a view through my own eyes

Oo-R-me-hearties!

Many thanks to MrsSJT for the pirate accessories.

I am not the proud owner of a cutlass, a telescope and an eye patch.

I am touched, I really am.

Apparently this is due to the impending pirate situation.

I will dress appropriately with the above when the time comes and see if I can convince dmc to let me borrow the inflatable parrot.

I hate, absolutely loathe stripping wallpaper borders which have been attached using border adhesive rather than normal wallpaper paste. The reason is this: border adhesive sets like sodding concrete and is just about impervious to moisture and heat, despite scoring and soaking it refuses to budge. Once you have the border off the wall, you still have to remove the bloody border adhesive which requires bloody ages of scraping. DONT USE IT BECAUSE IT IS EVIL. Wallpaper attached by paste on the other hand is trivial to remove. I think I spent twice as much time removing about 30 ft of borders as I did the wallpaper which edges it was covering.

On the other hand I love Dulux Magic White Emulsion paint. It goes on pink and dries white, its great you know exactly where you have painted and so don’t miss bits. This is particularly usefull when painting white on white to get consistent opaque coverage.

Thankyou Mr Dulux.

Been decorating, can you guess?

…this morning when I saw a kitchen roll laying on the bed and yet I could not quite put my finger on it.

All day long there has been this niggling feeling.

I found out why this evening when I returned home.

One of our delightful felines decided to shred the bloody thing all over the bed.

Thanks a bunch guys.

Well you know when Ariel has made use of the litter tray, as she runs round the lounge as fast as she can.

Its the only time that we ever see her run.

Can it be that bad?

In thirty days from today I will have my penetrating keratoplasty.

As a result of which I will receive a donated cornea.

Corneas can be kept for a maximum of thirty days.

So at some unknown point from today onwards a family somewhere will have lost someone that they love.

For a cornea to be used it has to be removed from the deceased within 24 hours of death.

A doctor will approach the family fairly soon after the time of death and inform them that the deceased was carrying a donor card, the familiy may not have been aware.

At that point as grief descends upon them due to their loss they will have to decide whether to agree to the deceased wishes.

Spare a thought towards these families, who have to make this final decision for the deceased. I am.

mrspao made me a loverly card – thankyou.

On the whole I don’t really believe in valentines day, as IMHO its a money making exercise for restaurants and florists. So last night we went out for a meal using some vouchers from the Torygraph that we had been given by Auntie H, so took ourselves to the Crab & Winkle in Whitstable – smashing meal £17 quid with drinks – bargain if you like fish.

I popped into Magic and Sparkle just after five to pick up some morsels for dinner, figured making a little bit of an effort would go down well. The place had been decimated by a plague of locusts going by appearances, but I did manage to get some bits and bobs so all was not lost. Though I really didn’t fancy shelling out £14.99 for a lobster cocktail – and to be honest nor did anyone else, I expect that they will be around 3 quid tomorrow. What was amusing was watching a group of blokes look like they were going to have a punch up over the last bunch of roses. Daft buggers. I really dont see why you should wait till valentines to buy the wife/girlfriend (or both even) flowers.

Popped into Mrs HBs on the way home as its the twins 5th birthday and we had cards to drop off, ended up being dragged in to east Boston Baked Beans and trifle and thence to assist with the present unwrapping – it was mad, but the boys enjoyed the attention and the recycling will take a big hit this week.

Finally arrived home a short while ago to find a letter – just looking at it before I opened it I just knew what it would contain:

A booking has been made for you to have your procedure carried
out under GENERAL ANAESTHETIC...

All the talk, discussions, appointments and consultations have now finally come to reality.

23rd March is the day, with pre-op assessment on the 8th.

My stomach has knotted up, I feel rather tense.

Really don’t feel like eating anymore. Dinner can wait till tomorrow.

Due to the impending eye op, I figured that it would be a good plan to investigate the local library.

I used to go to the library every week with my mum, I remember going first when I was about six or seven and being dumped in the kids bit and told to choose three books. I loved reading and so had a great time rummaging through the shelves (well the lower ones anyway) with books suitable for my age. It was a magical moment handing the books over the counter with my card and getting them stamped so I could take them home. This began the weekly voyage of discovery and each week I went home with up to three books and most weeks I read them. I didn’t care too much what I read then as long as I had a book to read. I recall being distinctly upset when at about eleven years old I was told that I could use the adults bit of the library and was discouraged of going to the kids bit which to me was the sacred place for my younger brother and I alone. So from then on my brother and I parted ways as we entered the library and I discovered the likes of Ian Fleming, Alistair Maclean and John LeCarre. The library though was never quite the same again. I think we stopped going to the library when I was around thirteen or so.

Anyway jumping forward over twenty years, today I ventured into the local library – different library, different town. But for some reason I felt around six years old again as I walked in the door.

So today I joined the library, I provided my ID and enquired about audiobooks. The assistant seemed a little suprised and said that they didn’t get too many takers my age for audio books so I explained about the impending eye op and that I was checking out the options. At which point she announced that I could indeed borrow the audio books and that I would be allowed them for free due to the eye condition.

All in all I will be allowed to borrow twelve at a time for the period of three weeks which should I hope be move than enough once I have had the op.

Also for some reason I feel that I am finally getting some service which will make a difference to me personnally that is being paid for by my council tax.

So all in all a result and I am very happy indeed.

Reading through the news this week in various papers (usually those without pictures of bare breasted ladies), New Scientist and watching the news on Auntie Beeb and Channel Four; has caused me to start pondering. Now I can’t say that the following is particularly coherent (my degree didn’t require me to write essays) or to be honest well informed, so excuse my ignorance and naivety (and probably my spelling).

Iran it appears is planning to assume a programme of nuclear enrichment, primarily its says for energy supplies (for the sake of these observations I will take that at face value).

The US, France, Britain and not overly pleased by this and want to take the matter to the UN Security Council. Meanwhile Russia is offering a compromise (to oversea Irans nuclear enrichment programme) and China seem to be keeping well out of the situation. Note that these five nations are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

At the same time the British Government is in the process of conducting a review of the energy policy and this includes nuclear fuel. This is apparently due to the rising cost of gas (which powers most of our power stations) and that we import a large percentage of gas from abroad mainly Russia, and so we are not self sufficient. It is also estimated that as a nation we will only be able to produce around 80% of our energy needs by 2015.

BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels) a state owned company has just sold its US based nuclear clean up unit to a US based company, Energy Solutions Inc of Utah. BNFL has for sometime been making a loss. Apparently they are also planning to sell its US (again) company Westinghouse (they make nuclear power stations). According to the BNFL website all UK assets will from the 1st April be transferred to the Nuclear Decommisioning Authority – any idea what they do? Doesn’t seem to leave BNFL with a tremendous amount to do.

We are now in a situation where oil supplies are running down and that the cost of oil continues to increase and will continue to do so. This is to the extent where from a cost standpoint nuclear generated power is possibly going to be considerably cheaper than oil/gas produced energy, oh and its not likely to run out anything like as quickly.

Looking ahead it seems that with the proliferation of nuclear reactors (India, Russia, China to name a few nations going through the process now) there is big money to be made by nuclear enrichment, energy production and also of course decommissioning of current reactors/plants that are at the end of their lifecycle.

Interesting that fuel enrichment is exactly what Iran is trying to do.

Also interesting that BNFL – does exactly that – well they did.

There is nuclear money in them hills and it appears that we (as a nation) will only be spending it.

I don’t know how I feel about a nuclear future to be honest, whilst properly managed it can be a clean resource – its disposing of the used fuel that is the major issue. I am aware that our dependancy on a finite resource (oil) is not environmentally friendly (greenhouse emmisions anyone?) and also the nuclear fuel is also finite (but you do get more bang for your buck). Ideally we should be using environmentally friendly ways to generate energy (wind, wave, solar power etc) but thats not taking off. Presumably there isn’t as much money in environmentally friendly energy production.