Hot Days, Hot Ward. June 2025

The last few entries in this blog will make more sense if you have gone through them in order from the post headed Cancer! which was uploaded on 18 November 2025.

We have now reached Sunday 8 June 2025, which finds yours truly in hospital suffering from a very painful set of leg ulcers on both legs. In the bed next to me is "The Shouter", a chap with dementia who interprets every little touch as the most painful thing and shouts and tries to push the nurses out of the way whenever they do anything such as prick a finger for a blood sugar test or attempt to give him a wash. "DON'T TOUCH ME THERE!!!"

Last night he was giving himself - and consequently the rest of us in the ward - a concert. I didn't recognise any of the songs but it didn't matter because at the end of each song he applauded himself... Mostly the songs were quietish but choruses sometimes reached a bone shattering roar. It was a little like excerpts from Puccini as played by ZZ Top...

In the meantime I grabbed a shot of each leg as they were redressed - left then right leg. Scroll quickly if squeamish...

Monday 9 June 2025. A strange day in some ways. The night before started out with the Shouter trying once more to puĺĺ his catheter out even after the considerable pain and blood loss the òther night.

After that it went quiet and I zonked until woken at 5.30 by a nurse wanting me to wee because I hadn't had one for a while... so I peed so much I started to wonder how much the bottles held and how could I swap to another one without an accident...

Then I've dozed all the day, interspersed with breakfast, blood pressure and pulse rate measured, lunch, a visit from daughter Gill with Miss Franny, a visit from the doc to discuss the bleeding and what they might do about it. Apparently it's quite rare. Well I do like to set a challenge...

Have kept falling asleep whilst writing this so will go and set someone's mind at rest about my wee capability. I can hear a nurse at the other end of the room asking somebody why are they taking their trousers off. It's just that sort of day...

Tuesday 10 June. 5.38am. We lost one of our number during the night. In a ward of 8 with me in a corner bed there are only 3 others I could easily communicate with. Next to me is the Shouter so that cuts the number to two and it was one of that number that passed in the early hours.

Miss Franny used to buy him a newspaper every day on her way in as asking the nurses was dependent on them finding time in their busy day. Also when he had asked one nurse to buy him one of the UK's more serious newspapers he was asked "What do you want if they don't have one? The Sun?" At that we locked eyes and he spread his arms in a cross between amazement and amusement. We were friends after that.

He used to struggle for breath and yesterday had been particularly hard for him, but he had a few minutes of restful breathing before he slipped away. Something woke me around 3:30am and one of the nurses was pulling the curtains around his bed. Then someone who I took for a priest came and stayed for a while. Sleep easy now, my friend.

The rest of the ward starts to function each day at this time of morning. One of the nurses has been round to check blood sugar counts. This involves a quick stab in the end of a finger, just enough to cause a tiny drop of blood to appear. The Shouter screams the place down on this attack and today he, aged 93, shouted threateningly "I'll tell my Mum!"

Cancer and Leg Ulcers Index
Family Memories: Personal Index

Tigger R.I.P.

A sad week. On Monday after a period of looking and acting a bit off Tigger, our female cat seemed to be having problems standing up.

We took her into the vet and they kept her overnight on a drip and for blood tests.

I had to go to Newcastle for 3 days but in one of those did it happen for a reason things I started off with a cold on the first night and shrugged it off for a day but then was feeling absolutely wretched on the second night and when I woke up on Thursday morning. So I came home on an early train and Fran said the vet wanted to see us that night.

Tigger still hadn't eaten and although she had fluids from the drip she was very poorly. The blood tests showed her liver was the problem and if she wouldn't eat she was not going to improve.

The vet felt she may eat at home, but wanted her back in the morning for more medication. We took her home but she was in a state. Normally after a trip to the vets she can't wait to get out of the travel cage, but she would not budge out of it, nor would she eat or drink or do anything other than a faint acknowledgement that she was back with us.

Jess, her brother, took one look and sniff and ran.

Taking her out of the cage was a shock. Her feet folded under her and she struggled to rise, only to crawl straight back into the cage.

In the morning the options were to try a feeding tube for a couple of days but then if she didn't eat after that, there would be nothing else to try and it sounded intrusive and we felt after so long that we didn't want to put her through forced feeding.

So yesterday was a very sad day and we are worried about Jess who, unlike Tigger, has never since a kitten particularly sought out our company except for food and a bedtime stroke, but who loved to cuddle up with her for hours. He's now trying to find hiding places where she hasn't been and we just need to give him time and hope he grieves and then comes round.

We'll miss our Tiggie-poos, she was a beautiful and loving cat right from being a kitten in 2002.

Hills and Barrows

Wednesday 29 May 1998. After calling at Bibury, Fran and I headed up through Northleach and then Bourton-on-the-Water which we shall see in the next entry. We booked in for two nights in Bourton and then drove out to look at a couple of long barrows, along the lines of West Kennet Long Barrow seen a few days ago.

Our first stop according to the map was Notgrove Long Barrow. Here's the car in the massive lay-by they have provided at Notgrove to take the hordes of visitors who flock in their.... er... we're on our own... There are several piles of gravel stored in the lay-by. A number of traffic cones help by showing a British car in its natural environment... Ok... so why am I prevaricating and delaying our look at Notgrove? Moi? Here it is!

Notgrove Long Barrow (according to the signboard nearby) was vandalised and to avoid further damage was backfilled by the local council. In other words, they brought a load of earth and filled it in. So it now looks like a hill. It no longer has hollow bits.

However, archeologists at some point in the future, say in a few hundred years, if they are confident that the vandals aren't lying in wait, can dig it out again as to their trained eyes it will be obvious which dirt is the added dirt. Ye-e-e-e-es... Ok, let's go somewhere else!

Well this is looking promising! The signpost, despite being perfectly horizontal, points towards a path that really is quite a way from the horizontal and in no time at all we are puffing and panting our way up a steep hill and hoping that we shall find something that doesn't totally resemble a natural hill.

Happily we arrive at a tumulus that does not in any way disappoint the curious traveller. This is not the entrance to the tomb. This is an elaborate false entrance to slow down the would be treasure seeker of millenia ago. The main entrance is round the back and we'll see that in a bit.

Before we get round that far though there are several small chambers entered through small outlets in the side of the mound. Standing against this, the lintel of the entrance is at groin height...

So to take this photograph I've crawled inside on my stomach. The chamber takes a quarter turn to the right and is incredibly professional looking. If they built one of these today it would not look too different from this - neat rows of brick and look at the ceiling!!! What is holding it up?!? So they were no slouches two or three thousand years ago...

And here I am, crouching in the rear entrance - which again has been backfilled. Looking at the height of the mound here, the main chamber was excavated underground rather than built on the level and then covered as at West Kennet.

So we may have started with a disappointment with Notgrove Hill (ex long barrow) but Belas Knap, besides having a wonderful name, offers a wonderfully atmospheric and mysterious glimpse of a past so far back that the name England was still thousands of years in the future.

Return to Wiltshire, Cotswolds and Avon 1998 Index

HMS Victory and Sketches

My God, it's like buses! No blog entries for ages and now three at once! So, I'm just in the mood I guess.

If I've not been writing the blog what have I been doing?

Well those of you who keep an eye on the Flickr account will have seen a few
sketches appear recently. That was prompted by a posting on the Billy Fury website.

Also on that site, it's my month to be included in the Hall of Fame. You'll find my musical biography there linked from the main index linked above. My entry in the Hall of Fame also includes two songs, both from Creeping Bentgrass albums, although one (Great Balls of Fire) is one of my solo pieces and the other one (Up Around The Bend) features David and Bob also.

Our entry in the Billy Fury Sounds Special feature this month is a live recording of Johnny B Goode and a few of the residents and holiday makers at Larbreck Hall Caravan Park may recognise their whoops and hollers and general joining in of the chorus!

I've also gone back to scanning the still massive pile of negatives from pre-digital days that still need to be scanned. This example was taken (despite the blue sky and sunshine) in February(!) 1996 and shows the famous warship, HMS Victory.

Not Nelson's ship, as Captain Hardy should have that honour, but it was on this ship that Nelson received a musket ball in his shoulder that passed down through his lung and broke his spine. He was taken below where he knew full well that he must die from his injuries.

"Not the side, Hardy," he said, forbidding Captain Hardy to perform the traditional ceremony of burial at sea. With the problem of how to keep the body from rotting and smelling, the ship's surgeon had the body placed in a large barrel which was then filled with port wine.

The spot where he died, in the ship's orlop below the waterline is as close to a shrine as the Royal Navy has. A ceremony is held there every year on the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar at which Nelson was killed.

Oh yes... and the Sally Geeson photo has gone on to new levels of fascination for the Internet public as it has now reached a viewing count of 1473, racing for the 2000 target and achieving daily viewings that peaked with an amazing 66 views on the 3rd of May. All of this without a single comment on it!

It's Been That Sort of Day...

And this is before I opened it...

I started the day full of good intentions to strip the remaining wood board panelling from the entrance hall, the stairs and the landing.

Once I gathered all the tools, I realised that the battens that the panelling is fastened to go all the way up to the ceiling, which is a bloody long way up above the bottom of the stairs. My stepladders don't do stairs...

I could tear and twist at the bottom I thought, but then the battens are only 1/2 inch square and would probably break off leaving a bit at the top. In any case there would be huge holes ripped out of the plaster where the rawl plugs are fixed...

So I abandoned the idea and resigned myself to a day of fun...

"You can plaster the holes you left in the hallway then," Fran said logically. I hate logic. I hate D-I-Y too but I did have some plaster in the outhouse.

So I spent a couple of hours filling up holes, smoothing out cracks and knocking out a load of loose plaster in the ceiling corner near the door. I actually managed to replaster that too. I was quite impressed with myself...

Not quite sure how I'll deal with all the lumps and bumps yet but plenty of time for that next week or the week after.

So thought I'd open a bottle of wine to celebrate my success and felt drunk before any of it passed my lips...

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Lois Maxwell - the Miss Moneypenny. R.I.P.