Special Festive Season Horror Edition!

This is a XXX rated edition of my blog. Go back now, I warn you! It’s not too late, you can be saved. What you are about to see is bad, so bad!!

Too late!!!! You have entered my domain, you are mine, all mine, all mine. You couldn’t resist could you? The dark world is coming towards you. Scroll slowly!

Following on from last week’s knee issues, by Sunday night it was still the size of a tennis ball and so on Monday I made an appointment to see the doc again to get his advice and/or action! Besides this, when I went to hydrotherapy on Friday my knee was rather like the Loch Ness Monster was in the pool scaring the staff and patients!

For those of you who haven’t been following my knee saga, I fell over about 6 weeks ago and landed on my knee. Two weeks later I then smashed it into the car dashboard whilst adjusting my seat. I now have a big bursitis on my kneecap. Bloody MND!

It was definitely action stations this time, and Jean was very very excited.

“Shall we syringe it then?” – Doctor Evil chirped

“Ok” – I whimpered.

I went into total relaxation mode, thinking about fluffy rabbits and the rather unimaginative paint on the walls. Mind you, the night before Jean had annoyed me by spending £16 on two Tibetan mediation music albums on iTunes! I was still stressed by that!

Anyway, it was trousers down, knee out and aim! The bad news for you is we have it on camera!

Actually, before continuing let’s just go back 20 years…………..

It is the late 1990s, Lord Bragg was still running his Vegan restaurant in Brighton (prior to the meat find), and I had decided to have a vasectomy. Yes readers, the old snip.

I am reminded of this day because of the similarity with my experience I had this Monday. Just like now I was asked to whip my trousers off, and lie down on a couch!

I laid down with my tackle stuffed through a sterile medical sheet. All was on display when in walked a female nurse and offered me a cup of tea! It’s rather hard, pardon the use of language, to keep a straight face when faced with such a situation. One thing was different 20 years ago, and that is to have taken photos, you would have had to use a serious camera, with obviously a huge suitable wide-angle lens!

When you have the snip, you are told to be particularly careful for about 2 days. Sit down, read or whatever. Unlike a friend of mine, who decided to play golf the very next morning. Not surprisingly he found, to his cost, this was not a good idea. Why not do a bungy jump!?

Anyway, back to Monday. This is what I presented to doc with!! Oh my god!! Look at the state of my leg hair!

I noticed the following on the wall above my knee, just at the moment of attack! Please be finally warned, bad picture coming after this one.

Knowing the nature of what I had written about the snowflake generation last week, I thought this was going to be my comeuppance!

Tension was mounting as doc shuffled through syringes and then glibly remarked that he had to go and get a bigger one and left the room! By this time, I was near soiling myself in trepidation.

And suddenly after two and half syringe fulls of blood and goo, it was all over.

Sorry about that readers.

On Wednesday we had our back door to our house lowered. A wheelchair can now get into the house easily.  Many thanks to Norman and his team at Complete Construction. I can highly recommend if you need any building work in Hampshire/West Sussex.

On the subject of wheelchairs, I received this letter this week, regarding my manual wheelchair…

Ooooh. Exciting, danger! Actually, it reminds me of a story, which is not at all funny, but I challenge you not to laugh. Now as I have MND, I am able to tell this story. Also it has a moral, and that is “Don’t be an energy sapper!” “What do you mean onein400?”

Well, earlier this year I was in a pub, sitting in the sun with friends, and it was clear from my speech and walking that I had something wrong. On getting up to leave, on the table next to us there were 4 people, and their faces were so distraught. I must have mentioned MND in discussion and suddenly the following conversation pursued…

“How are you doing, you have MND?”

“Yes I do”

“Oh you poor thing, how awful” – all of them looked so depressing.

One of them then decided to tell a story about a lady who also had MND, and was being pushed in a wheelchair around a village. People who know me, understand that I am a positive guy, and so really don’t want to hear bad stories. However, for some reason I was smiling, eagerly listening to her awful story. Every step of the story was horrific, and then she said “Do you know how she died?” I said “No“.  Apparently her friend, who was pushing her wheelchair one day, clipped a kerb and the lady was sent flying out of the wheelchair onto the road and she was hit by a car!

Now, I know this story is not funny, but you had to be there to understand why you would have wet yourself, I did!

We have started planning in more detail the additional house changes that we might need. As I have said before, I don’t want our house to look like a hospital, so we are planning changes as nicely as possible. Basically we will need to rebuild our bathroom, install a through floor lift, and to make room for a bigger bathroom, replace our conventional boiler with a combi.  So we are making the best of a situation and treating it as a couple of projects. But it ain’t cheap!

As I have mentioned before, in the accent of Matt Lucas, from “Little Britain”, I am not the only person with MND in our village, there is also my friend Jim. Jim and I were chatting on Thursday, and if there is anything good about not being alone, is that we share loads of useful information. This Thursday was no exception. Wow, I learned loads from some things Jim had found in relation to services and aids available! More to come in a following blog. Basically our amazing NHS is exceeding expectations again.

What else has happened this week? Poppy, our blonde Shih Tzu, disappeared for a week, and then suddenly she was dropped off home in a taxi with this scarf on! She claims she was fired from the Apprentice! She told us she got to week 9 though! No surprise really. She was on the winning team consistently until the incident with the field, cow shit and Karren Brady’s white dress!

Did a bit of “sexting” on Thursday! Don’t worry readers, it was all above aboard, as Jean was texting me about having her boobs squashed at the breast screening unit. It got a bit raunchy I can tell you. Anyway, I did ask why there was a giant tv screen setup?! Chichester is quite a respectful place, you know.

Breast screening must be quite an entertaining job these days. After all, we are now into the

“Ink a great big tattoo over my tits” 21st Century.

What has happened to the subtle,

“I really have to get to know you to see your discrete tattoo?!”

It’s only 1 week to Christmas now, and there will be NO post next Friday. There will be a special post on Christmas Day itself released at precisely 3pm GMT. So like last year make sure you record the Queen’s speech before sitting down and enjoying onein400!

Of course the Bragg Family Christmas card will be fully revealed. But who will be the big Bragg Family star? Or will it be a Christmas robin!?

Lord Bragg tells me I have to say  “Donate if you don’t want to see a ****ing robin.”

LORD BRAGG!!!!! So sorry readers.

So put the date in the diary, and see you next Sunday.