Start of the Year

 Prepping for the winter has officially started , I managed to buy 5 stones of onions from the carboot this week , i have some in the garden but they are rubbish this year but they will do for eaters red and japanese onions but not very big . These were big brown soup onions doubtless rejects from the pack houses, to big and the odd one a bit damaged but the dehydrator doesnt care , the whole house smells of onions and will do for a couple of weeks , ive done half a dozen bags for the freezer for when im having an idle day and it never ceases to amaze me how little space they take up once theyre dehydrated , they keep for 2 or 3 years as well . £3 well spent i think .

Next job will be bottling plums , again not many this year but more than enough for us . We ate all the plums bottled last year but i still have a few bottles of gooseberries left so shant do any for this winter . Apples are mental and im still on the look out for a juice extractor i killed ours during the building work . Has anyone tried dried crab apples would they serve a purpose? Its a tree i just use to polinate the apple trees but its laden this year and nobody likes crab apple jam or jelly . I will wait for the autumn raspberries as the builders dropped a skip on the summer ones..bless . 

So its fair to say im keeping myself occupied , nothing exciting going on at all , the jumbles have pretty much died till September the odd car boot when i can be bothered to get up at 5.30 lol 

Ask GP

 I noticed an article somewhere in the press the other day saying how many people the online GP service is killing it wasnt a small number !!  now there are several variants to the system this area is lumbered with Ask GP  which is basically appaling its  a gatekeeper system whos aim it is to stop people bothering the physical GP . So he wants to put in that one of his tablets is giving him the runs , so he tries to spell diarohea, cant, so he puts in that he has the shits, it comes back with go to the chemist and get imodium   Which is fine unless youre ill or like my partner disabled with complex medical needs and also happen to be dyslexic and a tad stroppy all the time . What should be a simple medication review request turned into an epic battle of wits between him and a computer system .  It decided he needed umpteen blood tests prior to his medication review the trouble is when he went to book the tests it wasnt for 5 weeks and he needed his perscriptions now . simple you would think but now he had to shout his way through the system till he reached the locum GP who has never seen him or obviously read his notes. First she decided he should go to free swimming , he doesnt swim and it would be a 30 mile round trip every day , so that set him off , then he needs to go to the local walking group ..lol  he can manage maybe 10 paces on his crutches most days by this stage hes bellowing down the phone which is normal he cant tell at what volume hes speaking , they now record all calls so i hope theyre saving it for training purposes . Now he has to explain he has an inoperable spinal tumour , so she sugests Slimming World at which point he did kinda lose it and pointed out was that going to shrink his tumour ? Now how did this all happen ? well im no longer allowed to deal with the doctors for him due to data protection , because he has no mental impairment  ..Ho hum im waiting for the call to tell me i can deal with his GP again...lol 

Back on the hospital cycle again next week , because the medical professionals at the GPs cant read his test results properly , the hospital rang us to ask why he hasnt been for a transfusion this year , we told them the GPs say theres nothing wrong with him and it gave the nurse a giggle because there is something wrong with him that doesnt ever get better he has a weird type of aneamia thats very close to Cystic Fibrosis as she said any doctor should be able to see this from his results . The problem is its so rare that a medical professional on the switchboard whos done a course online isnt going to be able to see the problem with his tests .....Onwards

Green

 My daughter is having a House plant frenzy and is constantly passing on cuttings of one thing and another , for my birthday i got plants . But the problem is its that cold here in the winter that they will all have to go in with himself  i have visions of him beng surrounded by the amazon jungle , hes not fond of plants and does tend to give them a kick or encourage the cat to knock them over . We only have one small window ledge so it makes it interesting . Hes now declared war on a huge potted Phormium that ive put outside the front door he keeps grumbling about it being in the way every time he passes it ,  he went to give it a good kick the other day and because of the shape of the pot it bounced back and attacked him , he promptly fell back into one of his garden chairs that snapped in half dumping him on the floor , I had a hard job to keep a straight face as i helped him up ranting and raving . No injury done to him but hes sat on the doorstep staring at it with utter loathing yet again this morning . If plants could talk i would think its smiling and saying youre not going to win this one mate

What did i miss?

 Well the world has changed so much ..not at all lets be truthful. We had a none election where nothing changed , 74 years of the tories continues here on the fen , not that any party made any effort to take this seat , we had a couple of leaflets a few days before the election , we didnt know till then who was even trying for our vote . Our old ancient MP despite being a robbing tory with a mansion and a duck house was pretty useful on a local level the present incumbent it would be fair to call a piss taker , never seen ,does nothing for her constituents. A NHS consultant who votes against the NHS at every turn, yet another scion of a large farming family. Ho hum in this area of no faces other than white, they stuck a bloke called Mohammed in as the Labour candidate he did suprisingly well but didnt have a chance of unseating our current MP . So thats my politics for the day over ...ho hum 

Im more concerned with the quality of garden veg this year , by now the dehydrator is on full time in a normal year , crap new potatoes , same variety i alwys use but all theyve yielded is a couple of giant baking size potatoes each , maincrop is looking a bit more promising but the slugs and snails are having an orgy this year , loads of flowering green beans but no bees to polinate them , beetroot just vanished , strawberries vanished overnight and they were in a cage . Broad beans seem to have been the one winner and are laden to the ground so are the apple trees i keep thining them, theres leeks and onions down among the weeds somewhere, i couldnt get doen there for all the scaffolding for weeks, so we will see. im not doing tons of bottling and canning this year i got it about right for the two of us last year 3 big bottles of everything with added huge bottles of mixed veg is about enough for us . onwards seems to be the motto at the moment im reading much more and viewing the internet less and less , will AI kill the internet ?  

Gibbering

 Well its been an interesting few weeks , it seems i was right the back of the house was indeed falling out !!  So everything turned into a circus with a whole lot of scaffolding and hoards of builders . Then they found that when they removed the kitchen units there was literally nothing behind them you could see into the fireplace in the front room and wave to Himself  , this explained the draft because you could see right up the chimney . The floor in the kitchen and dining room was so bad it has all had to be replaced , lots of rewiring tons of plastering , new ceiling in the kitchen theyve redecorated everything at the rear because they made such a bleeding mess it took so long that they only left me 4 days to unpack the container in the garden that they then didnt pick it up till Friday ...GGGRRRR  im still living in a sea of boxes , the internet is patchy . The mice got into the boxes in the container AAARRGGGHHHHHH very glad i didnt store any food out there and the cats are resolving that problem ..But then theres the fact they are coming back to tackle the upstairs back of the house and bathroom  at some later date along with more roof repairs . My imaginary hole in the roof was actually 4 inches round and it was indeed leaking into the back wall but theyve patched it for now !!!  So yes i may have a lovely kitchen but the fact theres more to be tackled fills me with horror 

The Return

 I will be back, 6 weeks of builder inspired hell is now over , im still unpacking stuff , im still dealing with my bizarre family and all being well i will have full internet access from sometime next week . Thankyou for your concern ...its been fun !!!  sits in corner gibbering gently