The Bodwyn Biffers

Last Monday, Keith and I went to a funeral. It was at the Methodist chapel a few miles away where, as it happens, I go to my Welsh classes each week and where Keith once danced on bits of paper in a short-lived attempt to join something akin to the Cubs (Don't ask!).

The funeral was for a childhood friend of Keith's, although he was a few years older. They lived in the same road, only a couple of houses apart and at that time, back in that golden era of the fifties, there were few other houses in the neighbourhood but lots of open land, an irresistible invitation to amuse themselves without the all-seeing eyes of parents and other adults. Keith and his friends called themselves the Bodwyn Biffers, after the area in which they lived, and spent a lot of their time and energy in conflict with a rival gang, the Nursery gang, again named in honour of their local area.

And then there was the time when they decided to do a little cuisine al fresco (yes I know I've mixed up two languages there). I have no idea where they managed to get the bacon and eggs from, but I have it on Keith's very reliable authority that cooking it in a hole, with a piece of turf pulled over the top for added privacy, improved the taste and enjoyment no end. Not sure about the effect on their lungs though.

 Clifford, whose funeral it was, was the leader of this intrepid group  and went on to be a mining engineer in adulthood.  (There has to be a link there somewhere!)

But although the chapel was packed, Keith was the only Bodwyn Biffer present and probably the only person there who knew the story.

A good day

A week last Friday, I had an appointment for a mammogram. As they don't recall anyone after the age of seventy, this would have been my last, which I was quite relieved about, as the last couple have been more than a little painful. (The word 'excruciating' comes to mind!) I don't think I would have been any good at all at being one of those mediaeval martyrs, the ones who were squashed under heavy weights in particular. The thought even flitted through my mind that it wouldn't be so terrible if I cancelled. After all, there is no history of breast cancer in my family and I have never had any problems myself, but then I remembered that in recent years, I have had three friends who have had breast cancer, with varying outcomes, so I decided that maybe I should attend after all.

As it happened, the experience wasn't quite as bad as on previous occasions and I quickly forgot about it - until last Friday, when a letter arrived, asking me to come back on Tuesday, together with a sheaf of leaflets and information about the further tests which would or might be carried out. Well, that rather upset my weekend and, imagination running true to form, by Tuesday morning, having worked my way through a few possible scenarios, I had got as far as wondering what would become of the dogs if I were not able to take them out for walks. (I was also a bit annoyed that they had recalled me on a Tuesday, which is the day of my Welsh class!)

However, after further investigation, things were quickly found to be well after all  and I can relax again, as can Keith. He wasn't too happy either!

So yesterday was, in the end, a good day.

This time last year ...

I have this photo of Dad as my screensaver. To me, it epitomises his second best way of spending a few hours in his latter years. His first, of course, would have been being up there on the footplate, rather than dispensing wisdom and advice from a safe distance.

Christmas last year was not great. Dad had started to go downhill with what was to be his last few weeks and Boxing Day saw him taken into hospital, where he stayed until things were in place for him to go home to receive palliative care until his death on February 4th. We have long been aware that, in Dad's family, there was a strong pattern of previous generations breathing their last in February or March and in this, Dad was true to form.

This Christmas, he has been very much in our thoughts and very much missed.

Dysgu Cymraeg

Last year, and probably a bit before that, Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales, and other Assembly Ministers were chatting over a cup of tea and wondering how they might fill their days during the coming months.

"I know," said one, "Why not reorganise Welsh for Adults."

"Syniad da!" (Good idea!) was the response, so they set to drawing up plans on the backs of any old envelopes they had to hand.

"Hang on," one of them said after a few minutes, "That's South Wales done, but what about North Wales?"

"Oh yeah! Forgot about that," was the reply. "Do they even speak Welsh up there? After all, they're nearly in Liverpool ... OK, well, we'll draw a line down the middle. Bangor university can provide for everything to the left and Coleg Cambria can have everything to the right. Of course they'll have to submit bids for the contracts but, well ..." (Taps side of nose and winks.)

When I started learning Welsh, five years ago, I had the choice of two providers, Coleg Cambria and Bangor university, each providing their own courses and until last year, I was able to follow both and go to three classes, which I found very useful as although each course covered much the same ground, it was presented in different ways so that each reinforced the other.

The rot set in when Coleg Cambria decided not to run the Canolradd course, which I was due to move on to, citing low numbers as the reason, which might have been acceptable had they had the grace to tell us without us having to contact them several times before they grudgingly admitted that the course wouldn't run.

Then came the reorganisation, with the result that we now have one course provider for our area, Coleg Cambria, so there will now only be one course and far fewer classes running. Instead of three,  I now only do one. Also, the classes run by Bangor were quite a bit cheaper than those provided by Coleg Cambria, which means that, even if they wanted to, some people who had previously done a couple of classes, can now no longer afford to do more than one.

How this contributes to the avowed aim of the Welsh Assembly to have one million speakers of Welsh by 2050, I am not quite sure. In the meantime, I am wondering about learning Swedish, so that I can follow all those brilliant Nordic Noir dramas on TV without the subtitles.

Out for the day

This is where we have been today.

And this was one of those North Wales traffic queues, sheep on the road.

I suppose you could call it a sheep jam.

We had lunch in Criccieth and then meandered on to the Lleyn Peninsula and down to the tip. If we'd popped across to Whistling Sands, we could have swum across to  Ireland.

Maybe next time!

Decorating

Today is a day of celebration! It is the end of a week of dental appointments, optician's appointments, Toby's doggie hairdresser appointment and the dreaded decorators. 

Not really, of course. In reality, they are a couple of very pleasant, hard-working men who turn up, do the job and leave everything nice and tidy and clean. The main problem is preparing for their visit. It all started when I got to the stage where, just looking at the carpet in the living room was resulting in raised blood pressure - it is well past its best - and the acceptance that, before getting that changed, we would need to have the room decorated and, while that was being done, it would be silly not to get the dining room done too. Then there was our bedroom - again, a cause of serious BP raising. These houses are nearly twenty years old, we have been in this one for thirteen and we have never yet decorated the bedroom. Keith's excuse is that it doesn't really matter anyway, because he goes to bed in the dark and gets up with his eyes only half open so doesn't actually see his surroundings anyway. Oh to have such a simple view of life!

The best thing though, or so I thought, was that preparing the living room for decorating would definitely necessitate Keith clearing his desk...

Or not! 

"You haven't tidied your desk," I pointed out on Sunday evening.

"Yes I have," he said, with pained expression. I looked. There in his hand was a six inch square cardboard box, containing three or four screwed up bits of paper. 

"Anyway," he continued, seeing my expression, "they can just cover it with a sheet, can't they?"

Still, when the carpet layers come, the room will have to be cleared, so he'll have to clear the desk before it can be moved - won't he?

And the opticians ... ?

This blog is beginning to seem like a series of complaints about the NHS, so apologies for that, but these are experiences I feel the need to share.

Today, I had an appointment with my optician. These days I see her every six months. I should really only see her every twelve months, but she sees me more frequently because the waiting times at the local hospital ophthalmology department are so long. At the beginning of the year, there was evidence of some optic disc haemorrhage, most likely related to my glaucoma and the fact that my current eye drops were not reducing the pressure very effectively.

"You need to be seen at the hospital within the next couple of weeks," she said, so I went home and rang the opthalomology out patients dept. In fact, I was well overdue for my next appointment anyway, but appointment were taking much longer to come through. In spite of pleading my case, the earliest appointment I could have would be in  five to six weeks, and as I wasn't prepared to take chances, I opted to see the consultant privately. This was the second time I had had to do that, the first time being just to get eye drops prescribed initially. I am lucky that I am able to pay to go privately if necessary, but it does not sit well with me that, whilst I am able to do that, other less fortunate people are not and have to take their chances.

Today's results were reassuring in that the second type of eye drops which I was given at the last hospital appointment were doing a reasonable job and my pressures were lower, although still not as low as they should be. 

So Mrs S will see me again in six months.

In the meantime, she was telling me of losing three of her opticians and having to fill in the gaps which they have left, whilst trying to find new staff and of the constant battle in trying to get her patients seen by ophalmologists within appropriate timescales. 

Mrs S is an independent optician and has three branches, two in England and one in Wales.

I am hoping that she will not at some stage decide to pull out of ours.

No doctor in the house?

I have moved about a fair bit during my life and so I've been registered at several different surgeries. The first GP that I remember was Dr Mogg, fat, jolly and as an added bonus, he could do conjuring tricks, which was a welcome distraction when you were in his surgery to have a dreaded injection! Elder Daughter commented recently that she was amazed at the low standard of GPs I had been treated by over the years. This was when I was enthusing over our latest 'find', whom we registered with a couple of years ago when Dad moved up here.

The surgery was open all day, had four GPs, all equally good, and the care we have received there has certainly been better than anywhere else I have been. Where else would your GP ring you at home at 7.50am to tell you the result of a recent blood test or happily do a home visit of his own volition just to check up that Keith's recent excruciating back pain had begun to respond to the pain medication he had prescribed? 

It is inevitable, however, that all good things will eventually come to an end. Unfortunately, although Keith and I are still registered at this wonderful practice,  the doctors aren't.

Like several other practices in North Wales, the doctors, all partners, decided in March that they did not want to carry on and would hand the practice over to the health board at the end of September.  Work load, surfeit of paperwork, ever-decreasing support from the local health board? Who knows? Betsi Cadwalladr University Health Board (BCUHB) - yes, there really is a health board with that name - has been in special measures for the past couple of years and, like turning a super tanker around on the open seas, it takes time to improve a large organisation. 

Still, all was not entirely lost. I learned from a fellow patient that Dr B, our GP had assured him that he 'wouldn't go until he knew things were settled'.

The next letter we received was to tell us that there would be a meeting for anyone who wanted an update on developments. This was conducted by a rather unsatisfactory 'someone' from the health board (who is not local and lives in Warrington, but let's not hold that against him), who could not or would not raise his voice to an acceptable auditory level, in spite of numerous complaints that people couldn't hear him.

According to him, there will be lots of 'other' staff - nurse practitioner etc - and the receptionist will point us in the right direction when we wish to make an appointment (Think steering as many people as possible away from the doctor and towards other staff, whether that's what you want or not). And on the subject of replacement doctors, well he 'couldn't say' exactly but it looked as if there would be one GP who would also have experience in manning the outfit and there may be another one too. One of the original GPs may come back part time and doctors from other surgeries may be able to fill in the gaps. Oh, and there would probably be some locum doctors - just to begin with, you understand.

A lot of 'may be', which translates into a lot of uncertainty, which then seemed a lot more uncertain when we learned from someone working at the practice that the 'other GPs' have now backed out and Dr B has in fact already left, to be followed very soon by two of the others.

Given that we are all potentially only minutes away from needing medical assistance, it doesn't fill me with confidence to learn that I am now apparently without a GP.

Let's hope we don't get ill any time soon, and if anyone knows of any GPs looking for jobs, please direct them to North Wales!

Turmeric and arthritis

A few weeks ago, I came upon this post from 'Julia's Place' about the possible benefits of turmeric on arthritis,so I decided to add turmeric capsules to my daily list of herbal odds and ends and see what might happen. As it was, I was being woken at night, not just by Keith's snoring, but by occasional knee and hip pains and getting out of bed in the morning was a creaky experience, to say the least. Managing the journey down the stairs, first thing, was taking ever longer too. The dogs sleep on the landing at night and, if I am first up, they precede me down the stairs, full of energy to start the day, but it had got to the point where Toby did about six laps up and down the stairs during the time it took me to go from top to bottom once, although after that, the lubricating oil starts flowing and movement  gets better through the day.

So, after only a couple of weeks taking turmeric capsules, I have to say, I have certainly noticed a difference. Obviously it hasn't been a miracle cure, but my knees and hip are certainly feeling better and more able to do the job they should be doing,  and  although  Keith's snoring still wakes me at times, my joints no longer do.

Now, although that is what I call a great result for me. unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have had the same result on Keith's ankle. Why this is, I don't know, but we'll keep trying.

 

Toilet/cottage for sale

This morning, I came across this article during my web-trawling.


It is a current trend to close public conveniences across North Wales, and other areas of the country, no doubt, because councils view it as a convenient way to save money. (You see what I did there?) This goes hand in hand with an expressed desire to encourage people for the rest of the world to visit Wales. One of the stated aims on this website is


'to adopt a customer-focused approach which understands and responds to market needs'.


Well, I don't know about you, but one of the things I view as pretty essential on a day out is somewhere reasonable to answer the call of nature and no, this does not include a hedge or nettle patch, which will be the only alternative in many places, if this policy of closing toilets continues. I have blogged before about the short-sighted custom of having public toilets closed on bank holidays, and that was back in 2004. At the current rate of closure, there will soon not be any left, open or closed, and that must surely have an impact on tourism and, as usual, it will be the disabled, elderly and people with children who will be hardest hit.

So, local councils of North Wales, what do you think people are going to do instead?

I leave it to your imagination, but the end result may not be pleasant!