Well, this month has been a
little fraught. The outcome of the visit to the GP was an urgent x-ray which
showed up a number of problems with the new hip that I had 18 months ago,
including bone fractures round the new hip, Bony spurs developing and an odd
bit of bone that looked as though it had broken off the spur, “tug lesions” in
various places, and possible problems brewing in the other hip. Tug lesions are
apparently a sort of scar that occurs in a bone near the place where a tendon
is attached, presumably when you have overdone the muscular effort. That
resulted in an appointment being made with a local NHS consultant, which was
arbitrarily cancelled the day before it was due when they discovered that no
application for Health authority sanction for the expenditure had been made.
And so I discovered that, in Kent, every time a GP refers a patient to a
hospital consultant, an application has to be made for sanction to incur the
expense, even if it is just for a diagnosis rather than an operation. Some new
regulation that has just been introduced to enable people to be put off from
seeing a consultant, thereby deferring expenditure for two or three months,
because the government has deprived the authority of money in the interests of
reducing the national deficit!. So I have been deferred until the 14 April or
thereabouts.
Meanwhile I have discovered the
benefits of Tramadol. Not advisable to mix with too much alcohol.
But worse things happen at sea.
But we cancelled the trip to
Cyprus on the advice of the GP and now await the views of the insurance
industry. We shall see.
Instead we visited our friends
Jan and Dick Richardson, who came to Cayman shortly after I arrived. They are
now at Banbury in a brand new house and are blooming with prosperity and
looking very well.
We also got to Dorset for a
couple of nights in The Grange, which is a rather decent hotel at Oborne, a
village just outside Sherborne. Much to be recommended.
Couple all of that with a
celebration of 50 years as a member of the Lodge at Bromley, which was a rather
good occasion, organising the Charter Lunch for Tonbridge Rotary, and a series
of more or less successful evenings – and afternoons of bridge, and life has
not been too difficult. The idea is now to restrict the calorific intake and
lose a bit of weight so the medics do not have an excuse to defer things any
longer than necessary.
The internet, courtesy of the
usual suspects, to whom my thanks go, has been quite productive, too. Some of
the best entertainment around includes the following:
Card trick developed by magician after
attacks in France. He did this in front of Penn and Teller on TV.
+++
God's Plan for Ageing?
Most seniors never
get enough exercise. In His wisdom God decreed that seniors become forgetful so
they would have to search for their glasses, keys and other things thus doing
more walking. And God looked down and saw that it was good.
Then God saw there
was another need. In His wisdom He made seniors lose coordination so they would
drop things requiring them to bend, reach & stretch. And God looked down
and saw that it was good.
Then God considered
the function of bladders and decided seniors would have additional calls of
nature requiring more trips to the bathroom, thus providing more exercise. God looked down and saw that it was good.
So if you find as you age, you are getting up
and down more, remember it’s God’s will. It is all in your best interest even
though you mutter under your breath.
Nine Important
Facts To Remember As We Grow Older
#9 Death is the number 1 killer in the world.
#8 Life is sexually transmitted.
#7 Good health is merely the slowest possible
rate at which one can die.
#6 Men
have 2 motivations: hunger and hanky panky, and they can't tell them apart. If
you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.
#5 Give a person a fish and you feed them for a
day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks,
months, maybe years unless you give them your email address.
#4 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday,
lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.
#3 All of us could take a lesson from the
weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
#2 In the 60's, people took LSD to make the world
weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.
#1 Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What
you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.
+++
Trump invited the Pope for lunch on his
yacht. The Pope accepted and during lunch, a puff of wind blew the Pontiff's
hat off, right into the water.
It floated off about 100 feet, then the
wind died down and it just lay on the surface.
The crew and the security team were
scrambling to launch a boat to go get it, when Trump waved them off, saying
"Never mind, boys, I'll get it."
The Donald climbed over the side of the
yacht, walked on the water to the hat, picked it up, walked back on the water,
climbed onto the yacht, and graciously handed the Pope his hat.
The crew was speechless. The security
team and the Pope's entourage were speechless.
No one knew what to say, not even the
Pope.
The next day NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times all ran the story. Their banner
headlines read............
........."TRUMP CAN'T SWIM
!"
+++
Funny fish
Go to
and see how it should not be done.
+++
I have always liked words:
The Washington Post's Mensa
Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary,
alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new
definition.
Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject
financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus:
A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication:
Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you
realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation:
Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of
breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy:
Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of
getting laid.
7. Giraffiti:
Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm:
The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it
9. Inoculatte:
To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis:
A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon:
It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really
bad vibes, right? And then, like, the
Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafhalon (n): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming
only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido:
All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler
Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they
come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic
Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've
accidentally walked through a spider web
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your
bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn when you discover half a worm
in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also
published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are
asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absent mindedly answering the door when wearing only a
nightgown.
7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavoured mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run
over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash,
n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle,
n A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude,
n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian
proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who
sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the
roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish
men.
+++
The semi-perennial soccer world
champions of Brazil did not do well in the last World Cup – but just watch how
well these Brazilians (female and male, young and old) show off their amazing,
and amusing, skills… Enjoy!
+++
Ronald and Nancy having a happy night out! (Video lasts about 9 minutes and very funny)
(Note the secret service behind the President
trying not to laugh)
+++
And that is about all for now. Spring is just
round the corner, so the best of the year is nearly upon us.
