheelchair so I have options, so 3) we need another try at a wheelchair assessment'.

And just to make everything even more perfect, I triggered a major backache while talking to my bendy friend on the phone - sat for too long, so, while the pain is now gone, I've had about 5 hours of sleep since Tuesday, and my body is at the 'why is the world spinning, make it stop!' stage of exhaustion. So I think I'm going to go and send off the short story I've been working on, and then I'm going to try and have a snooze.

And the way life's going at the minute. I'll no sooner get to sleep then the phone will go with {heavy foreign accent}'Hello, this is help department of Microsoft, there is problem with your computer and we need you to....'{/heavy foreign accent}

I'm headed up to my folks in south west Durham tomorrow (Thursday) for a couple of weeks, which is something of an internet dead zone, so any chance I get to get online is likely to be intermittent and probably not conducive to DWing. So if I go suddenly silent that's from stepping back out of the 21stC, not anything dire.

Plans while I'm up there:
Sleeeeppp!
Celebrate my birthday with family
Sit down for some serious editing work on my work-in-progress urban fantasy, which needs to lose around a third of its wordcount.
Catch up on some of the books sitting waiting to be read on my kindle

Hopefully to be avoided:
Family, especially sister dearest, pitching a paddy over my asking for a referral to wheelchair services.