Apologies for last week’s missing post. I have to admit it but Jean’s review was not positive. Apparently I am not allowed to express what I think in the way I do sometimes! However, I was finally persuaded to agree……, but only after I had cooked dinner for Jean!
In the news last week there was an interesting article that discussed the potential of “immunising” people against believing fake news on the internet. Really? Well I am not so worried about fake news, it’s all pretty obvious really, but I am rather annoyed by idiotic comments, naive statements and such articles etc. Lord Lee Bragg overheard me talking about this very subject and suggested that he had some smart software that could help. Boy, was I interested? After all, I had just spat out most of my breakfast across the table on reading one particular comment that day on the internet!
He told me all about Bragg’s Rant’O’Matic. This tool basically removes all the junk, stupid comments, tweets etc, so you only see the stuff you agree with! Genius, trust Lord Bragg! What a guy!
There is a free version that still lets through one piece of really excruciating annoying junk daily just to keep you uptight. What a great technique to encourage the user to upgrade!
Anyway, I have been told by Jean to use Rant’O’Matic on my post to see what it allows through. I have had to turn the level of checking right down though, as nothing I wrote was being allowed! So it’s not perfect, readers.
There are actually two weeks of onein400 to catch up on, so it should be quality. Let’s get this party started!
By the time this post goes out, our Prime Minister, Theresa May, might have met with The Donald and is just getting on with world business. He had better get some body guards as she will take no prisoners.
For my many American friends, please remain calm after last week’s historic events. We are still here in the UK, alive and kicking, some 6 months after our major political news, Brexit. I am a great optimist. So let us all see what happens. Such change often creates very interesting opportunities and typically there is not as much to be feared as originally perceived!
But what other things having been happening, readers?
In the disabled world here in the UK, a man has successfully won a Supreme Court Case against a bus company who refused to tell a mother, with her child’s push chair (buggy), to make way for him in a wheelchair, in a space specifically marked as disabled on a bus. Hurrah for sensibility and a pity that it had to go to court.
Please rest assured that if you were to board any one of Lord Bragg’s fully serviced buses to Upper Braggville, his drivers are fully trained in combat situations and will not hesitate in removing said self-righteous idiots from any of his buses! I have seen his training guide which was leaked to me by a proud driver.
Although I joke, unless the news story has been wildly misreported, which I don’t think it has, it was totally disgraceful. The driver should, of his own free will, have moved the pushchair, made way for the wheelchair, and assisted the child’s mother to get a seat etc.
Whilst I am on a rant (rant level 1) I might as well relive this memory from just a year ago no
In the world of onein400, a year is a significant length of time for my family and I, a landmark really. Although my voice is affected in this video, I am actually not that much different now. Yes, still just as weird, but understandable!
It was New Year 2016, that time when some people start to go the gym intensely for 1 month only! I wrote about these characters in my Choices Choices post. I call them gymsters, and last year they all had hipster beards, except the ladies! I created a cunning way to rid them from my local gym as they were blocking access to my cycle machine (yes MY cycle machine).
But seriously, I haven’t been to the gym much recently. I have focused on my trike. However, I need to go again, but as I mentioned in an earlier post I have had to constantly adapt my gym routine due to MND. FirstIy I moved from the men’s changing room to the disabled changing room and then in the middle of 2016, the golf changing room. I am not saying golf players are slow, like me, but the room is much closer to the gym, and has a less perilous walk from the shower. I am further adapting because of my increasing mobility issues. My new plan is to go pre-changed, with a track suit, and just whip off my bottoms in the gym itself! When I say “whip off”, I mean balance against a wall, fall into a sweaty woman, get punched, and drag myself to my feet. So yet more gradual adaptation.
I guess in the future I might need to be helicoptered to the static bike!
“Roof open, lower away!!”
On the subject of my trike. I had a small ZERO mph incident last Sunday! I was out cycling, with Jean walking the dogs ahead of me. Jean led me down this muddy narrow path, which at first looked fine.
Before….
With the end in sight, all was going well. Then suddenly, the perils of 3 wheels made themselves known. I have never toppled my trike before, but this time it happened, and I effectively rolled out of sight into a nettle, thorny bramble and dog s*** strewn hedgerow! There was no stopping me, one minute I was there and then gone!
I was truly stuck. Blood from a gashed nose, thorn branches sticking in all over, some smelly brown stuff on my hat and my feet firmly clipped into the pedals. What a mess!
Well, rather than be dramatic, I unclipped my shoes, and Jean dragged the trike out leaving me prostrate (not prostate) in the bushes! She then returned, laughing hysterically, to extract and guide me back to my trike.
After extraction, nose reattached and propping up! (Photoshopped to remove dog’s mess)
Phew! If Jean wasn’t with me, I would either have been the victim of the village rapist (a rather ugly shell-suited man) or only found 40 years later and the subject of a detective cold case. Waking the dead perhaps?
Anyway, I triked back home, hoping I didn’t meet anyone I knew before I could get cleaned up.
On the medical side this week, I had my quarterly blood test for liver function. The one drug that I take can damage the liver. Therefore it has to be monitored. That was the only test. Fortunately they didn’t do a test for the
“Concentration of Cadbury’s Double Deckers in my blood”
So I was free to eat another! Hurrah!
I really must stop listening to politics on television, it does wind me up (I wonder if Rant’O’Matic will work on TV?)
This week we were exposed to one of those brief news stories (ie it won’t be news next week) about someone leaking about our Nuclear deterrent, Trident, and that may have failed in a test fire. For goodness sake, that’s treason, official secrets and all that. The reason I slightly delve political today is that it reminds me of a great radio phone-in program I listened to in the 1980s regarding Nuclear weapons. I was 20 when the world was last terrified about Nuclear War. To be honest, I was more worried about whether my student grant would enable me to buy kebabs all term!
There was so much fear then. In response to this our UK Government produced a pamphlet and sent it to every household in the UK. It was called “Protect and Survive”.
I remember this, as a number of you may do. There was also a video. If you think some of today’s news is terrifying take a look at these Excerpts from the informative video!
Mind you, imagine if we had one of today’s trendy digital marketing companies producing the guide. You know a company with a name like “Square Orange – Ideas out of the Ordinary”. Sorry, Rant’O’Matic was turned off! The advice regarding stockpiling food supplies would be interesting:
14 tins of tomatoes, Waitrose best, not the cheap ones.
25kg of peeled, and individually wrapped organic potatoes.
50kg of Chia seeds.
10 tuna, Dolphin friendly.
Extra, extra virgin olive oil. Peanut oil if “one” really has to economise.
“What about the phone-in programme?” you ask. Oh yes sorry, I got carried away. It was about “How would a Nuclear attack progress on the UK?” The radio journalist was on live with a very senior army Officer, who described how London would not actually be the first target. It be more likely Birmingham! A gentleman from Birmingham phoned in and commented,
“That’s very interesting. If Birmingham is really the first target, is there any chance that the epi-centre of the blast could be moved to the nightclub near my house?”
Anyway, we never got nuked and the night club is probably still annoying people!
Ok guys. Have a great week. Next post, next Friday.
….
PsSSSH. Quiet. This is Jean. Don’t tell Lee, but Rant’O’Matic was turned up full for this post, so he has not sullied you with his full opinions at all!
Living with Motor Neurone Disease 