My Annoying Hand
My poor hand doesn’t seem to have the will to allow a plaster to stick on it.
The nurse at the surgery had a go this morning and his effort with steri-strips is coming to grief, as my skin doesn’t seem to offer enough grip for them.
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- The Strips That Won’t Stick
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- A Proper Dressing
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- Covered In A Cotton Glove
So I’ve now put a solid old fashioned lint patch and zinc-oxide plaster over the wound. I now cover it with a cotton glove to help stop the plaster being disturbed.
After all it is the Eve of All Saints’ Day.
I suppose the problem is that, as the wound is on the point of the knuckle, any movement stretches the skin. I think I might go to Rymans, if this doesn’t stick and buy a large rubber band.
It is all very annoying!
My New Shopping Bag
For some years, I’ve used some shopping bags, that were free with Waitrose’s Quick Check system. I no longer use the system and I don’t think it is available, in any of the branches near me. My last bag is on its last legs, but they do seem to work on the dreadful self-service tills at the Angel.They also are an easy one hand carry for my left hand and can generally cope with the biggest daily shop I do.
Yesterday, I was doing some shopping at their Canary Wharf branch and needed to carry it home on the Underground. As I didn’t have a bag with me, I didn’t fancy using a plastic carrier, as they aren’t good when they are full and I’m always frightened, that I’ll end up with shopping all over the tube or the bus. So I asked if they had any bags like the ones I used to use with Quick Check and they found this one at the back of a store.
My New Shopping Bag
I was charged two pounds, but I did get it home safely.
The trouble is it’s not trendy and modern. But it does have a large capacity and it does work well!
The Problem Of Living Alone
Yesterday wasn’t the worst of days by a long way, but it does illustrate the perils of living alone.
I had four jobs to do, when I planned my day.
1. Take delivery of my new television from John Lewis.
2. Go to the Regent’s Canal to prepare myself for the Ward Forum tonight.
3. Go to John Lewis to see if one of their kitchens would fit my requirements, when I replace Jerry’s terrible one.
4. I was also expecting the builder to come round to sort out when he would finish my half-completed bathroom.
That would all seem very simple.
But the builder and the television turned up at the same time, so I naturally asked him, if he’d help me put it on the wall. All it needed was to remove the old television, swap the bracket and then lift the other one on. But of course the old bracket didn’t fit and just needed to be drilled out. The sort of job, that I could have easily done, if I could find my Workmate, which is somewhere under the builder’s mess in the garage. The builder then left, leaving the old television on one sofa and the new one on the other.
So I decided to go for a walk along the Regent’s Canal and then when I got to Haggerston take the 242 bus to Oxford Street for John Lewis and lunch. But then I cut my hand on something and had to get it patched up. As I was a fair walk from home, I decided to go to my doctor’s surgery to clean myself up first. They checked the wound and put a plaster on it, so at least that bit worked. I then walked home looking for someone to drill out the plate. I didn’t find anyone, as most small engineering workshops have closed.
I then realised that I also needed to get a set of spare keys cut, as the builder has all my spare ones, so I walked around the corner to the local Locksmith. And there it was, sitting in the back of the shop, a proper bench drill. So I got the keys cut and the plate drilled so that it would fit the new television. And all for £14. Well done, Barry!
In some ways though, it was my undoing, as I now fitted the bracket and attempted to lift the television onto the wall. I could lift it with ease, but the constant stretching of the fingers in my left hand, meant that the cut opened up and the plaster fell off. This picture shows the location of the cut, which explains a lot.
My Poor Hand
I couldn’t mount the television, as it is a job that needs two hands and two sets of eyes, because the television blocks your view of the bracket.
So eventually, I set off for Oxford Street to hopefully go to John Lewis and have some lunch. The first bus to arrive was a 30 and I intended to take it to Highbury and Islington station to go to Oxford Circus. But the dreaded roadworks struck again and the driver couldn’t take a direct route, so he went round the houses before dropping me and perhaps twenty irate passengers at the station.
I got a train without a problem, but by the time I got to Euston, blood was now going everywhere, so at the next station I chickened out and went to A & E at University College Hospital, where I got it properly bandaged. I was also in and out in forty minutes.
I now have the problem of putting one television on the wall and getting the old one downstairs for the Council. If I could do just one of these jobs, I could at least sit on a comfortable chair.
You can really understand, how One Foot In The Grave got written. But it’s just so much more likely that things will go wrong, when you live alone. After all, if I still lived with C, she’d have cleaned up the first cut, ut a decent plaster on it, told me to take it quiet and probably made cups of tea for me all day.
I’ve now got the problem of strapping a plastic bag over my hand, so I can have a bath.
A Bath In A Bag Hand
It wasn’t too difficult. But this is probably because the fingers of the left hand work better in their bandage and I could cut the parcel tape before I put the bag on.
A Sad, Lonely Lith On The Regent’s Canal
I encountered this sad and lonely lith surrounded by rubbish on the Regents Canal today.
I was walking the canal to try to see if I could find anything to raise at the De Beauvoir Ward Forum in the evening.
We need more of these at every entrance to the tow-path and I hope the rubbish is cleared up soon.
It’s the first lith, I’ve seen that has been vandalised.
Racism In Moscow
One of the stories dominating the news on my trip north was the racial abuse of Yaya Toure in Moscow by so-called fans of CSKA Moscow.
I shall be looking forward to the fifth of November and the return fixture in Manchester.
Knowing Manchester City fans, they might come up with an unusual and probably humorous protest, that everybody, except racists, will applaud.
As my father often said, there’s nothing that bigots, fascists and bullies hate more than ridicule.
The Disused Circular Railway In Paris
Surprisingly, I’d never heard of this railway that connected the main railway stations in Paris, but there was a piece on it, on BBC Breakfast this morning. If such a railway had existed in say London or New York, it would have been the subject of books, documentaries and probably as famous as the sewers of Vienna, immortalised in The Third Man.
I think the next time, I visit Paris, I’ll find a tour or an expert and do an explore.
Walking Around Glasgow City Centre
I had an hour or so before I needed to get to Glasgow Central station, so as it was fine, I walked around looking at the buildings.
Glasgow is easy to navigate, as it has lots of wayfinding liths, just like London.
As you can see, some are megaliths and have a lot more than just a simple map and a few words.
Without doubt liths are the way to go.
This was illustrated, when I came across a group of students and a local, who were discussing in detail, the direction the students needed to go.
In my view, Glasgow’s liths may only have one problem, except for the misplaced Tourist Office.
And that is on Friday, with all the rain, they didn’t stand out, as the colours were too subtle. Perhaps, that is why London’s liths have yellow tops.
Glasgow’s Impressive Buildings And Structures
There has been a lot of building in Glasgow lately, much of it to do with the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
I was totally surprised by the combined velodrome and sports hall, called the Emirates Arena, which looked a real world class building from the outside.
What with three large football grounds; Ibrox, Celtic Park and Hampden Park, the SSE Hydro and the Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow certainly seems well prepared for the Games.
The finnieston Crane is a Glasgow landmark and was used to lift heavy cargoes onto ships. It reminds me of the massive seaplane crane at Felixstowe, which was used to lift seaplanes and flying boats out of the water. There’s a picture in this report.
i can’t find anything suitable about the Clyde Harbour Tunnel of which the two rotundas are part. They look very much like the buildings of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel in London, except they are much larger.
Coeliac Or Just Gluten Free?
I was asked this question in Jamie’s Italian in Edinburgh.
How professional is that?
I had a very nice rabbit pasta.
What The Hell Is That?
Because my eyesight to the left may not be that good, where fast moving objects are concerned, I’m always careful crossing the road.
I usually put my hand either on top of or on the rotating button of the pedestrian light control, so that I can turn my head to check the traffic properly, whilst effectively seeing the green light with my hand.
It works very well, unless like today, you encounter a control like this.
What The Hell Is That?
What the muck was I do not know, but it looks like some lazy bastard had put the remains of an apple there and left it to rot. As there was a bin about five metres away, and I spent a minute or so getting a clean hand, I hope that whoever they were, doesn’t get a good night’s sleep tonight.
I’ll contrast that with the behaviour I had seen earlier, where a young girl of about seven, missed as she put her crisp packet in a bin at the Angel, because the wind blew it out of her hand. She then ran back, retrieved the errant packet and binned it successfully.
The Anonymous Widower 