My week with Anita

“Are you awake?” Well, you should be. Anita now knows what it is like to share a hotel room with an early riser. We went on our long-planned trip to Norfolk for a tennis holiday this week. Bits of me still ache so it must have been good. We played five hours of tennis for three days and three-ish hours on the other two days.

I’d like to warn my club-playing friends that I am on it!!!! I am coming to play with renewed vigour – once my body recovers, that is. It wasn’t just the tennis that has made me suffer. I also had one or two too many red wines, far too much food and probably an excess of other things over the week as well.

The hotel - Dunston Hall  - was rather nice. As you drive down the lane to the car park it makes for a pretty imposing view. I guessed it was Tudor. It looks a bit like Hampton Court. I asked the young man on reception. He said he thought it was Elizabethan. I said that is Tudor. Oh….

Dunston Hall

Actually, the Hall was built as a private residence in 1859. Victorian! It has gone through a lot of tough times but now it looks rather posh. The other inmates for the week were Bridge players, MG enthusiasts and a few odds and sods. I reckon the hotel chain had cornered the market for groups, although, the restaurant service was dire (they couldn’t cope with groups) and the food inconsistent. Other members of our tennis group warned us to record everything we had as the bill would also be wrong. It was!

I am making my trip sound bad. It wasn’t. There was a wonderful spa area where we soaked after tennis and on one evening, Karl came and joined Anita and I. Karl… I’ll save you the joke. We hadn’t come apart. We enjoyed your company as always.

Karl... 

The pains linger but now it is a fading memory. Anita and I visited Margy and her Mum on the way home – another wonderful get-together! Then back in Cosgrove we hit the local – The Barley Mow – for an evening celebrating St. Patricks. Despite the creaking knees we even danced that night away over a couple more red wines! What else could we do after a whole week of tipples.

Meet up at Margy's

All is well with the world

When the sun shines and flowers come into blossom, the world feels a much better place. I draw back my curtains each morning to a courtyard almost full of colour. It is only the beginning of March. Everything has come up far too early this year. There is even a bumble bee buzzing around the flowers early each morning. I wonder whether it is the same one.

The robin that follows me around is still present in my garden too. Sammi says that robins follow us around because they think we are the oxen pulling the plough. So, my son likens me to an oxen – I feel a bit insulted. Robins recognise that us humans turn over the soil and expose the worms for them to eat. Whatever the reason, I do have a regular visitor. I have bought him a bird bath that has the most pathetic of solar fountains pulsing away. He does use it, surprisingly!

My blooming garden

On the downside, my wheelbarrow has a completely destroyed tyre and I have been looking online to replace it. It is a 30cm tyre but none of the tyres fit the wheel size. Replacing the whole wheel is a possibility but a wheel costs half as much as a new wheelbarrow. What to do? I could get a new wheelbarrow that is not rusty or I could find a replacement wheel and hope the old wheelbarrow remains usable for at least a couple more years. First world problems!

I have taken up drawing after a long break. A friend in the village came round for an afternoon’s art activity. I had forgotten how relaxing it is to get absorbed. Other things that fill my time are cycle trips – getting less muddy by the day. Recently I cycled through a speed trap and the man in charge of the speed gun called out to me to slow down. How sweet! If only my legs could exceed 30mph these days!

 

 

 

HMRC Woes

Finally we get sunshine again

A woman’s fury knows no bounds. This is especially true when you are kept waiting on a phone line to the HMRC. The music is irritating. The constantly regurgitated information is incorrect and, as a result, my blood on Monday morning boiled.

The repeated message asks you to use the website for information. This is fair enough but my enquiry was not answered on the webpage. The ambient music grated. I was also told intermittently at 8am on Monday morning that wait times yesterday were up to forty minutes. The lines are not open on Sundays. Lies!

What is worse, I had to phone up twice and also phone the DWP as well. So, I had more than double the issues. Five minutes into my turn with the elusive HMRC I was finally stymied by a security question. What was the exact date I filed my self-assessment last year? How did I know?  The woman answering the call said she could only accept my first answer. My second phone call ended rather abruptly after I had given the woman an earful. Stupid XXXXX!

I am an older woman with a fading memory. When sorting out pensions the HMRC should take this into account. Sometimes I forget where I have put the kettle. I now realise I need a list of possible questions at my elbow so I can instantly find answers. Of course, I now know when I filed my tax return in 2023 and I could put money on it that I will never be asked the same question ever again.

My pension is due this May and I am somewhat short of a full one. Living abroad is part of the issue. The woman I spoke to told me to look up form NI38 and fill in form CF83. These forms are if you are planning to go abroad so I could not fill it in in retrospect. I have now written a letter and sent it snail mail to Newcastle Upon Tyne. Snail mail can’t be any slower than phoning.

In all, my waiting times were over an hour each time. This is over two hours in my life that I will never get back. There was even an article in the Guardian to say how the HMRC is failing us. Fiscal drag is partly to blame, apparently – who would have thought.

Telling Sammi about my issues, I found out that he too had been on the phone to HMRC at the same time. I blamed him. It must have been him blocking the line! We plan to co-ordinate in future.

Possibly as a result of the trauma suffered contacting the HMRC I spent most of the week being ill. I developed a cough and cold that kept me indoors and awake at night. I tried to keep going as normal but life was just too much. The upside of lying in a sofa for a few days has meant my heel is back to normal – total rest cured me!

So once Saturday came around, I said to myself that is time to get better. I set off on a walk to Stony to the Farmers’ market and then onto Wolverton. Walking was important as I needed to test my Achilles problem. I can say that both the bad chest and the poorly ankle are now fully sorted.

Physios I have known

Currently my right heel is swollen as I have a stress tear on my Achilles. So far no real problem except tennis is not really on the menu. I have six physio sessions booked with a company in MK, and each time I have been I have seen someone different. The first physio was brilliant. She told me how to take care of my heel with simple and easy to understand instructions. I really thought I was on the road to a quick recovery.

The second time was an utter disaster. The man who saw me didn’t know what he was doing at all. He couldn’t answer my queries about what exercises to do. He tried to tape up my foot and got more of the binding stuck to his fingers than on my heel. By the time I got home, the tape came off with my sock! The worst of it was that I felt no confidence in him at all. He could have been seconded from a supermarket checkout for all the knowledge of physiology he displayed.

Then by the third session the overall manager of the company dealt with me. Apparently, she had had complaints about the physio who I had visited the second time. She had travelled up from Essex to cover the sessions in MK until she found a replacement. She said I wouldn’t need to pay for the previous session, and she would add another one to make seven sessions in all.

Now this brings me to the most recent of my visits. The latest physio was confident, knowledgeable – I hope(?) but her English was so awful she called my toes -fingers! I picked up on that quite quickly. She told me she didn’t like “tapping” – I repeated, “taping” with rising intonation as a question. She said “tapping” again… I just hope I understood her. She also said my heel was “swolled”. Probably with everything else she said, I would have given her IELTS 5. I was genuinely challenged on the comprehension front. Errrr.

Oh, how I miss the “torture-ess”. She was my physio in Singapore, and she was amazing. When I visited, I knew it would hurt but I also knew it would do me good. I genuinely think that there should be a minimum standard for physios to practice over here in the UK. They should have sufficient standard English and know what they are doing. My experience of physios in this country has been patchy to say the least. God help us… this is 21^st century Britain.

A wet world! 

My very comfortable son! 

Taking Lucky out - glorious sunshine

On other matters, I had a visit from Sammi and Lucky. Always lovely to have them round. Sammi arrived and instantly wanted to sleep – such good company to have. Danielle brought Ezra-Mae round this week too. My little grand daughter – three years old -  walked through the front door, took her shoes off and then shoo-ed her Mum away. She wanted Nana all to herself. It’s nice to know that my family can feel comfortable and settle in my little place!

Haps and Mishaps

Not a mishap - Christmas present of potential mushrooms doing really well! 

 Catastrophe struck. I was trying to load some horticultural gravel into the boot when the bag split. Half the bag poured over my feet, while some tipped into the lock and other bits inexplicably fell to all parts of the floor of the boot The only redemption was the bag being easier to handle with half its contents gone! It was a disaster. The worst part was when I tried to get the last tiny bits out from round the lock so the boot would close properly. I imagined what any onlookers were thinking, watching me scrabble around picking up small stone by the handful.

As disasters go it wasn’t more than an irk but at the time it seemed enormous. More pervasive and worse for my nerves this week was the gap between my computing skills and what I aimed to do. In preparation for the KAVS award ceremony, I have been putting together a photo album for the Community Orchard. I collected all the necessary pictures into a folder on Google Drive – easy! I chose CEWE software to make the album – again, easy. The problem arose when I wanted to move the photos from one part of my computer to another – not so easy.

I spent two hours trying to do this before calling a friend for help. Amazing – two heads really were better than one. One pasta bake and a coffee or so later, we were on the way to making this memento for the orchard. For me, the learning curve was very steep. I now realise I had downloaded the folder to an accessible part of my computer at least three times. Where I went wrong was not having the patience to wait for the download to happen.

Spring in my garden

Over the last week when the temperature for February has been 14c over here, my bulbs have burst out from the soil and my japonica is already in blossom. This really is remarkable. I have been in my current house for just over two and a half years, and I still haven’t quite got my garden how I want it. I’d like a jungle feel with leafy plants growing up the walls, a table and chairs in the centre of the courtyard and sufficient shade to make it an outside room… This year it will happen!

Be Afraid

 Yes, be very afraid. Until a swim earlier this week I saw myself as a harmless plodder. I arrived at the poolside, put my paddles and flippers on the side and set my watch to measure my lengths and heart rate. In that time, the two swimmers in my lane ducked under the ropes and carried on their swim in the slower lane. 

Wow, I thought. Did people really see me as a scary swimmer?  - one fast enough to be avoided, perhaps. I smiled inwardly. This has to be quite a feat for a granny with goggles. Actually at the same time as I was sizing up for my dip, a particularly hunky bod with tattoos was standing just behind me. I told him he must be the scary one that the other swimmers were avoiding. We laughed. He insisted it must be me. We got in the water, shared the lane and both enjoyed a swim without having to wait for any plodders... Note to self - I must work on my scary potential for future.

As my heel still isn't fully healed I am doing more swimming and less tennis at the moment. The weather up until a couple of days ago has been good for cycling too. Cycling is another tennis replacement. Sadly, we now have heavy rain which has brought a misery inside myself. Despite this, I am still cycling through  the big puddles to get to places locally. I return home splattered! Until I heard that we had reached 1.5c above normal for temperatures over the last eight months, I revelled in the February sunshine. I think we should all be afraid of that statistic.

I finally got round to having a shingles jab this week. I wasn't afraid of the needle. It was more worrying for me to think about the after effects. I felt like I was going to the doctors as a condemned man. I cycled just in case I wouldn't be able to drive back - there is a logic in that. In the end it wasn't so bad. I felt sick, had a headache, was lethargic - no more than that. 

Jeremy's pineapple tarts

Gold!! 

Lohei 

So with the Year of the Dragon upon us and so much to look forward to I wish you a Gong Xi Fa Chai. Diane, Jeremy, Ira and I ushered it in with a Lohei - we said all the right words and used most of the right ingredients so I reckon we have the bases covered for good fortune this year. I hope you do too.

On making the grade

On balance this has been a better than average week. My bike is now back on the road. I am becoming expert at changing and repairing inner tubes - I should be as I have had plenty of practice. The weather is unexpectedly balmy for the time of year too. This has made cycling so much more pleasant.

On top of this, I went to Centre Parcs with Diane for an evening Spa session last Tuesday. For me, it was difficult not to compare the experience with the one I had with Danielle at Bannatyne's. Woburn Centre Parcs is just round the corner from where Diane lives and I have often driven past and wondered what was behind the screen of trees.

Inside the resort it was tastefully decorated with blue and white fairy lights. I was excited before I had even reached the spa area. All the staff smiled Disney style but in a much more British understated way. Already I was chilled and ready for what was on offer. We started our evening with a glass on bubbly then explored the myriad rooms that offered all sorts of 'relaxing' experiences. There was a "Volcano" sauna - toooooo hot. An Ice Room - fun! Scented steam rooms - Yay!! An outdoor, salt water swimming pool with jacuzzi bubbles. I was a bit like a kid in a candy store.

We wouldn't have had time to schedule any treatments; there was so much to do. I felt like I had been there for much longer than I really had and by the time it was time to leave I really did feel totally relaxed. We tried everything except the 'relaxing areas'. Despite that, even now I still feel a bit of residual ohmmmm. Oh how different from my trip to Bannatyne -  and cheaper too!

I also had time to finish an online course I have been doing and take the exam. I passed first time. The old brain must be working still - good news that I can make the grade. The course duration was a maximum of six months' access before taking the exam and it took me three weeks. I am happy with that.

My right heel is still strapped up. My follow up visit to the physio this week was a mixed blessing. This time it was a man who treated me. Not because he was a man, more because he didn't seem to know what he was doing, did I worry about his advice. He taped my ankle up after a fashion and the bandaging fell off the same day. Last week the other physio taped my ankle up and the strapping lasted three days. Even I can do it better than him. So based on not listenng to his advice, I'm going to give tennis a go.