Flu or Cold?

Flu or a cold. Doesn’t really matter, both as bad as each other. Mine can't be flu as I have had the flu jab, I suppose it could be the Swine Varity but no, I think it is just a cold. I am a little better today and had to get my own breakfast in bed, husband gone to work. I was up all day yesterday but did little more than the washing up. I shall get up in a moment but the day is sad with dark rain and the forecast says it will be like that for some days so I certainly won't be going out.
Yesterday I did try to walk for 10.00 min on my new treadmill but only got as far a 8 min when my heart rate went silly and I slowed down to a crawl. I usually do an hours exercise everyday of one sort or another so thought it might pick me up from my doldrums.

I slept well last night so didn't hear anything on my radio except Dr Carl from Australia for a few minutes before I went back to sleep. This morning they are going on about MPs expenses again - Have we forgiven our MPs yet - Not really. I like our MP but now he has been in for a while he has become the 'professional' and is not quite so likeable. He did have to give some money back, which he did immediately, but no duck house and so on. Quite a normal bloke really not like a close neighbouring constituency, some ripe stories going round about him - and he is leaving!

I didn't start voting till quite late in life as I was in the WRAF from the age of 18 and didn't have a place I could call my home constituency. So I was 25, married and with a baby for my first vote. I remember a friend and I chose to have the party we did not like chauffeur us to the polls and back. Made it come up our muddy, unmade up lane to the caravan site where we lived. We were not gypsies but might just as well have been, just the only place we could find to live. Great heavens - that was fifty years ago now. History.

On going Cold

Still fighting my cold this morning. Had a small improvement but still sneezing like mad.
I have a radio on all night with earphones under my pillow so only I can hear it. Its mostly on BBC 5live, BBC World Service and sometimes on BBC Radio 7. Music seems to keep me awake and talking drifts me off to sleep. Trouble is I don't always hear to the end and have to use BBC player to find out what happened.
This morning I woke up to hear them talking about the mydavidcameron.com poster you can change. That sounded like fun so I went and did mine http://twitpic.com/115e8t and put my take on it up on my Twitter. Not very clever but my memories the Tories last time were not very good. Our life went to bits under them and I certainly don't want them back.
But the fact that people can change politicians bland untrue posters is great. I hear some of the big real posters have been changed and have had to be taken down. The nastiest poster the Tories did was the evil eyed Blair - I don't know though - perhaps they got it right. Although I did admire Blair for many things he did take us to war!

Third Day in Bed

I am on me third day in bed where I have my own notebook computer rather than our joint main computer downstairs - and time to write. I had promised myself that I would write more come the new year. Now truly the new year and I have not written one word - till now.
This morning I have got to grips with my Twitter account - still can't work it all out. I have started to follow Stephen Nolan of 5live as he has weight problems like me and he is, like me, trying to get exercising. (I have just bought a motorized treadmill) and is going to do the six mile Sports Relief run. So with my husband and friends so am I BUT I am going to walk it. (Doctors say running is too high impact for my new knee joints.) So if any one wants to sponsor me let me know.

I quite often walk six miles so not too worried, I did a 3 mile walk for cancer research a couple of years ago and could easily have gone round twice, waking not really a problem but running is no longer an option.

As this blog is supposed to come under 'that reminds me'. What does all this take me back to? Being a PTI in the WRAF in the 50s. Probably the source of all my knee trouble now. I wasn't any good at long distance stuff but was a sprinter. We did a hundred yards in those days, not metres. I did hurdles and long jump as well. Never all that good but got to Command level once or twice. To diffused, I think, as I also played tennis, and swam freestroke. But as a PTI one had to be able to do everything and teach it. The one thing I hated was doing and teaching PT to the girls yet in later years, in my 40s, it stood me in good stead as I managed to earn my living by running aerobic classes for a year or so. I had moved to Devon and in London I had just seen the first mass aerobic classes in sports centres. I adapted it and ran 3 or 4 classes for over a year - which really finished of my knee joints good and proper.

Than I got fat with lack of exercise and knees collapsed entirely. New joints over three years and now - I am going to walk the six miles - when my damned cold gives over!!

Lost my Google page

I lost my Google page for some reason but its back now. I'm great at losing thing particularly on the computer. Been trying to spring clean out some of my fiiles but there are just too many of them. I've manage to spring clean my house so all that is left now is to spring clean out the loft! They are coming soon to insulate it for free as i am over 70 - get all you can I say.

Snow in 1947

Just watched the programme about the snow storm this year. It had a bit about previous storms and confirmed my memories of them particularly the 1947 storms. It was in the time of housing shortage just after the war and my dad and I couldn't find anywhere to live having been chucked out of our digs (rented rooms) for some reason. Dad had a small, old white tent and with an added ground sheet over the top which we lived in over that winter. I tell everybody that it snowed most nights for weeks (which was true) and in the morning we had to get out and sweep the snow off of the roof before we lit the paraffin stoves. If you didn't the water came through the roof. It was so cold that you woke up with hoar frost around the blankets where you had been breathing all night.

It left me with a life long fear of being homeless again.

Buses in the snow

Hearing that the buses in London didn’t run on the first day of the snow storm I thought back to when I was Clippie in the fifties. I worked on the outskirts of London and getting to the bottom of a steep hill that was covered in snow my driver made all the passengers get off the bus while he made a run at the slippery hill. Many cars at the bottom testified to it being a difficult time getting to the top.
‘OK’ I said to my driver, ‘I’ll walk and see you at the top.’
‘No you won’t, I don’t drive unless I have a conductor on the back to stop anyone getting on.’
I gritted my teeth and held on while we rushed up the hill on the double decker bus. For younger people who may be reading this we didn’t have doors on buses then and people leaped onto the open back platform while the buses were on the move. Yes it was very cold.

The second time on the buses in the snow as a clippie was in Oxford. It was a Sunday and there was a heavy snow fall early in the morning. When we got to work the garage boss came over to us before we went out and asked my driver to ‘go a little further in towards the edge of the road every time we went up and down the road.’ This was because the council had said their salt gritter staff had not come in! I will not repeat my drivers reply.

I can’t remember not going to school or work because it snowed, ever.

Obama – President at last

I hope I witness the promised change that was offered today. How do I feel about it? I am thrilled that a man of mixed race could rise to the highest office in the World! Even here in this country I can remember seeing a black man for the first time. It was in the fifties - an African Chief and his entourage. I was a shop assistant behind a Mark and Spencers counter when they came in to buy warm underwear for our cold climate. I remember how tall they were and the length of their beautifully formed hands and fingers.

In the sixties I had many friends of all colours and races. One day, walking in London with two Nigerians, a woman spat at me for being in their company. Later one of these friends paid me the compliment of saying that ‘I did not see colour’. I hope that was true and is still true.

I add my good wishes and luck to Barack Obama and trust that with his country and the whole world in his hands it will not be too heavy for him.