Dizzojay's Dean Dreams

 So, I now have my operation date, and I'll be getting my macular hole plugged on the 7th of July.  I've got a pre-op appointment on Monday when I hope to find out much more about the op and the recovery period.  The operation I'm ggetting is called a vitrectomy and it apparently includes a bonus cataract repair for a cataract that hasn't even happened yet! 

Can't say I'm looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to getting it all behind me and getting my life back on track!

Anyway, that's if from me for the momeent, but while I'm on the subject of eyes...

Have these on me!

 So, it's been a funny old couple of days.

It's a stange fact of life that anyone in the UK under 71 years of age has never known another monarch other than Queen Elizabeth II.  I haven't studied the facts, but I'm willing to guess that's about 75% of the population who have never known anything other than our Queen.

I have friends and relatives who are on every point of the Monarchist spectrum, some ardently pro, some very much anti.  Me, I sit somewhere in the middle.  There are aspects of the royal family I don't like, and I'm not what you'd call a royalist.  I'm not one of these people that travels to be at special royal events and hangs around Buckingham Palace for a glimpse of the Queen.  That said, on balance, I think - as a naton - we're better off with them than without them. Mainly because, as far as I'm concerned, the thought of an elected president scares me because the standard of our politcians, generally, is - to be frank - fucking frightening!

So, given my fairly vanilla attitude toward the Monarchy generally, I was surprised at the strength of emotion I felt when her death was announced.

Mr D and I just stood in the middle of the living room staring at the TV, and I just burst into tears. It felt like something permanent and eternal had gone, like the White Cliffs of Dover had collapsed into the sea!

Our Queen has always been a stalwart.  She's always been there, calm and industrious, doing a duty she was not born to do with a work ethic that you can't fault.  She's always been dependable and respectable, and even on the rare occasion she gets it wrong, like when she badly misread the mood of the country after the Diana tragedy, she did her best to make good afterwards, and has continued to work on keeping in touch with the modern mindset of the nation - her participation in the 'James Bond' skit at the 2012 London Olympics and the fabulous 'Paddington Bear' appearance at the Platinum Jubilee, was proof of that.  She hung on to perform her last duty - to appoint her new Prime Minister - less than 48 hours before she passed away, so typical of the woman who had duty running through her veins.

Hers is the only Royal face I've ever seen on our coins and bank notes, on our stamps in the 54 years I've been alive.  I've only ever sung God Save the Queen, and when I was a Girl Guide forty years ago or more, I pledged allegance to the Queen.

Now we, here in this damp little island, have the biggest change that many of us have ever had to deal with.  Now we have King Charles.  We'll have a different face on the bank notes, and all of us will have to get used to talking about our King.  Next year, I'll finally get to see a Monarch's coronation - that 1,000 year old Ceremony that I've never yet seen in real time.

The UK has a couple of weeks coming up, the like of which has never been seen since 1952.  It will be interesting, and uplifting, and desperately sad all at the same time.

And as for Charles the third.  I'm so sorry for the loss of his mother, and I wish him well.

I hope his reign is more successful than our last two Charles's!

 I took a day out in London today to meet up with a friend.  We had a bit of lunch and a lot of chat, then we went for a wander around our old childhood stomping grounds, all around the Elephant and Castle.

There's a shop down the Walworth Road, just off of the Elephant and Caste that I remember from my earliest years, a herbalist called Baldwins and they sell a particular drink that's synonymous with South London and the West Indian communities around that area.

Sarsaparilla is a drink that I remember from my childhood and one of my fondest memories is going down East Street market with my parents or grandparents and we'd always stop at the Sarsaparilla Man's stall and have a cup.  You could drink it cold or hot, but I've alwas preferred it cold.

I probablly haven't drunk Sarsaparilla for, maybe, twenty years.  But today, for old times sake I went into Baldwins and treated myself to a bottle.  I had a glass earler this evening, and yes - it's still yummy!



And for some reason, it reminded me of this scene ... can't imagine why!!! ;)

Hey gang!

It's been a funny old year, a bit of a rollercoaster.  I feel like I've been here at Lj posting my Jensen Time, my bunny pics and my Friday Fives, but I also feel like I've been absent as well.



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Not the best way to start a week.

Today was my first day back from annual leave and I was getting ready to go to work.  It was about 8 am and I was making breakfast when suddenly there was a loud pop, sparks, the toaster went bang and my toast bounced off the ceiling. The circuit breakers did their job, and all the lights and mains electricity went out.

I went out to the circuit breakers and reset the lights circuit, but when I went to reset the mains electricity circuit, it was jammed and I couldn't move it. I fiddled and faffed or a couple of minutes but no joy.  I phoned Mr D, and he couldn't figure out a reason why it wasn't resetting either.

So I had no mains electricity.  That meant no kettle, no fridge, no broadband, no phone charger...

Awesome!



So I called British Gas, the company that I have a homecare contract with and they said they'd send out an engineer before 1 pm.

I called work and told them that I'd have to work from home this morning, then sat down to wait for the engineer.

By mid day, my phone, my work phone and my work laptop were all down to minimal battery with no way to recharge them..  I was having to use the mobile hotspot on my phone so that was tearing through my battery and my data like no tomorrow.

Then at about 12.15 pm I got a phone call from British Gas.  The numpty who had put the booking in hadn't marked it as an emergency, so they couldn't actually get an engineer out until 4pm - 6pm.

Bloody hell!!!



But I decided to make the best of a rubbish situation.  If the engineer wasn't due until after 4pm, I could go down to the local coffee shop, get a hot drink and a sandwich, plug all my devices in to get them charging and do a bit of work at the same time.

And that's exactly what I did.  I got a good constructive couple of hours in.

Until at 2.45 pm, I got a text from the engineer while I was sitting in the coffee shop.  'I'm sorry I missed you, please call British Gas to reschedule.'

AAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHH!!!!!



One frantic phonecall to British Gas, and a meltdown later, and I had arranged for the engineer to come back at the end of his shift between 6pm and 7pm.

At least I had some decent charge on my devices so could get a bit more work done now.

In the end, the engineer got to me about 5.30 pm.  He explained that somehow, a little test button on the mains circuit breaker got pressed (I may even have inadvertantly done it when I was trying to reset them).  This means that the system wouldn't have been able to reset the breaker until the 'test' button was released.

It took him all of ten seconds to fix it.



Think I might start having cereal instead of toast in the mornings from now on ...