Tony_S

Morning all. It is raining steadily and quite breezy here. I am off to the dentist soon for my delayed routine check up. I have a missing filling that I am sure will need to be fixed, not today though. The dentist isn’t far, I can see his surgery from our front bay window. His car is there so that is a good sign. Afterwards I will drive Aditi down to collect her asthma medication. The pharmacy is excellent but parking can be tricky so easier to drop her off and return from somewhere easy to park.

It is paediatric paracetamol. Until Matthew was about four he had convulsions whenever anything caused his temperature to rise. So he had to (on medical advice) have Calpol at more than the “over the counter “ dose and to be taken at first sign of a temperature. What we did find was that after a couple of days the low sugar version seemed to make him a bit loopy so we bought the sugar sweetened version. I had never heard of Calpol until we had a child.

That’s what I posted earlier but always nice to have an expert opinion. It was fortunate that it is one of the very few plants I recall the name of. Usually I ask Aditi “what is the name of the green shrub over there?” When asked to prune stuff, I get her to point or better still touch the plant rather than name it.

Never needed that particular picture as our Euonymus shrub is right next to the front door and the Land Rover would have the collision detectors blaring. Aditi said that shrub will grow back nicely after pruning.

Perhaps they don’t come with an on/off road experience day like Land Rovers. Though modern Land Rovers keep it simple. You just select an icon that looks like the scenery and off you go, if you see a cactus, select the cactus icon…

Potholes here can swallow a car… Teeny exaggeration but many are noticeable whatever you drive. Big ones on National Speed limit major roads too.

I think it was the older ones that interested my neighbour. He had lots of motorbikes and some classic cars. He used vans for his business but said he had always wanted a Lamborghini and so eventually got one. It is one of the VW ones but it does seem reliable. More so than nearby neighbours who have had Ferraris that looked quite good when on the on the tow truck after failure to start. Tony

Wasn’t one of the early British Railways express liveries a rather purple shade of blue. I quite like the express blue they had for a while, specially on Great Western locos. I have a few steam loco models released in that livery though I think some only became blue in preservation. .

As my neighbour, who has a sporty not SUV Lamborghini, says “it’s just a Volkswagen now “.

My alleged Singapore Style rice noodles definitely took on some colour last night when I added them to my stir fried pork and vegetables. Lunch today will be fusion food or as we call it reheated leftovers, so I will be accompanying the really spicy hot stir fry with some dal and nan. Tonight we will have fish pie, not the one with fish heads poking through the crust , the sort with assorted fish in a sauce under a potato topping. We had ordered the beer battered haddock but Waitrose substituted the fish pie. Normally we would have rejected it but we don’t feel up to spending much time in the kitchen. Aditi has made a rather splendid fish pie for her pesky-tarian (sic) relatives, so I know the correct thing will be to appreciate the Waitrose meal but mention it is not as good as Aditi’s. Tony

Odd that something associated with right angles is necessary for someone who can only move diagonally

Thomas the Tank Engine has blue wheels not red.

I have just had to sort the phone system out. Aditi’s Mum rang and instead of answering the call, Aditi accidentally blocked the number . So I had to find out to remove a number from a blocklist. This isn’t a handset option, but Google revealed all. I think I may have managed to disable the big red block button too so it won’t happen again. MiL rang Aditi on her mobile while I was sorting it out. Mil,is having difficulty understanding that we have been unwell for a while. Of course she likes to compare Aditi to,her sister, saying she stays strong by walking every day and going swimming. Aditi just loves (not) being compared to her sister.

I made a pork and vegetable stir fry with rice noodles tonight. Basically as it was quick and a change. We got the ingredients from Waitrose. We used a commercial stir fry sauce, as neither of us feels up to bothering (now 3 weeks of feeling unwell) . The sauce was a Wagamama Firecracker mixture. It was too much for Aditi , I had to finish hers while she went and got some nan and yoghurt . I did enquire why she had purchased something that was almost certainly not going to be bland. Having seen Uncle Roger’’s videos, I think he would have been appalled but at least I didn’t use olive oil or my Jamie Oliver saucepans.

I am sure people of my age only know the lyrics as approved by Uncle Mac on Children’s Favourites as broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on Saturday mornings.

I have no idea about baby bears though…

Babies first poo are usually green…

Always happy to help. Sometimes has my solar powered Citizen watch on the other ear.

My watch is on its charging station…

Were they there to open all her birthday presents?

I was a bit worried that the grass might now be a bit short even for the sheep.

The first ice cream cone we bought for Matthew was on the Norfolk Broads and it was from an ice cream boat.

Is that what you were told as a child? When Matthew was little, he asked why the ice cream van played music. I said it was so all the children whose parents couldn’t afford ice cream in their freezers could have some. Perhaps it was a bit cruel to tease a four year old but I assumed he would know I wasn’t being serious. A couple of days later he said his friend Sam always went to the ice cream van and Sam’s family had loads of money! Matthew had dyspraxia andn as well as the coordination problems, and difficulty following instructions we later discovered that not recognising untruths was another “symptom “. The more fiction he read really helped with that, learning to distinguish what was true and fiction. Before that he seriously believed his “friend” had a great white shark in his garden pond. We worked through it. Do you know how big one of those sharks is.? “Yes”. How big is Gary’s pond? “about 2 metres long “ .So how would it fit? Matthew said “but Gary is my friend, why would he lie to me?”

Two of the three routes out of Benfleet were scheduled to be closed or significantly restricted over the last two weeks. Fortunately the local council managed to persuade the people digging up the A13 to delay until today. If the nearby boot sale runs this weekend there is not a lot of point going anywhere.

Round here, it is usually a few bars of “o sole mio” played so loud it penetrates quite good double glazing.