Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19 – Retirement
Retirement
After my stroke, I was not allowed to drive because of an eyesight problem.
As my late wife and myself had decided we would move back to London on our retirement, I decided to carry-out our plan by myself.
I sold my large house in Suffolk and moved to a smaller one in Dalston in East London.
This is an area, where my many and varied ancestors had strong roots.
My father was born close by and was a direct descendant of a Jewish tailor, who around 1800, was kicked out of Konigsberg in East Prussia, which is now Kaliningrad in Russia, for no other reason than he was male, eighteen and Jewish. I suspect my coeliac disease comes from this Jewish ancestor. No female born into the family has ever successfully given birth and my granddaughter was born with a congenital hernia of the diaphragm, which was successfully repaired by surgery, when she was a few hours old. She now suffers from endometriosis.
My mother’s family were a mix of Huguenots and Devon yeomanry and although she was born a few miles away, her mother was born just round the corner.
My father called himself a London Mongrel and I use the term about myself, as my genes are probably more mixed than his.
Since around the turn of the century, I have been a blogger and around 2008, I started my blog called the Anonymous Widower. The topics, I cover are very varied and have made me quite a few friends.
I am a strong advocate of using blogging to improve peoples’ lives.
Difficulty Looking At Pictures On The Blog
One reader of this blog, has informed me, that he’s started having difficulty looking at the pictures.
I haven’t changed anything in the production of this blog, but I do feel WordPress have done a recent upgrade.
If anybody has any problems, please tell me.
Carry On Blogging
At seventy-two and after recovering from a serious stroke ten years ago, I could be considered to be in a relatively high-risk category from COVID-19.
I also live alone and am a coeliac.
But.
- I have reasonable supplies of ready-meals, tea, milk, beer and packaged foods to last for a week.
- I test my INR and on Friday it was 2.5.
- I weigh about 61 Kg.
- I exercise regularly and can easily walk a couple of miles briskly.
- I have plenty of INR testing strips, with probably enough to last until August.
- I have about two months of drugs, but there is supposed to be a system lunched this week to get drugs to people like me.
- I have an on-line subscription to The Times, so I can read their news in detail and get access to all their puzzles.
- I can walk round the corner to a shop, where I can get milk and other daily supplies.
- I can easily walk to my GP’s surgery and the local Marks and Spencer Simply Food.
- I have a son, who can put shopping on the door-step, ring the bell and run!
- I have enough cash to pay for goods that neighbours or others might deliver.
I also have the great advantage, that my front door almost opens onto the street, so I can receive deliveries without meeting the courier, by just leaning out the window and telling them to put them on the step.
I very much feel, that I can set myself up to just carry on blogging.
Others can help here by doing the following.
- Suggest topics, where they would like my comments.
- Sending me stories, that I might like to read on topics like battery-power, branch line reopening, design, energy storage, hydrogen-power, innovation, extreme science, humour and life in general.
- Sending me positive stories about COVID-19.
It’s probably best, if you don’t send me stories from the BBC and The Times as I read them extensively.
I shall always reply, if I can. Hopefully, I will try and treat subjects in a light-hearted manner to ease the burden of these serious times.
We must all carry on!
Mutual Blogging
A reader of this blog, who used to be an old Artemis professional, is currently working on a large project, where there are a large number of sub-contractors and a difficult public relations problem with those, who live locally to the project.
They asked me, if a blog could solve some of his problems.
So here goes!
I would suggest, he starts a simple blog, probably using WordPress, as it is generally easily managed by an individual with average computer skills.
- Only a tight group of individuals would be allowed to add posts to the blog.
- Posts would be limited to so many a week.
- Anybody would be allowed to comment, but under a set of behavioural rules and moderation, If the project is controversial, you don’t want the blog to become the focus of discontent.
- I believe that with a difficult project, it could be a place for constructive discussion.
- Hopefully, each post would generate comments and discussion, that improved the original post.
- The blog would also point on its home page to useful sites concerned with the subject of the blog.
- There would be a contact form.
If you were having a blog like this for say a public infrastructure project like Crossrail, it could be public, but a project like perhaps trialling a new treatment for a controversial-to-some illness like HIV-Aids, might be password-protected.
I think on balance most project blogs would be public.
If a system like WordPress is used, all of what I said is possible. And a lot more too!
North of me, they are electrifying the Gospel Oak to Barking Line and there has been a bit of controversy over noisy piling in the middle of the night.
A simple post apologising for the noise and giving locations may have eased the problems. You might even get comments to the blog from those overlooking the piling, which show the details of the engineering and the generated noise.
You can never be sure, the way that such a blog will develop.
But I’m sure it will work, to improve the smooth running of a project.
Repeated Spam
When I cleaned out the spam in my blog, a few minutes ago, one of the most common bits of spam, I found was on this post about US sailors being drunk.
It was for various lawyers in Texas, who were offering their services for offences like drunk driving. As the chance, I’d get done for drunk driving in Texas, as much less than hell freezing over, someone is wasting their time and money.
How To Unfollow This Blog
I’ve put this post in the blog, as someone wanted to unsubscribe. Or unfollow in WordPress terminology.
Firstly, if you subscribed to the blog, you are the only one who can unsubscribe, as that is one of the rules WordPress sets down. I can’t do it.
They do offer advice on how to unsubscribe in their forums.
Go here.
I’ve found the simplest way to unsubscribe is to login to WordPress and open any post in the blog from which you want to unsubscribe.
You should see a toolbar with the name of the blog followed by Following at the top of the web page. If you put your mouse over Following it should change to Unfollow. Just click Unfollow to unsubscribe from the blog.
Let me know if you have any problems and feel free to comment here.
How To Deal With Annoying Bloggers – Iranian Style
This terrible story of the death of Sattar Beheshti, a blogger from Iran, shows the regime in its true colours.
Getting Fed Up With Spurious Likes
I’m getting rather fed up with people saying they like pages in my blog because they’re hoping that will get more traffic to their blog, which in many cases, I am not interested in.
It never used to happen, but now if I publish a small page, it will get several likes immediately.
If people like a page, they should say so in a comment.
Spam in Blogs
Every morning, I empty the spam out of my blog. usually, it’s a dozen or so messages and I’ve commemted about it before.
It seems to have changed since that last comment, in that now a lot seems to be trying to sell me virus protection programs, with a rather verbose script, that only deserves one action; to be trashed.
You’d think people had better things to do with their time.
Especially, as the spam filter used by WordPress seems to be as reliable and accurate as an SAS-trained marksman.
30 Pieces of Spam
This morning the blog had thirty inappropriate comments, that all linked to stes, I would only endorse with large amounts of crinkly blue notes in a brown paper parcel.
As ever the WordPress spam filter trapped them all. And I have just despatched them to cyber-oblivion.
The Anonymous Widower 