AndyBlog

Mail Men Pause

Well, I'm glad they think it is, because I am taking their treatment of me increasingly personally. Repeated slow delivery times for packages and parcels is their speciality, but now the lax attitude is starting to extend to the standard letter delivery as well.

I know this is hopelessly parochial, but the poor performance of the Royal Mail affects quality of life and certainly compromises my business. Letters I send seem to get out, but things people send to me take forever to get through.

I am still waiting for a package to arrive after 2 weeks in the system. Several have been delivered after 10 days or more, and always delivered on a Sunday. Lee, our local depot manager, tells me he is short staffed because of sickness. If that is the case, he has a lot of people sick, and for a long time. Everyone I meet from his office seems offhand and completely unmotivated. What a sorry state of affairs.

Naturally, I complained to the Royal Mail, but I have received no response of any kind. Just to make sure, I complained to the watchdog for the mail service, Postwatch. They told me that because complaints to the Royal Mail were in such bountiful supply, I would need to wait a long time, because they used the same system that I do to complain to them.

The whole thing is ludicrous, and I mention it only because it seems indicative of a wider attitude across the UK. The idea seems to go something like this:

1) Make a company national and very big.
2) Allow it to provide a very poor service.
3) Have a tiny complaints department.
4) Simply ignore the complaints and pocket the money.

Small companies can no longer get away with this, but the big ones do. The general public have little or no comeback. I expect, if I am to get any sort of result on this, I will need to really dig in - and even then I may not get far.

Late parcels, not a big deal, you might think, but the wider implications make me feel isolated and powerless. And this, I suspect, is exactly what the Royal Mail and so many other massive companies are hoping for. It makes their greed an awful lot easier to sustain.

I run a company, just a little one. If I were to treat my customers in this way, the results would be disastrous.

I'm glad for that.

Breakfast Cereal - Which is best?

You could be forgiven for thinking that I think Bitesize Shredded Wheat is the best breakfast cereal. Such is not the case. I believe that Shreddies are the best breakfast cereal - well, with one or two provisos. The real category is breakfast cereals of the basic types, you know, with no added sugar and other such piffery.

So, in my estimation, the basic choice is:

Cornflakes
Shreddies
Shredded Wheat (and Bitesize too)
Rice Crispies
Puffed Wheat
Weetabix
Bran Flakes
Cheerios

There may be others - please do enlighten me - but my choice from this list for flavour, texture and all-round cereal enjoyment would certainly be Shreddies.

So - what of Bitesize Shredded Wheat?, I hear you ask. Well, to be perfectly honest, I /wish/ I hear you ask. Heck, I'm going to tell you anyway. Bitesize Shredded Wheat, in common with Shredded Wheat itself, has one property which raises it far above its lowly roots as a sugar-free breakfast cereal. I am not referring to them being 100% whole wheat, either. It is simply this:

Even when the milk has sunk into them, they are still nice to eat.

Yeah, take a moment. Drink in the truth.

Sure, Shreddies are delicious - but, the pressure! As soon as that milk goes on, the clock is ticking. Eat eat EAT! Quickly now, or all you will have is a malty mushy mess.

Weetabix - yeah, fine enough in their own way, but the window of crispiness whilst milk has been applied is painfully small. Should you be one of the brave individuals who have two at once - well.... you'd better be in top form if you don't want to complete your morning repaste with a barrage of soggy baby food hitting your palette.

Similar can be said of all the others. Only Shredded Wheat knows how to survive.

Anyway, that is my view - and I am not ashamed of it. So there.

Peel Away

I was far more saddened than I expected when I heard the news that John Peel had passed away yesterday. I actually read about it on the BBC news site, rather than seeing it on the TV news. It took me by surprise that someone so full of life could be so suddenly taken away. He is one of the few people who I believe loved music more than I ever could.

Still, a great way to go, whilst in good health and doing what he loved. No long illness, no gradual loss of faculty, just a clean and sudden break. I should be happy for both him and his family that, given that this had to happen, it happened in the way it did.

Instead of feeling this most worthy of emotions, my shock quickly turned to anger, as I turned on News 24 for the 1am bulletin. There was no coverage at all of John Peel's death. In those few short hours, his death had become both newsworthy - and then old news. I was angered because such a life had, ultimately, caused barely a ripple over the national consciousness.

I always feel this way when someone precious passes away. It's like the funeral can never be either long enough or grand enough to bestow honour in the right amount. We move on far too quickly. Life puts away it's thoughts of mortality so hurriedly and embraces the here and now with an eagerness which leaves me feeling uncomfortable.

It's not that I want to be morbid by always thinking about dead people, I just want to remember those who are no longer here, and not let their memory pass just because it makes me feel uncomfortable.

So goodbye John - I'm sorry you're not with us anymore, but I will think of you often in the days to come.

A Juggling Act

OK, this is how it goes.

I now have to balance my time between being upright, and horizontal - a state of affairs which gives rise to quite a few questions. At the very least, it requires a fair amount of planning.

My bandage is changed every two days, and during this rather uncomfortable proceedure we get to see how much the leg has seeped in the intervening time. (too gory for you?) So, having now had two bandage changes with the super new silicon dressings, we were in a position last night to make a judgement on whether things were better or worse than last time.

As it goes, they were worse - meaning that I had spent too much time upright and not enough lying down in my usual position. However, it wasn't /too/ bad, so maybe I wasn't that far off.

So, the job is to juggle my time effectively, making sure that everything that can be done whilst horizontal really is done that way. This Blog entry, for example, is easy to do on my laptop whilst sat up in bed. No problem.

Repairing computers, playing piano, printing stuff, using the lable maker, working on complex graphics, trips out and all that kind of stuff have to be done OUT of bed. I have no idea why I bothered to state the obvious to that extent.

That's it, then. I have to juggle my time and get the best out of it. Or else.

I will obey.

Abbreviations

I have a built-in enjoyment and sympathy for anyone who does something seemingly obsessive and pointless.

This guy has, along with countless other enthusiasts, found genuine organisations and meanings for every possible three letter combination.

http://www.atomiser.demon.co.uk/abbrev/3/index.html

According to the pages I checked, he has now moved on to four letter abbreviations. I plan to get in on the act when it gets up around 12 letters. FFFIWIALFTTW, is what I always say.

I suppose we shouldn't tell him that some of them will now be outated or obselete...

Staged Recovery

As this complicated and rather wonderful chart clearly indicates. I am getting better. Not just better at convincing myself I am getting better, but actually getting better as in actually getting better.

This is good news. After the somewhat self indulgent and rather wallowing-in-misery posts of late, I am delighted to be able to present a more up-beat picture today. It's not the end of the problem, it's not even the beginning of the start of the end of the problem, but it just might the start of the end of the beginning of the middle section ending. Or something.
(with apologies to the late and ultra-smashing Winston Churchill)

That said, however, and not wishing to, even though I am aware I do, and for that, at the very least, I apologise, it is good to be, once more, in a position to tell the story of an upward climb, rather than a downhill plummet.

Realistically, I hope to be up and about next week for a reasonable portion of the day. It's a start, and provided pain levels do not creep too high, I should be able to get a fair amount done. My bank manager informs me that this "not-working" lark is not particularly good for cash-flow. So, I'd better try and initiate some of that, before I end up disconnected from things, and other such nasties.

Interesting to note that only a few days ago I claimed to have reached rock bottom, and suddenly things took a turn for the better. If this is, indeed, a rule for life - it would seem that good advice would be: "Give up straight away - you'll feel better."

So, on that more cheerful note, I'll leave you.

Body Part Names

Of course, there is a name for every single part of the body - or so I thought.

It seems that the above statement is true for all parts under the surface of the body, the medical profession has seen to that. On the surface though, is there a name for:

1: The top of the foot

2: The top part that joins the calf to the foot

3: The back of the knee joint, sort of behind the knee.

4: The inside bit of the elbow crack

5: ?? Are there more ??

I really should stop letting my mind wander.

I'm Fine!

Thanks for the calls and emails, really. I'm touched and amazed at your concern.

Please don't worry. I'm fine, just sick of hurting. I'm still the cheerful chap you know and I am not terminally depressed. Special thanks to Jason for the list he sent me of suggested ways to commit suicide. Appreciated.

So, please no-one worry. Besides, if I ever did want to end it all, I wouldn't be stupid enough to warn everyone first. I may be in pain, but I'm not stupid!

Have a good day, folks. I'll speak to you soon.

Enough is enough...

...or not.

Not that enough is not enough, because it clearly is. More that whilst enough is very much enough, there is no actual way to reflect that, because the problem continues.

The problem lies in three main areas:

1) Huge amounts of what my doctor splendidly describes as "Neuropathic Pain".
2) Immobility - being virtually chained to this bed.
3) Physical damage to my legs and daily bandage changes.

Take these three things away, and I would be a very happy chap indeed. At least for a while. I'm not naive enough to believe that I would go for long without finding something to complain about. After all, I am both human and British. Enough said.

Legs Up

The mission: To lie for three hours at a time, with 20 mins break, making sure both legs are up.

Let's see how others measure up...

This guy has the right basic idea, but I doubt whether he could manage this for three hours at a stretch.

OK, fair enough, I can't fault her for achieving the "legs up" part, but...........well, no. Too vertical.