Nice End to a Not Nice Week

It's been one of those weeks. Started with the car screeching one of those metallic squeals at us. Stopped at the next services on the motorway to find the rear wheel radiating heat alarmingly.

Hang on... I paid £200 to have that problem on that wheel fixed not so long ago! Luckily the problem this time (only this time?) was the handbrake sticking on which required a new handbrake cable fitted. Huge relief until I went to pick it up and found another bill for £200 waiting for me. "It's a right job with them...!" For £200 for a handbrake cable I should bloody hope it's a right job...

Long term readers (er... you do exist, right?) may remember me having to have an operation on the nose a few years ago and whilst it went spiffingly, (ignoring the following infection which had me off work for three months and resulted in some spectacular bouts of nose bleeding) the nasal passages have been steadily shrinking since then and it's getting to crisis point again. Date for the specialist has been set, but for now I'm going through all the familiar side effects of the steroid spray with 2 or 3 (smaller) nosebleeds a day.

Plus my ear bunged up with wax and I've gone fairly deaf in one ear - makes David's singing a bit more palatable of course, but not good really (my hearing I mean, not David's singing which at times approaches ok...) and my ear feels as though I'm in a descending aeroplane and wouldn't I just love it to go "pop" and clear! Putting ear oil in has only softened the outside of the wax "plug" and eventually after a full week of not being able to shift it, I got the doc to have a look to make sure I wasn't trying to soften the remains of a spider that had curled up and died in there... His reaction was that it was unlikely to shift before another week goes by and that it will need syringing out even then. Great... If you ask me a question and I don't respond it's nothing personal, ok?

And then poor Mum got confirmation that she has cancer, though relief all round when it turned out to be contained and should hopefully be easily operated on. But that was obviously the big scare and health story of the week and I'm not even thinking of joking about that.

Finally in the ever-growing health row of dominoes that I've had for the past few years, the doc gave me some water tablets to tackle the size of my feet, which now require clowns' shoes, following my introduction to the pills for hypertension. (I'm busy - I need high blood pressure!)

A week on the first lot made little difference, so yesterday morning the doc, after freaking out a little when I asked him to check there wasn't a spider in my ear, upped the doseage of my water pills with the result that today has been extremely interesting during a day out to the Lake District, where we took Mum for her birthday. That half hour was the longest boat trip I've ever taken. I was thinking I might have to make a personal apology to the residents of Manchester (whose drinking water is pumped from Lake Windermere) but, luckily, I made it onto the pier (unfortunate term...) at Ambleside and they had some Gents...

I don't follow football that much but sheesh I wish I was paid several annual wages every week just for cocking things up. Most people get into trouble for doing a rotten job. Footballers apparently get into a strop at a demonstration of fans' disappointment...

Talking of the World Cup, Marlene - one of the Ladies-over-the-Water, sent news of a woman who had torn her windpipe through blowing one of those vuvuzela horns. She said "I'm not blowing one again - it wasn't much fun..."

Meanwhile, Amanda, another of the threesome that make up the Ladies-over-the-Water, sent me a photo at Christmas of a new wine decanter she was very proud of. She and her hubby Paul and her neighbours were gathered round it drinking the wine from straws... Not sure they quite got the concept of a decanter, but anyway, she's broken it and asked if I'd print a memorial here... It was probably a fight over the last drop...

And (because I just can't leave her out can I?) Evy has had some new decking done in her garden outside her back door. There's been a long standing joke about her house because she once confused me by describing her stairs - it sounded as though they end abruptly halfway up her wall. Anyway... they obviously match the rest of the house because the back door has a drop of three feet to the garden...