The Pressure's On!

 Wednesday. 7.45 a.m. The sun is shining! It might not be a heatwave, but at least it's not raining and no strong wind to almost blow your head off!

I am coming to the end of the 24-hour blood pressure test. I have got on remarkably well, having the portable device connected to my arm. Sleeping wasn't too bad last night, which was my main concern, and not getting the thing wet, or it's becoming disconnected. I remember when I was in the hospital, and having a heart monitor connected with the type of connections they put on you when you have an E.C.G., and finding it very difficult to lie in bed and sleep, and the confounded thing beeping whenever a connection came off. This thing is only connected to my upper right arm, onto the 'cuff'. It hasn't come off.  I will have to take it back to Central Milton Keynes Medical Centre at around 10 a.m., and someone in reception will receive it and then the data it contains, which has been 'saved' inside the device, can be uploaded onto a computer (I presume that's what will happen.), so that it can be looked at and see whatever can be done to help with my blood pressure, more than likely some sort of medication.

10.30 a.m. I have been to the medical centre with the blood pressure device. I had to use the toilet in the centre to disconnect the thing. It wasn't difficult, and now I have to wait for the results.

On the way, driving along Witan Gate, on my way to the surgery, I once again had to avoid potholes, something I have mentioned in earlier blog posts. As I got to the crossing near the police station, I was stuck behind a lorry with 'Road Maintenance' emblazoned on its side. It went over the roundabout and into the estate where I was going but then made a right turn, so I didn't have to follow it on to Bradwell Common Boulevard, where Central Milton Keynes Medical Centre is based. I thought to myself, with all the potholes I have to avoid, all around Milton Keynes, the workers on that lorry should spend some of their time filling in those confounded potholes.

Thursday. 12.10 p.m. I had an appointment at CMKMC (I'm not writing out the entire name of Central Milton Keynes Medical Centre from now on. It's far too long and a real mouth full if you have to say it.) This meant I couldn't go to my Thursday morning Bible study, unfortunately.

I got to the surgery in good time. The appointment was scheduled for 10.50. I was called into room 12 at approximately 10.55. I was to have another E.C.G., which went well. I can't see how it could have gone otherwise. Just laying on a couch and having sticky contacts put on you and not moving or talking for about 2 minutes, while the machine does its work. The nurse then told me that a doctor would need to check the read-out just to see whether my heart was all right. I had to go back into the waiting area and sit there and wait for her to speak to a doctor, and after around five minutes I got the all-clear and drove home to Dexter House.

The Whirligig of Time

 Easter Sunday. 7.40 a.m. It's Easter Sunday morning.

The clocks have changed. We are now, officially at any rate, in Summer. 

 As I look out of the window, I can see that there's fog covering Oldbrook. It's not particularly thick, but it's still foggy. I expect, as the day progresses and the sun comes out, it will clear.

Bank Holiday Monday. 7.25 a.m. I got up a good deal later than usual. It's relatively bright and sunny. 

I'm shocked by the number of potholes around Milton Keynes. I went into the centre of the City the other day and I unfortunately drove over a large pothole. I couldn't avoid it, and I was somewhat concerned that it would damage the car in some way.

Tuesday. 10.10 a.m. Another trip to Sainsbury's. I don't normally go on a Tuesday, which means it was easy enough to find a space to park. I suppose most people shop later in the week, on a Friday or Saturday. The 'up' travelator wasn't working, which meant, at the end of my shop, I had to go down via the lift.

I was more than ever aware of the number of potholes in the road as I drove to and from Sainsbury's. It seems to be getting far worse and it won't just me who has found this problem. If I damage my car from driving through a pothole I shall not be very pleased and I would expect compensation from Milton Keynes Council if my car is damaged.

Wednesday. 6.40 a.m. It's another mild and pleasant morning. As far as I can see, there's no fog.

Yesterday evening, just as I was starting my evening meal, I got post. I don't think there's been a post-delivery so late in the day. There was a time when you could more or less tell the time by the postman delivering. We had a delivery at around 7 a.m., and then a second one at around 11 a.m. It would seem that now they only deliver when they want to, with no sort of reliability. Anyway, I picked up the post and one of the letters was from Central Milton Keynes Medical Centre. Having read it, I was shocked that it was telling me off for missing my appointment. I think I mentioned this appointment in an earlier post. I didn't know whether it was a face-to-face or telephone appointment. I did put a message on the website, asking me which form the appointment would take. I didn't get a response before the appointment time. So, in that respect, it's as much their fault that I didn't go for that appointment. I have to say, it makes me feel like a naughty child, the way they had to write a letter to me. Why not merely ring me? Well, that's far to easy.

Thursday. 6.20 a.m. I have taken Alfie out. There was a thin rain falling. Not really rain in the normal sense. Having come inside the flat, I sat down and started using my laptop and there was suddenly an almighty rainstorm outside, (just as well it was outside!) It didn't last long, but it was very noisy and violent.

Still More Wet Weather

It's been a really miserable week. Carol's between chemotherapy cycles (only two more to go!) and we had hoped to get out for at least one day, hopefully to Whipsnade. But we certainly don't want to go if it's wet and windy. Not the best place to go, up on Dunstable Downs, when it's raining.

I mentioned that Alfie wasn't well yesterday evening. He seemed better after I'd given him the ibuprofen. This morning I was downstairs on my own in the lounge when he came downstairs to find me. He seemed in real discomfort. He had a sort of pinched look, his ears laid back. He came to sit on my knee. He has a habit of doing this, a really affectionate little dog. Then he jumped down on the floor and was immediately sick on the rug. Not a problem, but it occurred to me that he might have got some sort of stomach ache or similar. He seems to have been fine for the rest of the day, eventually eating his dinner as usual and the playing with the Comic Relief ball.

We've had a further dose of thunder and a rain storm, but it didn't seem to develop into anything, unfortunately, but it now means that we can't get the grass cut. It will need doing sooner or later as it's getting too long for our poor little mower to get through and it's now seeding which isn't a good sign.

It's now Friday morning and it's again been a wet night. No sign yet of it drying out so we can get the grass cut. It'll soon be so long Alfie will get lost when he goes into the garden. 'Garden' is a somewhat misnomer if ever there was one. The grass can certainly not be termed a 'lawn.'

When we were out yesterday, when we went into the centre of Milton Keynes, we saw workmen filling in potholes. They were using a machine that appeared to put some sort of filling into these holes in the road, with a sort of hose-type thing on the back of a large lorry and then the workmen used a machine that flattened this material and so patched up the holes. I'm not so sure how effective this will be as a long lasting solution. I just hope they manage to fill plenty of these potholes before winter when ice, damp and the mere effect of traffic moving across them will prevent them coming apart and making even more work to repair them.

Rest of Fence Replaced

I had to drive to Sainsbury's early yesterday morning for some shopping that we needed. On the way along Saxon Street I noticed that the major pothole which is just one of many in and around the Eaglestone area, and which it's quite difficult and dangerous to avoid in order to not damage the car, has now been marked with green paint. No doubt the Council has actually admitted that it's a major problem and will no doubt, in due course, get round to repairing it. I'm fairly certain that the state of the roads in and around Milton Keynes have had a detrimental effect on our car which meant we had to have certain parts replaced at great cost, namely, the coil springs, which would be made to deteriorate gradually as a result of having to drive over not just potholes, but speed bumps, a number of which are in and around Eaglestone. It wouldn't be just my vehicle that has been effected, but probably quite a few other drivers' vehicles who also use the road system around Milton Keynes.

Gary began working on replacing the fence that separates our garden from his. The work began mid-morning and went on for the rest of the afternoon, which meant I had to close the lounge curtains as I had the second Better Together session beginning at 2.30. A vast improvement on what was there before. I'm surprised the old bit of fence survived the winter and looking at it after it was removed, just a crumbling, rotting disaster. It was rickety, to say the least, and a gale, such as we had a couple of winters ago and which blew out the fence the opposite side of the garden (and which was replaced by Council workers, because  the house on that side is owned by the Council) might have destroyed it completely. 

Having now got myself an iPhone, we have now ordered one for Carol. We had a telephone call from Sky, as we are already Sky customers. They have recently added mobile phones to their expanding portfolio. It only seemed a question of time before this was done. We ordered another iPhone 5 (similar to mine) and it comes with a SIM card and you get a rolling data contract, which means that you don't loose your data at the end of a month and goes on to the next. It's for a 30-month contract and the payment is added to our Sky bill, which now means we don't have to buy top-up credit each month, which is simpler in the long run and probably cheaper. You also get the option to up-grade your mobile when a new model comes out and send the old one back when they are offered. The whole process of setting it up and ordering was done very efficiently by the lady on the telephone and the mobile is expected to arrive by courier sometime this morning. I have to say, even though the iPhone is a good deal more expensive than other mobiles, it is a good mobile and works as you would hope. It makes the Samsung Galaxy mobile i had seem fairly feeble by comparison. Much faster and more 'user-friendly' which is what you'd expect from an Apple product.

Some time later

I knew vaguely when the iPhone was going to be delivered. Sky very conveniently emailed me to say that it would be delivered by the courier company D.P.D., and with modern technology it was possible to 'track' the parcel from it's journey from the company depot in Raunds, near Wellingborough and if you put the consignment number in their website you could even see a photograph of the driver. (Looked a bit grumpy to me. Why couldn't he smile?) Using Google maps it was even possible to have a vague idea when the van was and at one point it showed up as being approximately 30 minutes from our house. I expect it's linked to G.P.S. and SatNav technology and when a parcel is signed for, using a touch-screen keypad device, a signal is sent to a computer system that tracks the parcel. I was also given an indication that the parcel would be delivered between 9.50-10.50. In the end it arrived at around 10.20 so I wasn't at all surprised when the very distinctive van drew up outside the house and the driver walked up the path to the front door and I was waiting with the door open. You then have to show some photographic identity (in this case my Driving Licence) and he handed over the parcel. Delivery completed when I signed the digital screen on the device I was handed.

It's another warm and sunny day today. Just hope it remains this sunny for the weekend and we don't suddenly get a downpour when we want to go out for the day.

MoT'd Car and Snow

The car had been booked in for it's annual MoT on Friday at O.K. Garage, which is where  Mick the mechanic who repaired the car after we broke down on the M1. worked. It's only a short drive from Eaglestone to Peartree Bridge. We walked back along the Redway once it had been left and we got a call at around 10.30 to say it had some work needing doing, a ball-joint on one of the wheels or something, nothing too expensive to fix and they did the work and we returned just after lunch. We have got it booked in again for next Friday as we're having a couple of new tyres fitted before we go away on holiday.

Considering the state of the roads around Milton Keynes, it's no wonder the ball-joints on the car need repairing or at least replacing. You may recall (that is if you follow these blog posts.) that back in the early part of 2015 we had a problem with the car when we drove home after visiting Ascott, (a National Trust property on the road towards Aylesbury and close to Wing village.) We drove over a pothole in the road which, in turn, set off an alarm in the car, because the E.S.P. (Electronic Stability Programme) mechanism was damaged. This has since been repaired, under our insurance, although we had to pay the excess on the insurance ourselves, a hefty £350. When we were driving the other day (and, actually, most times we are out and about in the car and on local roads around this area.) we seem to spend a considerable amount of time attempting to avoid potholes. The road surfaces in and around Milton Keynes are considerably pot-holed, although, to be fair to Milton Keynes Council, they are attempting to re-surface a great deal of the Grid Roads, but still the roads are in a poor condition, which is really appalling considering that Milton Keynes is a modern city and no more than 40 years old. So it's no surprise that our car, or any other car for that matter, should have the suspension, tyres and the ball-joints in need of replacement and repair. Every time you drive over any of the speed bumps around here you are putting stress on not only the car's suspension but wear and tear on the tyres.

Early this morning it was snowing heavily as I looked out of the window. The car had a layer of snow on it, but it didn't last and by mid-morning it had completely disappeared. We had considered going out in the car for a drive, but as Carol has been off work for the past few days with a heavy cold and wasn't feeling too brilliant, we decided instead to go into the city centre so parked in the multi-storey carpark near Debenhams, arriving before most of the shops had opened. We walked through the shopping centre and found that there was a handmade and vintage market on in Middleton Hall, just outside John Lewis. We were intending to visit Lewis's, but the store wasn't due to open for a good half hour or so, which meant we had time to go into Cafe Nero and have coffee and croissants and then returned to browse the market which had a lot of interesting stalls. Monday is Carol's birthday so we wandered along the malls and went into the Disney store. The music was excessively loud, that awful song 'Let It Go," if you can call it a song, from 'Frozen', was being played, which put me off and if it hadn't been for Carol, I would have left. She saw a toy from a new film 'Zootopia' a sloth, and I bought it as a birthday present. We've seen the trailer for this animation film and the sloth had a prominent part and Carol had said she'd like to get the soft toy if one was available. We then walked along to H.M.V. and bought D.V.D.'S of "Jurassic World" and "Suffragette" and then went to Marks and Spencer's to buy food for this evening's meal and then to Debenham's to browse in the men's clothing department and finally back to the carpark and home.

Signs Of Spring

Goodness gracious! What's this? The sun is out and there are definite signs of spring. There are daffodills blooming outside the Academy and crocuses are popping up all along the Milton Keynes grid roads.  Having said all this, the roads around here are in a really bad state of repair, most likely as a result of three really bad winters. There are potholes on many of the grid roads and roundabouts which are really hard to avoid. Some of the drains along the kerbs are in such a bad state of disrepair, particularly where you come off the roundabouts, that you have a really difficulty avoiding. I wonder how many people have their cars damaged by these pothole and put in claims for compensation from Milton Keynes Council.  This may account for one of our front tyres always loosing pressure as it always needs air putting into it as it is always virtually flat whenever we go out in the car.

There has been something of a cold wind blowing, not metaphorically, but genuinely and when I dropped off Carol at the Academy this morning we almost got blown away! Hopefully if the weather holds up we can go out this weekend. Let's hope so.

Coughs and Sneezes

Carol has been off work since Wednesday with a really sore throat. At one point she could hardly speak, so it was really no good her going in to work as she would never have been heard by the children she teaches. There is enough problems with behaviour at the Academy, without problems being able to speak. 

It is bright and sunny at the moment, but the temperature has been dropping gradually over the past week or so. According to the BBC Breakfast news there has been snow in parts of North Yorkshire and Scotland, and it would appear that we are going to get snow here before the weekend. They had a report this morning on television from Pickering in North Yorkshire, an area we know well as we had a holiday there a few years ago and went by steam train from Pickering to Whitby which was a great journey up over the Moors. 

We had severe snow and ice last winter and as a result many of the roads within Milton Keynes became potholed, many of which have since been repaired. It took the Council quite some time to get round to repairing these holes, but many have only just been dealt with. I have seen Council workers out repairing the road near here, so I suspect someone has decided that it would be best to repair any remaining holes before the wintry weather hits hard.