I am at home enduring a slow recovery from a major op and hoping to not only walk, but walk better and have less pain, in due course. I have only had one op. I HAVE TWO MORE OPS TO GO! But I am getting more mobile, but under duress/difficulty, and pain. I still cannot go up stairs, one leg and one step at a time, for I still have to go one step and two legs to each step, then the next step. And I get terrible pain in the knees when being only slightly ambitious, but you don't want to know my pains.
So after Comic Relief on Tuesday-it was an exhausting trip by train, and Charing Cross has a lot of walking to get from train to underground- I had a busy Wednesday. I am a Councillor in my Kent Parish. We had a site meeting, by a field, at the entrance on the side of the road, to agree what to do with the field. It had been bought under a Compulsory Purchase Act, and protected with massive concrete bollards, a gate, and a well dug trench, now filled with water, that was impassable. We got very wet as it poured with rain. We had plenty of ideas that included using the field as a venue for loud rock concerts, or boy scout camps, or boot fairs, or a "growing community" almost like a market garden centre but for local people, and far bigger than allotments. We need to use it, and be seen to be using it. It was bought to protect the area from a massive invasion of gypsy travellers in that particular area. I have no problem with travelling people, some of them provide a very useful set of skills that our community benefits from:leather work, blacksmithing and farriers, but the constant abuse of planning law and the desecration of our countryside appalls me. They just move in and within a few weeks, there are masses of them, and they occupy "green fields" once used for farming or some country pursuit like grazing horses, and stick tarmac down and fill the space with caravans that become permanent abodes. And if they go they just leave rubbish. Where I live it has become an easy target just to move in, and few bodies choose to do anything about it. Even in our local community role, and responsibility, local Councillors seem to have no weight, as the Gypsies use Human Rights law to move in when very expensive enquiries always seem to side with them, and governments-of all persuasions-do little to influence those decisions.
In the afternoon I attended a Funeral Thanksgiving service to celebrate the life of a Councillor who sadly departed because of the big C. She had seen her husband die only 18 months before with cancer, and when she reported her tiredness following his death, she was then told of her cancer. The children and grandchildren lost both of them, valuable parts of their family, within 18 months. We in the Parish lost a strong community member.
Such events also call for Council members to be available-and as such a number of people made the most of the opportunity to see me and relate their concerns. We have to be apparent and open, answerable and avialable. We also have to be transparent and honest.
The next day I had awoken following a terrible night of some rat ta tat tat noise to see a massive hole in our eaves of the roof. That noise was a woodpecker or squirrel or something else. A hole the size of a dinner plate had appeared. I opened up the attic above the hole to see if there were any new homes for birds or animals and discovered several wasps nests, and an attic full of growth from some vine like growing plant. We needed a builder for repairs, a pest controller for the wasps, and somebody to clear up the plant mess.
I contacted our house insurers. We contacted them 6 months ago, when our flat roof on the dining room extension collapsed. It was only completed-all the repairs and decorating last week! So this was stressful. Not again, more hassle!
So Friday has been dealing with and responding to affairs of the roof! And I am in agony!
Its a Rugby weekend-great!
So after Comic Relief on Tuesday-it was an exhausting trip by train, and Charing Cross has a lot of walking to get from train to underground- I had a busy Wednesday. I am a Councillor in my Kent Parish. We had a site meeting, by a field, at the entrance on the side of the road, to agree what to do with the field. It had been bought under a Compulsory Purchase Act, and protected with massive concrete bollards, a gate, and a well dug trench, now filled with water, that was impassable. We got very wet as it poured with rain. We had plenty of ideas that included using the field as a venue for loud rock concerts, or boy scout camps, or boot fairs, or a "growing community" almost like a market garden centre but for local people, and far bigger than allotments. We need to use it, and be seen to be using it. It was bought to protect the area from a massive invasion of gypsy travellers in that particular area. I have no problem with travelling people, some of them provide a very useful set of skills that our community benefits from:leather work, blacksmithing and farriers, but the constant abuse of planning law and the desecration of our countryside appalls me. They just move in and within a few weeks, there are masses of them, and they occupy "green fields" once used for farming or some country pursuit like grazing horses, and stick tarmac down and fill the space with caravans that become permanent abodes. And if they go they just leave rubbish. Where I live it has become an easy target just to move in, and few bodies choose to do anything about it. Even in our local community role, and responsibility, local Councillors seem to have no weight, as the Gypsies use Human Rights law to move in when very expensive enquiries always seem to side with them, and governments-of all persuasions-do little to influence those decisions.
In the afternoon I attended a Funeral Thanksgiving service to celebrate the life of a Councillor who sadly departed because of the big C. She had seen her husband die only 18 months before with cancer, and when she reported her tiredness following his death, she was then told of her cancer. The children and grandchildren lost both of them, valuable parts of their family, within 18 months. We in the Parish lost a strong community member.
Such events also call for Council members to be available-and as such a number of people made the most of the opportunity to see me and relate their concerns. We have to be apparent and open, answerable and avialable. We also have to be transparent and honest.
The next day I had awoken following a terrible night of some rat ta tat tat noise to see a massive hole in our eaves of the roof. That noise was a woodpecker or squirrel or something else. A hole the size of a dinner plate had appeared. I opened up the attic above the hole to see if there were any new homes for birds or animals and discovered several wasps nests, and an attic full of growth from some vine like growing plant. We needed a builder for repairs, a pest controller for the wasps, and somebody to clear up the plant mess.
I contacted our house insurers. We contacted them 6 months ago, when our flat roof on the dining room extension collapsed. It was only completed-all the repairs and decorating last week! So this was stressful. Not again, more hassle!
So Friday has been dealing with and responding to affairs of the roof! And I am in agony!
Its a Rugby weekend-great!
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