a view through my own eyes

These were recommended to me by Michael (husband of Jeanne) when we were in the US on holiday last year. Michael was so enthusiastic about them, that since we were at Uncle Hugo’s & Uncle Edgar’s science fiction and fantasy bookstore to pick up all three books. I have to admit that at the time it was a gamble, I barely knew Michael from Adam, we were with people we had not met in person before, we were in a strange country (well it is) and we would need to get our luggage back; so I kind of did not have a great amount of choice.

So earlier this year (yes I am quite behind on putting books up at the moment), I sat down and read all three – well actually I sat and read the first book and one thing led to another.

Set in a fictional fantasy world, the land of the Six Duchies is ruled by the King Shrewd, who has three sons. One of which has a bastard child – Fitz. Fitz is brought up within the King’s castle not as a prince but as a stable boy. As he grows and matures he learns that he has the Skill and the Wit, at the same time he is trained to be an assassin. Around him however the three princes of the King are in conflict over the way forward as the Kingdom comes under repeated and brutal attack from the Redship Raiders – where the best way to respond to their hostage taking is to pay them to kill the hostages rather than return them alive…

Anyhow I thoroughly enjoyed the three books and will be keeping an eye out for other works by Robin Hobb as I traipse round fetes and charity shops.

This is the second of KSRs three Californias trilogy. In this future history our protagonists are the survivors of a nuclear war, but instead of being a nitty gritty survival story it is more a coming of age story as Henry who has known no other time transitions from a boy to a man. Guided by his friend from the olden days who tells fascinating stories of a time when man walked on the moon he learns about his life and the history of his country as he learns what happened and why.

Not a book that will be everyone’s cup of tea it has to be said, like most of KSRs works (with the exception of Antarctica) I found it slow to get into but oh so rewarding.

Once again we get reports on the news that the prices of gas and electricity are going up and so we can expect the prices to be punted on to us, the customers.

At the same time British Gas in order to promote environmentally policies are giving away free light bulbs which are energy efficient and so good for the environment.

What annoys me about this, is that they are using a big TV advertising campaign to promote how good they are and how they and us their customers can and will be helping the environment.

So is it any wonder that my gas/electricity bills will be rising because I am utterly certain that their shareholders will not be footing the bill for the advertising, the light bulbs or the postage.

Finally – rather than promote the bulbs as environmentally friendly which I suspect that most people could not give a toss about and so do not use, why don’t they say: use these light bulbs as they will save you money?

The above was one of my questions to friends on IRC this evening, previous thoughts and comments were:

shitshitshitshitarsebugger
how do I explain this to mrspao
well I suppose things could be worse

Retracing my steps lead to:

trouser pocket
phew

This was arrived at because of mrspao – it is all her fault you see.

Today mrspao and some colleagues at work decided to go to Thurrock for meatballs from the land of Ikea – cannot say I fully understand why but there you go.

So this evening I potted the container plants that had arrived from Thompson & Morgan and repotted the apple trees that we bought last year into the humungous pots that they had just been sat in from the plastic shop pots.

Having done this I washed my hands sat down and noticed something missing.

Wedding ring.

The good news is that last week I picked up my new glasses lenses.

The bad news is that the left lens is not right, my operated eye appears to have changed a tad. So talking to the opticians it was agreed that I would wait until I saw the consultant (today) and see what he says.

Well the consultant is happy with how the cornea is settling in, eye drops for another week and then I stop. However he did agree that the vision has changed and is not what it was a couple of months ago. So for the moment it is a return trip to the optician to see if we can get a working prescription.

At this point I had to ask what happens if they can’t sort out a prescription as that could well put me back where I started. To which I was told that most keratoconus sufferers (which the cornea op cannot completely cure – but at that point I was beyond prescription of any variety anyway) end up using contact lenses but it is sensible to try glasses first particularly since I have never used contacts.

So opticians again later this month, back to consultant at the end of June and see how we go. Fingers crossed eh.