And now he’s 45 and 2 months

I have a blog folder sitting on my desktop, where I keep notes of ideas for blog entries, as well as all the photos I have yet to upload and/or write about. In some ways it’s a delightful way of keeping everything tidy and ensuring I don’t forget any magical blogging epiphanies (I still like to think I might have one at some point). In other ways it’s a great device for filing things away in order to procrastinate a little longer without interruption. So here I finally present to you some photos I took when we all went up to Norfolk to see Lee for his 45th birthday a couple of months ago.

Click for the set

EEG

I went up to London for an EEG yesterday. To a hospital, you understand, it wasn’t done in the middle of Trafalgar Square or anything. Just as well really, because an EEG involves the patient’s head being measured, drawn on and covered with little electrodes, stuck on with pale green conductive paste and that kind of look doesn’t go down so well in public.

I’ve had a couple of EEGs before, one sleep, one not. Both involved looking at a very bright strobe running at different speeds and a couple of minutes deep breathing, which over-oxygenates your brain and makes you feel horrible. The sleep EEG then had the added bonus of taking a sleeping tablet, curling up under a blanket and having a snooze. One assumes that further tests were then performed, but I was asleep at the time, so I couldn’t swear either way.

Yesterday’s EEG was a sleep EEG and I was expecting to do all the strobe and breathing malarky before my nap. However, once wired up to the machine I was told that, no, this was pretty much just a case of sleeping. I lay on the bed for a few minutes and was told to shut my eyes. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Yet I found a way to make it complicated, because OH MY GOD my eyes just wanted to open. All my strength was going into keeping them shut. I imagine the electrodes stuck to the “wild nonsense” part of my head were working overtime at this point.

The first tests done, just a couple of flashes from the strobe, the technician brought me a sedative, three little capsules in an envelope. If I was also being scored on my ability to pick up said capsules, I probably scored about 4/10. Slippery little buggers they were. I took the sedative, 9mg of melatonin, lay back and shut my eyes again. The lights were turned off and I was told the drug would take 10-15 minutes to work.

I lay there for what felt about a week, quite clearly not going to sleep. Thoughts about this and that were running at high speed through my mind and once or twice I even had to divert my attention from scenes from “Friends” that had flitted into my head, which put me at risk of bursting out laughing apparently at nothing. As I gradually relaxed noises inside and outside the hospital kept jolting me just enough to make me wonder if I was ever going to get to sleep. Ambulance sirens, my own busy mind, a relatively light room, traffic, cold feet, electrodes tugging on my scalp and sharp voices in the corridor outside were all working against me.

The strobe flashed.

Shit.

I’m not asleep yet. Does he know I’m not asleep yet? How should I let him know I’m not asleep yet? What if I’m about to fall asleep and moving would wake me up further? WHAT SHOULD I DO? Should I say something? Would that ruin the test?

I know.

I’ll just scratch my side and move my feet. Those are conscious movements and will show I’m not asleep.

“All done,” the technician said, “You managed a small sleep.”

Oh. I did? Ok, so how delighted am I that I chose not to say “I’m still awake” just then?

All my wires were removed and a cursory attempt was made to remove the paste from my hair. Still I left the department with the same bouffant mess that everyone does. The results of the EEG will be known in about a week, so we shall see just what my temporal lobe thinks it’s doing. In the meantime though – and don’t say/read this without knocking on wood – this month I had no funny feelings at all.

Cold-caller

The phone rings. I answer:

“Hello?”
“Can I speak to your manager?”
“To whom?”
“Your manager.”
“I’m the only one here, so how can I help?”
“What?”
“I’m the only one here, how can I help?”
“Can I speak to the owner?”
“I’m the only one here on this line. Can I take a message?”
“Can I speak to the manager?”
“No, sorry.”

I hang up.

A few moments later, he rings back.

“Hello?”
“Can I speak to your manager?”
[Enunciating firmly in a somewhat irritated manner] “No, I am the only one here. I am PA to the directors. Can I take a message?”
“You’re PA to the directors?”
“Yes.”
“Can I speak to the director?”
“No, I am the only one here. Can I take a message for you?”
“You’re the only one there?”
“Yes.”
“Can I speak to your manager?”

I hang up … and set fire to the phone.

Last day in Bratislava

One of the reasons I blog (apart from the fame and glory) is to help me remember what I’ve done. Trouble is, from time to time a combination of laziness and other things in life takes over and by the time I get round to doing the blogging, I’ve already forgotten.

I’ve now uploaded the photos from our last day in Bratislava at the end of August. Remember what you were doing at the end of August? No, me neither. Hubert’s ship had set sail for Linz, his final concert of the tour and our flight back to Stansted wasn’t until the evening, leaving us a day for sightseeing.

The grey skies of my photos and crinkled pages of our tourist map remind me that it was a rainy day. We walked (one million miles) around the city, taking in the architecture, the bronze statues, fountains, the warmth of a coffee shop and the view of the whole city from the New Bridge.

High above the road traffic on the Novy Most stands the UFO restaurant and observation deck. Admission is free for seniors, so that was Dad in. Children over 111cm have to pay, so I would have had to shave 4cm off my height to get in free … but for the disabled discount. Haha, one more member of the family in free of charge, leaving Mum who is not (that) old and not (that) short to pay her 150 SKK. Except the gatekeeper evidently took pity on her having to hang around with such a dilapidated family and let her in free of charge too. Score!

The lift took us 85 metres up to the restaurant level at a grand speed of 3m/s and then we climbed the last stretch up some metal steps and walked out onto the observation deck. Bratislava was laid out before us, with the Danube flowing steadily below. We spent a long time up there, just watching the river and the world go by.

Click for the set

Cold toes

It’s meant to be a post about my garden, but all I can think about at the moment is how cold my toes are. They are cold. Autumn is definitely here now and when I go outside to visit my pumpkins the cold air clings to my clothes and my breath freezes in the air as I spare a few encouraging words for my forthcoming harvest. Light frosts have wilted the leaves of my pumpkin vines, so where there was once a lush vine climbing the back wall of Juniper Lodge, it now looks as though someone’s somewhat randomly hung up a dead plant as festive ornament. The gourds are still growing and can survive a light frost easily enough. Harvest might be this weekend … or it might not. We’ll see.

Going somewhat against the grain of my inclination to be just a fair weather gardener, I’ve actually planted a new crop that will grow over winter. Garlic needs a couple of months of cold, frosty weather to make the cloves you plant split and grow into bulbs. So, best of both worlds for me. I get to look clever and diligent for planting something this late in the year, when actually it’s more a case of poking the cloves into the ground and calling “Ciao, see you in the spring!” as I run back indoors to hug the radiator and eat Jaffa Cakes.

Click for the latest from the patch

Mumpkin puffins

~~Susan Reimer’s~~ My pumpkin muffins are very yummy indeed and are in fact the sole reason I grow pumpkins from time to time. And am I wondering if I can fit a vine … or two … on my patch again next year? Why yes, yes I am.

I’m not a particularly fast baker, preferring to watch pretty colours combine as I stir, or to wait and see if that last drop of milk will ever make it out of the jug and into the bowl. So also stopping every two seconds to take photos of what I was doing didn’t exactly serve to make this the fastest batch of muffins I’d ever made. There was also the Crisis of Oh Crap, This Pumpkin’s Way Too Runny. That young pumpkin I’d rescued from the garden during 7 Days produced enough flesh for a batch of muffins, but it turned out to have far too little bulk to it having been harvested so early. So that got dumped and I used another helping from the freezer … which might have been butternut squash, but whatever, it was orange and mushy.

Pumpkin muffins

255g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp each of ground ginger, nutmeg and cloves
110 – 170g granulated sugar
1 egg
90ml milk
3 tbsp honey
200ml / 1 cup pumpkin
85g butter, melted
85g raisins

1. Prepare muffin tins. Preheat oven to 375-400ºF / 190-200ºC / Gas Mark 5-6.
2. In a large bowl, sift together: flour baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, spices and sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, beat egg with a fork. Add milk, honey, pumpkin and melted butter. Stir well.
4. Pour all of liquid mixture into dry. Stir just until combined and no dry flour is visible. Add raisins during the final strokes.
5. Spoon batter into tins. Bake for 20-25 mins, until tops spring back when pressed gently.

Recipe: “Muffins – Fast and fantastic” by Susan Reimer

Click for the set

Russ was here. But don’t tell anyone.

It should be safe to write this, as my aunt and uncle are on safari in Africa at the moment and probably not checking in on Dreamdust. My cousin, Russ, came down to visit last week in order to get a lesson on his new toy: a Nikon D80. The D80 that his parents don’t know he’s bought yet, because he’s meant to be a poor houseowner. But it’s totally ok, because the camera was an absolute steal at £200 on eBay. And in any case, if they give him trouble, he can just arrest them. He’s a policeman, you see.

John taught Russ the scientific stuff about aperture and shutter speed and I nodded along, adding the occasional piece of wisdom while knitting a sleeve. Then I cocked up the knitting and had to wait for Mum to come home for her to sort it out before I could continue any further.

Russ seemed to absorb all the information well, so we’ve got another happy snapper in the family and I guess that all we’re going to see at family get-togethers from now on is various Nikons glued to various faces. I also deemed Russ handsome enough to tell him that come Christmas I’m expecting him to join in the next 7 Days at Flickr. Incidentally, speaking of Flickr, I blocked my foot friend. I didn’t want him exploring my stream any further and coming across my entire set of feet photos. So to speak.