54. Will you still be sending me a Valentine .... ?

I finished last Saturday’s post by writing that unless something interesting happened at Sandown Park later that day, I would be putting up the final posting today.  Nothing interesting happened at the race meeting (not to us anyway) because we didn’t go.  Caroline woke up that morning unable to speak and with yellow blisters on her tonsils.

This isn’t the final posting, however, as I think that I’d better tell you about my birthday that happened last Tuesday.  I became 64.  Wednesday, October 6^th 2010 was also my birthday.

Like the Queen, who has her official and her natural birthday, I also have two birthdays – one on February 8^th, the day I was born and the other on October 6^th.   It was on October 6^th 2008 that I received my new liver.

I was lying in bed on Tuesday night after an enjoyable but exhausting day when Caroline asked,

           

“How old were you when, “When I’m 64”, came out?“

(By the way, that title is the stupidest one the Beatles ever came up with.  I bet Paul McCartney who is 68, regrets it now.  64 isn’t old!  It’s a song about a young man who has fallen in love and wonders what the future has in store.  Apparently McCartney wrote it when he was 16 and at that age 64 must have seemed a long way off then but even so, why didn’t he write, “When I’m ninety-four?”  Even in 1967 when it first came out I was irritated because my grandmother was 64 at the time and like me now, totally alert and independent.  Yes I am!)

“Nineteen or twenty, I think,” I answered.

“When you were twenty,” Caroline went on, “did you think then that when you became sixty-four you would be laying in bed with a beautiful, sexy woman?”

“Well,” I said, “I probably hoped I would be but even at nineteen I realised that you don’t always get what you hope for in life.”

Caroline is a lot better now but I’ve got a big, painful bruise on my upper arm and it really hurts. 

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I got a bit of a fright on Tuesday morning. I was in the kitchen when I suddenly realised that my right leg was shorter than the left one.  I walked up and down a couple of times to check it and realised that I was not imagining it.

“I’ve got a problem,” I said to Caroline and explained why.  “I think my replacement hip joint has slipped or snapped in some way.”

Before my hip replacement operation my right leg had been about two inches shorter than the other and it now seemed as though something had gone wrong.

“No it hasn’t.  You’re all right,” she said.  “Look at your feet.” 

I looked down to see that on my left foot was a thick-soled slip-on shoe while I was wearing a slipper on the other.  What a relief!

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Before you leave my site for what is possibly the penultimate time, why not check my links if you haven’t already done so?  You can find them on the right of the page under the heading “My Blog List”. 

The first is Ian Quill : My World.  Ian is like me, a liver recipient.  He has been going through a bit of a bad time recently but things are looking brighter now.  He writes about his experience and the problems of living with Hepatitis C that he contracted as a result of a blood transfusion many years ago.  It was undiagnosed for a long time while the damage to his liver got worse.

Below that link is Alison Macleod Studio Jeweller.  Alison is Dugald and Joyce’s daughter.  You met those two in Hesperody.  I met Alison a couple of times in Cayman.  She designs and makes fine jewelry that is simple, beautiful and relatively inexpensive. 

She has outlets in Massachusetts, Sydney, Tokyo and Seoul and all over the UK in: Bakewell, Bristol, Chichester; Exeter; Holt, Leicester; London, Brick Lane E1; London, Clerkenwell EC1; London, Muswell Hill N10; London, Notting Hill W11; London, Pimlico SW1; Manchester; Taunton, Somerset; Penrith, Wellbeck, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kirkwall and Perth.

Below Alison’s link are four links to transplant organisations.  If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to sign up to allow your organs to be used after you no longer have any need for them.  One person can make a massive difference to at least seven people and their families.  In the UK you need to go to the NHS donor register: http://www.organdonation.nhs.uk

The link to Monken Hadley Common will be of interest to you if you live in or near to North London.  Even if you live elsewhere it may be of some interest, as it shows how a group of interested and concerned residents look after their local environment.  The Common is an area of managed open space of some 175 acres.  The link is here because Roger, whom you may have read about a few times in my ramblings, manages it.  Looking after it keeps him out of the pub and he spends a lot of time keeping it clear and environmentally healthy.  It has a long history and is a lovely tranquil area of open space and woodland and it is well worth visiting.

This is a photo taken on the evening of October 6^th last year in a restaurant where we went with friends to celebrate my other birthday.  Sandy brought the balloons.   I have no idea what the other diners made of it seeing a middle-aged man with a balloon saying, “Happy 2^nd Birthday”.