Let’s start with the “physical” clutter and by that I mean all the medical aids that have been provided and/or bought yet no longer required.
I am fortunate enough to live in a house with large rooms, but that has the disadvantage that the medical professionals with whom I interact and to have (with the best of intentions) provided me with lots of pieces of equipment. Some I use almost every day, but others just sit in a corner with no way to return them easily, as they have no identifiable labels giving details of who it was that provided them.
There are also the eBay purchases that I just can’t get rid of no matter how hard I try – Freecycle, eBay etc.
The motorised wheelchair that is just too small for me and came as an added extra with the electric stair climber that is still in use for my parents house in France where there are both stairs to get into the house and internal stairs.
The manual standing frame that I bought of eBay to try and practice standing, but is hard to operate/quite uncomfortable and since the purchase of my standing wheelchair just before Christmas is simply no longer required.
The lightweight wheelchair that I bought years ago and sits in our shed. At the time it was great, but it doesn’t fold easily and again is simply not required any more.
I could go on, but I think that is quite enough for the physical objects!
To expand the concept there is also the “mental” clutter that is part and parcel of my condition. The sudden depression and uncontrollable crying and feeling useless – but I don’t want to dwell on that as it is self-perpetuating!
Considering my limitations I shouldn’t really complain about my life, because I have been very lucky and still enjoy an awful lot of opportunities that I have. Going to festivals, visiting relatives both in England and France and (although I haven’t done it for a long time) having the opportunity to get out and visit the local Arboretum.
So, let’s just put on a happy face and smile, smile, smile.
Primarily via e-mail – my preference, but otherwise I tend to use the online communication channel preferred by the people with whom I am talking (albeit virtually). There also many different choices available and I tend to use most of them, except where their operation or lack thereof are not available to me because they either have security measures that operate so fast that I just can’t access them in time due to manual dexterity difficulties and the need to use voice dictation software rather than typing on a keyboard.
When I want to engage in a ‘proper’ conversation with those distant from me, including my parents, I use Skype for my personal contacts. It’s just nicer to be able to see them whilst speaking naturally. And then for special occasions I tend to use Zoom as we can group together and it just provides a different “party” feel.
I deliberately restrict posting to Twitter (now X – stupid name) for things like petitions and/or keeping up-to-date with the activities of the various ‘health related’ contacts that I have made since being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and using a wheelchair.
This will be quick as I don’t really have any stunning “crazy business ideas”. Probably the most “crazy” idea that I had and have already done and moved on, was refusing to retire on medical grounds from my previous job and instead setup my own business as an IP attorney having never worked outside the safe environment of an existing large company/organisation and doing everything myself – manager, finances, Patent Attorney and paralegal all rolled into one. Not very interesting but the best I can offer.
This is taken from the “THINK IN DECIMALS” WordPress site and I really am quite jealous, because I would love to go and get my NHS wheelchair augmented by something that was actually comfortable and I could use to push myself around, which would help my rather pathetic arm strength. Leg strength is much less of a problem due to my assisted exercise bike, which I tried to use almost every day.
My parents arrived in the UK on 07 March 2019, to meet up with their bellringing friends in Froom prior to commencing a ‘bellringing tour’ (by coach) to Cardiff and its environs. Normally, this would not be worthy of note except that the coach appeared to be the ideal breeding ground for transmission of an infection that by the end of the tour had managed to lay most of the participants out with a cough, cold and general malaise.
At the end of their visit to the UK, as usual, my darling parents had arranged a couple of days stopover with us in Swindon prior to their return via Portsmouth to catch the ferry back to France (14 March 2019). They arrived at our house during the evening of 12 March, both with snuffles and head cold, had a taste of our dinner and immediately took themselves off to bed. So far, all had gone pretty much as normal except that the following morning my mother just about staggered out of bed to fill us in on the brief details of their trip before returning to bed – with profuse apologies – to join my father, who was still sleeping. We spent the next couple of days having occasional visits from my mother and father, but the remainder of the time they spent in bed snoozing / sleeping etc.. Too much time has passed for me to accurately remember how much of their time was split between seeing us and snuggling back in bed, but it was not the normal split (of that I can be sure). Upon their return to France, the lurgy continued to lay them low for weeks – although, it appeared to end with a prolonged period of coughing.
From our perspective, the first to succumb was Kevin, which is rather surprising considering my illness and propensity to pick up bugs that have rather unpleasant consequences. Now for Kevin it was cough, cold and general malaise (just like my parents), but for me a day later it resulted in a complete body shut down & lack of appetite (I ended up living on a very small intake of drinks) and I simply could not sit properly or stand up on my very wobbly legs. I was almost permanently sleepy and ended up spending days confined to bed. Fortunately, Kevin had kept all the bits for the TV stand that I used to use around my assisted exercise bike and so he was able to rig up the TV at the end of our bed so that I could watch it during my waking hours.
Me in bed & TV
Debra hanging from ‘crane’
Debra leaves the bed
When I say “waking hours”, I really mean it – they could occur at any time, day or night – I didn’t really notice the difference, but thank heavens for Amazon Prime, because it meant that I could watch lots of shows at any time.
Looking back through the e-mail communications at the time between Kevin and my parents, I was ‘out of it’ for a lot longer than I realised. Unfortunately, my calendar backs him up on this and so I can’t really argue with his e-mail comment: “And on the sixth day Deb awoke and rose from her slumber …”. I realise that I am extremely fortunate because my default position (even from when I was a very young child) is – feel unwell … fall asleep.
Apparently, the next day “the crane” (otherwise known as a hoist) wasn’t required and the improvement continued from there. My Mum and Dad apologised profusely for unleashing ‘the lurgy’ on us both, but it seemed to linger longer with them than it did for either of us. As I commented in an e-mail to my mother on 23 March: “I am over worse of the bug and managing to catch up with some of my work, but I still have the occasional coughing fits. Fortunately, as I spend most of my time sitting at my desk, I don’t really notice the “lack of energy”. For the last few days, I have even been able to cycle ‘actively’ for over 60 minutes on the exercise bike, whilst watching TV.” So, my ill spell was sandwiched between two sessions of work. On 11 March, before my parents visit – I had an e-mail exchange with a potential inventor (unfortunately, this came to naught) and as soon as I was able to get back in my office to my computer I was able to catch up with all my work management tasks i.e. finance, IP management database etc. – one of the benefits of working for your own company, from home.
23 March 2019 – the plumbers are back to fit the ‘replacement’, reduced depth sink, although the drainage is not quite working when the sink is at different heights. The plumber came back from lunch with some more bits, which will hopefully rectify things. Hooray, it worked! We now have a sink arrangement that is much more discreet (i.e. doesn’t stick out into the toilet area) and functions perfectly at all various heights.
I know this has been a long hiatus between posts, but … I’ve been through massive changes over the intervening months and only now am beginning to ‘come out of the other side’. The cat (Charlie) – last post – is now well and truly part of the family and as you probably expect, is a bit of a character and incredibly friendly and amendable. As his erstwhile foster carer said: “he’s bomb proof”.
At the end of April, we had a sudden call from Swindon ‘wheelchair services’ saying that they had a late cancellation and therefore could we visit their offices that afternoon – we made the appointment, but after that (and all the intervening time) everything became / has become a bit of a blur and suddenly we were looking at options for a powered wheel chair that I could operate independently using a central control lever (as my arms and hands have been getting progressively weaker). Then, we took a late Easter holiday in France (with my parents), and almost immediately upon return to the UK at the start of May we were off to a full programme at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival (or so we thought). It was tough (largely caused by the difficulty of being able to get me in and out of the car) and we decided to miss quite a few performances – self-preservation being the better part of valour! To conclude quite a stressful few days, what better way to ‘pep yourself up’ than a visit to the solicitors to discuss updating/formalising our wills & discussing ‘living powers of attorney’ – weird I know, but that’s just how we like to do things i.e. have a session sorting things out. Next a visit to the “Complex Spasticity Clinic” in Oxford to discuss the pros and cons of fitting a Baclofen pump. Now for someone who has never been admitted into hospital, the cons definitely seemed to outweigh the pros. So May was really quite challenging – although being pleasantly interrupted at the end, by a visit from an old friend from College, his wife and his daughter (who was greatly enchanted by Charlie).
So now roll on June, which started with another full programme at the Cheltenham Science Festival, which we managed a little better than the Jazz Festival, but still missed a few events, although being sure to attend some old favourites – i.e. FameLab final, Science Festival Variety Night & the “Over Ambitious Demo Challenge”. Oh yes – and then back to “sorting things out”, housewise this time. 1. Visit from our usual plumber to discuss the installation of an ‘accessible bathroom’ (this saga still continues) and 2. Installation of large window on the landing at the top of our stairs. 21st June – “Mercy visit” by my dad (from France), because I have been feeling psychologically, physically & mentally s**t during the whole of the period covered by this post. A major change to occur as a result of the visit to ‘wheelchair services’ was our decision to reallocate the two spare rooms that we each use as offices. If we ended up with a larger wheelchair, which may be less manoeuvrable, we decided that I should take Kevin’s previous office (because of straight line access from our bedroom & only one turn into the bathroom, which could be made in our large-ish open landing area). My dad’s unscheduled, but very useful visit also allowed Kevin to finish the “tiger bamboo” flooring in what was my previously allocated office (hence the purple wall). I magically managed to get a Doctor’s appointment which was then closely followed up by a social care team visit – and June is over, but the “fun” is just about to begin …
My “old” office – now Kevin’s + “Tiger bamboo” flooring
JULY: The senior Occupational Therapist (OT) visits me to have ‘a chat’, we sign the Wills, we travel to NEC Birmingham for “Motability: The Big Event” (which is surprisingly useful/interesting), the following week a mobile Hoist is delivered and we go back to Swindon wheelchair services to see the wheel chair rep, who is visiting and the next day the OT visits again, with a new design of sling (I think) and I complete my final mentoring meeting at Dorcan Academy, just prior to the final “Celebration & Review”. (I’m quite proud of the fact that despite everything that’s been going on, I am only one review meeting down on the recommended schedule). Continuing: I have my first massage session (very relaxing), we have the plumber back for another look/think & right that the end of July, we finally manage to get our wheelchair lift serviced (having waited since the end of last year).
Monster electric wheelchair
And so on to August – it seems like nothing much happened to me really, although my mother had some knee problems & steroid injections into her knees and was also having serious and painful poly … rheumatica problems with her shoulders which also required a course of oral steroids (French style i.e. lots and lots for a long time). On 10 August, I am offered a specialist mid day gym session (with more help available) specifically to try and improve my arm strength and more importantly get my grip much more secure. This is followed up by another mid day gym session on 24 August (2 weeks later – I am supposed to practice in the meantime, but I have to admit that this doesn’t really happen). Toward the end of August, I have another massage appointment (we’ve decided this is a GOOD thing and will try to book appointments each month) and the following day we have a ‘sling assessment appointment’ with the salesman, who claims that he has a van full of slings that will fit just about anyone and after this appointment we all agree (salesman, OT & us) that I will need a large size sling, not because my waist is too big, but because the larger sling fits better under my arms and the longer straps allow the hoist to lift me without danger of my head hitting the crossbar on the hoist. So now we have a mobile Hoist + 2 suitable slings, but Kevin is told that he must NOT use this equipment as it really needs 2 carers (1 to control me dangling at one end and the other to operate the electric lift and move the hoist around). So we’re getting there, just very, very slowly.
SEPTEMBER: The Carpenter arrives to start work on levelling the floor across our upstairs landing and to replace the handrails, Newel posts and spindles around the open stairs. After a bit of misunderstanding (on our part, I’m afraid) he doesn’t do anything about the existing stairs or very wobbly hand rail from the ground floor to the first. However, he comes back just a week later and finishes off the job.
Level first floor & banisters, Newel posts, spindles etc.
In the meantime, I have begun to feel much better, just in time for the “adult social care team” to swing into action. As we are self funding, the ‘lead’ person visits for the financial sign off on Thursday, 13 September and we agree that my first two-person carer visit should start on the following Tuesday (to allow the Carpenter to complete the stairs on Monday). The first visit is OK, except the carers haven’t been told anything about me, nor what they are expected to do i.e. get me up and dressed as quietly as possible and put me in my office, so that Kevin can try to get a little more sleep. (This doesn’t really work when they 1. Ring the doorbell and then 2. Call out “hello” just to let us know that they have arrived). We must have been feeling better, because it was quite funny really and we couldn’t help a little snigger. Also, the dressing bit didn’t go quite as planned – my fault really, as I should have suggested that they put my trousers on whilst I was lying on the bed, before they tried to fit the sling (one with which they were not familiar) to lift me and take me to the bathroom etc. All this meant that their supposed 30 – 45 minute visit actually took them well over one hour. It has to be said that after this first day hiccup, the next 2 days were actually excellent and all finished within 30 to 40 minutes. However, unfortunately after all the shenanigans and waiting, I was much better now and the carers were not really required yet. Still, we had a care plan in place, could be confident that it would work quickly if my condition deteriorated in future and so we decided to cancel the contract for the time being.
I seem to have made it into the midweek gym session now, except that the physio at the therapy centre was going on holiday at the start of October and we had to admit that we also would be busy at the Cheltenham Literature Festival from Friday, 5th October until Saturday, 13th October and then immediately thereafter we were off to France to visit my parents for my mother’s birthday. As with all the previous festivals, we did miss a couple of booked events but those that we did attend were great and we finished with a great show by Marcus Brigstock called “Devil May Care” which was terrific fun and made up for the couple of days that we had to take off after suffering from food poisoning.
I’m not exaggerating (at all), but September and October were not my best and therefore I had absolutely no desire or impetus to write any blog posts – and I’m sure they would not have made interesting reading anyway. I have had major leg spasms and excruciating pain (neuropathic pain? – so I guess it’s not real !) I’ve travelled in wheelchair accessible taxis (not always so accessible in my case, as being 6 foot one seems to cause lots of problems both on entering the taxi – I have to duck – and sitting upright in my wheelchair where my head seems to prop up the roof). I’ve been back and forward to hospital appointments to see physiotherapists & neurologist (in November) and the outcome seems to be that no one really knows what to do – inspires confidence doesn’t it? Anyway, we have been self-medicating on previously prescribed painkillers that reduce inflammation and slowly that seems to be doing the trick. Fingers crossed. Now that’s enough of the medical self-pity, so here is the one bit that did seem to go well-ish in October.
We did make it to some of the gigs we booked at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October – and they were great – or maybe they just seemed great in the context of everything else that was going on. … No, they really were great and I’m so glad that we managed to get out of the house. (Kevin may not be so pleased, as he had to do much of the “heavy lifting”). Although hopefully the “heavy” part is getting less as I also have not felt like eating much. Special mention goes to the sessions by John Sopel (at the start of ‘our’ Festival) and Ewan Davies (at the end-ish of ‘our’ Festival) whose presentations were both very good – the BBC can be proud of their journalists! We also attended some very interesting sessions on “life in the grey zone” and “speeches that shaped the world” both of which were very well done. The session on “who really runs Russia?” was very interesting – and it’s the first time we’ve heard a Cheltenham audience heckle the chairman of a panel (rightly too)! As you’d expect we did so include some “fun” items – so all in all it was very entertaining. [Sorry no pictures of this event.]
So why did my last post say that I was so busy? Well at the end of May was my (and Kevin’s) birthday and for me it was the big half-century ! Therefore, I wanted to do something to celebrate and what better than to try and recreate my 21st birthday when Kevin and I were at Imperial College in London and I was still a happy go lucky student. Now first: On my 21st birthday Kevin, my parents and I got the overnight ferry to Holland and went to Amsterdam (by train) for an Indonesian rijstafel, returning home on the overnight ferry that evening (well we were students and did have to do things on a tight budget!)
Now of course quite a lot has changed in the intervening 39 yrs – I’ve worked (so have more money), I now use a wheelchair (courtesy of MS) and we have a car. The latter is very important, because trains (that we used all those yrs ago) are a bit more difficult to organise now. However, the ferry still runs from Harwich to the Hook of Holland and with the car we could just drive (Kevin really) from Swindon to Harwich and then from the Hook of Holland to Amsterdam. As the picture shows we managed it, had the aforesaid Indonesian rijstafel and a lot more besides. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your age, my/our birthday falls during the Whitsun holidays. This meant that I was never at school during my birthday, but has the downside that travel and holidays in general are more expensive. It also means that the ferry gets booked up very quickly and so plan A had to change immediately – no disabled cabins available for the overnight ferry. Still, we are older now and a little thing like unavailable cabins wasn’t going to stop us. Plan B – take a sedate drive to Harwich, stay overnight in an accessible room at the ferry port and take the day ferry across to the Hook of Holland (having a meal on the way, of course), then drive (Kevin again) from the Hook of Holland to Amsterdam. This should have been easy, but was made a little more complicated by having an out of date satnav and the Dutch authorities building lots of new roads. Anyway, after a short skid via the outskirts of Rotterdam, we eventually made it to the Mövenpick hotel in Amsterdam and met up with my parents that evening. Oh, that’s another thing that’s changed – my parents now live in France and were driving across from the west of France via Belgium to a different hotel in Amsterdam, reasonably close by. Upon meeting up, my parents confirmed that their trip across France and hotel were great BUT their journey around Antwerp had been awful (not good for us to hear, because Antwerp was the next place we were visiting & planned to stay overnight on our way back to their house in France).
Now, booking a hotel when you have a disability and therefore require an accessible room is a bit more difficult than you may think. I picked the Mövenpick hotel in the centre of Amsterdam, because it had an accessible room & en-suite bathroom. It was more expensive than we would normally pay, but I must admit that the accessible bathroom was very good. The hotel is actually built out in the old dock area, which accounts for our rather noisy and changeable neighbours (see pictures). I think this first photograph (of the view from our bedroom window) needs a little more explaining: As I predominantly sleep on my back now, I no longer seem to be able to achieve a full, uninterrupted 9 hours sleep each night. I tend to wake up, Kevin helps me sit up and I spend the next hour or so reading my Kindle. This particular night, I woke up as usual and sat there reading when (around 4 o’clock in the morning) I vaguely became aware of noises outside. Upon looking out of the window in the semi gloom, I was surprised to see that there appeared to be terraced houses opposite that I hadn’t noticed when we first arrived. I went back to sleep for a couple of hours as normal and when waking for the 2nd time Kevin commented that there was a lot of commotion outside. He opened the curtains properly and this was the view that greeted us – A cruise ship ! So after getting dressed and showered, Kevin immediately went outside to take a better look. Upon returning to me in the room, we had lots of jokes about “Costa” cruises and whether the captain had really intended to park to park his large vessel outside our hotel. Needless to say, once I had showered and dressed too, Kevin took me outside and we immediately noticed that our hotel was right beside the cruise ship terminus. We met my parents at the coffee shop right next door to our hotel, where I had a lovely freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast. My parents didn’t want or need anything having already partaken of a rather large hotel breakfast, which was included in the cost of their hotel. Once all together, we set off into Amsterdam city centre via a bridge over the River and we started to have a look around. Neither of my parents had seen an Indonesian restaurant when they had had a quick look upon their arrival the previous day, but we decided to look around and try to locate the flower market (where of my parents’ friend had said that they had found and Indonesian restaurant) … and on the way, I had an apple pancake (another of my fond memories of Holland from yrs ago). That evening, we had sushi in a weird Japanese-style fast food restaurant I’d noticed on our travels that was wheelchair accessible (unlike lots of the traditional restaurants, which were both narrow, all and had steps up to the door – no change there then!) Anyway, as can be seen from the photograph at the beginning of this post – we did find a lovely, accessible Indonesian restaurant and I got my Indonesian rijstafel. The morning that we were leaving Amsterdam (and my parents) Kevin and I went into a cafe in the Information Centre just opposite the Grand Central Station. The cafe was downstairs, but there was a lift and we decided to stop for a drink and lunch whilst waiting to meet my parents. They arrived and also decided to have a drink/look at the menu, where my mother saw the item “Bitterballen” which she decided to order – another fond food memory that we had enjoyed as a family many yrs ago. (Therefore, completely unintentionally, I had appeared to ‘tick off’ 3 items from my imaginary bucket list.)
Next, Kevin and I made the journey to Antwerp, which as my parents’ had predicted was a nightmare journey – roadworks everywhere! Our hotel was right in the centre of Antwerp and once we had managed to negotiate all the major disruptions, we finally made it to the hotel … and had to have a lie down to recover from what was a comparatively short hop. No pictures of Antwerp, but as you can probably imagine the combination of major reconstruction/building works, removal of almost all dropped curbs and cobbles made our investigations of Antwerp painful for me (in the wheelchair) and extremely tiring for Kevin (trying to manoeuvre the wheelchair over rubble/unmarried pavements etc.) In summary, Antwerp may be lovely in a few yrs time but not at the moment and especially not when trying to get around with a wheelchair or similar. Round 2 finished and onto the round 3, edging ever more slowly towards France.
Round 3 – Mons. Now Mons was lovely and probably had undergone similar building works to Antwerp but a few yrs earlier i.e. a view of what Antwerp may become in a few yrs time. The hotel was lovely and interesting, but again there were lots of cobbles and this time the town was located on a Hill – oh what fun!
And there’s really not much more to say – upon leaving the hotel in Mons, we started on the long drive across France to my parents’ house in Normandy. It had been a fun week away and we were now ready for the final ferry trip home (after a few days recuperating in France) via St. Malo … and yes a bit more food !
Sorry for the dearth of posts once again, but I have been doing lots – really!! So now I’m afraid that this will have to be a consolidated post again and also you will have to excuse my definition of a weekend, which includes the preceding Friday too (on both weekends).
Friday, 22 April 2016 we had booked an ‘advice surgery’ appointment with our local MP to discuss our issues with moving house and the implications caused by SDLT announced in the recent 2016 budget. Hardly something to look forward to, but I have to admit that I did look forward to it and it was ‘FUN’ in a rather perverse way. It was raining at the time of our appointment and the MP was running a little late, so we had to wait under the overhanging ‘shop front’, which was fortunately just wide enough to accommodate my wheelchair if I sat parallel to the window. While we were waiting, we noticed several parking spaces being vacated opposite the MP’s office and so Kevin went off to collect the car to be closer in case it started raining even harder at the end of our meeting. Eventually the previous meeting ended and the MP himself came out to greet me, apologising profusely that our appointment was late. He wheeled me into the office preceding all the while to refer to me as ‘sir’ – not a good start for him and in accordance with my ‘evil streak’, of course I didn’t make any admission of the fact that I was actually the ‘Debra Smith’, who had booked the appointment and therefore was not a ‘sir’. Once inside the warmth of the office and upon his observation to his assistant that we were “just waiting for Debra Smith, who was currently moving the car”, I felt it only fair to say that in fact I was Debra Smith and it was my partner who was moving the car. (Not the ideal way to start a meeting in my book, but that’s the reason that I found it ‘fun’ and quite liberating really!) So, we had the meeting, said our piece including pointing out how simply the draft bill could have been written to exclude those people unintentionally (?) hit by SDLT despite having no desire to own a second home or buy to let property, but requiring modifications to their new property before they could move in. For us, we need a lift installed, which has a 6 to 8 week lead time and we did point out that SDLT meant that we were having to take out a loan (for which we pay interest + set-up fees) just to provide HMRC with an interest-free loan which we knew they were required to repay, supposedly within 14 days. We’ll see! Having worked for the MOD (civil service) in the past, I commented that unless HMRC were planning a major recruitment drive, I thought this was highly unlikely! The MP tended to agree.
Meal with Kevin’s family
Valerie & Maria
Saturday, 23 April 2016: Unusually, we drove into West London (Cheam to be exact) to meet up for dinner with Kevin’s parents, his sister, aunt and eldest cousin. This was a special opportunity because neither Kevin nor I had seen his aunt since she visited us at our basement flat in Chelsea (and that was years ago!). This is because both his aunt Valerie and cousin Maria live in Majorca, Spain and were over for a couple of days because his cousin had meetings in London. I have never met his cousin Maria before, but she is almost the same age as me (she was born in January and I in May of the same year). I thoroughly enjoyed myself, which undoubtedly meant that I was being my usual, extrovert and ‘naughty’ self. (Maria is the one who described to me as ‘naughty’ and she also said something in Spanish which neither she nor her mother were able to translate and I speak no Spanish – however, they assured me that it was complimentary! Mmm.)
Now spin forward to the following weekend – Friday, 29 April 2016. The Friday started fairly inauspiciously with me having to go to the hospital for two eye appointments, the first a visual field test (awful – me having to transfer from my stable wheelchair to a very unstable/freely rotating ordinarily chair with no arms – it was terrifying!). This was followed up by the usual orthoptic appointment where the findings were much the same as before, but this time were repeated with my new distance and reading glasses. Conclusion: Do nothing, but repeat appointment in 3 months time. I’m really beginning to wonder if there is any point in these regular appointments as nothing seems to result and I really find them quite stressful. Fortunately, on this occasion after an awful start of the day I knew we were going to see our first jazz concert at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival that evening. We saw Penguin Cafe (lead = son of the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra), which everyone had told me was great, including my father and they were quite right!
Penguin Cafe
Saturday, 30 April 2016 we knew was going to be tough as we had booked to see five concerts starting at 12.00 hrs with the Trondheim Jazz exchange (group 2 were excellent and really different – it made you feel a bit sorry for groups 1 and 3) and ending with ‘the Printmakers’ at the Parabola Arts Centre (Cheltenham Ladies College), my favourite venue, at 9.00 p.m. It was a really enjoyable, but very tiring day, not helped by a mix-up in booking to eat at Pizza Express, which left us very little time to change venues and eat at Ask Italian. In fact, we had to slip out early from every one of the last 3 concerts, just to give us time to scurry between venues.
Zoe Rahmen & Courtney Pine
Courtney Pine
Fortunately, Sunday, 01 May 2016 was a much more relaxed affair, with us managing to have a lie in as our concerts (only 2 of them this time) didn’t start until the afternoon / early evening. As the weather wasn’t too good and I didn’t really want to eat outside as I was cold, we went to Ask Italian again for an evening meal which was much lighter, more relaxed and altogether more enjoyable than the previous evening. And that’s where it ends … Our Cheltenham Jazz Festival was over for 2016 and now we just had to wait until early June, when we had lots and lots of tickets for the Cheltenham Science Festival. Hopefully, our rather over heavy schedule on the Saturday will allow us to plan things a little more successfully – although looking at the calendar, every day seems to be a ‘heavy schedule’ at the Science Festival, so much so that on occasion I have no idea when we are going to make time to eat!
bibbysmith 