Diary of a self-isolator – week 57

A light-hearted look at a few memories and the situation over the last seven days in our house.

Sunday 11/04/2021 – Day 395

Another cool and brisk morning here in Kidderminster, our family crisis continues but there are improvements.

Finished the flooring in the garden room yesterday, the difference in the temperature is amazing, still a few odds and ends to complete, today I will put up the blinds (hopefully).

Mrs H and I had a dabble on the Grand National yesterday, our first-choice horse which was the favourite (Cloth Cap) stopped to pick his cap up near to the end, but our second choice Burrow’s Saint came in at 9/1 giving us a return of £14, it was great to see the female influence in the race, especially Rachel Blackmore becoming the first ever woman to win the prestigious £750,000 race. It all started in 1977 when Charlotte Brew led the way and became the first female rider, then in 1982 Geraldine Rees was the first female rider to finish the race. It would take a further thirty years before Katie Walsh became the first female rider to finish in the top three in 2012.

Well, since last week we can all sit outside and have a drink with two friends, but Mrs H and I have been looking at the rules of such a treat and to be quite honest – we find them a little perplexing.

1,  You can walk inside a pub to get outside, then you can sit inside a covered area as long as it’s outside.

2. You can go inside to the toilet, but you can’t go to the toilet outside.
3. You can go inside to pay, but you must stay outside to drink.
4. If it rains then you can all sit inside the covered area, but only if it’s outside.
5. If you decide to go home, you can walk inside the pub to get outside to walk home and be inside again.
6. You can walk past the bar to go to the toilet inside, but you must not carry a pint back outside, this is only safe if done by bar staff.
7. You can only sit with six people, unless you have a massive family, then you can sit with as many as you like.
8. A substantial meal no longer protects you while you are drinking, the virus no longer comes out after 10.00pm, as long as you are outside.

Are you as confused as Mrs H and myself? Just go and get a drink and you will be.

We’ve been having a few problems with Pigeon power over the last week, as you all know, I am no great lover of pigeons. But I have a particular bird who I have nicknamed ‘Stubby’ which is a shortened version of stubborn. Allow me to enlighten you. From the bedroom window where I type this drivel – I have a great view of the garden, we have three trees in which pigeons love to nest and rear their offspring to annoy us even more in the future, pigeons, it has to be said are not fussy birds, no elaborate nests lined with fur for these Kings and queens of the airways, no, all they require are a few well-placed twigs to nest upon. Over the past few weeks, I have successfully evicted at least three birds, not because I’m cruel but because these overweight fat birds ruin the trees they nest in by constantly flying in and out. Then last week Stubby arrived, I sat and watched him on Thursday morning as he collected twigs in preparation for the love of his life, around 11.00am I wandered down the garden, looked up and sure enough the half-built nest was there, I got the broom and knocked the twigs to the ground below. On Friday morning I watched in amazement as Stubby returned time and time again carrying twigs and building his second nest for his version of she who must be obeyed. At 11.00am I went down the garden with the broom and knocked the twigs away. On Saturday morning I just couldn’t believe my eyes, Stubby was there again – re-building the same nest in exactly the same spot, now I was really angry, (my eyes bulged, my muscles flexed, and my chest and body expanded, sorry, that was the Incredible Hulk, got a bit carried away there) I stormed down the garden and shook the tree till all the twigs fell to the floor. So, I am sat here this morning and – well you can guess the rest, Stubby is now building his fourth nest and I’m sat here thinking that the poor bird must be under real pressure from the love of his life, so I won’t be going down the garden path this morning, Stubby has earned the right to nest in that tree!

There were 1730 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours with thankfully a new low of seven deaths.

Monday 12/04/2021 – Day 396

Some excellent news re the family crisis, things are looking good at last. It is a DaD day here today (Dull as Dishwater) but for the first time in weeks, we are all upbeat.

I spent a few hours yesterday putting up blinds in the Garden room, I must say Mrs H has got good taste (well, she married me didn’t she) they look really good, have to admit though, we are going to need some sort of shading on the ceiling, is there no end to it?

From today you girls can go and have your hair and nails seen to while you lucky chaps can brave the Winter weather and sit outside having a pint and a snack while you wait. Keep heart though boys, in five weeks you can sit inside whilst the good lady spends your money.

Mrs H has a new philosophy on life, it is as follows.

If you’re happy and you know it stay in bed
If you’re happy and you know it stay in bed
If you’re happy and you know it getting up will surely blow it
If you’re happy and you know it stay in bed

I’ll bet you were all singing the words to that weren’t you, and now it’s going to be stuck in your heads all day.

On this day in 1954 American, Bill Haley recorded ‘Rock Around the Clock’. It was the first record to sell a million copies in Britain.

Mrs H sent me down the garden today to re-site some posts I removed when building the Garden room, it should have only taken an hour!, but I didn’t allow for Mrs H’s thinking.  I should have heard the alarm bells when she casually remarked ‘I really could do with a little more border you know.’

I was already going to move one board from the decking, but Mrs H was already one step ahead of me, ‘Why don’t you move those four other boards?’ she said casually, ‘That will leave you with a nice straight edge to put up the posts. Yes, she was quite right, although, she didn’t mention the fact that it would leave her with another substantial sized border, I had been conned yet again, you’d think I would have learned by now.

The result was that I must finish the job off tomorrow.

There were 3567 new cases and a further 13 registered deaths today.

Tuesday 13/04/2021 – Day 397

Had a phone call this morning with some wonderful news at last, hopefully, by the end of the week I will be in a position to tell you all what has been going on with our family crisis.

Despite the gloomy weather forecasts, it seems to be another bright and sunny day out there, we had a slight frost but now the sun is streaming in from the office window.

Forgot to tell you that Mrs H and I have found a new drama series to watch, it is Australian (why do the Aussies and Canadians make better programmes than us?) It is called ‘Offspring’ and has five series; we have already watched series one and it’s really good.

Found out today that the BBC (Blooming Boring Company) have to date received over 100,000 complaints about the coverage of Prince Philips death last Friday, no one denied that it was top news, but when the BBC put mirrored programmes on both BBC 1 and BBC2 it was a bit much, Viewers tuning into BBC Four were greeted with a message urging them to switch over for a “major news report”, while BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live also aired programmes about the duke.

Well, I have to take advantage of this ‘gloomy weather’ and go and complete the project I started yesterday – unless Mrs H gets any more bright ideas of course.

Mrs H and I have been thinking of adopting a pet skunk, it seems that they’re the best pets for guaranteed social distancing.

A further 2472 new cases today with 23 registered deaths/

Wednesday 14/04/2021 – Day 398

Things are really looking up at last and we are hoping that we have finally turned the corner with our family crisis. This, of course is why I suddenly started to think about medical dramas of the past and present.

It all started with Emergency Ward 10 which was a British medical soap opera series shown on ITV between 1957 and 1967. Emergency Ward 10 is considered to be one of British television’s first major soap operas. It was shown twice weekly for 30-minute episodes, Lew Grade who ran ATV at the time said cancelling it was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made.

Dr Kildare was an NBC medical drama television series which originally ran from September 28, 1961, until August 30, 1966, for a total of 191 episodes over five seasons on BBC. Richard Chamberlain became an instant heart throb and girls had his picture all over their bedroom walls alongside Elvis and Cliff. But Chamberlain was also a singer, besides other music he recorded the signature tune as Three Stars Will Shine Tonight which reached No12 on our charts.

General Hospital was one of the first  British daytime soap opera’s produced by ATV that ran on ITV from 1972 to 1979. It was not modelled after the American drama of the same name. Rather, it was an attempt to replicate the success of its predecessor, Emergency – Ward 10 after Lew Grade had a pang of conscience..

Angels is a British television seasonal drama series dealing with the subject of student nurses, it was twice weekly and was broadcast by the BBC between 1975 and 1983, it  was once described as the “Z-Cars of nursing”. The series provided valuable early TV exposure for a variety of young actresses who became better known on British TV, including Fiona Fullerton, Érin Geraghty, Lesley Dunlop, Julie Dawn Cole, Angela Bruce, Clare Clifford and Pauline Quirke.

The District Nurse is a British television series, produced by BBC Wales and shown on BBC One between 1984 and 1987.  It starred Nerys Hughes as Megan Roberts, the titular district nurse fighting to improve living conditions for the people living in a poverty stricken mining town, Pencwm, in South Wales during the late 1920s.

Next came the BBC drama Casualty,  a British medical drama series that airs weekly on BBC One. It is the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world, and the most enduring medical drama shown on prime time television in the world. It was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 6 September 1986 which means that it has now been on our screens for 35 years!

Children’s Ward (retitled The Ward from 1995 to 1998) was a British children’s television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children’s ITV strand on weekday afternoons.

Doctors is a British medical soap opera which began broadcasting on BBC One on 26 March 2000. Set in the fictional West Midlands town of Letherbridge, the soap follows the lives of the staff of both an NHS doctor’s surgery and a university campus surgery, as well as their families and friends. Initially, only 41 episodes of the programme were ordered, but due to the positive reception, the BBC ordered it as a continuing soap opera. Doctors was filmed at the Pebble Mill Studios until 2004, and was then relocated to the BBC Drama Village

Holby City is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One. It was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999.

The Royal is a British period medical drama produced by ITV and aired normally on Sundays in the early evening slot. The show consisted of eight series of one-hour episodes and was broadcast on ITV from 2003 until the show was cancelled in 2011/

So, as you can see dear readers, we’ve had more than our fair share of medical dramas, I was going to cover cookery programmes next week but there are so many that it would have taken up the whole blog for the week!

On this day in 1912 The British built luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic shortly before midnight and sank in the early hours of the next morning. 1500 passengers and crew were killed.

1983 The first cordless telephone, capable of operating up to 600 feet from base, was introduced. It was made by Fidelity and British Telecom and sold for £170. Problem was, it was so big you needed a pram to carry it around in.

And finally on this day in 1985 The death of Noele Gordon, English film and television actress. She was credited as the first woman to be seen on colour television sets, as she took part in the BBC’s early tests in colour broadcasting in the 1940s. First in 1969 and then during the following decade, she won the TV Times award for most popular television actress on eight occasions. In ‘Crossroads’, she took the role of motel owner Meg Richardson (later Meg Mortimer) and was the only member of the Crossroads cast who had a permanent contract.

New cases reported today totalled 2490 with a further 38 deaths registered.

Thursday 15/04/2021 – Day 399

Things are really getting better for us in our family crisis situation, hopefully, better news to come.

I have the gloves on with Microsoft and PayPal at the moment. If you are considering a PayPal account – beware! This company will throw you to the wolves if necessary. My Problem began on the 7^{th of} April when Microsoft took £59.99 from my PayPal account for a product I had not ordered. I got in touch with Microsoft immediately and they said PayPal would re-imburse me. PayPal refused, saying it was up to Microsoft to re-imburse me. Microsoft admit that my account may have been ‘compromised’ that someone could have invented an e mail address for this purpose. I have tried everything but neither of them will budge, Microsoft say they will re-imburse me if I let them know the email address on which the original order was set up – but if my account was compromised – how am I supposed to know the address? Stalemate.

Meanwhile George popped round today, he was holding what seemed to be a bundle of white fur.

“What’s that George?” Mrs H asked.

“It’s a – er dog.”

“Well let’s have a look at it then.”

George reluctantly pulled the white bundle from beneath his jacket, it was a puppy!

“Rose bought it for a bit of company for herself while I’m down the pub.”

“But the pubs haven’t been open for months.” I said.

“I know, that’s what I can’t understand, do you reckon she thinks I’m boring/”

Mrs H started to say something, but I tapped her hand just in time, I couldn’t quite make out the breed.

“What breed is it?”

“A Shitz-poo.”

Mrs H almost choked on her coffee, “You mean a Shih-poo don’t you George?”

“You haven’t seen it around the house” George replied, ‘I’m constantly picking up after it, the dog doesn’t like me, it keeps nipping at me, I keep it under my coat in case any of my mates are around, it’s so embarrassing.”

“I didn’t want to ask but felt obliged, “Does it have a name?”

George’s face went red, “Sweetie pie”.

That was it, Mrs H and I just burst out laughing, thoughts of him calling out ‘Come here Sweetie pie,’ when it runs off on a dark Winter night were just too much to take in.

George, slipped the little bundle back beneath his jacket and slinked off, but as Mrs H discovered later as she ran around spraying air freshener everywhere – Sweetie pie, wasn’t so sweet, he’d left his calling card behind the chair in the Garden room.

A slight rise in new cases today, there were 2672 reported, whilst the official number of deaths was 30.

Friday 16/04/2021 – Day 400

Well, here we are, at day 400, can you believe it? I have been on furlough now for 400 days!

Mrs H and I are avid fans of Countryfile (I know, sad isn’t it) they do some great reporting about farm life and the environment, but they seem to have lost their way recently, sometimes it’s like watching an episode of Coast to Coast. But the main thing to watch for is the six-day weather forecast at the end of the show. This last week it was supposed to be frosty nights (true) and mornings (true), it was also supposed to reach a maximum of 10 degrees (False) and stay cloudy most of the day (also false). I don’t know where you live dear reader, but we are in the West Midlands in the county of Worcestershire in Kidderminster, this week has been an early frost with full sunshine and clear skies, the temperatures have been so high by 11.00am that I was forced to strip off down to just my T shirt (and jeans and shoes of course) I have been painting outside all week, so come on Countryfile, get your act together and stick to what you know best.

On this day in 1889 Charlie Chaplin, English-born film actor and director was born. but did you know that he penned Petula Clarkes No 1 hit ‘This is my Song’. It was also recorded by Harry Secombe and the two had a race up the charts, Harry’s version halted at No 3.

Also, on this day in 2020  Shortly before 06:00 this morning, Tom Moore, a 99-year-old war veteran from Bedfordshire, who is walking 100 laps of his garden with the aid of a walking frame before he turns 100, had raised nearly £12million for the NHS. More than 600,000 people from around the world donated money to his fundraising page since it was set up the previous week.

Another slight rise in new cases brings the total for the last 24 hours to 2756, the number of deaths reported was 34.

Saturday 17/04/2021 – Day 401

It is another beautiful sunny day again, a slight frost this morning but it’s a small price to pay for the wonderful sunny and warm days that follow.

The news on the family crisis is greatly improved today. So, as promised here is what has happened in the last four weeks.

It started over four weeks ago when our daughter Sarah was complaining about stomach pains, she visited the doctors twice that week and was eventually given anti-biotics. Sarah lives with her 18-year-old daughter Mollie.

On Thursday 18^th March she had been awake most of the night and very poorly, at around 5.30am that morning Mollie called an ambulance and Sarah was taken into Redditch Hospital with a serious infection. By teatime, the doctors were phoning other hospitals to get her in for an emergency operation, it seems that the infection had become deep-seated in her kidney, meanwhile, her breathing became so erratic that they put her on a ventilator.

You need to know at this point that Sarah has poor health anyway, she is a diabetic (since childhood) and insulin-dependent, she also suffers from arthritis.

On Thursday evening she was taken by ambulance to Worcester Hospital where she was to have an operation to have her Kidney flushed. On Friday 19th she was taken down to the theatre. We were phoned at around 5.30 by an ICU doctor who told us that the news wasn’t good, the operation had gone ok but whilst they were flushing the kidney, Sarah suffered Septic shock. She was now dependant on a ventilator, and they had heavily sedated her, in short – it wasn’t looking particularly good for her, and the next 24 hours were critical.

Mrs H and I spent most of the night praying that we weren’t going to get that phone call, we both eventually slipped into a sleep and woke about 7.30. We rang the ICU ward immediately and were told that she’d had a steady night, she was on two lots of antibiotics, and the sedation along with the ventilator were doing their job. We phoned two or three times a day over the weekend, but nothing had changed, we were not allowed to visit because of the Coronavirus epidemic. There was no change in her health for the next three or four days, the following Thursday they weaned her off the ventilator gradually, by Sunday she was only on a very low dose of oxygen, on the Monday 29^th she was moved back to Redditch ICU.

It was Tuesday morning when Mrs H’s mobile rang, I heard her shriek, it was Sarah! It had been almost two weeks since we had heard from her, apart from being a little croaky she sounded ok, she was absolutely drained after what she had been through, but we were elated. Then on Wednesday she was moved back to Redditch, she phoned us on the Thursday and said that she now had to go to Birmingham Queen Elizabeth hospital where she was to have a tube fitted.

We didn’t hear anything else, so we phoned the ICU ward on Friday 2^nd April and were told that she was poorly again but stable, after a phone call on Saturday we were told that they were thinking of putting her back on a ventilator because she was having difficulty breathing.

On Easter Sunday we had another phone call from the doctor at the Queen Elizabeth, He told us that Sarah was back in the ICU and that once again the outlook wasn’t very good, she was basically back to the same condition she was in on Friday 19^th, Once again Mrs H and I had a terrible night, it is the worst thing in the world to be waiting for a telephone call.

Mollie was coming round to our house quite regularly and eating with us, she couldn’t stay because they have a dog, we could sense how stressed the poor girl was.

Over the next few days Sarah’s health started to improve, once again on Friday 8^th she was moved back to the ICU at Redditch, by the following Monday they were once again slowly coaxing her off the ventilator, on Tuesday they moved her to a private room on the ward, to our great joy we got a phone call from her on the same day, most of her tubes had been removed and she had tried to eat something.

She is now improving a little every day, but there is still a way to go, having already lost one daughter to leukaemia we are just so relieved to have her back from the brink.

All we have to do now is locate her bags that have sort of got mislaid in the many moves, a small price to pay I think.

You should all go now and give your daughter/son/siblings a great big hug and tell them how much you love them, and if there is a rift in the family then heal it – life is far too precious.

There were 2206 new cases today bringing the total for the week to 17,893 just 1051 less than last week, there are press reports about the virus beginning to rise again in some areas, let’s hope they are exaggerated, the number of deaths for the week was 180 which was 74 down on the previous week. But there was a huge rise in the number of recoveries which shows us that the vaccine is doing its job, recoveries rose by 184,072 to a total of 4,145,180.

Well, dear readers, we are at the end of another very eventful week, but for the first time in over a month, I am at least ending on a more positive note, many thanks to the hundreds of you who have given Mrs H and myself a lot of support over the past few weeks. Have a great week and stay safe.

It really has been emotional.