Greetings, friends! Slightly shorter interval this time, must be bored with nothing to do – right! So no health update really, bloods and clinic are Monday and Tuesday respectively so won’t know anything concrete until then but hopefully nothing will have changed too much. Meanwhile after weeks of fingernail-chewing, I got a text message on Wednesday inviting me to book an appointment for my Covid-19 jab, and the first available day was Thursday – yesterday, in fact. I trotted up to the surgery, spent (a somewhat uncharacteristic, if you believe other reports) 25 minutes queuing outside in the rain, and was then admitted to the inner sanctum, jabbed, warned against any “wild parties” and let out again, very quickly. Apparently it will take 3 weeks or so for the antibodies to build up a reasonable level of resistance, so no mad celebrations yet, but it feels *bloody* reassuring! Booster some time in the next 12 weeks – more uncertainty, but much less worrying this time.
Meanwhile in other news:
The dishwasher broke – I spent 3 days dismantling various bits of it but couldn’t resolve the problem (I hate not being able to fix things). It wanted to keep draining water out for ever, and wouldn’t stop to let some new water in. So yesterday we invested in another secondhand purchase and the old one (bought secondhand about 3 years ago) will go the tip, unless anybody wants to buy any useful parts from it.
Then today, the vacuum cleaner broke – burnt out motor. The good news here was that a new motor was surprisingly cheap – only about £15. This is about a week after the accessory hose fell apart and I had to buy a new one.
The central heating broke – a bit of frantic evening diagnostics led to a water valve put in last time it broke, for some reason jammed shut and not allowing any fresh water into the system to compensate for evaporation and maintain the pressure. VERY satisfying when we turned it on again and heard the reassuring gurgling of several litres of water making their way into the system and displacing the dangerous air that was there before. The house has been pleasantly warm ever since.
I took Linda’s old Kenwood Chef apart and replaced (well bodged) the top motor bearing (replacements aren’t available so I had to improvise with a commercially available part), fitted new motor brushes, and generally cleaned and lubricated it, as a result of which it makes slightly less noise (but not much), but is a little less wobbly and should hopefully last for a few more cakes.
I made a new boat spring (Google it) for my English bracket clock, so that’s now going steadily instead of letting the hands slip and failing to chime / strike. I also serviced the Vienna regulator (again) so that it goes again instead of the pallets catching on the escape wheel and stopping all the time.
The Merc went for a service and I got a long lecture from Richard at the garage about using premium fuel in it – so I will.
Various jigsaws got completed. We still go for a walk every day, except for the last couple of days, when my gout has been playing up again, but OK again today.
We had a couple of inches of snow, and some enterprising people built a small igloo in the field on the other side of our hill – more interesting than snowmen, anyway.
I got bored with shaving, so decided to let nature take its course for a while:
It’s certainly warmer!
That’s it for now. Stay safe, and I’ll update again next week. Toodle pip!
Nick's Chemo Diary 