Three stents for me back in January 2018 and a hernia repair just this February 2020; Barbara has had a new knee in September last year and hospitalised for 8 days on 16 February this year after falling from her wheelchair down two deep steps outside a local restaurant, missing the left turn onto the ramp. She has small but extremely painful fractures to elbow and knee and worrisome pulmonary embolisms being treated now with long term anticoagulants. Virtually quadriplegic currently but standing and weight-bearing is coming on gradually.
In other news, we now have three grandsons in Stockport, being William, Leo and Tobias, via Jill and Edward; Beth and Jim are 20+ weeks pregnant with a boy after IVF at Homerton Hospital in the East End.
No allotment activity (I relinquished my quarter plot last Spring) since last Autumn where my allotment neighbour has picked out a mini plot on one of his for me to keep my hand in – how kind is that – had a few onions, courgettes and cabbages last time after enjoying the light labour involved.
Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category
Quick email I’ve just sent to a friend in Australia. Made me reflect for a moment on some of the better parts of life at the moment:
Results of tests show coronary artery disease and I’ve received an appointment to have an angiogram and probable angioplasty at Royal Stoke Hospital on 17th January 2018. Looking forward to meeting the pre-op nurse on 11th and the cardiology team on 17th, when I shall have lots of questions prepared. In the meantime, all Christmas festivities went well, decorations are now down and today Barbara and I visited our allotment aka Alice (first time we have been able since early November) where we found a great deal of weed suppressant cover had been laid down on the crop beds – by my plot neighbour Ian. That’s what real friends are.
My log of my allotment activities. She’s called Alice.
See also http://jim.granter.co.uk/?p=559 from September 17 2013 which I’ve just noticed!
Encouraged by my partner Barbara, I enquired about an allotment on Saturday 14 September 2013 at the Rotary Charity stall at Alsager Civic Centre; after a chat with Derek Hough, the President of Alsager Gardens Association, he gave me the Secretary’s phone number. I arranged to meet Mel Buckingham at Alsager Gardens Association shed in Cedar Avenue on Sunday 15 September. He showed me round part of the whole site and allocated me a quarter plot at 26-A2, see below. It was totally overgrown with waist high weeds but Mel reassured me that they were of a type that pulled up easily! There were signs of a plastic box, some raspberry canes and fruit bushes. It is a long walk from the entrance gate and is adjacent to the wire fence bordering the site and the playing field.
On Tuesday 17 Sep Mel, accompanied by his sheepdog Floss, delivered my key.
This is the view through the boundary fence on Cedar Avenue playing field, before I started or could visit:
Here endeth Chapter One
Mount Vue Motel Asheville North Carolina
jimsnopes on August 13, 2015 in AmArt, Americana, Diary, Film, Thought No Comments »I stayed here for a few nights back in the 1990s when the sign looked like this:
Some year later I joined a good humoured online piss-take about the place and its specially featured COLOR TV. Someone thought they might even have phones too! I think I can see Bobba Fet coming down through the trees on the left; someone else could see it too.
Today I reminisced and had another look at motels in Asheville. Note the original COLOR TV sign has been retained. But of course. Such magnificent artifacts can be overshadowed in size and glare but never surpassed in the annals of good taste:
Looks like a set for a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice, though you couldn’t beat Bob Rafelson’s 1981 version with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson.