My Junkberry Has Now Packed Up Completely
This morning the Junkberry has now given up completely.
When I went to go shopping, I thought I’d give it a go, but it was as dead as the proverbial dodo.
To make things worse, I just got a nuisance timewasting call from a scammer on my land-line. I gave them an alternative number, who will be really pleased to get the timewasters.
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Olympic Torch Relay or Diamond Jubilee Service
I’m very much a supporter of the Queen and the work she does, but I’m watching the Olympic Torch Relay as it passes through Omagh.
I think when we look back on these days in the years to come, the Olympics of 2012 and the associated relay, may be in our memories more than the Diamond Jubilee. After all we’ve seen a lot of Royal ceremonials, but the Torch Relay could turn out to be an important moment, in the restoration of good relations between the UK and especially England and the whole island of Ireland. We may be divided in many ways, but no pessimist could say we’re not joined in our enjoyment of sport.
Two Years On
It is now over two years since I had the stroke in Hong Kong and as you know I’ve now moved to London. So how have I improved in the last year? I’ll intersperse the comments into a copy of last year’s post.
So how am I feeling?
Bodily, I have few issues.
My nails used to be firm and hard, but now they are soft and brittle. My toenails are actually worse than my fingers. My nails were always soft before I went gluten-free and I used to bite them badly and my skin too. I’m not biting them now at all.
My nails went bad at the start of the year and aren’t too bad now. If my left hand wasn’t gammy, they would be better as I could cut them properly.
Q 1. Could it be that as my body is repairing itself from the stroke, it’s using up what I need for healthy nails?
I never got an answer to this question, except that this house has a very dry atmosphere. But they were bad soon after the stroke.
I have an almost cramp-like pain in my left lower leg, which is very like the pain I got, when I trod on a razor shell on the beach in Norfolk in the summer of 2009. It tends to get worse at night.
I still have this, but it certainly doesn’t get worse at night. I think also it’s true to say that I’ve had this problem off and on for ten years or so. Sometimes I get it in the right leg, but not at the moment.
My left humerus is also painful a lot of the time at the same place where it was broken by a bully at school. I think as the nerves for my arm and hand pass close to the bone, it affects them at times.
This is still the case and no-one listens except my physio. But then he’s paid to listen.
I did have pain at the end of my spine, but now that has virtually gone unless I sit on the wrong sort of chair. This again was an old injury, which was very much aggravated by the hospital bed in Hong Kong. I should say that I always sleep face down because of the end of my spine, which curls outwards and I get less cramp in my lower leg, which I’ve always had since a child. I can still feel the cold lino, which I used to put my foot on to cure it.
It’s almost as if my old physical problems have come back!
Q. 2 Does your brain develop new pathways to get round the pain from injuries?
I think now, that’s taken as the case.
Facially, I haven’t too much pain, but my scalp and left hand side are rather tender. My skin actually feels like it did at times before I went on a gluten-free diet before I was diagnosed as a coeliac. One of my main symptoms of coeliac disease was chronic dandruff. It went immediately, I changed to a totally gluten-free diet.
It’s come back with a vengeance this winter and I put it down to the hot dry air in the house. I’ve installed air-conditioning to hopefully kill it.
In fact, at some times, I feel like I’ve been glutened. Not seriously, but my motions are rather loose nearly all the time. Full tests at Addenbrooke’s have shown that there is nothing serious there, although I haven’t had another endoscopy to see what my gut is like.
I still do.
I have just re-read a post on this blog, which was a pain diary, describing how I was trying to control the terrible pain I was having last summer, with codeine and paracetamol. It wasn’t that successful and a few days later or so, I collapsed and ended up in Addenbrooke’s. Nothing was done and I just struggled on. And then a few weeks later, I ended up having a fit like symptom, when I was putting on my coat. I can remember feeling a bolt of pain in my humerus and then I went into oscillation. It’s funny, but I may remember something similar happening, just after I broke the bone, as I walked home from school. Addenbrooke’s put me on Keppra to stop it happening again. It hasn’t.
But I did collapse again.
Q.5 Should I keep taking the Keppra?
I’ve changed to Tegretol.
Because of the pain and because it felt like someone was pouring awful muck down my throat, I went to see an ENT specialist to see if my sinuses were bad.
He found everything clear, but thought that I was suffering from a serious pollen allergy. Now as a child, I was very sickly and was always off school. In my first year at Grammar School I virtually missed all the second term. Gradually it got better and it really improved when first we went to live on the 11th floor in the Barbican and later when I started flying aircraft for pleasure.
I’ve also had some bad winters and springs before, but not as bad as this one, when for much of the time, I just couldn’t breathe. Although in the last twenty years or so, I’ve lived on top of a hill with a strong westerly wind and my late wife and I could afford to take holidays in the sun in January. Funnily, my cardiologist,said that everybody should take two weeks in the sun every winter. I did try to do this in April by going to Greece and backpacking around the islands, but was irritated by everyone smoking all the time.
I know from travelling around the UK in the last year, that when I get out of the pollen I feel better. For instance, I went to Barnsley in March on a breezy day to see the football and felt a lot better that day. On the other hand, I walked past a tree-shredding machine at Euston a couple of weeks ago and it set me off coughing for half-an-hour.
Q.6 So why should all of this reaction to allergens get so much worse after the stroke?
On the other hand, in 2009, I was travelling to Holland a lot in the spring and suffered worse than I had done for years. I put it down to different pollens at different times. It was almost as if I got used to the English ones and then when I went to Holland, a load of different ones set me off.
Some days it’s so bad that all I can do is lie down indoors and listen to the radio. On the other hand, when I went down the London sewers, it helped my breathing immensely.
I do this less often, than I used to.
So how am I managing otherwise.
I have no problem getting around on buses and trains and of course by walking. I did fall over on a bad pavement in Upper Street in March, but haven’t hardly stumbled since, especially since I was fitted properly for a pair of trainers. I have no problems using the top decks of buses and climbing up and down ladders.
I like cooking and do quite a bit, although, as there are now so many Carluccio’s with a gluten-free menu, I am lazy quite a bit of the time.
I do eat a lot of soft comfort food, like bananas and ginger cake between meals. But my weight is still the same as it was five or six years ago.
My only problem with cooking is that my left hand diesn’t seem to like hot or cold, although the finger movement is now almost back to normal. I notice this most with my typing, where although I type mainly one-handed, I now use the left properly for the shift. Incidentally, I’ve always typed with my right hand, because of my bad left arm.
My eyesight to the left isn’t good, but in the last month or so, I’ve been able to play table tennis again, something that I couldn’t do a year ago. On the other hand, it does seem to be worst, when my eyes are streaming from the allergies.
Not really much change here, except that my nose seems to leak like a drain. My eyes are a bit better.
And Now We Lose Cahill
What was it Napoleon said about generals? Something like?
“I have plenty of clever generals, give me a lucky one.”
I can’t find the exact quote, but you get the drift.
Roy Hodgson may be a good manager for England. But he is not blessed with good luck.
Especially now he’s lost Gary Cahill to a double fracture of the jaw.
He is now being criticised for not bringing in Rio Ferdinand or Micah Richards, but adding Martin Kelly.
Only time will tell if he’s right. But at the moment I think he is.
I don’t think I’d like either John Terry or Rio Ferdinand in my team and I think it’s one and not both. And he’s already chosen Terry. So for centre backs it’s Terry plus Jagielka or Joleon Lescott.
He may not have the best team in terms of playing skills, but has he chosen players, who might step up to plate and perform. Terry definitely has something to prove, what with the criminal case of racial abuse and missing the Champions League final. Jagielka might just like to win something.
So although, Roy’s luck may have deserted him, ~I think he’s using his brain to create a team with its own built-in ambition.
The defence doesn’t seem to leak goals and the attack seems to be able to score enough to win the game.
The crucial match is the game against France. I think, that both teams with half a dozen black players each and very few of their fans there to support them, could get a lot of abuse from the locals who turn up. I hope not, but if it does has England got the strength to weather the storm. I would hope so!
India Shows “A Queen is Crowned”
According to this report from the Times of India, they’re showing the documentary, A Queen is Crowned, in Lucknow at the moment.
I think I saw it soon after the Coronation, as in those days television was only in black and white, but the documentary was in colour.
They’ve Cancelled The Stringbag
The weather has now got worse and the BBC has announced that the flypast by the Swordfish has been cancelled.
The Queen Does Her Duty
I think the Queen was getting a bit cold in the rain and has now put a wrap on. The Duke, who of course is very much a nautical person, seems to be enjoying the pageant a lot more than his wife. But the Queen as ever carries on!
I think he understood, the semaphore signalling from the top of the Festival Hall, judging by his smile. I hope they weren’t sending rude messages, as I would have thought few people on the river could have read them these days, except the Duke.
A Place for the Little Ships
In the Diamond Jubilee flotilla today, there are about forty or so of the Little Ships of Dunkirk. If you look at the Wikipedia entry, you’ll see that some unusual boats took part in 1940. What surprised me was that 39 Dutch coasters that had escaped the Germans also took part and rescued about seven percent of the total of the troops brought home.
The Last Corinthian
Colin Murray has been visiting all of Great Britain’s Olympic gold medallists and I may have missed it or he could have been referring to a previous program, but he closed by talking about Jim Fox. As he won his gold medal in the modern pentathlon way back in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, he has probably dropped off the sporting radar a bit. However this article in the Independent from 1998 gives a lot more details about Jim and his various fights, against Russian cheats, bureaucracy and Parkinson’s Disease.
This the first paragraph from the Independent.
One figure stood out among the galaxy of personalities on parade at the 50th anniversary bash of the Sports Writer’s Association last week. Indeed, Jim Fox stood out because he insisted on standing, albeit more stiffly than the rest, declining a proffered seat, his dignified presence a sobering reminder of a gentler, more romantic era before the pursuit of sporting glory became suffused by greed, drugs and duplicity.
Remember Foxy? Once he led the charge down sport’s superhighway, a swashbuckling, Corinthian hero in an age when sportsmen were men, and women seemed happy to be ladies. And Foxy was a ladies’ man, a ruggedly handsome, 6ft 3in dashing white sergeant, single, and single-minded who, on his own admission was a bit of a stud; swordsman supreme, in every sense. Now, at 57, the old soldier who was, arguably, Britain’s outstanding all- round sportsman is a victim of Parkinson’s Disease and fights on two fronts – for his own future and that of the sport with which he became identified.
I met him in the early 1990’s, when he was making a comeback and attempted to get into the British Eventing Team. We just chatted about the horses and he talked about his problems, which he put down to falling off too many horses. I don’t know whether the real diagnosis had been made.
He was an impressive man and that meeting left an indelible mark on my mind.
He must be the Last Corinthian, as sport now is just too well-funded and professional, so another will not come along. Fox was as professional in the five disciplines of modern pentathlon as anybody, but he competed in the true Corinthian spirit in the tradition of those like C. B. Fry.
I am afraid, that we won’t see the mavericks too at the Olympics in the future.
Australia has one of the bravest in Bill Roycroft. All it says in Wikipedia about his winning of the gold medal in eventing is this.
Although seriously injured during the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he left his hospital bed to compete in Show Jumping, which was the final event. He rode a flawless round, and Australia won the Gold Medal.
The truth, is more out of Aussie versions of Greek Heroic Myths.
The deed for which Bill Roycroft will forever be renowned occurred at the Rome Olympics in 1960. On the last day of the three-day equestrian event, Australia faced a grim predicament. Two riders, Laurie Morgan and Neale Lavis, were doing well; Brian Crago’s horse had broken down, and the fourth member of the team, Bill Roycroft, was in hospital – concussed, sedated, with extensive bruising and muscle damage. Doctors refused to sanction his release from hospital. The problem was that, if Australia was to win the team event, it needed three finishers. Roycroft had fallen during the steeplechase phase the previous day after his horse, Our Solo, somersaulted over pipes and landed on him. He had climbed groggily back, finished the course, then been given oxygen (and whisky) and flown by helicopter to a hospital outside Rome.
Next morning, with the final phase, the show-jumping, due to start soon, Roycroft insisted on signing himself out of hospital. The doctors said no, and refused to give him his clothes; he then threatened to leave in his underpants. Finally, he signed a document taking responsibility for his safety, and was allowed to go. He was 45, laced heavily with pain-killers, unable to bend, and his comrades had to dress him for the last ride. He was virtually folded onto Our Solo, and the reins were placed in his hands. Stiffly, flawlessly, he completed the round of 12 jumps, ensuring team gold for Australia. (Morgan also won the individual event). Roycroft, patriarch of a legendary riding family, competed in four more Olympics, winning team bronze in 1968 and 1976. He also carried the flag at the Mexico Opening Ceremony in 1968.
It can’t be a myth as it’s on the Internet. But even the author, left out the bit about jumping the round with his arm in a sling. Roycroft won his bronze medal in 1976 at over sixty.
Mavericks too, must include Dick Fosbury, who developed a new method of high-jumping and then turned up at the US Olympic Trials in 1968, won it and then went on to win the gold medal at the Olympics in Mexico. Without his method, Mary Peters would never have got her gold in Munich.
The VIPs Get English Wine
On the Diamond Jubilee flotilla today, the VIPs will be served three English wines.
- Sparkling Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 2007, produced from West Sussex
- Stopham Estate Pinot Blanc 2010, also from West Sussex
- Albury Vineyard’s Silent Pool Rosé 2011, this time from Surrey
I’ve said before, but West Sussex champagne is up with the best.
The Anonymous Widower 