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Lucy’s column for October 21st
Doclo..1
Years ago, my mother once said of a neighbour who was a permanent fixture in the local doctor’s surgery queue : "She enjoys bad health…".In other words, she was a hypochondriac. This was the section of society which my old mum treated with total contempt, since she was one of those stoics who, in the 46 years I knew her, never went into hospital, and succumbed in her latter years only to an under-active thyroid which meant taking a tablet a day – which she loathed and detested doing, treating it as a weakness, rather than a life-saver.
Indeed, on the day she died, in her 81st year, she woke up feeling "a bit iffy", went downstairs and rang the doctor, went back to bed to await his arrival, and shuffled off her mortal coil as calmly and uncomplainingly as she had lived her life, just a couple of hours later.
So this "can’t bother that busy doctor – mustn’t be a drain on the NHS", attitude must have rubbed off on me, because I really have to gird my loins before I pick up a phone and ask for appointments. I don’t suffer from what’s known as the white coat syndrome so far as I know. I like to think I have a fairly good relationship with the young man who’s been monitoring my fairly hum-drum and boringly normal blood pressure for the past 20 years. I tend to limit my visits to perhaps two a year. But when I go, I certainly go, with a list, and the question : "Shall we start with my head, and work downwards, or the other way around?"
That doesn’t mean to say I’m a paragon of virtuous good health. In fact, most days I feel like rubbish, and my one gleeful thought of the day is actually waking up – alive and kicking. So far, I’ve been in hospital for the birth of one of my two babies – I had the second at home – wisdom teeth extraction, varicose veins – which came back with a vengeance just a few years later, and are still there – and the dreaded breast cancer lumpectomy. I can’t really count the cataracts. It only took about 20 minutes and I didn’t even have to take so much as my shoes off.
But despite my reluctance to cave in to what is known in medical circles as "the fat file" – the aforementioned hypochondria – I’m in the hospital appointments, and repeat prescriptions, loop. I have a yearly blood-letting date. And an annual mammogram at the Breast Clinic. And yes, the Statins are washed down with the nightly cocoa. I’m a martyr to a hideous corn, and a "bad back". As I write, the latter has been stopped in its tracks with some over-the-counter pain killers, and a heat-emitting ugly truss thing-y, which himself found on Google, which was lying beside me, stuck to the sheets, along with a corn plaster, next morning.
Talking of feet – oh, those 50s stilettoes have a lot to answer for – he, and Google, have come up with a cheese-grater contraption heralded as The Ultimate Foot File, so gentle it won’t burst a balloon, which claims to remove callouses and dry skin, neither of which I suffer from. I’m not sure what my chiropodist June Allen will make of it. It may trap the shavings in a little egg. But nothing calms a corn like June.
Currently, I’m awaiting the results of recent visits to the jolly vampires at the DRI, and the wonderful girls at the Derby City General Breast Unit. Fingers crossed. Back aching. Corn throbbing. I hope I don’t sound smug. I so want to be like my mum.
end
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Tuesday 7 October 2008
No diamonds
Lucy’s column for October 7.
Drivelo…1
That promised diamond ring becomes more Zirconian by the minute, the cruise ship has drifted away to just a dot on some exotic horizon.
In their place is a leak-free new roof on the kitchen extension, and a re-vamp of this office-cum-laundry-room-cum-pantry, which now boasts a lick of paint, a potted plant, and pictures of Elvis including a collage of leaves somebody nicked on a visit to Graceland. And since Ower Annie drifted off to the pilchard palace in the sky a few weeks ago, we no longer have to share it with a litter tray and a dish of wilting Whiskas.
Give or take a set of must-have tyres on his ridiculously expensive-to-run boy toy, and some fancy new doors on the ancient garage, the sponduliks have been gushing out of our account faster than the rain poured in through our aforementioned roof.
But new tyres? Posh garage doors? Makes the drive look a tad shabby, he reckoned. Which resulted in a visit from our mate Gary Wilkins and his team from DPL Paving Ltd, which stands for drives, patios and landscapes, but which joker Guggy – for that is his nickname – suggests could be interpreted as dips, puddles and lakes.
It was nigh-on week of diggers and bumpers, hard-core and steam-rollers, endless bacon butties, more tea than a NAAFI canteen, and loads of good-natured banter, resulting in the shiniest, smoothest, car-parking space in Littleover.
When, a few months back, I suggested using some of that rainy-day money to enhance our fast-approaching dotage, the last thing I anticipated was using it on boring, sensible, joyless ventures. I had frivolity in mind. Then along comes the credit crunch, and of course, by now, the diamond is reduced to glass, and the liner has sunk without trace.
But heck, I can now walk to this infernal computer without falling headlong into the clothes basket, straighten the nets, peer in the pantry pull-outs and actually see a tin of spaghetti hoops rather than run the risk of being knocked senseless by one. There’s the added advantage of a paddle-free kitchen without strategically-placed buckets and floating mats – not to mention wet, whingeing cats - and those garage doors could well be the golden gates to paradise, such is their sparkle and allure.
But it’s that vast expanse of shiny Tarmac and prettily paved edges which has done it for me. Guggy has incorporated into the "design" a state-of-the-art wheelie-bin park, and a cosy corner with room for a patio table and chairs from which to watch the washing dry. Oh, the bliss of a back yard, to be able to peg out with impunity instead of side-stepping dodgy concrete and craters.
And who needs a flash solitaire when he’s treated me to a new clothes line?
Catlo…1
Ower Annie’s passing – her demise was well documented in this column a couple of weeks ago - didn’t go without tribute from other cat-lovers. Hot on the e-mail came a note from fellow feline fancier and columnist Anton Rippon, whose own two beauties are the family’s pride and joy, and who wrote with sincerity, and a tear in his eye.
This was followed by a call from, again, Derby Telegraph columnist, former sports editor, and cat man, too, Gerald Mortimer, who was moved enough to pick up the phone and express his condolences. And we also received a couple of thinking-of-you cards – one from my old mate Michael Nazaruk of Mickleover, the other from Doreen Hatton of Allestree, who I’ve not seen for years, but remember as a tireless worker for animal charities. Thank you all for your thoughts. But no, and thrice nay, no more cats at Orgill Towers. No, not even the prettiest, fluffiest kitten in the world.
Drivelo…1
That promised diamond ring becomes more Zirconian by the minute, the cruise ship has drifted away to just a dot on some exotic horizon.
In their place is a leak-free new roof on the kitchen extension, and a re-vamp of this office-cum-laundry-room-cum-pantry, which now boasts a lick of paint, a potted plant, and pictures of Elvis including a collage of leaves somebody nicked on a visit to Graceland. And since Ower Annie drifted off to the pilchard palace in the sky a few weeks ago, we no longer have to share it with a litter tray and a dish of wilting Whiskas.
Give or take a set of must-have tyres on his ridiculously expensive-to-run boy toy, and some fancy new doors on the ancient garage, the sponduliks have been gushing out of our account faster than the rain poured in through our aforementioned roof.
But new tyres? Posh garage doors? Makes the drive look a tad shabby, he reckoned. Which resulted in a visit from our mate Gary Wilkins and his team from DPL Paving Ltd, which stands for drives, patios and landscapes, but which joker Guggy – for that is his nickname – suggests could be interpreted as dips, puddles and lakes.
It was nigh-on week of diggers and bumpers, hard-core and steam-rollers, endless bacon butties, more tea than a NAAFI canteen, and loads of good-natured banter, resulting in the shiniest, smoothest, car-parking space in Littleover.
When, a few months back, I suggested using some of that rainy-day money to enhance our fast-approaching dotage, the last thing I anticipated was using it on boring, sensible, joyless ventures. I had frivolity in mind. Then along comes the credit crunch, and of course, by now, the diamond is reduced to glass, and the liner has sunk without trace.
But heck, I can now walk to this infernal computer without falling headlong into the clothes basket, straighten the nets, peer in the pantry pull-outs and actually see a tin of spaghetti hoops rather than run the risk of being knocked senseless by one. There’s the added advantage of a paddle-free kitchen without strategically-placed buckets and floating mats – not to mention wet, whingeing cats - and those garage doors could well be the golden gates to paradise, such is their sparkle and allure.
But it’s that vast expanse of shiny Tarmac and prettily paved edges which has done it for me. Guggy has incorporated into the "design" a state-of-the-art wheelie-bin park, and a cosy corner with room for a patio table and chairs from which to watch the washing dry. Oh, the bliss of a back yard, to be able to peg out with impunity instead of side-stepping dodgy concrete and craters.
And who needs a flash solitaire when he’s treated me to a new clothes line?
Catlo…1
Ower Annie’s passing – her demise was well documented in this column a couple of weeks ago - didn’t go without tribute from other cat-lovers. Hot on the e-mail came a note from fellow feline fancier and columnist Anton Rippon, whose own two beauties are the family’s pride and joy, and who wrote with sincerity, and a tear in his eye.
This was followed by a call from, again, Derby Telegraph columnist, former sports editor, and cat man, too, Gerald Mortimer, who was moved enough to pick up the phone and express his condolences. And we also received a couple of thinking-of-you cards – one from my old mate Michael Nazaruk of Mickleover, the other from Doreen Hatton of Allestree, who I’ve not seen for years, but remember as a tireless worker for animal charities. Thank you all for your thoughts. But no, and thrice nay, no more cats at Orgill Towers. No, not even the prettiest, fluffiest kitten in the world.
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