Friday 23 October 2009

Holiday

I am about to head off for a week's holiday from work. Can't wait. I feel as if I have not been able to give my parents much of my time and maybe get to do some nice things with them. They have been here so long and they leave at the end of next week and I have missed so much!
Will make a big effort to get some photos up here and of course of the wedding/registry office ceremony.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

water water everywhere

John is at home and now impatiently waiting for the doctor to sign him back to work. It seems that the most likely cause of the problem was Legionnaires Disease! [Legionnaires' disease causes a serious pneumonia (lung infection). You get the infection by breathing in droplets of water which contain Legionella bacteria. The earlier the illness is treated with antibiotics, the better the likely outcome. The illness is fatal in some cases. Pontiac fever is a milder illness caused by the same bacteria]. Given that John had been in hotels, on planes and in general exposed to airconditioning for 12 days on his last trip to the Middle East, there are lots of places that he could have picked it up.
Anyway...yesterday a water pipe burst in the pavement infront of our neighbour's house. It seems that various residents in the street had been reporting it from 2:30 pm, but not a word from the water company. In my job I speak to all the utilities suppliers, almost daily! So I rang to add to the furore! They promised to deal with it and then I mentioned that all the houses on the leak side of the road were actually below street level and I would hate to think what would happen if water ran down into garages and living rooms.........there was someone there to plug up the leak within an hour! By bedtime the job was done and the water service we lost for about 2 hours was back on. Nice.

Friday 16 October 2009

Blue Light Ambulance

Well, life is never dull.

We had a great weekend last week.... My mother was 71 on Friday 9th, so on Saturday my brother and his girlfriend came from London to celebrate. We made this fantastic lamb dish and served it with roasted potatoes and calabrese (a variety of broccolli) http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/roast-leg-of-lamb-with-aubergines-and-onion

For dessert we baked a raspberry cheesecake, using our own raspberries. There was champagne, wine and a lot of laughs.

On Sunday, John and I drove to West Berkshire, 1 and 1/2 hours away, for lunch. We met the Hidens and Goegehans at a pub called Langley Hall Inn in a place called World's End. http://www.langley-hall-inn.co.uk/ It was a great day out, the food was excellent and so was the beer, although the women were designated drivers for the day, so we did not drink!

On Monday my parents left for a week in France and John reported feeling a bit unwell, which we put down to a big weekend, but as the day wore on he got worse and by the afternoon he was on the train back from London in agony.

I picked him up from the station and took him to the Queen Victoria Hospital in town, which does not have an A & E, only a minor unjuries unit. They put him on an ECG machine and said that it was not his chest, but he was gasping and very distressed. They called for a blue light ambulance to take him to the hospital in Tunbridge Wells. I was asked to drive on ahead to meet him there. I got all the way to T'Wells and was called by the hospital in East Grinstead to say that the ambulance had taken him to East Surrey hospital in Redhill, another 30 minutes on the other side of EG!!

By the time I had picked up Adam from home and found John in the emergency ward in the hospital, he was on morphine. It was 2 am before he saw a doctor and he has now been in hospital for 5 days....it seems he has a chest infection and that he will be released today.

What a week. We have been going to see him every night. He is bored and tired as it is a surgical assessment ward so people are always being brought in and then taken out.

The week has been so strange. There is no routine, nothing is getting done and I cannot wait til he is home and we can go back to normal...

Friday 9 October 2009

Red Tape

John and I went to the Crawley Registry Office on Wednesday to put in our paperwork. It was not very straightforward as we did not realise that we had to have an appointment. I managed to get someone lovely to agree to see us at 12:30 and we were interviewed seperately and had to sign a declaration that we are both free to marry.
We have set the date for October 30th at 3 pm!! If there are no complications with my paperwork (the japanese/english parts) it should go ahead then.

Friday 2 October 2009

the knot

Since the last post I have had a few messages from people who did not realise that we are not yet married! Hope it is not a blow, but given the circumstances, only two months after the death of John's ex wife, it was not easy to rush things. We have always wanted to get married, and intended to when we got the children settled, work settled, the house sorted out etc.
In a way it is nice to be at this stage in life! It means we have all reached a state where the rite of marriage can take place! I cannot say though that the house is sorted out, that is still a work in progress.
John comes back from the Middle East next week and we will be able to set the date then. I will make sure we put some photos up of the event....