Take Me To The Caribbean

2007-08-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

Oooh get me! A second post in 3 days! I'm actually suprised anyone still reads this thing. It does my head in when people only update their blogs twice a year and you keep clicking on it and the same old story comes up. It's like buying a daily newspaper for 3 months and finding the same news everytime.

I have just read my friend Jac's blog, which I have to say is one of my favourites as it always makes me wet myself laughing. She was talking about the dangerous combination of wheelchairs and husbands. A phenomenon that I know a little about seeing that I am in possesion of both.

There are two reasons why I only use my wheelchair when I really have to. The first is logical -I want to be getting as much exercise as possible (or rather as much exercise as one can get dawdling round the shops and stopping for regular tea and cookies) and so only keep it in the car for when I am really struggling.

The second reason is...well....I don't find it the most relaxing of experiences. Now my husband is many things - loving, kind, generous, supportive and amazingly good-looking (he's reading this I know....) BUT even he has just a couple of weaknesses (yes you do have darling....)

The first of these weaknesses could be described as a lack of spatial awareness and cooridnation. Or in politically correct terms "unique coordination".

I however call a spade a spade - he's clumsy.

The second weakness could be described as a lack of studied effort to achieve goals. Or in politically correct terms "time poor".

In other words - slapdash, which the dictionary describes as "in a bold, careless manner; at random."

Which most defintiely describes Brad's wheelchair-pushing technique.

The result of the irrepresible combination of clumsiness and slapdashness (or 'time poor unique coordination') is certainly interesting where wheelchair manouevring is concerned. Now normally when we go shopping (or even when we're not going shopping) Brad has to walk at the kind of pace normally reserved for those creatures that carry a house on their backs at the same time. On top of this, he also has to put up with constant stops as a I 'ooh' and 'aaah 'about anything sparkly or pretty. So it's really no wonder that as I sit down in the wheelchair I can sense as deep sigh of relief as the vision of an open road with no speed limit passes in front of Brad's eyes.

Which would be fine if the road was actually open. Which in a shopping centre or tourist attraction it seldom is. This small fact does not however hold Brad back. No, he has the wind in his hair and his eye on the far horizon. As we set off I can hear the faint sounds of "Born to Be Wild" playing in his head.

Doorways tend to rather ruin the momentum, as we crash through them with me almost flying out the seat. Shop displays present a similar problem as we career through Debenhams with me wearing half the stock on my head, leaving a trail of fallen naked shop dummies in our wake. But most serious of all is the dangerous combination of Brad+wheelchair+pedestrians+ankles. As I'm swept along, we leave a trail of people hopping on one foot clutching their ankles and uttering profuse apologies to us.

That's the funny thing about being in a wheelchair. The normal rules of society go out the window and in their place are put the "Polite Rules for Encountering Wheelchair Users". These are the unwritten rules that NWU's (non wheelchair users) must use when in close proximity to WCU's (wheelchair users).

1. In cases of close encounters with WCU's (e.g. when entering a lift together), a NWU must make exagerated smiling signals and become overtly friendly, chatty and helpful in order to show how open-minded and disabled-happy they are.

2. In cases where WCU and NWU's are not encountering each other closely (e.g. when sitting at seperate tables in a cafe or passing in the street), the NWU must make overt "I'm-not-looking-at-you" signals in order to demonstrate that they are so used to disabled people that they hadn't even registered the presence of a wheelchair (N.B: Exception to this rule is when the WCU is not looking).

3. If a WCU careers into the ankles of a NWU, the polite response is NOT "Oi! You F*cking idiot, watch where you're going, you've just taken all the skin off my ankle and it HURTS!" Instead you must simply stifle a gasp, limit the hopping, keep smiling and say "Oh I am SO sorry!" until WCU is out of sight, at which point you may then examine your wound and call an ambulance if appropriate.

This latter rule is taught to small children as soon as they can toddle. It ranks so high up on the scale that it is equivalent to the "no loud farting in public" rule. The difference is that not only must children of NWU's be taught to smile and apologise when they are mown down, but a new addition comes into play where small children are involved. This rule states:

"Where a WCU damages the child of a NWU, not only must parent and child apologise, smile and ignore the stream of blood coursing down the child's leg, but in addition the parent must commence extra-loud berating of small child for the incident"

Yesterday we went round a visitor centre of a stately home. I was in the wheelchair. It was rather dull which only added to the average speed Brad was notching up, as we really only wanted to visit the tea shop (but felt obliged to make some pretence of being cultured). We crashed our way through the true-life-scene-of-Tudor-kitchens, knocking a small milkmaid over as we passed by and leaving me with her mopcap on my head. We bashed our way through several doorways, removing the 15th century fresco in the process.

We decided to watch the film of the house in the little cinema even though it was already 5 minutes into the showing and crashed spectacularly through the doors into the darkness, with everyone turning to look (before realising the WCU rules stated them must only smile benignly at our interruption). 3 minutes after watching Henry VIII fly a kestrel in a field whilst talking to Ann Parr I got bored. But becuase of being a WCU I was allowed to break the rule of having to sit and behave and we went crashing back out the doors again.

We were so relieved to reach the tea-shop and stuff our faces with cream teas that at this point Brad careered into the ankles of an 8-year old girl. She had already learnt the rules. She held together her severed limb, gritted her teeth into a smile, apolgised profusely and was led away by a mother shouting at her "Sarah you MUST learn to look where you are going!"

The system works.

EDIT: On looking up "clumsiness" on Google I have found the solution to it. So dear husband, if you are reading this, here is what you must do...

"Animals are another image that helps people become less clumsy. "What is the most graceful animal that you can think of? A cheetah? An eagle?" Dr. Gersten asks. "Imagine yourself as that animal. Feel yourself as that animal. Feel how every muscle in your body works together. Feel the wind in your face as you run or soar through the air in perfect balance with yourself and with nature."

BORN TO BE WI-I-I-I-L-D.......................

2007-08-25T16:05:00.001-07:00

I have absolutely had it with anything to do with veins. Yes it’s that good old time again- IV’s. Or rather not IV’s. Because IV’s require access. And I haven’t got it.

As a result of having a very rubbish chest at the moment, I went up to clinic yesterday to start IV’s. Unfortunately the only appointment they had was at 9.30am which meant leaving the house at 8am. Now anyone who knows me will be aware that me and mornings do NOT mix. In fact I have an extremely poor relationship with anything that involves being alert before 11am. Anyway, having decided that I needed IV’s, they got the port needle in without any problems and after a few hours of administering drugs and collecting four huge carrier bags of drugs and a massive yellow sharps bin, I was on my way…just in time for my brain to begin waking up and saying “Have I missed something?”

Now at this point I should update those who are not familiar with what a port is and in particular, the unique personality of my own one. A port is a small metal device that is buried under the skin on the left side of my chest. It is put in during an operation (which I had in January) and is plumbed into the main vein leading to my heart. Because I have had so many courses of IV’s and blood tests in my life, my veins are pretty much useless and won’t allow any access. However with a port there is easy access to the bloodstream as all that needs to be done is to insert a special gripper needle into it and hey presto, unlimited access! At least that’s the theory…

Mine never read the instruction manual. It never learnt to read full stop. My port is as much use as a chocolate fireguard because it keeps spitting the needle out. Where a needle is meant to stay in position for 2 weeks at a time and be very difficult to remove from the device, mine gets itchy feet within a few hours and decides that holding needles in place is too much like hard work – so gives up. During my last course of IV’s I had about 4 needle changes in the first week, after which my port still didn’t feel it was getting enough attention so decided to get infected for a change. My port was then named Emily. For those of you who know Emily this will make perfect sense. Naughty, attention-seeking, and with a tendency to stamp its feet in protest. I’m talking about my port of course…..

So may be it shouldn’t have surprised me that at 3 am this morning I woke up with an agonising pain that felt like I was being prodded with a red hot poker in my chest. Yes that’s right. Emily had decided that she couldn’t sleep so I should wake up and entertain her. Since I hadn’t done this she had gone all pouty and spat the needle out. Getting up at 3am to remove a port needle and dressing is not my idea of fun. Getting back to sleep after was less so.
I refused to get up early to work out what to do with Emily and slept until 11am, before re-evaluating the situation. As far as I could see, there was no point in spending an entire afternoon driving to Bristol and back to get another needle put in, as more than likely it would be spat back out by the following day. That left two options – either going to my nearest A&E for a venflon or finding out if the local Minor Injuries Unit could insert one. As CF patients are meant to avoid A&E as much as possible due to infection risks (although I guess an exception can be made if one’s leg is hanging off or similar) I decided to try the latter option and rang them up.

Hurrah! It appeared that it would indeed be possible to get the local MIU to put one in for me and even better – it was only a sunny 15 minute drive away. Feeling very pleased with myself we turned up there at 1.30pm and were told the doctor was out on calls but would be back within the hour.

Unfortunately when said doctor arrived I realised that she was in fact one of the GP’s from my village practise….the very worst GP in the history of the Universe. Dr S is middle-aged, miserable and moody. She has the personality of a wet fish and is permanently grumpy. Funnily enough, although the 3 other doctors at the practise have 2-week waiting lists, you can get an appointment with Dr S on the same day, probably within 5 minutes. That’s how good she is. This was going to be great fun….

I was called in by the nurse and walked down the corridor of doom to meet Dr S, who looked me up and down with a scowl.

“I don’t really understand what this is all about but you’d better come in” she mumbled. Good start.

I sat down and explained the whole situation. That I simply needed a venflon inserting until I could see the CF team again on Tuesday to dicuss my port. That I’ve had venflons put in at A&E before when my lines have failed over a weekend, but that my team preferred us not to go into A&E’s if possible due to infection risks.

“Hurrumph” said Dr S with another scowl “Can’t see why, there is no difference between going there and coming here”. Which would have been a sensible retort if it wasn’t for the fact that the MIU is constantly deserted, except for the occasional old lady wandering in – probably for a bit of conversation – and pointed out to Dr S that in comparison to sitting for 4 hours in a very busy A&E this option was much more preferable.

“Sounds ridiculous to me” she snapped. Oh good, this was going well.

Next she told me she didn’t think anyone should have a venflon in for a whole 3 days. Which is intriguing as she’s the first doctor who has ever stated that this was a problem. I managed to convince her that since in the past I had often had them for a week at a time, I doubted it would be an issue.

Then the fun started. Dr S begrudgingly mumbled that she would “give it one try” and brought the sister back in to assist whilst I laid down on the couch. She poked around at my veins, making very doubtful noises and frequent mentions of “scarring” and “it’s going to be difficult” which is always encouraging to the patient I find. May be I should have realised why at this point the sister pointed out that I could “always come back at 6pm when Dr G is on who does this sort of thing regularly”…it was obviously more than a subtle hint, but I didn’t pick up on it and agreed to one try by Dr S.

Next Dr S took out the venflon and tossed it on the bed. I think this was the point I started to realise that her hygiene procedures might not be that good. I had been waiting for her to wash her hands (after all she’d just walked in after spending the last couple of hours on the road) but when she started to unsheath the needle I realised that she had no intention of doing so. With visions of septicaemia flashing before my eyes, I took a deep breath and was impressed to hear myself saying “Would you mind washing your hands first please?”

I think I offended her. She gave a rather indignant snort but couldn’t really argue with it, so shrugged and said “If you want”. She then headed to a nearby sink where upon the sister pointed out to her it was the wrong sink and that she should use the one on the other side of the room with the disinfectant soap. As she was washing her hands the nurse caught my eye and winked and nodded approvingly at me, clearly impressed I had spoken up for myself.

When she returned she picked up the venflon and started peering at it. I think it was at this point that I realised she probably hadn’t seen one for about 3 decades as she wasn’t even sure how it worked. Apparently they had been “all different” when she had last used one and she couldn’t even work out how to put it in. With a lot of guidance from the nurse she decided to go for it. At this point I realised she was about to insert probably the biggest venflon sharp I have ever seen and with my confidence in her abilities was at an all time low, I was on the verge of grabbing my bag and legging it out the door.

It was too late though so I just gritted my teeth and gave her the benefit of my overwhelming doubt. This may have proven foolhardy however because her first attempt backfired when she couldn’t even get it through my skin. She held the weapon up triumphantly (gleaming in the sunshine) and announced “Hmmm, I think this one is blunt” before going in for a second attempt with it.

Now I’m very good with needles and with needle-associated pain. After years of being stabbed repeatedly and having junior doctors doing a botched job of inserting lines into my veins, I’ve developed an ability to mentally detach my arms and let them do their worst. However nothing had prepared me for an attempt by Dr S…

Firstly she missed the vein spectacularly. Secondly she failed to realise this. Thirdly she decided that if she kept pushing as hard as possible into my arm with it, it might just strike gold. I’m surprised the bloody thing didn’t appear out the other side of my wrist.

AAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now most doctors realise when they have missed a vein and retract the sharp immediately, along with profuse apologies. Not Doctor S. She was hanging on with a grim determination, leaning her entire 15 stone bodyweight onto the needle, for some reason apparently believing that my veins were located somewhere near the floor.

My brain quickly registered that she had no intention of finishing her mission and that only I could stop her.

“PLEASE COULD YOU TAKE IT OUT! OUT! TAKE IT OUT! NOW!”

It took a couple of seconds to register but finally she twigged. Oh. Hurting. No vein. Take out needle.

The nurse was by now nearly as terrified as me having witnessed Dr S’s attempts to skewer me to the bed and rapidly grabbed my arm and started pressing on it.

“Hmmm I don’t think I got the vein” Dr S announced.

GIVE THAT WOMAN A PRIZE!!!!

“Don’t worry about the bleeding” she went on “it’s not from your artery”

YOU DON’T SAY?! IT’S NOT FROM ANYTHING RESEMBLING A BLOOD SUPPLY LOVE BECAUSE YOU NEVER GOT NEAR ONE!

“I’ll give it another go when it stops bleeding” announced Dr S.

You what?

I cleared my throat and said, in only a slightly wavering voice, “Errrr how about I come back later when Dr G is here?” in as nonchalant a manner as I could manage. The nurse was standing behind the doctor with a panicked look in her eye and started madly nodding at me and winking. Clearly she was dreading another attempt as much as I was.

“Oh well, OK” said Dr S grumpily as I fled out the door.

At 6.15pm Dr G inserted the venflon in 3 seconds, with barely a flicker of pain. He was clearly a pro and a very nice, friendly one at that. He also appeared to know quite a bit about CF and was very chatty. He checked it flushed ok and sent me off with a smile. What a difference.

It was perfect. Well apart from one thing. I’ve just tried to give my evening dose of drugs. And nothing – NOTHING – can be injected into the venflon. It doesn’t work. It’s packed up before I’ve even used it. I give up.

2007-05-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today I was up at clinic to have my port flushed and pick up some drugs that have proved a bridge too far for my *ahem* crap *ahem* pharmacist to supply. More about him another time...

This was the third port flush that Brad has been attending as part of his learning process for being able to access my port himself at home. We both feel it would be an advantage for him to be able to do this as it means that if we are on holiday he can flush it and also that we don't have to do a 3-hour round-trip to the hospital every 4 weeks. At first I think he found it difficult to get his head round the idea of pushing a two inch steel needle straight down into his wife's chest. I've assured him it hardly hurts but I think its a strange psychological situation to get used to when you are not medically trained!

This appointment helped him quite a bit because the nurse gave him two ports to feel, hold and play with, along with a port needle. One of them was cut in half down the middle which was really good as it enabled us to both see clearly what is inside a port and how the needle needs to hit the metal back plate of the device when it is inserted. I think he can now envisage what he is dealing with under my skin better.

He still watched again today but I've told him that next time he absolutely has to have a go himself. I expect it won't go right the first time (even the nurse missed at first today because my legendary rhino-skin caused the needle to bend in half!) and I am expecting that he won't have anticipated quite how hard he is going to have to push down on the needle to get it through the skin, muscle and silicon centre of the port, but I'm happy to grin and bear it while he gets his confidence and I'm sure in the long run he will be doing it just fine without even thinking about it!

During the procedure one of my consultants came in and told me some good news. Well it may not sound like good news but it is to me...I am seriously anaemic! Why the positive response to this news? Because it seems that I have been anaemic for quite some time, which is exactly what I had suspected for the last 18 months but which I have never been treated for until now. I've struggled with tiredness for a few years but it has been particularly bad for the last 18 months-2 years...so much so that I have become more dependant on my wheelchair, have had to plan each day with meticulous precision so as to ensure I "spend" my meagre allowance of daily energy wisely (e.g. resting all day if I'm going out for the evening etc) and have been generally feeling so utterly exhausted that I can barely function a lot of the time.

About 18 months ago (when I was at my previous CF centre) I tried and tried to get the doctors to take this exhaustion seriously. Unfortunately I think they had already made their mind up that it was all in my head (my history of depression appeared to hang like a cloud over my notes every time they opened them) and after running various tests they as good as said so. Well they said that since the blood tests were all fine there must be a "psychological element" that was causing it, though when I asked what that was (taking into account that I was no longer depressed) they had no suggestions. Winner.

When I tentatively asked if having a Serum Ferritin level of 12 when the normal level is 15-200 could be an issue, I was told that although it was below normal, I didn't need any treatment for it and it was irrelevant. I tried to suggest that at least a trial of iron supplements might be worthwhile, as a final attempt to find a solution, but again was told this was simply not necessary and that actually iron supplements could lead to susceptibility to pseudomonas. Bad idea, please close the door on your way out.

I moved clinic a few months ago and things have been so different that sometimes I feel like crying with relief after visitng the team at my new hospital. They were determined that they were going to find ways of combatting my chronic breathlessness, exhaustion and constant infections. After running some specialised lung function tests my consultant identified that my smaller airways were functioning very poorly and he put me on a new type of inhaler called Spiriva that is usually used in patients with COPD.

Within about a week I noticed a massive difference in my breathlessness. I went from getting hugely out of breath just having a shower (and then collapsing exhausted on the bed and needing help with dressing) to being able to walk round the shops without my wheelchair and without experiencing any noticeable breathlessness. I could have kissed my consultant! The effect wore off a little with time, but I am still so much less breathless than before that it is amazing.

Next on their list of problems was my constant infections . A week after finishing a course of IV's (with minimal results) I would be back heading downhill again. My lungs were also bleeding more and more regularly. After 6 courses of IV's in one year, the team and I decided that an option other than yet more IV's was needed. They decided to try me on nebulised Tazocin, a powerful antibioitc that I am sensitive to but which is not licensed for use in nebulisers as yet (though has been trialled at one other centre before). The difference this has made to me in the last 8 weeks is phenomenal. I haven't needed any IV's or orals and my chest is better than I can remember it being for the last 2 years!

However the one thing that just didn't seem to shift was the exhaustion, barely altering with variations in my chest symptoms. With hindsight I have had the classic symptoms of anaemia - debilitating exhaustion, breathless, looking very pale, flaky nails, a constantly dry mouth and occasional heart palpitations. My team, determined that they would eventually find the cause of my fatigue went back through my recent blood tests results since becoming their patient. When they asked to do some blood tests two weeks ago, I suspected they might be on to something.

Today it turned out my iron levels are skulking around with a miserable expression on their face at a paltry 7ng/ml (the normal scale is usually taken as 15-200 nl/ml in the UK, although one research report concluded iron deficiency was a likely possibility with results below 50ng/ml)). No wonder my poor body has been throwing major strops for a considerable length of time! They can't work out why the levels are so low but I am now popping my iron tablets with gusto and have high hopes of being powered through the ceiling by tomorrow morning with my new-found energy levels. May be a little optimistic, but at least I feel we are finally starting to work out the conundrum of my complicated little system!

2007-05-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

Introducing Sybil!

Apologies for the lack of blogging over the last couple of weeks. My excuse is that I have been spending my time dressed as a slut, being drunk and loud and copulating with old men. Some excuse hey? Even better, Brad has amused himself during this time by showing his bum to 200 people in our local village…which was nice.

May be I ought to explain…..

Three months ago I joined PVADS (Pewsey Vale Amateur Dramatics Society) and auditioned for their modern comedy “Denim” by Jay Saunders. Originally I was cast in an unspeaking role as a member of a girly-type Birthday party. Meanwhile Brad was cast as…a stripper….which made me laugh hysterically and think “Thank god I got away lightly!” whilst feeling highly smug that I didn’t have to do anything so embarrassing.

However at the second rehearsal the Director came up to me with some interesting news. One of the cast had dropped out and he wanted me to play the part of Sybil. SYBIL???? Oh SH*T!!! That will be the Sybil who has a relatively major part as a drunken nymphomaniac and who has to simulate sex with a pissed old man (played by a 73 year old chap from the village)? NOOOOOOO WAY!!!!!!

I very nearly decided there and then that I had never really wanted to be a thespian and that the role was rather too complex for my liking. But then I stopped myself from turning and running out the door by thinking that this was make or break. I have wanted to act my whole life. As a little girl I spent hours writing little plays in my bedroom and then performing them to my gathered family (not easy when you have to play all the parts by yourself and there can only be one of you onstage I can tell you…)

I remember so clearly the day I was told, at the age of 7, that I had been cast as an angel in the Sunday School Nativity play. I was beside myself and ran out to my Mum afterwards on cloud nine, full of thoughts of wearing a white sheet with tinsel in my hair and angel wings. When my Mum gently reminded me that we would be away for Christmas that year, in the exotic location of the United Arab Emirates (my first ever trip abroad) I absolutely wailed and pleaded with her to cancel the holiday!

At secondary school I had auditioned for the annual musical every single year without fail and never even got a non-speaking part. My school was exceptionally high-achieving and many of the girls there had private singing lessons in the lunch-hour. For some reason they never picked musicals with anything more than a small cast so the only people who ever got to take part were those who were very gifted singers and who, presumably, would make the school look extremely prestigious. Every year I would get so excited when the details went up on the notice board of who had got a part and I’d run up the stairs and stand desperately scanning for any sign of my name – but nothing. The let down was terrible.

When I went to my sixth-form school I joined the drama club and auditioned for the first play that they were putting on. You can imagine my amazement when the teacher became slightly overexcited by my audition and immediately cast me in the leading male role (that’s the trouble with all girls schools!). However this was a bit of a shock to the system after having been turned down for so long and I took one look at the pages and pages of lines I would be expected to learn and panicked.

Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, whilst panicking over how to extricate myself from what seemed an impossible task, I was struck down with an appendix abscess which went undiagnosed until I was so ill that I was rushed to hospital with peritonitis and my parents were taken out of the room to be gently told I might not make it through the night.

Still, it got me out of the play nicely….

So anyway, back to the role of Sybil. I knew that if I turned down this opportunity then I could kiss goodbye to any dreams of acting in the future. I made up my mind there and then that I would overcome my natural inhibitions and play this role as well as I possibly could. Even if it did involve being on centre stage drunkenly singing “Happy Birthday to you, Have a shag cos you need too, shag him twice on the sofa and suck him off till he turns blue!” Seriously! Not to mention being grabbed from behind by an old man and oohing and aaahing as if we were at it. Eeeeek!!!!

Actually within the first few rehearsals I felt so at ease with the wonderful bunch of people there that it really didn’t matter anymore and we all laughed along together. The PVADS members are some of the nicest people ever and are a really fun and genuine bunch. They made me feel so welcome and were very understanding about my CF-limitations. Many of them are smokers but once they understood my problems they all agreed amongst themselves that they would only smoke outside and well away from me during rehearsals which I thought was really sweet since I hadn’t directly approached them about it.

Anyway, after 3 months of rehearsals the play finally opened on Thursday and ran for 3 nights. I’ll write more about it in my next blog entry in a few days time....

2007-05-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

I can't stop eating.

No really. I've spent my whole life without an appetite but its been particularly bad over the last 6 months. Until now. Until the time that I have a gorgeous dress to fit into for the Breathing Life Awards. Suddenly I've gone from being someone who pushes all her food round her plate before scraping 3/4 of it to the side, to someone who is asking (yes asking!) for treacle pudding and custard after clearing her plate. My husband has been getting more and more stressed over the last few months, vainly trying to tempt me with something to eat or encourage me to drink my (disgusting) Calogen...and now suddenly he's running down the shop to stock up on ever-diminishing packets of crisps and Haribo.

This evening I was actually hungry an hour before dinner and polished off a bag ofHaribo and a raw carrot (a somewhat random mixture), then ate my dinner, then desert and now some savoury snacks. It's like a TV diet show in reverse. Picture the scene...Gillian McKeith stands before a long trestle table, her face a mixture of delight and revelation. She turns to look at me with a glowing smile. "Emma, just look what you ate in the last week!" The table contains a handful of plates with tiny helpings, a few apples and a bag of salad. You are amazing! You've lost half a stone in the last month! I can't wait to catch up with you week, you're a national inspiration....

Cut to the following week. Only this time Gillian has on her familiar scrawny, smacked-arse face and she's looking at me with a mixture of disgust and shame. The table this time is groaning with food. Bags of Haribo are split open everywhere, their contents spilling over into bowls of crisps and pretels. Snickers bars compete for space with sponge puddings and custard, fried chips are lined up side by side. And standing behind it all is me, wide as a house and wobbling about like a jelly.

Well, I may be exagerating just a teeny bit, but I have actually put on half a stone in the last 6 weeks (since going on nebulised Tazocin which has really helped me chest-wise). It's great! It's amazing! No struggles to drink Calogen, no sticking out ribs, no friction between me and Brad about my diminishing weight. BUT WHY NOW??!!!! I NEED TO FIT IN MY DRESS!!! Isn't that just Sod's Law?!! Ah well, I'm not going to stop eating so if worst comes to the worst I'll just have an excuse to go dress-shopping again hehe. Oh and please do tune in to watch the Breathing Life Awards on Five Life, Saturday 2nd May 2007. I'll be the one doing the impression of a space hopper with legs.....

2007-04-24T01:43:00.000-07:00

Well the lack of blogging on this page is starting to annoy even me now! I'm not sure whether I still have any readers, but I see what happens if I post another entry. I can't believe this is the first post of 2007. I do have some excuse in that during the first week of January my lovely friend Emily was whisked into Harefield Hospital for her long-awaited double lung transplant and at that time I started up a private blog for her that I kept daily for a month. Then our comedy night "Laughter for Life!" took over and there were a few weeks where I was doing the equivalent of working full-time on the preparations. The next few weeks were taken care of with dealing with a bit of a health battle and a bit of burn-out from the comedy night. Which brings us to now..... Ta-Da!!!!!

Anyway, I will try to be a better blogger over the coming months, even if it is short entries. I know there is nothing worse that continually clicking on a blog and finding the same out-of-date entry! I will also try to keep entries shorter as it will be less difficult to keep going (hopefully!). Sadly I can't promise the kind of laugh-a-minute blogging antics of Jayne or Jac, nor the amusing and perceptive delights of Emily so I won't even try but as long as out of a choice between watching paint dry and reading my blog, the latter wins in 90% of cases, then I'll be satisfied!

The other day I was standing in a charity shop examining the jewellery display under the counter. There was a rather large man standing next beside me facing directly towards me, as he chatted to his friend who was serving. As I bent down to look in the glass counter, I noticed the conversation fall silent and felt I was being watched. I suddeny became conscious that I might be providing a rather revealing view of my cleavage, seeing as I was wearing a faily low-cut top. As I straightened up the fat chap decided to speak.

"Cor that was lucky then" he joked, "I thought the top was going to come right off!"

Somewhat stunned by the impudence of this outlandishly rude statement my brain started whirring as to quite how to respond. Should I go all out and slap him (as seen in all the best soap operas)? Should I look around at all the other customers and humiliate him over what he had just dared to say to me? Why was his friend behind the counter just standing there calmly looking back at me? How dare they?!

"When you bent over I thought it was all going to come out!" laughed the fat man.

WELL! I was incensed by this point but also slightly bewildered. I'd never encountered anyone being so blatantly offensive and lecherous, seemingly without a shadow of embaressment or discomfort. The heat was now rising into my cheeks and I was genuinely contemplating the slap approach. Come to think of it, what was my husband doing just standing there looking at me? Why wasn't he jumping to my defence and laying this despicable little man flat out on his back? He should be prtecting my honour, grabbing the man by the scruff of the neck and telling him if he ever made lewd suggestions like that to his wife again, he would not forget it. How dare they all just stand there smiling? How dare they? How.......

But despite my look of incandessant rage and indignation I was lost for words and just glared at him in a scary way before stalking out the shop seething with anger.

"Didn't you just hear what he said Brad?!! What a bloody cheek! And you, just standing there watching and now saying anything. I had a good mind to....."

"He was talking about the water bottle"

"The WHAT???"

"He was talking about the water bottle you were holding in your hand. He was worried the top might come off it when you tipped it upside down as you looked down at the counter".

Oh. Right. Ahem.

Thank god I didn't slap him......

2006-12-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

Wow! Christmas has been and gone for another year and doesn't it disappear quickly compared to all the weeks of build-up?!

We had a lovely Christmas Day (at my parents) and Boxing Day (with Brad's family). I was on IV's this Christmas and was pretty knackered out for most of it, but we managed to adapt the festivities to suit my gnat-sized energy levels and as long as you can adapt things I don't think it really affects the enjoyment of anything. I'm finding these days that even things like sitting up at the table for a long meal is too exhausting, so I had a nap on the sofa after finishing my main course and returned for Xmas pudding (or as Brad described it "that round thing that comes after the turkey"...) Actually I always used to get bored during the "polite after dinner chatting" anyway, so I reckon it works quite well this way! Then I had another rest on the sofa whilst we opened presents, followed by a rest in bed and then Christmas cake woo hoo!

The following day we went up to Brad's family for the traditional "Boxing Day lunch" of cold turkey, gammon, mashed potatoes, pickles, etc followed by trifle. I have finally accepted that I socialise best in a horizontal position ( Oi! You with the mucky mind...you know who you are...) so happily chatted away and opened more presents snuggled under a blanket on the sofa, which worked well because it meant I was able to enjoy more of the day without feeling exhausted.

I got some lovely presents and feel like a very spoilt girly. Pink particularly seemed to dominate a great deal of my presents this year....spot the infouence of a certain Miss Thackray there?! I had pink pyjamas, two pink jumpers, a pink top and some seriously groovy pink stripy socks. One of the jumpers is pink and candy stripes so with my stripy socks I now look like a very happy pink mint humbug!

Today I went to clinic for my "after week 1 of IV's" check-up (must think of a catchier name than that...) and guess what?!! My lung function has reached the dizzy heights of 1.8 litres (48%)!!!! I don't think it has been that level for many years so clearly having become chronically infected with a weird bug is doing wonders for the old lungs WOO HOO!! In fact this time last year it was static at around 39% I think, so I guess that despite the hassle, 14 weeks of IV's this year has done some good YAY!

In my typically odd style, I am actually feeling pretty pants despite this great improvement and am more breathless and generally wiped out these days than I have been in a long while. I do find it frustrating though that no one seems to be able to work out why I am steadily becoming able to do smaller and smaller amounts of anything that vaguely requires any energy, and yet my lung function is doing so well. What's the point of having all that space in my lungs when I have the stamina of a flea? Still, the main thing is that whatever is going on it doesn't appear to be damaging my lungs so thats definitely something to be pleased about and thankful for. And after all, I simply wouldn't be me if anything about me made sense hehe!

After clinic I decided to see what all the fuss was about the sales this year, and we braved Swindon town centre with me safely installed in Fraggle (the wheelchair). I must say I didn't really see that much to get excited about and we seemed to end up coming home with about 15 toilet rolls, 4 kitchen rolls and 3 boxes of tissues all from "99p Land"...how festive! (and no we don't have a paper-product obsession really.....)

I also discovered a new mathematical equation: wheelchair + people madly intent on a post-Xmas shopping bargain = madness and mayhem. Brad doesn't do patience when he is pushing me...after all, he's spent the last few years walking at a snails pace round the shops and having to stop and look interested every 5 seconds to answer questions like "does this go better with that or would you say that needs some shoes like this to work?" so when he can welly it he is going to, crowds of dawdling shoppers or not. This produces a particularly interesting spectacle in shops that insist on ignoring the needs of wheelchair users and pack the aisles full of hanging clothes and debris. Result? Brad's sweeps past leaving a trail of destruction in our path as I desperately apologise to the latest person whose ankles he has broken.

As we crashed our way round the town I considered what a mad idea Xmas shopping sales are anyway. On 24th December people are rushing around buying all sorts of stuff and getting totally stressed out before collapsing in a heap with hundreds of bags and queuing for 2 hours to get out of the car park. Then two days later they all suddenly want to do the exact same thing again, only this time they have to queue for 4 hours, fight their way through rails of mis-sized crap, sustain serious head injurys from flying elbows every 5 seconds and see everything they bought 2 days beforehand at half price.

Now I really must pop into that big Next tomorrow to see if they have those trousers reduced.....

2006-12-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Love and Hugs

Emma xxxxx

2006-12-17T18:13:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a lovely sunny day with bright blue skies. I love winter days like that - it doesn't matter that it's cold, it's just nice and bright with none of the grey drizzle that has returned today! Anyway, we decided to take advantage of this and went with Daisy to the little park nearby. Daisy had a great time letting off steam rushing around playing football with Brad. She managed to eventually puncture the football (that's 3 footballs in 3 days!) but not until she had run around for a good 15 minutes with it.

I love this park because it is always deserted and has great play equipment! Why is it that we all think that when you become an adult you shouldn't play anymore???! I love going on the swings and see saw - so does Brad as you can see from the photos!!!

I'd love to build a huge adult-sized fun park with adult-sized swings, slides, bouncy castles, ball ponds, etc. Why is it seen as "childish" to have do things like that? After all it's great exercise too! At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.........

2006-12-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

So, you’ve read the background to where I was going on Thursday (if you haven’t then you missed the last blog entry and you might be a bit lost!) so this is how the day went…

We left home at 2.00pm to leave plenty of extra time for getting to the studios in East London for the programme in the evening. I had arranged to meet Andy (someone I met through a message board who needs a kidney transplant) at the studios at about 5.15pm. The producer had arranged that we could all wait in the warm in a holding room where there would be drinks…sounded rather nice!

Now, Brad has always maintained that he doesn’t need a Sat Nav and that such things are very wimpish because real men can read a map. And anyway, he’s got me in the car to navigate hasn’t he? Haha! He had printed out the AA routefinder instructions and decided that through the centre of London would be better than going miles out of the way round the M25. So at about 3.30pm we start getting into London and I put on my “Personalised Sat Nav” hat and started reading out instructions.

Now I think that if you asked Brad today whether you should ever attempt to get across London anytime near the rush hour, he would laugh at you very loudly (perhaps a little hysterically actually), given what we had to deal with over the next 3 hours (yes, that’s 3 hours to go 8 miles). Let’s just say it was an exceptionally stressful journey. So much for the Congestion Charge making things wonderfully quiet on the roads in London!! We literally crawled the whole 8 miles, watching the clock get nearer and nearer 5.15pm, then nearer and nearer 6pm, then nearer and nearer 6.30pm (when the doors to the studio would shut) and and there was nothing we could do about it.

It didn’t help that the AA Routefinder is obviously written for people who already know where they are going in central London (yeah that’s logical isn’t it?!) as now and again they would forget to point out a turning or waffle something very ambiguous like “continue straight forward past the statue of Eros and then turn right” when there are two right turns to choose from. As a result we ended up getting lost whilst I desperately wrestled with the A-Z of London to try and find where we were (and somehow wherever we were it was always just on the edge of page 12 which then meant hurridly finding page 35 to continue the route aarrgh!!!!) with a very stressed out Brad saying “Quick! Just tell me where to go!!!” It was a real nightmare and Brad got very stroppy at one point (not like him at all and we had a right laugh about it afterwards!) and told me that if I was going to navigate could I at least do it properly? This then reduced me into fits of giggles which was not really the most helpful contribution as he fought his way blindly round Picadilly Circus!

Afterwards Brad said he was going to make a very large pie when he got home….a humble one and that he would eat it whilst reciting the words “I really do need a Sat Nav, they are such great inventions” ......

I was busy texting with Andy at the studio who was telling us not to worry, that the show wasn’t starting until 7pm and we would make it in time just fine. And finally at 6.35pm we arrived at the studios!! They weren’t what I was expecting at all. The studios were set in something that looked like a vast industrial park with security gates at the entrance (had a battle to get let in and had to sign a million forms first). The buildings all looked like vast warehouses, very unimpressive really! When we got out the car a girl with a clipboard and a walkie talkie came over and was obviously waiting for us. Poor Daisy had been in the car since leaving home so we quickly let her out for a wee and felt very bad for having to put her back in the car and rush off!

The girl with the clipboard quickly took us into one of the “warehouses” and it was just that….a big old empty warehouse! It was pretty cold and gloomy in there with a few old plastic chairs in a far corner. I suddenly realised that this was the “holding area” (I had naively imagine it would be like a “Green Room” haha!) and Andy and Sue’s friend were there waiting for us. We hurridly said hello and the girl with the clipboard was clearly in a panic to get us in the studio (judging by the conversations on her walkie talkie) but I was desperate to use the toilet after nearly 5 hours driving so I had to make her sweat a moment or two longer whilst we went). The toilets were through an old door in the corner of the warehouse, which brought us out in another vast, dark and empty warehouse with a tiny temporary toilet portakabin in it (like they have for outdoor events). I was just rushing in the ladies part when a man stopped me and said “Are there any paper towels left in there?” It was Duncan Bannatyne!!!! All suited up and ready to go on stage!!! I was in such a rush I just glanced inside, told him there weren’t and rushed into a toilet. How bizarre a meeting with one of the UK’s richest men and a TV celebrity hehe!

We rushed back to clipboard girl who was telling the walkie talkie man that yes, she was honestly JUST coming!!! We then all headed off across a dark car park to yet another warehouse. This was the one being used as the studio and there was a temporary stage with a small walkway in the middle, five leather seats at one end of it, and a few tiers of plastic chairs to one side. There were cameras and wires trailing around everywhere and most of the plastic chairs were occupied, but four had been set aside for us. Andy and I sat on the two in the front row and Brad and Sue’s friend sat a few rows behind. It was all much more basic and cramped than I had imagined and the chairs could win the award for the most uncomfortable chairs in history! The floor was concrete and the walls were just bare brickwork. Across the wall behind where the leather seats were positioned (for the millionaire panel) there was a cardboard scene of London, lit up at night. It’s amazing that when this programme is shown on the TV it will look like an impressive studio with a packed audience (there were actually only about 50 people there), overlooking the night time skyline of London!

By now my temperature was starting to go up (I’d had my flu jab the day before and was feeling pretty rough) and I was desperate for a drink, but within minutes of sitting down they were beginning and I was busy taking in what was happening. The 5 millionaires filed in - Duncan Bannatyne (from “Dragon’s Den), Jeffrey Archer, Kanya King (founder of the Mobo awards), Jacquline Gold (founder of the Anne Summers chain) and Simon Jordan (chairman of Crystal Palace Football Club) and stood waiting for their entrances onto the stage. Crikey, I’d hate to be that famous…you’d have to look so perfect all the time! The women looked positively plastic, with their hair, makeup and clothes so perfect and stylish! Then they were filmed taking their seats as the music and commentary rolled and a voice said “Please welcome your host tonight – Richard Madely”!!! Right beside me Richard Madely came and walked onto the makeshift stage! “Right” I thought, “I’m cornering him later!” He has been a great supporter of our Live Life Then Give Life Campaign and is a friend of Emily’s too so I decided I definitely had a chance to get to speak to him at some point!

The filming went on for 3 hours!!! One by one each person or group entered to great applause, gave their pitch and were interrogated by the panel. Some of them were clearly never going to get any money. One guy came in dressed as a Viking and said his career was giving talks about being a Viking but that he needed money for a bigger boat?!! He only lasted 5 minutes and the panel told him he was “sinking fast” and to get going! Another time a woman wearing very odd clothing came in with a cushion and a red sparkly high heeled shoe. She proceeded to put the cushion on the stage and pretended to go to sleep. Everyone was looking around thinking “Errrm….” when she started making the noise of a phone ringing, “woke up” and answered the shoe as if it was a phone receiver! She started pretending to have a conversation with someone on the phone who wanted her to ask the millionaires for some money. Then she put the shoe (sorry the phone) down and said that her “friend” had given up work to be an actress and wanted to take theatre into pubs but had no money. All totally bizarre! Her “friend” was obviously her, which caused even more confusion and she was one of those really annoying “panto-esque actresses” by which I mean that she constantly talked in the most over-exagerated and staged manner and was basically totally irritating. Thankfully the panel clearly agreed with me and sent her packing, but not before I had concluded that Emily would love the pair of shoes (sorry the telephone) if only I could locate the other one!

There were some good pitches too. One woman came on and talked about how her friend had died and her other friend had taken on the twin daughters who had been left orphaned, but that with her own 5 children, her 3 bedroomed house was now so cramped that they needed £14,000 to do a loft extension for the twins to sleep in. She was in floods of tears remembering the friend she had recently lost and Jacqueline Gold went and hugged her and held her hand which was quite sweet. Then her friend (who had taken on the kids) came onstage too and talked to the panel, explaining about how her son sleeps in the garage at the moment with no heating in there etc. The kids were all invited onto the stage too and after some discussion the panel said they definitely wanted to give them the money but that they felt £14,000 wasn’t enough and that they would donate £20,000 so they could treat the kids as well! They were all so happy, it was really nice.

By now two hours had gone by and my seat was giving me terrible backache, plus my temperature was going up more so I now sported beetroot red cheeks! I was dying for a drink and during one of the breaks managed to say to one of the runners that I had a medical condition and was getting dehydrated so they gave me a couple of bottles of water – phew!!! During this break Richard Madely was wandering around looking rather bored so I got up and walked towards him. A runner promptly said I couldn’t approach him, so I said could she give him a message that I was Emily Thackray’s friend. By then he had wandered across the stage to stand right in front of me anyway, so she asked him with me standing there. He clearly couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell him so I just piped up saying “I’m Emily Thackray’s best friend and I have Cystic Fibrosis” HAHAHA!!! Kind of a bizarre introduction but I wasn’t going to leave unless I’d said hello to him so I had to make an instant impact! He is the Patron of the CF Trust and a good friend of Emily’s so it was the quickest way to make an impression!

His face lit up and he seemed really genuinely pleased to chat (I think he was bored anyway waiting around!). He was ever so nice, really relaxed and friendly. He asked me all about my CF, how well I kept, how Emily was and we talked lots about her and lots of stuff like transplantation and things. He asked if I wanted to a photo with him….did I ever?!! Brad hastily found the mobile and panicked as he tried to take the picture and took one that was all blurry so had to ask if he could take another, but Richard was quite happy to pose again. Then Richard said “Let’s see the picture” and Brad couldn’t find it on the phone, so he was fumbling around and panicking with Richard Madely leaning over his shoulder telling him how to use his own mobile because he had gone to pieces haha!

Then the show started up again and Richard said goodbye. Mr Viking Man was on next and then in came Sue and her husband!! Their pitch was brilliant and within minutes I realised that the panel were extremely pro what they were doing. They were “interviewed” for about 15 minutes as the panel discussed the book, looked through it, asked about Zoe, what money they had raised so far, etc. I felt really emotional. I just sat there so proud of what Sue and Richard were doing and thinking “this is going to actually save lives, may be even Emily’s or Oli’s or Peter’s”…I was a bit teary at one point. As all this discussion was taking place, Richard Madely came hurrying over to me and whisperingly asked if we would mind him mentioning mine and Andy's situations when he went up on stage? We said that would be fine!

Then Jacqueline Gold said that she had a printing company and they would print 50,000 of the books for free! WOW!!! The panel discussed things further and asked Sue and John more questions and finally agreed that the book would be made a bit smaller/shorter, Jacqueline would print them for free and the rest of the panel would fund the production of 50,000 DVD’s to go with them!!!! It was brilliant!! Sue and Richard were overwhelmed and both in tears as they hugged all the millionaire panellists. It was so touching to see the total support that they gave the whole issue of organ donation and how important they all felt it was.

The Richard Madely came on to congratulate them and ask how they felt. After this he said “Now we actually have two people in our audience who will need transplants. Emma on the left has Cystic Fibrosis and will need a transplant in a few years time and Andy on the right is waiting for a kidney transplant at the moment. There’s a good chance at the moment that they wouldn’t get these operations but let’s hope that with projects like this we can increase those chances”. The cameraman was by now right by me and Andy and had the camera right in my face where it stayed for about 5 minutes! I think they were hoping to film me in tears or something but by then I was just so excited by what Sue and Richard had achieved!!!

I don’t know if we will be shown on the TV or whether that bit will be cut. Certainly they will cut a lot of stuff since they filmed for over 3 hours for one 50 minute programme! By the time it all finished I was totally shattered and could barely stand up! Andy said to me “Quick, go and ask Kanya King if she will put the Live Life Then Give Life web banner on the Mobo Awards website before she leaves the stage”. I said “I can’t do that!!!” and panicked but he said “Course you can…come on!” and took me over to her. Thankfully he did most of the talking and she said “YES OF COURSE!!!!!!!!” I was stunned!! I hastily fumbled in my bag for a piece of paper and a pen (why is it so much harder to find things when you are panicking?!) and she wrote down her email address and PA’s phone number WOO HOOOO!!!!

Then Sue and Richard came over and we finally all got to meet and hug each other. They are two of the loveliest and most genuine people ever and it was so nice to finally meet in person after lots of emailing and phone calls. They asked if we wanted to join them for something to eat and drink and although I was tired beyond belief I couldn’t miss an opportunity to celebrate something like this, so we all decided to go back to their hotel for a drink and a burger. It was nice to chat to them properly and everyone was on a real adrenaline high.

At 12.30 am Brad and I said we had better head home. Poor Daisy had now been in the car 10 hours apart from two hurried leg stretches! She is such a poppet and so patient and adaptable. We finally arrived home at 3.30am and after all my nebulisers etc I finally fell into bed at 5am. What a day!!!

2006-12-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an amazing day! Utterly exhausting but really good. I will write more about what happened in tomorrow’s blog entry, but here is the background to what I got up to…..

I have been in touch a lot recently with a wonderful woman called Sue Cansdale. Sue’s daughter, Zoe, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in 1998 when she was just 22 years old. Sue and her husband Richard knew that Zoe had wanted to be an organ donor when she died because of a conversation she had with them when she was just 10 years old after watching a TV programme about organ donation. Despite their utter devastation at Zoe’s sudden death, this generous family decided that they would give hope to others. As a result, Zoe’s heart valves saved the lives of two little girls and her corneas restored the sight of a young man of 24. What an incredible legacy.

But Sue and Richard did much more than just this. They decided that more awareness needed to be raised of the issue of organ donation and the miracles it can achieve in helping and saving the lives of others. Believe me, Sue is a woman who once she has made her mind up doesn’t stop at anything! She decided to publish a glossy A4 book called “Transforming Lives”, full of stories and beautiful photographs about the people whose lives are touched by organ donation and transplantation…people who have received transplants, families who have donated their loved one’s organs, surgeons and nurses and many others. To have a look at the book online click on the link in the right hand column ---------------------------------------->

In order to publish this book they needed some funds. So Sue and Richard set up their own charity called “Legacy of Life”. But Sue wasn’t going to sit and wait for money to come in! She began fundraising in earnest (including baking cake after cake to sell last Christmas) and copies of the book started to be produced. However this was a very slow way of raising funds and because they were only able to afford to print small quantities of the books, the costs were high. But as I said before, Sue doesn’t take no for an answer and as she says herself “Time lost is lives lost”.

It therefore came as no surprise when she told me last week that she had just auditioned for a new ITV Show called “Fortune”. The programme is basically very similar to the BBC programme “Dragon’s Den” but with a slight difference. There are 5 millionaires on a panel and they have each donated £200,000 of their own money to go to what they feel are worthwhile causes. Individuals go before the panel and do a one minute “pitch” of their idea before being scrutinised and interrogated at great length by the millionaires. Finally they are told whether they will get the money they need or not – at least 3 of the panel have to want to support the person/venture in order for any money to be passed over.

Sue had travelled to London (from Newcastle) to audition for the show in order to get financial help with printing the “Transforming Lives” book and DVD….and she had got through!!!! In one week she would have to go back to London for the filming of the TV show in front of a studio audience! This opportunity could not have come at a better time as Sue and Richard had just received the backing of the Department of Education for their book to be used in schools for the teaching of the subject “Citizenship”. The book and DVD pack could therefore be placed in every one of the 25,000 secondary schools in the country, as well as all the hospitals/prisons/libraries that Sue had already planned to get it into. All she needed now was the money to do it…£100, 000!!!

So, yesterday I headed off with Brad to drive to the studios in Bow, East London for the show! Sue had arranged that Brad and I and another guy (Andy) who I knew and who needs a kidney transplant, could sit in the audience to watch and she said that if she got chance she would mention that there were people in the audience who needed transplants and we might even get shown on the TV. As I say, it turned out to be one tiring but excellent day…full update tomorrow!

2006-12-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

Spot the Difference?

Brad has always maintained that my CF consultant bears a striking resemblance to my Granny. For this reason he always refers to my CF consultant as "Granny" (not to his face should hasten to add, that might just be slightly bizarre.....)

Now I spent 3 years telling him he was talking rubbish (well actually I always tell him that but I've told him for 3 years on this particular issue).

In order to clear up the matter once and for all, I decided to put them side by side.

I think he may have a point now.

2006-12-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

Well I'm back!!! The flight took several days to recover from but I am now starting to feel a bit more normal again (I use the term very loosely ;o hehe!) I've launched straight in at the deep end with tons of work on the Live Life Then Give Life campaign work with Emily and also extra work with the new charity that I'm a Trustee of called "Gift - The Children's Transplant Charity" (will talk more about that at a later date). So it's all a bit hectic and the holiday seems really distant already, but its good to be back having dosed up on sunshine!

Yesterday I spent the day with Emillllllllllllllyyyy!!! YAY!!! OK, it didn't go quite according to plan as most of the afternoon was spent in A&E (see Emily's blog for more info!) but I did get to ride in an ambulance...though sadly without the blue light flashing. It was a bit of a let down actually. I was expecting something all high tech, full of neon lights, stainless steel surfaces, high-tech equipment and perhaps a pop-up operating theatre....but instead it was very basic and a bit, well, tatty really hehe!

Just a short entry today as I'm somewhat busy. But I read this just now and it really made me smile, so thought I would share it! Enjoy!

This is the transcription of the ACTUAL radio conversation between the British and the Irish off the coast of Kerry, Ireland October 1998.

Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-98.

IRISH: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

BRITISH: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

IRISH: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

BRITISH: This is the Captain of a British Navy Ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

IRISH: Negative. I say again, you will have to divert YOUR course.

BRITISH: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER HMS BRITANNIA! THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. DEMAND YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. I SAY AGAIN, THAT IS 15 DEGREES NORTH OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

IRISH: We are a lighthouse................Your Call.

2006-11-29T10:57:00.000-08:00

Question: Where was this photograph taken? Chester? Chichester? Or Cricklewood?

Nope, none of these. These photos were taken yesterday afternoon in the “sunny” Caribbean!

Only the other day Brad and I were eulogising about the rain out here. You see normally we are more than happy with the kind of tropical rain showers they have here. I’d go so far as to say the rain here can actually be quite enjoyable!! It’s rain done properly. In fact if I were to write an ideal job description for rain, tropical showers would fit the vacancy perfectly.

This is how it works: A bucket of rain comes down for 10 minutes and it’s really dramatic stuff this rain. None of your murky English drizzle for days on end…. The skies go dark, the torrential rain thunders down deafeningly on the roof, mini-floods appear everywhere and sometimes some dramatic thunder and lightingmake an appearance for full effect. Then as abruptly as it started it stops. The sky brightens up, the sun comes out, everything quickly dries and life carries on as if nothing had ever happened. Job done! The plants are watered, the grass stays green and it’s all over and done with in quarter of an hour.

At least that is how it’s been any time we have ever been in the Caribbean. But yesterday it obviously decided that enough was enough and that perhaps the English style of rain has a few advantages. Because yesterday it rained nearly ALL DAY! I don’t think the sun appeared once, the sky was dark grey and it poured down almost non-stop.

The rainy season is supposed to end on 30th November! Perhaps it’s just realised that it’s been slacking on its job description a wee bit too much and that it only has two days to make up the overtime?

Today is our final full day here in Grenada. I never thought I would hear myself say it, but we are now starting to feel ready to come home (and no, it’s not just the rain that has caused this by making us homesick for November weather in the UK!) We have had an amazing month and seen and done so much. But I think we have explored every nook and cranny of the island over the last four weeks and, although it is very beautiful here, it is starting to feel a bit small. I guess that’s not that surprising considering that Grenada is only 21 miles long and 12 miles wide.

I think it is also because we have moved from “desperately-needed-holiday-mode” to “living abroad” mode. Don’t get me wrong….if I could I would always have white sandy beaches, warm seas and a lovely swimming pool available. And sunshine on tap and pretty flowers. But I’m starting to wonder if on their own those things are enough to build a life around day after day forever. If I lived here I would need some kind of project - either studying or working in some capacity or a serious hobby – in order to keep my mind occupied. Brad says he now feels the same too.

If someone had said this to me a month ago I would have thought them crazy! After all, what could be better than a life spent lying on a beach, swimming, seeing the sun each day and relaxing? I guess it’s just another interesting insight that this last month has brought me. I came to the “Spice Isle” and have realised that variety truly is THE spice of life.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could have the ability to have the best bits of the whole world all in one country! You see, the sunshine and warmth here is gorgeous….but not if you need to get something done. It’s fine if you can just lie on a sunbed and keep cooling off in the sea, but if you want to get a job done or run a business or even just go shopping in town, then within a few minutes you are soaked in sweat, exhausted and desperate for a cold shower and feeling awful. And when every day is exactly the same weather wise, you can actually start to fancy a little variety in the seasons (although not the kind of variety of a British winter I hasten to add!)

In an ideal world I guess I’d be a millionaire with a private jet. I’d have houses all over the world and when I felt starved off sunshine, sand and sea then I’d hop off to somewhere exotic for a week or two. If I fancied some culture I’d disappear off to a European city for the weekend. And if I fancied some serious shopping I’d just call up Emily and we’d go and wear out my platinum card (haha!) buying ourselves shoes in Harrods for the weekend. As money would be no problem, I could take on as many projects as I wanted and then employ staff to manage them all when I got bored and wanted to move onto the next one. Like in Grenada, I’d set up a Dog Rescue Centre for a start. Definitelty. Oh and naturally I’d be incredibly brainy and quick-learning, so I could train as a vet one year, a doctor the next, a business analyst the third. And if I didn’t ever use the knowledge then so what? I’d just learn it for the sake of it until I got bored of it! Oh and I’d also learn to do things like surfing and horse-riding and painting and farming (god knows where the latter came from, just humour me….). I’d keep designing houses to live in with pink and green walls and balconies, or bright yellow walls with white fretwork. Then when I was bored of living in one, I’d build another one somewhere else.

And you know what? After all that I might just wake up haha!

2006-11-26T17:46:00.000-08:00

Brad and Roy at "Fish Friday"

Gouyave Fish Friday

Grand Anse Beach

Emma swimming at night!

Last night we went to “Fish Friday” at Gouyave, Grenada’s main fishing town. Every Friday they have a big street “Fiesta” where everyone sets out stalls cooking and selling all different types of cooked fish and other food and drinks. Sometimes there are up to 2000 people at the festival on a Friday night, both locals and visitors to the island. It’s a fantastic event and full of atmosphere, but best of all the food is delicious! There are so many different types of fish and different styles of cooking it…barbequed fish, fried fish, stir fries, fish cakes, everything! There is also every type of fish you can imagine…tuna, red snapper, fried jacks, lobsters, flying fish and loads of others whose names I don’t know! They sell all sorts of food to eat with the fish too, like macaroni pie, fried breadfruit, rice, plantain, green banana, etc. I had fried jacks (about the size of sardines but fried until very crispy and crunchy), macaroni pie and plantains, all washed down with a bottle of cold Carib beer.

We were there with a friend of ours called Roy. Roy runs a little roadside bar near the airport which we like to go to in the evenings. We’ve got to know Roy well over the last three weeks. His bar consists of two wooden tables and a few old chairs and he never has more than two or three people there at a time. He knows them all well and they enjoy stopping for a cold beer or two after work or on their way somewhere in the late evening. We have learnt so much about Grenada from Roy. Grenadians LOVE chatting…it’s probably their main social activity and once the sun goes down everyone comes outside and sits on their front steps or outside the many shack bars, exchanging news and talking about politics, experiences and gossip.

Through chatting to Roy, we have learnt so much about Grenada. We’ve talked at length about what it was like during and after Hurricane Ivan, about the Communist Revolution that took place here in the early 1980’s, about the house he is building for his family (Hurricane Ivan destroyed it a few days after he had bought it but now his family are hoping to move in just before Christmas). He has given us an insight into Grenadian politics and current news stories. We have discussed the forthcoming Cricket World Cup (some matches are being held in Grenada at the new stadium that is currently being completed), the difference between life in the UK and Grenada, agriculture, economies Grenadian culture and the Grenadian outlook and way of living.

Last week we went to Fish Friday with my Mum and Dad as they were over here for a week on holiday. Roy said that he had never managed to get to Fish Friday due to his work commitments (he works full time at the University in charge of maintenance, runs a car hire business with his wife and opens the bar nearly every night too!) He said he would love to go though, so we suggested he come with us when we went back this week. We all had a really good evening, and it was a shame to have to leave early to get back so that Roy could open the bar at 9pm. I could have eaten a lot more fish given a bit more time!

We have had a really nice day today. This afternoon we went to the beach for a few hours and it was as lovely as always. I particularly love the beach at weekends as there is so much more to watch and observe, as so many local people are out enjoying their afternoon in the sun and sea. We spent ages in the sea, swimming and floating about and generally having a lovely relaxing time in the sun. Then we sat on the sand at the edge of where the waves were lapping and I decided we should be kids again and build sandcastles! Why is it that when we become “grown ups” (or even teenagers) we think we have to stop “playing” with things like sand? Wet sand is great fun! I’m sure people walking by thought may have thought we were nuts but I couldn’t have cared less, after all they don’t know what they are missing! I built a rather cool sandcastle and looked up to admire Brad’s industrious work that he had been concentrating on quietly for a few minutes (always a bad sign!). He was looking exceptionally pleased with himself and had a very big, cheeky grin on his face. At that point I realised that he had fashioned NOT a nice innocent sandcastle but two enormous sand “breasts” complete with nipples!! TYPICAL! Blokes eh?! I had to laugh though...and threw lots of sand at him because he deserved it!

I then moved further up the beach and played with the hot white sand that was dry and powdery away from the lapping of the sea. It was so different from the texture of the wet grainy sand and it poured through my fingers and blew away on the breeze. It felt so lovely and hot and fine. I’m definitely going to bring some back with me to remind me of the beach here! I even lay on the hot white sand and enjoyed the feel of it on my skin. When I got up I looked very strange, covered in sand! But I just ran into the sea and washed it all off.

When the sun started to go down we decided to walk along the beach and take some photos. We ended up walking almost the entire crescent of Grand Anse beach, which is a pretty long way! Although my chest is pretty mucky at the moment, it doesn’t seem to make me feel as “ill” as I would in the UK with a similar level of symptoms. I wonder if it’s the climate, the humidity, or being by the sea that has helped with this? We bought a couple of cold bottles of “Ting” from someone on the beach (fizzy grapefruit juice) and as we walked along the beach and back we talked about how much we would love to live here and set up a bar/restaurant or hotel and have a little house here. I love the sorts of conversations you have when you are on holiday somewhere like this. Somehow anything seems possible in the sunshine and bright colours of a tropical island and you get filled with news ideas and possibilities. They are unlikely to be possible, or even practical, but it’s great to imagine and dream and wonder about different things.

We then drove back to the villa and I was so hot by then that even though it was dark, I put on the pool lights and jumped in for a lovely cool refreshing swim. We have bought two objects called “Noodles” which are for use in the water. They are basically long polystyrene tubes that you can wrap round yourself or hold onto and they hold you up in the water, so are great for lying and floating with. I lay floating around the pool and listened to the tree frogs cheeping all around. I love the fact that out here it is NEVER cold!!! Even at 3 am you can get up and sit outside in the garden in a vest top, listening to the sounds and feeling warm! I also saw some fireflies as I floated around the pool, flashing golden lights in the night air.

I so love my swimming pool and will find it so hard to leave behind! My Mum always says I’ve been a “water baby” since a young age and I really do love nothing better than splashing, swimming and floating around in the warm sea or the swimming pool. I also love the freedom it gives me that I don’t get on dry land. In the water I can jump up and down, kick, dance, turn round and round…all with ease due to the support of the water. Doing these things on the land would render me breathless within a few minutes. I also love the feel of being in water and again it brings out the child in me because it’s FUN!!! There’s also nothing better when you are so hot and sticky that you just can’t bear it and then you plunge into cool water!

After a rest in bed for an hour whilst Brad cooked us a delicious supper (chicken in passion fruit sauce, rice and plantains), I had my nebulisers and then we decided to go over to Roy’s for a drink. His friend Peter was there again too and we all chatted away for a couple of hours. We chatted about cricket, football, Peter’s numerous family members in the UK, and also about electricity! Peter is an electrician and it was interesting to hear that in the area where he grew up (just round the corner) they didn’t get electricity until 1985. Also the whole area where we were sitting and (which is now quite developed with shopping malls and main roads) was all just fields of sugar cane back then.

Peter and Roy are planning to come over to England next year as neither of them has ever been (although they have both lived in Canada). I really hope they do come as it would be great to see them and introduce them to the UK in the way they have introduced us to their island.

2006-11-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

So here I am, sitting in my typical bleary morning state eating my breakfast at the table under the shade of the veranda (not often you can write that in November woo hoo!) Now, you’ll no doubt be surprised to hear that I’m not at my most convivial or mentally challenging at this time of the day (no really….) So having blinked a lot and looked blankly around me for a bit, I decided to read the cereal packet. Like you do.

Now the cereal is called “Caribbean Crunch” which the packet reliably informs me is a blend of “Toasted oat cereal with pineapple, banana, raisins and coconut”. Sounds a sensible enough cereal to produce in a country that grows pineapples, bananas and coconuts and that can supply you with more raisins in the supermarket than you can shake a stick at .

However, the interesting thing about this “deliciously toasted selection of freshly milled oats and other tasty ingredients, packed with nutritional goodness for a most nourishing and sustaining breakfast” - which also, incidentally, “puts a new crunchiness into salads” (SALADS?!!!) - is that it is not made in the Caribbean at all. No, no, no no! It’s made in good old Blighty….Crewe to be precise. That centre of Caribbean culture and cuisine no less.

So before this packet of breakfast cereal reaches my breakfast table, it has undergone a complex trans-Atlantic journey. The pineapples, bananas and coconuts have been grown in the Tropics. Then shipped to the UK. Where upon they are stuffed into a pile of oats. And promptly flown back to the Caribbean. Logical really isn’t it?

Now this isn’t the only interesting thing about this cereal (OK, contain your excitement a wee bit longer…..). This is a RESPONSIBLE breakfast cereal as it comes with a health warning. See, you can tell now that it’s made in the UK can’t you? Nothing we like better than a good old health-protecting statement to safeguard unwary cereal-eaters about the perils they may be putting themselves prey to.

See if it were a truly Caribbean cereal there would be no health warning. Or if there was it would be something along the lines of “Don’t be falling no sleep when you be eating dis cereal or de Good Lord may take you to He Kingdom in de sky”. But this is a good old British health warning and reads as follows:

“PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A CRUNCHY PRODUCT. IF IN ANY DOUBT ABOUT THE CONDITION OF YOUR TEETH, PLEASE CONSULT A DENTAL PRACTITIONER”

Followed by additional warnings of: “THIS PACK CONTAINS NUTS AND SEEDS” (would never have guessed when the ingredients include coconut, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds) and “SENSIBLE WARNING: CEREAL MAY BE HOT WHEN REMOVED FROM MICROWAVE – BE CAREFUL!”

It seems to be a peculiarly British thing to feel that we have to cover all possibilities of an accident or mistake being made. Is it because the cereal manufacturer really believes that their elderly customers may forget to put in their false teeth before munching their morning cereal? Is it that they really believe that without the warning you may not realise that a microwave makes things hotter? Or that that someone with a nut allergy may accidently overlook the fact that the word “Coconut” contains “nut” in it? Is it that the cereal manufacturer is scared he will be sued by a toothless, nut allergic twit who mistakes the microwave for the freezer? And anyway, what if said toothless-nut-allergic-twit-who-mistakes-microwave-for-freezer is also illiterate? What then?

Since I’ve been in Grenada I have noticed a stark contrast to the amount of risk that your average Grenadian is exposed to during their lifetime to your average Brit. The other day we went to Annandale Falls which is one of several big waterfalls in the rainforest area of the island’s interior. There is a natural pool here at the bottom of the waterfall, and people love to come and swim here and dive into the cool clean water. It makes a wonderfully refreshing dip after having got very hot and sticky in the heat of the sun.

We were there at a weekend and it was wonderful to see so many people out enjoying their Sunday afternoon. Children ran and jumped into the shallow areas. People had a cooling swim in the middle. And young lads kept trying to outdo each other by diving into the deepest parts from the rocks around the pool. A couple of women sat on some boulders at the edge and one was washing and combing out the others’ hair. People had picnic baskets and sat chatting as they watched what was going on.

I couldn’t help but wonder how these waterfalls and natural pools would have been treated in the UK. I’m sure that at the very least there would have been a contingent of lifeguards and various posters stating rules and regulations….no running, no diving, no petting, no bombing, certainly no hair washing! There would be lockers for valuables and the deeper area would have been cordoned off so that children didn’t accidently swim into it. There would have been opening and closing times, stringent water quality checks and no doubt a hefty entrance fee in order to offset the costs of everything involved.

Now may be this would have been a good thing? Or may be it wouldn’t? I’m not about to become one of those people who spend their time saying “Oh its not like this in Country X…it’s all so much better there”. For example I do think that Grenada would be better off having a drink driving law (at the moment there are none, although you can’t drive very fast on the narrow country roads so it presumably makes accidents less dangerous on the whole). I also think that they should continue to enforce the new seatbelt legislation. And I must admit that coming from the UK, seeing lads diving off high rocks into waterfall pools or riding on the back of trucks with the cool breeze blowing in their hair, does make me quite uneasy.

But perhaps in some cases, being too careful and safeguarding everything too rigidly can remove some of the fun and spontaneity from life? Certainly the fun that was happening that Sunday afternoon at the waterfall would have been different if it had been strictly regulated. And can too many safety regulations also be counterproductive, because when we expect life to be made safe around us by “others in charge” we lose our own instinct to be careful and protective ourselves?

Wow, that was very long and pondering for me at 9am!!! I think I need a lie down now! Actually I’m going to go swimming to cool off because it is very hot already. Don’t worry though, I will be safe enough with my armbands, lifejacket and rubber ring as you just can’t be too careful these days…..”Belt, braces and a piece of string just to be sure” as my Dad would say Haha!

2006-11-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

Paddy McPadderson at the controls of Leprechaun 1

Leprechaun 1 ready for its debut flight

*This is a special post dedicated to my very good and very Irish friend Alan!***

*Newsflash*

The new airline, PaddyAir, was launched at a press conference in Dublin last night. The owner and sole pilot of PaddyAir, Mr Paddy McPadderson, said:

“We be lookin’ forward to bringing de Oirish experience to de air travel in de 21st century. Bejesus.”

PaddyAir will run flights between Dublin and Grenada from tomorrow onwards. The sole aircraft (see attached photo) will run to a flexible schedule, depending on how much alcohol the pilot has drunk the night before and whether or not he can find his map.

Customers can look forward to a uniquely Irish experience during their flight. The traditional airhostesses have been replaced by leprechauns and in flight entertainment will consist of the entire back catalogue of Foster and Allan’s Greatest Hits on the radio.

For those who chose to fly first class, there will be extra perks. The entire cast of “RiverDance” have been drafted in to perform leg-flinging entertainment to the accompaniment of a trio of tin whistles. Guiness will also be served on tap and video screens will show Foster and Allan’s music videos (including squiddlydiddly dancing).

When asked at the press conference why air-conditioning is not available on PaddyAir’s current model of plane, Paddy McPadderson retorted:

“Jesus! Mary mother of God! I’ve never heard the like of it! If they be wantin’ cooler air they can jus’ open de feckin’ winda”

2006-11-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

“There has been only one hurricane in the known history of the island – Janet – which occurred in 1955. We do not expect a repeat visit for another five hundred years or so.”
[Grenada’s main guidebook – printed 2002]

At 3.30pm on September 7, 2004, Hurricane Ivan struck Grenada with full force. It was the worst hurricane in living memory and one which claimed 39 lives. Travelling at 125 mph, it tore through Grenada, leaving behind a wasteland of flattened houses, twisted metal, and splintered wood.

During the 6 hours of hurricane force winds, 90% of homes were damaged or destroyed and 40% were left totally uninhabitable. The entire island lost its electricity connection and drinking water was unavailable for several days. Telephone services were cut and there were shortages of food. The Prime Minister, Keith Mitchell, declared a national disaster.

The storm destroyed schools, churches, the island’s prison and one of the island’s two hospitals. The island's extensive public health system collapsed and people were left without medication. Only two of the island’s 75 primary and secondary schools were left in a useable condition. In the aftermath of the hurricane, widespread looting occurred and troops had to be brought in from surrounding countries to restore order.

The hurricane had sucked up seawater and blown it across the land. As a result the remaining trees and vegetation appeared to be scorched and brown. Inland, the rainforest suffered extensive and severe damage. Half of the trees were left lying on the ground and the other half lost all their leaves.

The economy suffered a devastating setback. 80% of Nutmeg, Cocoa, banana and other agriculture trees were destroyed and 70% of the island’s tourist infrastructure was damaged with hotels left needing extensive repairs and rebuilding.

The following are eye-witness accounts of the hurricane and its aftermath:

“As the wind blew on my roof it sounded like I was in a washing machine. The next thing I remember, I was lying on the floor with the roof on me.”
James

“In the area where I live, as far as my eye can see, every building lost their roof including mine. It all happened so quickly that all one could do was to stay where they were, covering themselves. When my roof disappeared, I went underneath a step in the basement together with my five-year-old daughter, sheltering from the rain underneath a piece of thick canvas. We stayed there for about 2.5 hours as the wind howled and roof tops came tumbling down the hill and crashing into our house.”
Ernest

“When the eye of the storm came, we left the house and went outside. It was very quiet. There was no wind. It felt surreal, as if we were experiencing something extreme and on the edge of human existence. Outside, it was as if a giant had trampled through the area. Trees were flattened and the buildings looked like they had been abandoned years ago and left to ruin. When the wind started up again, the gusts picked up all the loose debris and threw it against the house we were in. This included huge water tanks, big branches and the roof of a neighbouring house.”
Heather

“In Grenada food is desperately short, and serious health problems are imminent due to lack of sanitation and clean water. Distribution of relief is hampered by lack of vehicles, and roads are still impassable.”
Nicola

“Almost all of the house roofs are gone, debris litters the streets and the most prominent sound that you can hear is the sound of chain saws as people try to clear the wreckage. On our way out of town we were stopped by soldiers who wanted to search us for looted materials, they eventually allowed us to continue but warned us that their orders were to arrest people on the streets.”
Leslie

During our time in Grenada we have learnt a great deal about the effects Hurricane Ivan, many of which being felt (and can still be seen) over two years on. My next blog entry will talk more about this........

2006-11-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

PLEASE can someone save my sanity by helping me to understand why I can't post any photos in my blogs suddenly??!!!

I have a blog entry waiting to publish but I need the photos to go with it and for some reason they just won't appear. I have the images hosted at www.imageshack.net and I normally put the direct URL for the photo into the box as requested, after clicking on "insert photo".

Now when I do this, it says the image is being uploaded, then tells me that it HAS been uploaded and I can return to view my blog. But when I do this....there is nothing there!

I have also tried adding photos direct from my computer (by clicking "Browse") but these do not appear either.

Anyone who can help me out here will be richly rewarded with a coconut and a bottle of Carib Beer. Yes, I know its a big prize, but since I've been struggling with this all yesterday evening and this morning, I think it's worth it. Now please form an orderly queue........................

2006-11-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

This blog entry is a copied account of what I wrote this afternoon whilst lying on the beach:

There can be no more relaxing and soul-enhancing ways of spending time than a Saturday afternoon on a tropical beach.

Lying here comfortably on my sunbed, I take in the surroundings and the atmosphere. The waves gently crash on the soft sandy beach – a constant, gentle, and eternal lullaby.

A gentle breeze sways the coconut palms – their fronds gently lifting and dancing in the warm air and dappled sunshine.

Voices and laughter drift through the air – so many people out enjoying their weekend. The local children giggle and shriek as they play in the water and run up the beach, a sound like a bubbling stream of pure joy and happiness.

A group of lads are enjoying their afternoon together. They sing, they shout and they laugh. Now and then they run along the sand before performing back flips and somersaults into the sea.

The leaves of the trees shading me rustle and flutter as the breeze caresses my back.

Round the bay the land curves, a crescent of greenery with little white buildings nestled amidst the rolling hills. The multiple clustered buildings of the town snuggle together, tumbling down towards the harbour.

The blue sky stretches far above. Laughter and voices float across. The sea continues its constant and unchanging melody.

Two beach sellers pass by calling out “Coral! Beautiful coral!” and “T-shirts! Buy some T-shirts!” and quickly they are gone again, moving further off along the beach.

The sun’s rays are becoming longer as the afternoon drifts on. Above me a bird sings his heart out in the tree. The dappled sunshine dances through the broad green leaves and flutters through the fringes of the coconut palms.

The sun begins to set behind the hill and a warm pink light suffuses the surroundings. People still splash about in the gently rolling sea and sit together on the sand. It’s been a great Saturday afternoon.

2006-11-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

I am having a sulk at the behaviour of my laptop. Which I think is totally justified considering it isn't working. Hurrumphh.

I am therefore getting behind at updating my blog which I am not impressed with either, so I am going to have to find someone to fix it in the next couple of days.

In the meantime I've just got a few minutes left in a local internet cafe, so I thought I'd put up a quick post. This place is called "TJ Chillaxinn" and according to the wooden sign outside, you can get an interesting assortment of things here:

Restaurant and Bar
Internet
Massages and Tattoos

The internet room is out the back and is actually quite nice as it has air-conditioning and three computers.

Right, I must go and pick my Mum and Dad up from the airport as their flight will be arriving in 5 minutes YAY!!! I'm so looking forward to seeing them. Shame they couldn't bring Daisy out here too though!

I will leave you with a great quote that I saw yesterday. All the buses here (which are actually minibuses) have names and also usually a quote written across the back windscreen. The one I saw yesterday was called "Real Stable" and had the following quote, which I found pretty meaningful on a lot of levels:

"Each tree of success has roots of stability that run deep"

2006-11-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

Grenadian Car!

Emma, James and Puppy

Town of Sauteurs

Hmmm, I haven’t blogged for four days now and as a result I’m not entirely sure where to begin on catching things up. Do I start from yesterday and work backwards or start from Friday and work forwards? See that’s the trouble with blogs, once you’ve started them you need to maintain them and I find myself entering a total state of blogheadedness…..

“Ooooh, I must take a photo of that for my blog!” (cue instructing Brad to screech to a stop on a blind bend to facilitate photo-taking-ability) or “Oh no! It’s 1 am and I’m knackered and my feel shite but I haven’t blogged about how I went and bought a cheap skirt in a shop today!”

The first photo in this entry was taken during one of these blogphotomoments. I find it amusing to drive around the tiny villages on the island and see cars in various states of decay, just happily residing alongside the road, with plants and climbers and assorted vegetation happily winding around them to make quite an interesting display. I guess there aren’t too many scrapyards on an island this size, so they tend to just become part of the roadside undergrowth. The best one I saw was a Volkswagen Mini Van with no doors, which, as well as taking on the role of artistic vegetative display, was also housing a donkey inside it. Now that’s what I call resourceful!

I’m sure the man standing beside the road was extremely intrigued why these strange tourists would want to stop in the middle of the road and begin photographing a rusty old banger instead of the beautiful countryside….but that’s blogging for you!

There are two things that I enjoy most about travelling. The first is exploring the “true” country, away from the tourist areas, and the other is talking to the people of that country about their lives and their views on things. We spent Friday doing just that and although it was a very long and tiring day, it was well worth it.

We decided to cut right through the middle of the country and go up to the very northern part. If you look at the map above, we are living down in the south-west coast in the area called Lance Aux Epines and we wanted to drive up through St George’s (the capital), go across the centre of the island and up to Sauteurs. This is a distance of approximately 35 miles which we anticipated would take a couple of hours each way. Ha! Not quite!

As I’ve mentioned before, driving in Grenada is very different from driving in the UK, apart from the fact that both countries drive on the left. Apart from in the southwest of the country (near the capital), the roads are very small, narrow, very winding and often very potholed. And that’s the main roads! The biggest problem however is finding the way to where you are going if you are not intimately aquainted with every area of the island. The map is often of little help because there are no signposts letting you know which direction each road is going in, and there are no names on any of the villages that line the way one after the other. So every few minutes we will arrive at another point with four apparently identical roads going off in opposite directions (three will just take you further into the village and only one will take you through the village but you have no way of knowing which one of the four that is) and we will spend 20 minutes taking each one in turn, eventually finding that the first three take us on a 5 minute route that suddenly turns into grass and the final one (sod’s law it always IS the final one!) will get you to the next village along the route, where the process will begin again. Oh and of course you also don’t know which village you are now at as you had no idea what the last village was called, or the one before that, or the one before that……

Usually the easiest solution is to stop and ask people the way as you pass through the villages. There are always plenty of people about…workmen on the roadside, people cutting down vegetation with machetes, people walking home from work or school, and friends sitting on the front porch of their house or in a shack bar chatting together. The only problem with this solution is that you need to be able to make yourself understood and also to understand the response. It’s not normally a problem (after all the national language is English) but in some of the more rural areas, the accent can be very thick and difficult for us to understand, and naturally they have the same difficulty in understanding us. This doesn’t just happen when you ask for directions. Grenada is such a friendly place that people will call out to you as you drive by or stop to share a joke with you through their car window as you pass in the road. Often we just have to smile, nod and laugh along and hope we are making the right noises in the right places!

Because of the difficulties in navigating the route and the time spent going round and round in circles hopelessly lost, as well as the need to stop for calls of nature and food, the journey to the north and back home took us a staggering 8 hours!!!! It was utterly exhausting physically with all that driving, but also mentally since I spent most of that time peering at the map and trying desperately to fathom out where on earth we could be. However we did see so much of the country and learnt so much about the way of life away from the capital city area, that it was definitely educational and worthwhile.

Driving along these roads one passes through a village and then shortly after, another village and so on, all the way. Many of these houses are tiny and built simply of wood, with just a couple of rooms inside. Others are bigger and built of cement blocks. All of them tend to have a front porch facing the road, where people can sit out and watch the world going by as they chat with friends or braid each others hair etc. There is often washing hanging on lines merrily waving in the breeze, or sometimes it is laid out over the bushes around the house to dry in the hot sun.

There are dogs wandering around the houses and roads. Often these dogs will lie in the middle of the road and be reluctant to move! It is very sad to see that many of the dogs are very thin and occasionally limping. I want to take them all home and look after them! We saw two dogs who had obviously recently given birth and the tiny little puppies looked so adorable sitting by the side of the road with an expression of bemusement at the world around them! There are no noticeable breeds of dogs here like there are in the UK. Dogs here seem to belong to people but are not treated as “pets” in the same way as they are at home. They all look quite similar….basically short haired, brownish “Heinz 57” varieties!

As you drive along, you see goats every now and again, tethered to the verge by the road. We also stopped abruptly along one road when faced with a big brown bull in the middle of the road staring at us! Thankfully he didn’t seem to be in the least bit aggressive and after a couple of toots on the horn, he ambled to the side of the road where he was tethered to a rock.

There is a noticeably poorer standard of living when you start driving up into the villages inland and away from the main towns. People still have food and clothing and the children go to school etc, but there are many smaller wooden houses, people are working with machetes to cut down vegetation and in one area we noticed that people were collecting their water from standpipes alongside the roads.

We eventually decided to stop for lunch at another point where we had found ourselves lost and pulled into a bar/restaurant called “Daw’s Café”. Here we were greeted by a really nice guy called Wade who proceeded to cook us some lunch. We were the only people in the place and it consisted of one large room with a single table and a wooden bar. The food was absolutely delicious...chicken cooked over a BBQ, rice, pasta salad and green salad. This was washed down with a fresh fruit punch and the whole lot came to the grand total of £3.50 each!

We finally reached our destination on the north coast…the town of Sauteurs (pronounced “So-tairs”). As with our trip to Grenville, we arrived at school leaving time and one of the busiest times of the day. The town was pretty small and basic, but we wanted to visit a place there called “Carib’s Leap”. This is the edge of a cliff above the town itself where, in 1650, forty Carib warriors threw themelves off into the rocks and angry waters below, rather than surrender to the French who were invading their island. The actual spot was less dramatic than anticipated when we arrived and was now part of a rather unkempt graveyard belonging to the church that is now on this area of land.

After a brief drive around Sauteurs and the north east coast of Grenada, and having taken some photos, we decided to make our way back to the south of the island. We thought that having finally found our way up the route to the north, we would find it easier to get back again….not quite as easy as anticipated, especially since the sun was now going down and there was no light in the car! Having found ourselves going in the wrong direction, we eventually stopped back at Daw’s café again for refreshments and (mainly!) for a desperately needed toilet stop. I think Wade was somewhat surprised to see us back again a few hours since our last visit. We’d told him we would come back soon, but I doubt either of us was expecting it to be that soon!

We went inside and had some drinks and some of the cake he had just taken out of the oven (still warm!). Whilst there we met his two year old son, James, who must have been at nursery when we had stopped off for lunch. James was full of beans and, although we could barely understand what he was saying and he could barely understand us, we had fun playing with him whilst his Dad was in the kitchen. He particularly enjoyed us showing him how to take photos on our camera! Wade’s family have two dogs, one of which is a young puppy. Both were fairly thin and the little puppy looked so cute and sad that I picked him up and spent 20 minutes cuddling him on my lap…he really was adorable!

By now all the light had gone (the sun goes down very quickly here and by 6pm each day it is completely dark) and we had to make our way back the rest of the way with me trying to read the map by the light on my mobile phone! Thankfully we did remember most of the way from here on and the journey back was a bit less stressful that on the way up!

Phew! That was another massive bog entry! I’m not sure whether anyone will actually read all that, but it’s nice for me to have a record of my time here for the future so I’m glad I got it all down in writing. It has been very cloudy all day today, which is a first since we got here but actually makes a nice change! It rained very heavily in the night and a short while ago we had another big downpour, which I guess isn’t too suprising since we are at the end of the rainy season here. It is still nice and bright though, so I’m not complaining!

I’m off to get something to eat for lunch now and may be have a swim later. It is Sunday here, so all the shops are shut and people are at the beach or “liming” with friends (liming means chilling out and spending time together). Sounds like the best way to spend a Sunday to me!

2006-11-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

I

I am sitting indoors at the moment having my nebulisers. It seems even hotter than normal today and its only 10am! I’m also feeling a bit rough today so I’m not looking forward to moving everything over to the apartment in a couple of hours, one of the hottest times of the day! Everything is packed now and ready to go, apart from all the food in the fridge and freezer which will have to come out at the last moment.

The apartment looks nice but it’s very small compared to having the space of a house – just a bedroom, lounge/kitchenette and a bathroom. However it does have the most stunning view of the sea, which I will take some photos of. It is part of the house where the owners of this villa live and we will share their pool and garden. The biggest benefit to it though it that we can have it free! Then after a week there we can move back to this villa for the final two weeks.

Now there aren’t many downsides to being in a tropical country, but there are a few. Many of them take the form of insects! Thankfully Grenada does not have such delights as poisonous spiders or scorpions, but the little pests can still cause trouble and sometimes a fright.

I have just counted my mosquito bites and they now number over 20. The mosquitoes here also seem to have developed the skill of making their bites as large and ITCHY as possible! I seem to be constantly scratching or trying desperately not to scratch. I’ve tried three different natural insect repellents now (I don’t like using the powerful toxic sprays as they are absorbed by the body through the skin). Yesterday we bought a new one that it made on the island and contains essential oils of citronella, eucalyptus, pennyroyal and cedarwood. When the sun went down I stood in the kitchen spraying it non stop all over my legs in an exceptionally liberal fashion.

The first thing I noticed was that Brad seemed to be on the verge of passing out from the fumes. The second thing I noticed was that the spray was an oil and I now looked like a ready-basted chicken. The third thing I noticed was that the oil had spread out in pools around my feet and been walked around the tiled floor, thus rendering it as lethal as an ice-rink. Undeterred, I declared to Brad (once I had resuscitated him) that there was no chance of a mosquito eating ME tonight and went skating of along the floor to sit outside and eat dinner. But guess what? This morning I have another bite right where I had sprayed my foot. I just hope that after eating me the flipping thing had severe indigestion from all the oils…..

I had another encounter with a couple of unpleasant insects on the second evening we were here. Firstly I padded out across the patio in my flipflops to hang a wet swimming towel on the washing line. Suddenly underfoot there was the most enormous SCRUNCH! Thinking I must have stood on one of the little frogs that seem to be everywhere in the evening, I did what any sane and rational woman would do….i.e. panicked, stood on one leg and yelled for Brad to help. However it was not a frog that I had stood on, it was the most spectacular sized cockroach, equipped with antennae about a foot long. At least it had been. Now it was on its back and dead as a doornail. Funny isn’t it, how they say that cockroaches would be the only creatures to survive a nuclear holocaust, and yet at the sight of my flipflops they go all pathetic and die?

About an hour later, and having recovered from this introduction to Grenadian insect life, I went into the kitchen from the bedroom to get a drink. This time I was in bare feet and as I padded across the kitchen I froze as my mind made sense of the fact that there was a long black wiggly thing about a foot long, beside my feet. The fact that it had more legs that you could shake a stick at, hastily informed me that this was either a centipede or a millipede. I guess I could have worked out exactly which it was had I had the inclination to kneel beside him and attempt to count his legs (“9,835….9,836…..9,837….oh shit he’s moved!”). However at that particular moment analysing the mathematical arrangement of the hugewigglything’s legs was very far from my mind.

Having clearly learnt how to deal with such situations from the encounter with the cockroach an hour earlier, I clearly handled this matter in a far more sane and rational manner…..I sped across the kitchen, leapt onto a high bar stool and screamed for Brad at the top of my voice. Brad’s response was something along the lines of “Oooh hello, that’s interesting” at which point I informed him that no, it wasn’t at all interesting, it was quite frankly horrible and scary. So there’s me stood on a barstool being hysterical and making girly sounds like “Ooooooh it’s horrible! It’s horrible!” and there’s Brad with his caveman instinct coming out, trying to protect his over-sensitive woman by encouraging the hugewigglything to climb onto a magazine so he could move it outdoors.

Now I had read that the millipedes on Grenada are harmless but that the centipedes can bite, and are distinguishable because they are segmented. I decided to helpfully inform Brad of this fact (from the safety of my bar stool) and called out “Brad! Brad! It might bite. Is it a centipede or a millipede?” At this point there was a thwack and the reply came back “I’ve no idea but it’s a squashedpede now”.

Sadly I have no photos of centipedes, millipededs or even squashedpedes to delight you with, nor even giant cockroaches or teeny mosquitoes. So you’ll have to make do with the photo of the impressively huge cricket that decided to spend some time indoors with us yesterday evening instead. Enjoy!

2006-11-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

Today we have decided to spend the day chilling out at the villa before we have to pack everything up later, ready to move to the apartment in the morning. I am sitting here on top of the roof terrace, one of my favourite places. The roof terrace is quite large and partly covered by a pergola so it’s nice and shady. There are potted tropical plants around the terrace and bright blue railing surrounding it.

In front of me I have a gorgeous view of the sea, some rooftops of other villas, a huge expanse of sky and a couple of palm trees gently swaying in the breeze. To my left and right are large expanses of green trees and tropical fern leaves growing up from the garden below.

The sky has gone quite overcast above the sea at the moment, though behind me is still bright blue sky and little white fluffy clouds. I think we may have some showers in a minute. I don’t mind the rain at all in Grenada as it’s completely different from in the UK. Here there are short sudden downpours of rain and within a short time the sun is back out and everything quickly dries. Tropical showers are also nice and warm, very different from the rain at home where there may be days of endless gloom and drizzle, not to mention the cold!

The sounds I can hear are the singing of birds, the distant sound of workmen talking and working as they build a new house nearby, and a very occasional car driving up the road. The villa is situated in a quiet, affluent part of the island, and there are quite a lot of ex-pats here, mainly Americans and British. The houses here are mostly large, with good-sized gardens and beautiful sea views. Some of the houses are palatial, but ours is quite small and sweet. I wouldn’t want to be rumbling around in a mansion personally!

There is a noticeable difference in wealth of the inhabitants of the island as you drive around. Here in the area around St George’s (the capital) you find all the hotels, banks, businesses, shopping malls, University, etc. Many of the people here are better off and have big houses. Once you venture away from the south-west corner of the island, you tend to find a more traditional way of life and generally a poorer standard of living.

I had a bit of a sad moment earlier when I was sitting up here on the roof terrace eating my breakfast. I was looking at the view and thinking how much I love it here. Then I got to thinking about how I’ve always wanted to live abroad, ever since I spent a year in South Africa. Sadly I don’t think this is a dream that will ever be realised, at least not somewhere far from home. Whilst I can forget about having CF a lot of the time, it does interfere with wanting to live abroad, especially now that my health is becoming more problematic. If it wasn’t for CF I really do think that Brad and I would both choose to focus our lives on travelling and living abroad.

I also got to thinking about something that has been on my mind since I got here, which is will I ever be able to come back to somewhere like this again? The flight over this time really took it out of me and was the maximum I could possibly have pushed my lungs to. By the time we arrived I had a temperature and my lungs began bleeding, but more than that I was utterly exhausted. For the next couple of days I was so breathless that Brad was even having to help me with tasks like getting dressed. Thankfully I am feeling loads better now, but with having to have oxygen when I fly now and particularly with the impossibility of getting travel insurance, it does make me realise that my ability to travel to places like these may be becoming very difficult. That’s quite a sad thought really at the age of 32.

Anyway, these thoughts only lasted a few moments and when I have them I just think how incredibly lucky I am to be here right now and get on with enjoying the time I am here and making the most of every day in this paradise place. I love the brightness here, the sunshine, the blue skies, the bright colourful flowers, the relaxed way of life, the gorgeous white sand beaches, the people, our swimming pool, everything! Even going food shopping is a fun experience!

I think a lot about Emily while I am here and how sad it is that she can’t experience these things at the moment. When I’m swimming in the pool or the sea, or walking around the town, or seeing new places I think of Emily and how much she would love to be able to do what I’m doing now. It makes me appreciate what I have and am able to enjoy, and also how fortunate I am to be here. And Emily, I know you will be reading this, so just think of what you will be able to do and see and experience once you have those new lungs which you WILL get soon, I promise!

Wow, that was a long blog entry! Whilst I’ve been writing it the grey clouds have moved away and the view in front of me is now of a bright blue sky and a lovely blue sea. There is a beautiful breeze keeping me cool and the pink bourganvillea is gently swaying in the air. I’m off to eat some toast and then jump in the pool to cool off! Byeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2006-11-07T17:07:00.000-08:00

Today we decided to explore some more of Grenada, so headed off along the coast road that winds along the south coast and then up the east side of the island. In Grenada it takes a very long time to travel a fairly short distance because the roads are very narrow and continually twist in and out as they snake along the coast and wind in and out of the hillsides. A lot of the roads further away from the capital of St George’s are also quite rough and potholed, which makes for a rather bumpy ride at times!

The route weaved through one little village after another. These villages usually have a couple of wooden shack mini-marts and bars, a church, sometimes a school and the occasional small business repairing tyres or selling car parts. There are people out walking down the roads, dogs trying to find patches of shade or food, school children playing on their way home, the occasional tethered goat and a gentle trickle of activity as you drive through.

Our destination was Grenville, the main town in the parish of St Andrew’s, the largest producer of Grenada’s main export crops – cocoa, nutmeg and bananas, as well as spices, vegetables, coconuts, fruit and flowers. Last time we visited Grenada (in 1999) we visited the nutmeg station here and had a tour of the factory where the nutmegs and mace (outer covering of a nutmeg that is also used as a spice) are purchased, separated, dried and prepared for shipment.

Grenville (pictured above) is a bustling old town and was particularly busy when we arrived as school had finished for the day, so the roads and pavements were full of schoolchildren. Here all children wear very traditional, smart school uniforms, even the older pupils. The small girls look particularly cute in their little red and white checked dresses with their hair plaited neatly with big white ribbons.

We parked up in the centre of Grenville and had a walk around in the heat of the baking sun. The strangest thing was being the only two white people we saw in all the crowds of people going about their daily lives in the town. There is no problem with safety as everyone is very friendly. It just makes you feel really self-conscious that you can’t blend into the background and that you are so clearly the odd ones out!

We bought some delicious bags of peanuts from a street seller who was roasting them in honey and spices over an open grill. I’ve never tasted peanuts as delicious as those…and at only 20p per bag they were a total bargain too. We also went into quite a few little shops selling a whole variety of items from homewares to clothes to toys. They are all quite dark inside as they have no windows so that the sun is kept out.

I saw some pretty skirts in one shop and we went in to find out how much they were. They were hanging up on the ceiling and the lady had to get a big stick to get down the one I liked. She asked if I’d like to try it on, so I said that would be a good idea, and she took me to a very unique changing room. There was a make-shift wooden door along the back wall of the shop and she opened it up for me to go inside. Once in there I could hardly move…it was smaller than our cupboard at home where we keep the vacuum cleaner! “Good job I’m not on the large size” I thought. There was a mirror in there but due to the fact it was completely dark (apart from the light coming over the top of the door) it was a bit difficult to tell what the skirt looked like, but at least I could tell it fitted before reversing back out of the tiny partition and at £9 it was a bargain too.

By now we were melting in the heat and stopped off at a bar down a side street for a cold drink. It was a typical street bar, with a lino floor, a few wooden tables covered with flowery plastic tablecloths and plastic potted plants on top. It actually seemed hotter than outside as there was no breeze in there, but a couple of ceiling fans slowly rotated, moving the heavy warmth around a bit. A handful of people were watching American Football on the TV, which seems to have quite a big following here. I did try to use the “washroom” but finding that, like the changing room, it had no source of light, I decided that whilst I could just about manage to put a skirt on in complete darkness, I’d rather not try and use a tiny cramped toilet in the same circumstances!

After we got back in the car we tried to find the alternative route back, through the interior rainforest of the country instead of along the coast. However this proved very difficult due to the problems of navigating in Grenada. Having a map is only a certain amount of help on the island because there are no signs anywhere! This means that the roads have no names, there are no signs saying what each village is called, and there are no road signs pointing out which direction you are heading! Add this to the fact that there are no obvious main roads - just lots of narrow windy lanes with varying amounts of potholes – and you can end up hopelessly lost!

In the end, after half an hour of weaving up and down steep tracks, we found our way back to the sea and decided to just stick with going back the way we had come. At least if you keep near the sea you only need to worry about whether it is on your right or your left! After an hour we were back in the capital of St George’s, a distance of about 20 miles. We stopped of at a supermarket for some meat, flour and bread and then headed home for a rest.

Tomorrow we are going to spend the day mainly in the villa relaxing and swimming in the pool, as we will have a busy day on Thursday since we have to move all our stuff to the nearby apartment we are renting for next week. The following week we will be moving back to the villa for the last 2 weeks of our stay here. It’s certainly going to take a bit of work packing up everything as we now have a fridge and cupboards full of food!

It is 8.30pm here and I’m typing this outside on the terrace. The tree frogs are cheeping their hearts out, the mosquitoes are making their regular evening attempts to munch me and I’m going to go and have a swim in the pool now to cool off! Byeeeeeeeeeee!