Update on oggbashan's health

[NaokoSmith]

As for their computer systems? Back to the 1960s when they work...

I sympathise, since I also date back to the 1960s and I am a bit creaky at times.

Maybe cranberry juice rather than a fermented grape juice? I don't know why it is supposed to be good for flushing stuff out, but it's often recommended for cystitis, although doctors (I mean proper medical ones) say: No, it can't be good for it as it's full of sugar. (Probably not the best for your diabetes.)

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

As part of my chemotherapy apart from taking pills on day 2, 3 and 4 I have to self-inject in my stomach for five days.

I have been finding that difficult because of eyesight problems, particularly in a mirror.

But tonight I successfully completed this session of five. Ignore mirror - just stab!

Having just read you're diabetic, I guess the idea of stabbing yourself to inject something isn't a thing you're unfamiliar with. It still sounds very unpleasant though, glad that session was done.

 

[JamesMiehoff]

I have difficulty getting into a smaller car than our Volvo estates ...

Wow. Don't I know it. On one of my business trips to Merry Olde England, the car rental place gave me a Vauxhall (sp?) Fox. I pushed the seat all the way back, I leaned the back of the seat all the way back and there was just no way I could fold my legs up enough to get into it. My co-worker (a very petite lady) offered to drive, but I couldn't even get into the passenger seat. When I gave up and headed back into the office to admit defeat and ask for something bigger, I noticed that practically all of the employees of the agency were lined up in the window watching. I am sure I was the amusement of the week.

One might think those cars were designed for Hobbits.

James

 

[oggbashan]

...

One might think those cars were designed for Hobbits.

James

No they are designed for British roads, not for British people who have got bigger. Trey getting into a small vintage British car of the 1940s or 1950s.

When I wanted to buy my first car I tried a Morris 8 of the 1930s. It would have been a great car except my feet were too big for the foot space. I couldn't use the accelerator without pressing the brake, or the brake without either the clutch or the accelerator. The same was true for small Austins. I had to buy a Ford.

 

[Javahead]

No they are designed for British roads, not for British people who have got bigger. Trey getting into a small vintage British car of the 1940s or 1950s.

When I wanted to buy my first car I tried a Morris 8 of the 1930s. It would have been a great car except my feet were too big for the foot space. I couldn't use the accelerator without pressing the brake, or the brake without either the clutch or the accelerator. The same was true for small Austins. I had to buy a Ford.

That does explain much. The first time I tried driving in the UK I was astonished at how narrow some rural roads were - what the map showed as a fairly major road might be a narrow two lanes - more like one and a half - by rural US standards.

I learned to drive in a rural part of the US, but it took some readjustment. Though I will say that Irish rural roads are even narrower.

 

[KeithD]

That does explain much. The first time I tried driving in the UK I was astonished at how narrow some rural roads were - what the map showed as a fairly major road might be a narrow two lanes - more like one and a half - by rural US standards.

I learned to drive in a rural part of the US, but it took some readjustment. Though I will say that Irish rural roads are even narrower.

And the "roads" invariably have towering hedges along both edges. Last time I toured England (doing a great circle from Birmingham to the Forest of Dean, across to Great Yarmouth, up through York to Edinburgh and back through the loch and lake countries to Birmingham) they tried to give me a standard-sized car at the Birmingham airport and I knew too much about English roads to have any of that. And still driving was a harrowing experience.

 

[fifty5]

I had a scam call on my landline from an Indian call centre.

He started off by asking 'How are you today?'

I responded 'I'm dying'.

That didn't stop him launching into his spiel about how cheap an offer they were making on insuring domestic appliances against breakdown.

I said 'They will last much longer than me.'

That did worry him. I didn't give him any bank details. I said it was pointless because my bank account will die with me.

He hung up.

Keep on like this, Og - it shows your sense of humour is still 100% fit!

 

[fifty5]

Everything else is NHS (except their exorbitant car parking fees for patients).

We developed a system to deal with that: I drove to the outpatients door and got out, then my wife drove to the local Co-op and waited for my phone call telling her at which hospital door I was waiting!

To be fair she usually bought something we needed from the Co-op.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I had missed the call centre story until it was quoted above

I had a cold call the other day, saying they could provide me with cheaper utilities than my current provider.
"You ARE my current provider!" I replied.

 

[KeithD]

I had missed the call centre story until it was quoted above

I had a cold call the other day, saying they could provide me with cheaper utilities than my current provider.
"You ARE my current provider!" I replied.

That's like a window replacement company that sent me "someone in your neighborhood is replacing windows with us and you can do that cheaper by engaging us at the same time. We'll come by to contact you on that," letter. When they came by, I informed them that I was the one in the neighborhood who they'd replaced windows for and asked whether I got a commission off anyone else they roped in in the neighborhood. They didn't seem to think so. They did say my new windows looked nice.

 

[Javahead]

That's like a window replacement company that sent me "someone in your neighborhood is replacing windows with us and you can do that cheaper by engaging us at the same time. We'll come by to contact you on that," letter. When they came by, I informed them that I was the one in the neighborhood who they'd replaced windows for and asked whether I got a commission off anyone else they roped in in the neighborhood. They didn't seem to think so. They did say my new windows looked nice.

We got the same sort of letter from a roofing company, a couple of months after they did ours.

They did a good job at a fair price, though. I’m sitting listening to rain on the roof now.

 

[markelly]

Oh Ogg...

Your post pulled me up. It also explained why I’m reading more of your stories. Please look after yourself as best you can Ogg. I expect another ten years out of you at least after all this treatment their looking to drop on you.

My thoughts are with you and your family, more so as we approach the festive season.

 

[oggbashan]

Your post pulled me up. It also explained why I’m reading more of your stories. Please look after yourself as best you can Ogg. I expect another ten years out of you at least after all this treatment their looking to drop on you.

My thoughts are with you and your family, more so as we approach the festive season.

Ten years? No hope. Even ten months would be longer than the best estimate. The treatment is palliative to try to give me a few more months of a reasonable quality of life but cannot stop the cancer.

 

[NaokoSmith]

TThe treatment is palliative to try to give me a few more months of a reasonable quality of life but cannot stop the cancer.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Wow. Don't I know it. On one of my business trips to Merry Olde England, the car rental place gave me a Vauxhall (sp?) Fox. I pushed the seat all the way back, I leaned the back of the seat all the way back and there was just no way I could fold my legs up enough to get into it. My co-worker (a very petite lady) offered to drive, but I couldn't even get into the passenger seat. When I gave up and headed back into the office to admit defeat and ask for something bigger, I noticed that practically all of the employees of the agency were lined up in the window watching. I am sure I was the amusement of the week.

One might think those cars were designed for Hobbits.

James

Hmm. I'm 6'4 and the only car I ever just couldn't fit in was a- I think 2007 Miata. I have a 36" waist, too. Couldn't even get my leg under yhe steering wheel. I did conclude that if my stepdads '99 Ranger Sport was a manual, it might be a bitch working the clutch. I think the smallest car I ever drove was a 2016 Mitsubishi Mirage and it was for a job and I just had to get it to my station, car wash, and back in the line. No way I would drive it as a daily, Smart cars are more roomy.

And the "roads" invariably have towering hedges along both edges. Last time I toured England (doing a great circle from Birmingham to the Forest of Dean, across to Great Yarmouth, up through York to Edinburgh and back through the loch and lake countries to Birmingham) they tried to give me a standard-sized car at the Birmingham airport and I knew too much about English roads to have any of that. And still driving was a harrowing experience.

That's funny. Sometimes it would amuse me watching Jeremy Clarkson or his corhorts navigating those areas with the likes of Lambos, Ferraris and such, seeing as those cars are bigger(and heavier) in person, than they look on TV. A Hurracan is a about as wide as a Crown Victoria and maybe hardly a foot shorter, Crown Vics are 17' and 3" long.

 

[oggbashan]

Santa Special

Today I went with my grandson and some of the family on a local preserved railway on a Santa Special to see Santa Claus at the station at the far end of the line.

We have been going for over a decade but eldest granddaughter, a teenager on Christmas Eve, has decided she is too old for Santa this time.

Grandson has also said that he thinks this is his last time too.

It is certainly the last time for me. I do not expect to be alive for next year's event which meant that I felt a bit sad, that grandchildren are growing up and that I won't be around for next year's family event - if it happens.

 

[Handley_Page]

Ten years? No hope. Even ten months would be longer than the best estimate. The treatment is palliative to try to give me a few more months of a reasonable quality of life but cannot stop the cancer.

Thoughts & Prayers, Ogg

 

[NaokoSmith]

I felt a bit sad, that grandchildren are growing up and that I won't be around for next year's family event - if it happens.

*hugs* dear Ogg.
So many happy memories they will have from previous times.
But I know, the thing I can never get over when I think of my mum, is that although I still do all the things we used to enjoy, and I think how I used to enjoy doing them and telling her about them, she is not here to enjoy them any more. I don't exactly miss her now, as I think of her all the time when I garden, or bake cakes using the old recipe book we shared while I was growing up, or do other things. But I wish so much she was still here to enjoy them too herself.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Today I went with my grandson and some of the family on a local preserved railway on a Santa Special to see Santa Claus at the station at the far end of the line.

We have been going for over a decade but eldest granddaughter, a teenager on Christmas Eve, has decided she is too old for Santa this time.

Grandson has also said that he thinks this is his last time too.

It is certainly the last time for me. I do not expect to be alive for next year's event which meant that I felt a bit sad, that grandchildren are growing up and that I won't be around for next year's family event - if it happens.

Do as much as you can with them so they’ll have those memories..... - that’s all we can do for those we love, making those memories good ones.

 

[KeithD]

It is certainly the last time for me. I do not expect to be alive for next year's event which meant that I felt a bit sad, that grandchildren are growing up and that I won't be around for next year's family event - if it happens.

Yes, I'm getting that sadness too from doing something and going somewhere and suddenly thinking "This is probably the last time . . ."

It's sort of like in my career when I seem to have gone, almost overnight, from being the youngest to have done this and that to the old codger in the room.

 

[JamesMiehoff]

It is certainly the last time for me. I do not expect to be alive for next year's event which meant that I felt a bit sad, that grandchildren are growing up and that I won't be around for next year's family event - if it happens.

It is sad. In the last few weeks there has been a sudden outbreak of death in my extended friends and family. One from suicide, one from heart attack, one from cancer, one from unknown causes, two from car accidents. Each one reminded me of a quote from some TV special about the ancient Egyptians, "The belief was that you were still alive as long as someone remembered your name."

My personal version of that is that we are immortal as long as someone who loved us remembers us. The memories that we make with our friends, our children, grandchildren and if we are so lucky, our great-grandchildren is the basis of our personal immortality.

The more of your stories I read, the more I am saddened that I never had the chance to meet you in person.

James

 

[oggbashan]

... Each one reminded me of a quote from some TV special about the ancient Egyptians, "The belief was that you were still alive as long as someone remembered your name."

...

That is another thing that makes me sad. When I have gone, no family member will have personal memories of my grandfathers, great-aunts and others of that generation born in the 19th century. I have put information about them on Ancestry but it isn't the same.

My grandparents and my father had to leave their home in the City of London after it became unsafe as a result of the blast from the then world's largest aerial bomb (550 kilos) dropped by a German Zeppelin in 1915. Only two people died as the result of that bomb - two men who came out of the local pub, holding their beers, to look up at the Zeppelin. But several hundred people were made homeless. My father and his older brother remembered that bomb vividly. They were in bed asleep when it dropped and saved from the flying window glass by the blankets of their bed.

 

[KeithD]

That is another thing that makes me sad. When I have gone, no family member will have personal memories of my grandfathers, great-aunts and others of that generation born in the 19th century. I have put information about them on Ancestry but it isn't the same.

I published a "memory book" (vignettes rather than a try at a comprehensive memoir) that as much captured what I could from the two generations before me as it did about the highlights (and low points) of my own life. That, at least, literature helps with. It doesn't all have to be locked away in personal memory.

 

[oggbashan]

I published a "memory book" (vignettes rather than a try at a comprehensive memoir) that as much captured what I could from the two generations before me as it did about the highlights (and low points) of my own life. That, at least, literature helps with. It doesn't all have to be locked away in personal memory.

I have some very distinctive women in my forebears. My eldest aunt was a Lady Typewriter before 1914 - then a high-tech and well paid job. Throughout her working life she earned more than any of her brothers despite two of them becoming high-ranking civil servants and women being paid less than men for the same work. She was the first in the family to buy a television - in 1938 - and replaced it in 1948 because it had been on the Baird system, redundant post war. Each of those televisions cost the same as a new mid-range family car and she paid cash.

My maternal grandmother owned and ran a large horse-drawn omnibus company in the 1880s, employing her husband as a bus driver. She sold out to what became London Transport but lost most of her money in Russian shares made worthless by the 1917 revolution.

Before them, many of my female ancestors on the paternal line had been freemen (sic) of the City of London, trading as business owners in their own right, and able to elect councillors for the City long before other women had a vote.

 

[KeithD]

I have some very distinctive women in my forebears. My eldest aunt was a Lady Typewriter before 1914 - then a high-tech and well paid job. Throughout her working life she earned more than any of her brothers despite two of them becoming high-ranking civil servants and women being paid less than men for the same work. She was the first in the family to buy a television - in 1938 - and replaced it in 1948 because it had been on the Baird system, redundant post war. Each of those televisions cost the same as a new mid-range family car and she paid cash.

My maternal grandmother owned and ran a large horse-drawn omnibus company in the 1880s, employing her husband as a bus driver. She sold out to what became London Transport but lost most of her money in Russian shares made worthless by the 1917 revolution.

Before them, many of my female ancestors on the paternal line had been freemen (sic) of the City of London, trading as business owners in their own right, and able to elect councillors for the City long before other women had a vote.

Yes, there are some terrific stories from "back then." What struck me when I was collecting and writing on those in my background--sometimes loosely, while maintaining the basic foundation as I've done with a grandmother here in sr71plt's "Wolf Creek"--was how in touch folks were with other folks "back then." My grandmother knew Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, the Lindberghs, an assortment of movie stars and novelists, and rather openly was the mistress of a U.S. senator as well as having her world collapse on her in the 1918 Spanish flu and then going West to homestead and build a whole new life--right back up to Washington, D.C., society. Luckily, we caught her on tape when she was 98, transcribed it, along with those from the next generation who knew her, and got it published in various forms. She'll live for eternity even for readers who don't know the specific person.

This stage of your life may be rewarded by such getting it in writing.