Learning To Drive, Lorries and First Cars

I was learning to drive at the time I went off to work as a Student A.S.M. at the Everyman Theatre in 1969 (details of which are described fairly fully in an earlier blog post.) During the season break I returned home and did my driving test in Bedford but failed miserably. Not keeping up with the traffic and failing to turn either right or left when I should have done were the reasons for the failure. On returning to Cheltenham I continued with some more driving lessons and then passed successfully. My parents bought me my first car, a Ford Anglia which came in two shades of green and cost the princely sum of £75. Amazing when you think about it, but I suppose in 1969 with amount people earned per week, that was probably quite a lot of money. I think my first proper wage was somewhere in the region of £10 per week. The cost of a gallon of petrol would probably have been in the region of 30p. That little Anglia, christened Henrietta, got me about quite successfully. It had one peculiarity. When it rained and you needed to use the windscreen wipers, they went fast when you drove slowly and slowed down whenever you drove fast. Don't ask me why. Just the way the car operated. So, if it was raining and you were driving up a hill and in a low gear, the wipers sped up. Going down the other side of the hill and you went a good deal faster, they slowed down. 

It took me a good deal of time to pluck up courage to go off and drive on my own, probably because when you learn to drive you always have someone in the driving seat next to you. When you first learn to drive on the public highway, it takes some time to get used to having cars coming towards you, even if they are on he opposite side of the road. When I did eventually get used to driving myself then there was no problem. That little car lasted a few years. I had it when I worked at Colchester Rep, then Midlands Arts Centre and drove me up to Liverpool. I think that was the first time I'd driven on a motorway. At that time you had to drive through Birmingham because Spaghetti Junction hadn't been opened then so to get from the M1 to the M6 you had to negotiate the centre of Birmingham. It seems so simple now when driving north. When I went to work at Greenwich I had to drive into the centre of London, after one of the shows we did, because I had my own car, it was decided that I could use it to return some props to the suppliers around Covent Garden. I'd never driven into the centre of London before and had to go round Marble Arch during rush-hour which was not something I had ever contemplated doing before (and, frankly, don't really want to do now, as it happens.) I think I just more or less shut my eyes and just went for it (metaphorically, not really, you understand.) I do remember once when I worked at the theatre in Watford having to drive a large lorry into central London with a load of furniture on the back, including a piano. Unfortunately this lorry had a fault. You could only turn off the engine by stalling it. I went with another A.S.M. in pouring rain and we got lost in Covent Garden and went the wrong way down a one-way street and ended up having to reverse out, which wasn't something I wouldn't wish to repeat.

Driving Rain and Hale

2.18 p.m. The sky went very dark. It's almost like early evening, and certainly not early afternoon. The clouds have been building up over Milton Keynes for the past hour or so. Very black and forbidding, to say the least. It could only lead to one thing, and a few minutes ago there was a very powerful rainstorm. It lasted for about thirty seconds. Looked to me as if it was hale, as I stood near the sink washing up. I think if you'd been out in it you'd have found it quite difficult standing up straight. Stinging hale as it looked like there was a certain amount of ice particles mixed in with the rain. Water rushing down the road outside, almost like a river, a torrent. It was sunny and quite pleasant and almost spring-like earlier this morning, but the temperature dropped a few degrees as the clouds built up. It's still raining as I write this, but the actual hale storm has abated. Still dark though. 

Morning Swim

As Carol is on half-term this week we decided to make the best use of our gym membership and so went to D.W. just before 9 a.m. to have a swim this morning. It was virtually empty, apart from one woman swimming up and down and making quite a noise about it. I did around 20 lengths of the pool and then went in the steam room for 5-10 minutes and we then both went in the jacuzzi for 15 minutes. Both very chilled out and relaxed by the time we left. A good hour or so there. Next we drove to M.K.C.C (Milton Keynes Christian Centre) and had coffee in the coffee shop, Strudwick's, and ordered panninis (cheese and ham) which were really tasty. Considering we hadn't had breakfast which, on a school day we have at 6.15, meant we were quite hungry after the swimming session. Good value and well worth a visit. Really surprised how busy it was in there.

The sun has been out most of the day. Certainly makes  change from the awful weather we've been having lately. Good that there's no wind as it was getting quite scary. Part of the roof of the Xcape centre was blown off a few days ago. No real signs of wind-damage as compared to other parts of the country as seen on television news, but it has been a bit scary, what with trees being torn up and crashing to to cars and power lines. We haven't been out much in the car apart from going to Morrisons for shopping on Saturday morning.

Still Raining

Considering the flooding in other parts of the country at the moment, particularly along the River Thames near Chertsey and Staines and in the Somerset Levels, we shouldn't complain here in Milton Keynes about flooding. We have had very little, although there has been a considerable amount around Newport Pagnall and Olney. As I sit and write this I can see out of the window from the lounge and the rain is falling as hard and fast as ever, some running down the window. The garden is like a quagmire. Whenever the dogs go outside they come back caked in mud. Neither of them wants to stay outside for long, and who can really blame them? The fence is looking very unstable. Along the right hand side of the garden an entire section of the fence was blown over a couple of weeks ago. We managed to right it and prop it up as best we could and put some old garden chairs against it and it seemed to survive in this condition for a few weeks, but it came down only a couple of days ago with an almighty crash which I heard when I was reading. This fence-section is now in such a poor state of repair that there is really no point in attempting to right it again. The upright planking has come adrift from the cross-pieces which hold it together. It, along with the remainder of the fence, is in a very sorry state and I predict that a further strong wind will see it completely disintegrate. Alfie has been tempted on several occasions to wander through the gap in the fence whenever he goes into the garden, but I think he now knows that he must stay in the garden and not go through the gap. We have all manner of items propped up against the fence in an attempt to either shore it up or plug holes in it. Having said all that about rain, it is still relatively mild. There have been days when we've been out to the car first thing in the morning and discovered the windscreen has a layer of ice on it, but those days have been few and far between. I drove to Waitrose this morning and saw primroses had bloomed along the side of Chaffron Way. Considering we are barely halfway through February it seems very early to see signs of flowers blooming. Definitely a good deal milder than this time las year when we had a very long spell of snow and ice.

Workmen are currently working along the road from this house with a shredder into which they are putting cuttings from bushes and trees. It had got very overgrown along some of the paths around this estate so it was good to see this work being carried out. A lot of the trees along the inner ring road of the estate has been cleared and it is now much tidier and clearer. A lot of the trees along the Redways and Gridroads have been cleared and i must say it looks very neat and tidy.

Calmer Weather

Well, today is a good deal calmer on the weather-front, thank goodness. The sun is out and it's almost spring-like. The wind and rain of the past few days was beginning to get very wearing. The wind particularly around here was very strong and there was the possibility that the rest of the fence was going to be torn down.

No word as regards a landlord visitation. The house is exceptionally clean and tidy and will remain so. We don't expect them to do an inspection now. If they were coming on Saturday then they would have to inform us at least a week in advance so, as today is Thursday, it's too late for them to visit now. They did the same a year or two ago, said they were going to inspect the house and on the arranged day they didn't appear. 

I have had a refund of my money from Milton Keynes Arts Centre for the cancelled creative writing course. I had to ring up just to find out what was going on. Hopefully the course will be back on in April. Just a shame it was cancelled when it was.

Undue Care and Attention

Carol has to do quite a lot of different things besides merely teaching at Milton Keynes Academy. One of these things is to visit the children who go on work experience at various places in and around Milton Keynes. Just to check up on their progress, whether it is good or not so good. I have been with her on several of these visits, although I cannot always go in to the places and have to wait outside in the car. As I've described in other posts on here, we don't exactly excel at navigation, and invariably get lost when looking for places we visit or when we go on holiday. She had three visits yesterday, two in the morning and another in the afternoon. The two morning ones where in Bletchley. Some of the places were near where I used to have calls when I worked for Guardian Homecare. We got to the first one and it was pouring with rain and quite windy (as it is today.) She went into the school and I sat in the car (these visits generally take no more than 20 minutes at the most.) I spent some of my time setting up my new Nokia mobile phone to be able to use Facebook and email, which has taken some time and effort and they now work well enough on this new mobile. As I sat in the car a car drew up and parked across the road from me. The driver, a woman, left the car with the windscreen wipers on as they kept flicking back and forth. This seemed a bit odd to me, because it would have meant not only that the engine was running (I presume) but also that the keys were still in the ignition. She was gone around five minutes and returned to the car with a child she had collected (probably she was taking the child to an appointment or something, the doctor or dentist, or else the child was sick and was going home.) But they got into the car which was unlocked and the she drove away without stopping at the road junction to check if any traffic was coming and drove in the middle of the road. What a driver! She left the car open and so could be stolen and then drove in a somewhat reckless manner in the middle of the road and not checking for traffic at the road junction/crossing! How on earth some people manage to get away without having their cars stolen or without having an accident I'll never know. Did she not realize that she was putting herself and her child at risk?

Grumpy Kleeneze Man

I had to write this on a post. I decided on Monday morning to have a bath. As one does. The house is empty. It's quiet. Nice to have a nice hot bath. We got some nice bath foam in Sainsbury's the other day. It take quite a while for the bath to fill up as the gas boiler only runs when you turn the hot tap on. A relatively ancient system. You have to run the hot tap for a minute or two before it runs hot and then hot enough for a relatively warm bath and some time before the water-level is high enough before I actually get in. 

A couple of days ago we had the latest Kleeneze catalogue shoved through the door. I didn't bother to look at it, because, to be honest, I can't see the point of ordering anything as most of what they sell you can buy elsewhere, such as Asda, Sainsbury or Tesco (or any number of similar outlets.) and they also have a website so if I was desperate for a gadget to catch spiders in, or a thing for de-fluffing the stair carpet or getting the dust out from behind  a radiator with a special brush, I might be inclined to by it on-line or go to a shop to buy such an item. Not that over-awed by their stuff at the best of times so why bother. I know if you get these confounded catalogues you have no choice but to put them outside where the agent can retrieve them when they call back. Not as if the things are actually wanted. Just another load of stuff that gets shoved through the letter box along with leaflets for pizza deliveries, estate agencies telling you they can sell your house or double-glazing companies. So, I had it ready where I could find it for when the agent came back and was likely to knock on the door and demand the thing, so it's a good idea to have it where you can find it and not be looking around to retrieve the confounded thing. 

Well, to get to the point of the story and the connection with my bath . . .  . cut to the chase and so on . . . I was waiting incidentally for a parcel to arrive from Amazon. Carol had ordered a book on teaching psychology or something and so it was actually quite an important parcel so I was keeping one ear open, as they say, for the merry knock on the door by an employee of Royal Mail. So, as I settled down to have a rather pleasant soak in the bath, there was a somewhat angry-sounding knock on the door. At first I just ignored it, but when it was heard again I had no option but to respond. It would mean getting out of the bath and drying myself and then finding my clothes and then going downstairs to answer the door. So, instead, I made the decision to get out of the bath and open the window and calling down to the, as yet, unseen person at the door.  Well, I had no clothes on (!) but my modesty was well hidden as I lent out of the open window. As I peered out I couldn't see directly below the window as there is a porch which has a roof which hid the person below. I shouted down, believing the person pounding on the door to be a postman, as I expected the Amazon parcel to be in the process of being delivered and that the postman wanted to hand it over as it was unlikely to fit through the letter-box. So I said 'can you put it in the bin-cupboard?' which is immediately next to the front door and the usual place for items which won't fit through the letter-box if we are out when they arrive. But it wasn't the postman. Instead, a face turned up to me, of a somewhat grumpy gentleman who was obviously a Kleeneze agent. He shouted 'leave the catalogue out for me by Thursday!' and walked off in something of a huff. Not exactly the sort of customer-service I would expect from someone I was likely to buy something off. More likely put me off and not bother. So I completed my bath, the still and peace of the morning somewhat ruined by a grumpy old git.

This whole episode puts me in mind of the B.B.C. Television sitcom "One Foot In The Grave" as the grumpy old Kleeneze man makes me think of the character in it played by Richard Wilson, Victor Meldew, who was just as grumpy and bad-tempered as the man I had the misfortune to come into contact on the occasion of that morning a few days ago.

I have now put the wretched Kleeneze catalogue out on the doorstep. It is in a plastic bag which is supposed to keep it dry if left out in the rain. It is there for grumpy old man to collect when he returns on Thursday. Sorry to say, if he treats all his customers in the same way as me he won't get many sales. Actually, next time one of their catalogues is thrust through the letter box I think I'm more inclined to throw it out with the recycling as it has put me off Kleeneze altogether. I shall now make a point of NOT buying anything from the aforementioned Kleeneze catalogue if and indeed, when, it is shoved through our letterbox. The stuff inside it is generally not up to much anyway, and certainly if he man who runs the thing in this area is so rude and bloody-minded he can keep his rubbishy catalogue and all it contains if all he's going to be is miserable and grumpy.

'Thousands More to be prescribed statins in new NICE guidelines'

BBC Breakfast television news this morning had an item about NICE's  (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) recommendations that more people should be prescribed statins to reduce cholesterol levels in their blood.

The following is a quote as it appears on the NICE website:

'Thousands more people could be prescribed statins to help lower cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, under draft guidance.'

'In an update to the existing guideline on lipid modification, NICE is proposing that the threshold be halved for offering statins to people to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD), the cause of 1 in 3 of all deaths in the UK.'

'Currently, only people with a 20 per cent or greater 10-year risk of developing CVD are offered statins. Draft guidance now recommends offering statins to people who have a 10 per cent or greater 10-year risk of developing CVD.'

'As many as 7 million people in the UK are currently believed to take statins, at an estimated annual cost of £450 million.'

'GPs should estimate the level of risk among their patients using the QRISK2 assessment tool and measurements including whether or not they smoke, their cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and body mass index. The calculator then provides a percentage risk of developing CVD in the next 10 years.'

'NICE had previously recommended the US Framingham risk tool before withdrawing advice about which risk assessment tool to use in February 2010. New evidence has suggested that QRISK2 is a more accurate CVD risk tool particularly among ethnic populations.'

'Patients with type 2 diabetes should, however, have their risk assessed using the UKPDS risk tool.'

'NICE recommends that GPs start statin treatment for the primary prevention of CVD with atorvastatin 20 mg. Patients with established CVD, type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes should be offered a higher strength 80mg dose of atorvastatin.'

I have been on statins since I had my heart attack in 2006. As I have mentioned in earlier posts on this blog, I had tried various forms of statins, Simvastatin for example, some of which had quite extreme side-effects, one being, when I was in hospital, being like having flu, muscle cramps,etc etc until I eventually settled on Pravastatin, which is what seems to have the least of the side effects. Reading the leaflet which is enclosed with the tablets you can see what these might be. They are, to mention only a few:

insomnia, dizziness, tiredness, headaches, sleep disturbances (surely insomnia would cover that?), muscle and joint pain, nausea, diarrhoea, wind, (I'm sure I suffer from most of these, unfortunately. I'm not so sure whether it's because of the statins though.) 

I think personally it's best to have a decent diet, low or fat-free food, for example I have always had semi-skimmed milk and use low-fat spreads instead of butter, eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetable, give up smoking (I have never smoked so that doesn't matter to me, and cut down on alcohol intake (I drink very little so that doesn't effect me. I'd personally rather spend the money on a good book than alcohol, so I don't find that a hardship to give up.) Also, take plenty of exercise (we recently joined a gym and go swimming twice a week, and walk regularly. Not perhaps at the moment, but that's down to the poor weather, unfortunately. 

I don't personally think just putting healthy people on statins is such a good idea. If they have a risk of stroke or heart attack, maybe it's a good idea. As there was a family history of heart problems in my family then it would have been a good idea to be prescribed statins (as it happened I wasn't. Would it have prevented me having a heart attack? That, of course, is open to doubt. I was told by my doctor years ago to go on a low-fat diet, which is one reason why I went over to using semi-skimmed milk. It took some getting used to after having full-fat milk, but now I actually prefer it. Some low fat products are frankly awful, thin, tateless and now particularly nice, but there are quite  few quite nice alternatives, such as spreads, yoghurts etc etc.)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Well, there seems to be absolutely no let-up with the constant rain we've been having lately. It began before Christmas and is still unrelenting in it's intensity.

I was supposed to have started my creative writing course on 21st January but I was rung up the morning of that day  by someone at Milton Keynes Arts Centre to be informed that the course leader, Deborah Fielding,  was ill and so that evening's session would not be taking place. The same thing happened the following Tuesday and then this week they rang on Monday morning to tell me that because Deborah was still not well and not likely to be well enough to lead the course, the whole course would now be cancelled. All those who were booked on the course would have their fees repaid in full and Deborah would write to us all and send us an 'encouragement pack.' I have to say I'm disappointed as I was really looking forward to this course. The one-day creative writing course I'd been on in November was really good and I found it very useful, not least because I gained a certain amount of confidence in my writing, perhaps because we shared what we wrote on that day. Writing in general can be a somewhat lonely occupation and it's good to meet other writers and sharing is quite an important part of the creative process. No doubt the course will be set up at a later date but as I write this I have a ring-binder full of completed and part-completed material, most of which needs heavy editing and proof-reading.

Fence Collapses Again

This morning I was sitting in the lounge reading when there was an almighty crash outside. I looked out of the window in the pouring rain and the gale-force wind and discovered that that section of fence which blew down a few weeks ago has again fallen over. It looks well beyond repair as the slats are coming apart from the frame-work.  I Can't  honestly see it surviving much longer in it's current state.  The landlord has been told on several occasions about the state of the fence but seems totally oblivious to our requests for some sort of repair or even replacement of the fence. Not so much a fence as a pile of rotting timber. Considering what we pay in rent i'm sure some of the money could be used to maintain this property. We still have heard nothing as regards a further inspection. If they were to come on Saturday then to be honest they should have informed us a good week in advance, which they haven't. I doubt that they will bother to come at all as they did last year when we were put to a lot of bother cleaning the place and they didn't turn up in the end. No apology or any sort of reason why they didn't come, which was annoying.

A Bright and Sunny Day

Well, after all the rain and wind of the past few weeks it makes a change to have at least one day when the sun shone. I went to church alone this morning as Carol hasn't been feeling well for the past few days. M.K.C.C.  (Milton Keynes Christian Centre) has two services currently on a Sunday at 10 a.m and 12 noon, but from Sunday 2nd March there will be three services, at 9 a.m., 10.45 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. I got home having been to the 10 a.m. service and, seeing how it was so bright and sunny, we decided to go out to Dobbie's garden centre at Fenny Stratford. We got onto the A5 and going down towards the roundabout which goes into  Watling Street we encountered a queue of cars backed up as there is a large amount of roadworks there as the road is being widened for the instillation of traffic lights. Carol unfortunately took the wrong turn off the roundabout (which at the best of times can be quite a difficult place to get though due to a high volume of traffic at peak times of the day) and we ended up going on to the next roundabout on the rod towards Aylesbury and came through Water Eaton and then into the centre of Fenny Stratford and then down Wating Street to Dobbie's. It was just nice to get out for once instead of being stuck indoors over the weekend due to rain and high winds. We had coffee and toasted cheese sandwiches in the restaurant and may come back another weeekend as there is a really good Sunday roast on offer.

I think, in general, we have been lucky with the weather in this part of the country, when we see what has happened with flooding, particularly in the Somerset Levels and along the coast. We seem to have escaped the worst although we have had a fair amount of rain and wind, particularly the day when  a section  of the garden fence was blown down.

As I write this we have had no further notification as to when we can expect to have the landlord visit for an inspection. Last weekend we were supposed to have a visit at 3 p.m. on Saturday, but it was cancelled at the last minute, somewhat annoying considering the amount of time and effort we put into cleaning the house ready.