a view through my own eyes

Rebus the world weary DI from Edinburgh is back in action, sidelined for being a bolshy pain in the arse by his leaders whilst the G8 summit takes place in 2005 he and DI Clarke take on the case of a murdered rapist as well as looking at the apparent suicide of an MP.

As usual with Rankin’s books threads twist and weave all over the place, just as you think you are getting somewhere he chucks in another twist. Utterly compulsive reading as so many of the other Rebus novels highly reccomended.

So what do a murdered rapist, a dead MP, the local gangster Morris Gerald Cafferty, a councillor and a armanents company have in common? Read this and find out.

I went to the cinema to see the film of this book as a child, all I remember is the cartoon bunnies and the song warbled by Art Garfunkel, so finding it in a jumble sale for twenty pence was considered a chance to pick up a copy.

Hazel, Fiver and other rabbits flee the warren after Fiver warns that something dreadfull will happen. The story follows the group of rabbits as the leave the warren and set up and new one and then go in search of does.

In many ways its a loverly story and in others absolutely harrowing. To be honest after the first third of the book I was quite shocked at what happened and then started to wonder how much worse it would get – it didn’t. The story is interspersed by stories of rabbit folklore as told by Dandelion which in some ways give a nice break from the main narrative but in others distract from it, I feel you can take or leave these as you feel apropriate.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and whilst in some ways its marketed as a childrens book, the subjects that it deals with ensures that this is not the case maybe because it is about bunnies that people think it is for kids. It is clearly an adults book and the themes that are explored demonstrate that.

Bit late on this review – I forgot.

This is the third in Dobb’s Churchill series.

Its 1941 the Battle of Britain is over and major cities in England are being bombed by the Luftwaffe. Things are desperate there is not enough food and the Americans are not prepared to commit to war. Japan ups the ante in Asia and has eyes on the Pacific as Germany heads towards the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile Churchill does everything in his power to coerce the Americans into committing to the war effort and does not do some thing that are in his power…

I quite enjoyed this book, it gave another slant on the times, the goings on in the corridors of power and in the attitudes of the to and from the Americans as they cautiously aided England whilst trying not to offend the Germans and the Japanese.

Of course in hindsight we know what happened, Pearl Harbour. It changed everything for the Americans. What we get in this book is the cajoling, goading and pleading from Churchill to the American diplomats and Roosevelt. At the same time we see how far Churchill was apparently prepared to use his own family to get what he and his country wanted.

One thing I dislike about the antibiotic eye drops is that like other very fluid drops they enter the tear duct and then through a maze of passages in my head and end up at the back of my throat.

This in itself is usually not a problem, however the antibiotic drops to put it bluntly taste absolutely disgusting and from time to time leave me feeling nauseous.

Today was slightly different as I was feeling pretty rough to start with, probably just some bug but combined with the nausea led to some interesting effects.

I like Ribena quite a lot, that blackcurranty taste when you get the mix just so is loverly. It is also the colour of blackcurrants. When its diluted down with the contents of the stomach and then hurled back up in the oposing direction to that which it originally entered the temple that is the body along with the contents of the gastronomic system and you forget like I did earlier today that I had drunk a pint of ribena then the initial thought whilst using the great white telephone was that this would be a pretty good moment to repent.

Fortunately I remembered.

Is what I have been repeatedly advised by the eye consultant in the last few appointments.

This morning on the way to work I noticed that my eye was sore, not in a gouge my eye out with a teaspoon way but in a really gonna piss me off way.

So I played the game of fight the automated phone system, I won’t go into detail but I think on Monday I will need to check that the phone is still in one piece as I was poking the buttons with a slightly more than moderate level of enthusiasm.

Once I did get through to the secretary I explained the situation and was advised that she would call me back shortly once she had got hold of the consultant. Five minutes later I am advised to come straight down to the hospital as he wants to take a look at it.

Twenty minutes later I have struck gold on free roadside parking and am in the hospital, the clinic is packed, I have a book (Watership Down by Richard Adams – review coming soon) and go and check in. Ah yes they are expecting me, take a seat.

Five minutes later the consultant calls me in, much to the obvious disgust of the other patients who may well have been there for a good hour or so waiting to see him.

The consultant takes a good look round, pronounces that there is a bit of inflamation, that the graft is looking really rather good and that I did absolutely the right thing in phoning in and coming in. He then says that he wants to take a look at the refraction stuff and so he swears at the computer that does the corneal mappings whilst he convinces it to work, all the time grumbling about lack of NHS funding.

Once the mapping is done, he says that one stitch was worked its way into being quite tight which probably explains the inflammation and the soreness, so that is going to come out and whilst he does that he wants to tug another one out as that should improve the astigmatism.

Ten minutes later the stitches are out and I am in a heap on the floor. Apparently I passed out just as he finished – which as he put it was most odd as I am one of his most relaxed patients for stitch removal. Still a couple of nurses fussing over me made it worth it.

So for the time being I am back on the antibiotic drops 3 times a day and the steroid drops three times a day, reducing down to once a day over three weeks.

Oh and the eye bloody well hurts now.

But the good thing is the cornea is not being rejected, the pain I can live with, the loss of sight would be more of a challenge.

… to discover that on campus behind the Student Union buildings opposite the old bus stops there are masses of bluebells in the woodland.

To be fair bluebells only last a few weeks and the only reason I noticed them was because I walked past on Monday evening as I had to get a bus home.

So lunchtime today was a great chance to play with my macro lens.

Click for a bigger version.

A few more that I just can’t see how they refer here:

herne bay dump
I suppose Herne Bay could be regarded as a dump from a certain point of view

what does death feel like
No idea whatsoever

wattleup australia
errrrr

lazy eye long version audio
Wonder if someone is mixing things up a bit

bugger all
Well yes that sums up the worthwhileness of this blog

wife swapping tuesday
Swap my wife on a Tuesday? I would not wife swap any day of the week. Trade her maybe for a big ass Canon lens…

This weekend mrspao and I hired a van.

Saturday with the help of the able bodied sherpas foo and rah we collected a couple of mattresses from Canterbury, a sofa, desk and other stuff from Dover and a chair from Eastry.

Sunday we emptied the garage of a friend who allowed us to store stuff in so we could make the old house look less cluttered to aid selling it.

Now we have a double garage full of stuff.

Over the next few weeks we are going to have to go through it all, some will go on to freecycle, a book cull will ensure that local charity shops get extra stock (I dare not give them to the locals who collect for the village fete as I will only buy them back later in the year…) and anything that remains will either stay or go to the dump.

Eventually we will have a garage to stick the car back into.

This morning I noticed that our new neighbours appeared to have similar plans for the weekend:

Click for full size image.

A week or two back mrspao went to the dentist, I have to admit that I called mrspao marble mouth.

I too have a marble mouth.

Sorry mrspao.

Back to the dentist today where things did not go quite as expected.

We agreed that having the radio on for some background entertainment would not be a bad idea, so to Billy Idol and other 80′s wonders we settled down.

The anaesthetic went in and whilst that kicked in, the ozone treatment that was needed on four teeth was performed. Then I noticed that my tooth ached where the anaesthetic went in and mentioned this. The dentist took out the old loose filling and cleaned up with a drill and the rusty pliers and washed it all out.

Then he sighed and commented, “That is not what I expected to find, I am going to stick a temporary cap on this and we will talk in a few minutes”.

A few minutes later I am informed that where the filling was slightly loose it appears that enough bacteria has got in underneath to make a hole in the tooth. The hole goes down to the root.

So in around three weeks time I go back and have root canal treatment, followed by the originally planned filling.

Why three weeks time? Well the dentist is on holiday next week, I am away for a week after that and two hour slots are hard to find.

Wonder what music we will have then.

Oh and if anyone asks NHS dental places in this area are about as rare as rocking horse shit.

I have just spotted this on the BBC news website.

Apparently:

19 out of 50 primary care organisations it surveyed had replaced doctors with cheaper alternatives

So cheaper than a Doctor, err lets see, I know: Nurses.

Now I am not knocking the nursing profession, BUT how the hell can nurses be expected to do the work of doctors? If they were as capable then we would have no need of doctors.

More worryingly from the same article:

The Department of Health said most patients benefit from the new system.

What bloody planet are the DoH living on?

I could have a bloody good rant now about declining standards and bastardised healthcare, but Dr Crippen does it so much more eloquently, and he has the pleasure of being a Doctor in the NHS.