Sunny But Chilly

Thursday.It has been sunny but somewhat chilly this morning. We took Alfie out for his morning trot around Eaglestone Park and came across children being walked to school by their mums and dads, on their way to the primary school. Alfie was overwhelmed by all the people passing by and kept running up to them, running around in circles and enjoying the attention he was getting. I think he forgot that he was with us as we walked along the part of the Redway which crosses the park. Also, the children and parents seemed amused by his antics. He just wants to be friends with everyone he meets. I wore a long-sleeved shirt for the first time this morning. It was a necessity as it was, as I said earlier, fairly chilly, but as the morning progressed and the sun remained out, it got quite warm.

Carol had an appointment with the stoma nurse at Milton Keynes hospital at 10.00 a.m. in the Out-Patients' department. We got there far too early, as we almost always seem to do and parked easily in the multi-storey carpark. Just fortunate that someone was coming out of a space as we drove in, which made it easier. Any later and we wouldn't have been so lucky.

Friday morning. My Casio G-Shock digital watch has been showing signs of running out of power. The light which comes on when you press one of the buttons, for example, in the middle of the night when it's dark, doesn't work and the display had faded completely, so I thought it must be the battery needed replacing. The only place I know which will do a new battery as well as put it in is a small shop within the Central Shopping Centre, as they've done this before. I don't have the right screwdriver to open the back of the watch to install a new battery. I'm not going to H.Samuel or whatever the jewellers name is,  which I've used before because a few years ago I purchased a digital watch from them, I think another Casio, very nice, with a good, sturdy strap (which is the part that seems to wear out quickest.) and I bought the watch with an extended warranty. The watch malfunctioned, it just stopped working, for whatever reason (I don't think it was the battery.) so I returned it with the idea that it would be covered by this 'extended warranty.' Samuels refused to repair or replace the watch, making some sort of excuse as to why this was the case, so I was not pleased, as you might imagine. Surely that would be the whole point of paying extra for an 'extended warranty.' So, I refuse to buy anything from them. Paying a bit more for your watch, as a sort of guarantee that if it goes wrong it will be either replaced or repaired, free of charge, was sort of putting my mind at rest that the watch would be reliable and therefore repairable. But no.

So we decided to drive into the Milton Keynes centre and park where we always do, near Debenhams, in the multi-storey carpark which is currently being renovated. We walked along the mall to Boots as Carol needed some painrelief tablets and then we went to The Watch and Clock Shop to get them to replace the battery for me. It was going to take at least 30 minutes, they gave me a numbered ticket to identify my watch when I returned to collect it and we then went to Patisserie Valerie for lattes and really nice almond and chocolate croissants. They recently moved from their old unit further down the shopping centre to their new location. I was really surprised that they had a waiter service, which I don't think many other similar restaurants offer in this day and age.

I needed the loo. As one does. So I left Carol in the restaurant and went out into the main shopping centre and into the newly-opened toilet block. Very smart. They recently moved the main toilet block from one side of the shopping centre to the opposite side. I needed to wash my hands and they've craftily hidden the soap and water under the mirrors over the row of sinks. You just put your hand under where they're marked on the bottom of the mirror and water comes out as well as soap. I reckon some people would find this difficult to find or get to operate. Then I wanted to dry my hands. I hunted around for the hand-drying machine, but in vain I couldn't find one. Then I returned to the sinks and they'd hidden them under the mirror-edge, next to the soap and water. It was marked but not clear enough and not somewhere you'd think to find a hand-drier. Also, operated when you put your hand underneath the sensor.

I returned to Carol in Patisserie Valerie, we paid the bill and as we walked out we saw that there were toilets with the store, so I needn't have left to go to the toilets in the shopping centre.

We walked towards John Lewis and ended up in Middleton Hall, where there was a jobs fair on and had a browse around the stalls and then walked back along the centre and went into Marks and Spencer. I was looking for a long-sleeved Rugby shirt, of which I have a couple already, the idea being they are ideal for when it's cold in the winter. Particularly ideal wear for when we're out and about and probably when we go to Whipsnade Zoo, because it can get really cold up on Dunstable Downs. We searched high and low in the men's department, but couldn't find one long-sleeved shirt I liked. You would think that they would have them in stock by now as the days get colder, but it seemed they only had summer stock in. When I got home I went on the MacBook and found on the Marks and Spencer website that they had plenty, which begs the question, why not in their bricks-and-mortar stores? We left Marks and Spencer's and made our way towards Midsummer Place and Debenhams and went up the escalator to the multi-storey carpark to our car and drove home.

Impaired Hearing

I'm suffering from impaired hearing today. It started last night. I get this on a fairly regular basis. My ears seem to get blocked up with wax. Sorry, I know it's not the most pleasant of topics, but I can't avoid it. It seems the only way to relieve it is to go to the doctor's surgery and get one of the nurses to syringe my ears. It causes really bad headaches and my hearing deteriorates markedly. I've had the syringing done several times. I seem to get really dry skin on my face and around my ears which may have something to do with the build-up of wax inside my ears. I was prescribed a cream to clear up the dryness but I need to see the doctor to get another prescription. I thought I could get an appointment with the nurse by ringing the surgery this morning, but I was told when I got through that I need to see the doctor and then be referred for an appointment with the nurse. Which now means that I will have to go to the surgery on Monday morning before 8 and queue up and get an doctor's appointment. I may not get one on Monday, which means a journey back to the surgery on another day and if I have to make an appointment with the nurse THAT might be in a week or two's time. So I'll have to suffer with impaired hearing for a good deal longer. So, it begs the question, why on earth can't I make a nurse's appointment without seeing the doctor? Surely, as I've been to have my ears syringed several times before, I'm not going to waste the nurse or the doctor's time over something trivial. With the N.H.S. in some sort of financial crisis, it would save one doctor's appointment if I went direct to see the nurse. I can't fathom this out at all. Or is it so the doctor can peer into my ears to see if there's an infection or something so I can then see the nurse or have some sort of medication for it prescribed? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me somehow, I don't know what you think. Actually, I can't think why it's called syringing, as no syringe is used. They use warm water which is injected into your ears with a special sort of gadget which is most certainly not syringe-like. If it was, knowing my dislike of needles, I don't think I would sit around having the thing inserted in my ears or, indeed, anywhere near my person.

I have been working on a new piece of writing. I have had the idea for this story for some time but haven't come across how to develop it, until a few days ago. I have written several pages but have been working on the main central part of the plot which has been going very well this morning. It will take quite a bit more thought and effort to complete it, but when I have it finished and revised it I will upload it to Shortbread Stories, a site which is specifically for short stories which can be downloaded and read using ebook readers and Kindles.  I have now got several bits and pieces at various stages of development in my notebooks which I put away when things aren't quite going as well as they might, but then, when a new idea comes to me I bring them out and do a bit more work on them.

With everything else going on at the moment my digital watch has packed up. Well, it is working, but it's not showing the correct time. So it's not much use to me.  It's a Casio digital watch which I got from Amazon. It has something on it called  'wave ceptor ' which means it keeps the time correct by receiving a radio signal from the atomic clock somewhere in England which happens at midnight. I does mean that the time is always accurate, but the watch has had a habit of going completely nuts and showing the wrong time. I have to say I'm not very impressed, even though it was a cheap watch. I have never had any problems with digital watches until this one started playing up. It had a resin strap which didn't last long which I had replaced with a metal one.  I once bought a really decent digital watch from Samuel's jewellers. It wasn't cheap, around £45 or so. They told me I could buy an extended warranty for it which would cost something like £15, which seemed a good idea at the time, because I needed a reliable watch, so if it broke down and needed repair the extended warranty would cover it. Or so I thought. It had quite a nice strap on it, made of fabric and leather, which was what appealed to me. So I bought it, and wore it, and all went well, it kept good time and I was happy with it. But then, well over a year past the day I had originally bought it, the thing went wrong. The screen went blank. No time. No nothing. Just dead as a proverbial dodo. So I took the thing back to Samuels, thinking, goody, I have an extended warranty, they'll fix it. There should be no problem. But what do they tell me when I take it in to have it looked at? It's the battery or something. It's not covered by the warranty. I'm not happy about this, as you can imagine. You would think that something like a battery malfunction would be covered by the warranty. But apparently not. But they had made their money out of the original sale as well as the extended warranty which for some reason didn't cover the fault. Very convenient and as a result I don't intend spending my money in H. Samuel's jewellery shops ever again if that's the way they treat their customers.