COOKER WOES

10 January 2017

Patchy clouds with fleeting sun

7 degrees


OH still has hacking cough and sounds like he is on 40 Woodbine a day so he booked himself in again with the singing replacement doctor and I had a run around Cartmel. The normal doctor has taken herself off to a more clement climate and there is a young doctor who is still developing his style.  You tell him what you think is wrong with you and he humms and says, yes....  hmm hmm hmm oo doodly doo .... and he punches the keyboard and tells me I am on a massive dose of steroids.  This is news to me - I have been on the same dose of what my French doctor called low dose steroids for the past 13 years.  He says I need to be weaned off them but perhaps not yet.  I have trouble breathing and blow into a peak flow meter and it is 150 instead of 350 so I get a packet of strong steroids and some anti biotics.  Imagine my bones like a bag of Bombay mix.  Aren't steroids linked with osteoporosis?  Must have words with my French doctor.

OH gets some anti biotics and then shows the singing locum the cyst on the roof of his mouth.  We have had numerous appointments with a specialist in France, and it took various sessions with xrays and scans to establish it was a cyst.  Oh yes, says the locum, poking it with a spatula, that is definitely a cyst - do you want it whipped out?  OH does. But only under a local anaesthetic.  No one wants to deal with it other than by a general. OH doesnt like the idea of a general.  

He talked me out of having a general anaesthetic when I had a lump taken off my arm.  I didnt have a problem with the lump but OH said it ruined my perfection (silky tongued devil that he is) so I went in and had a local.  It was deeply unpleasant to be wheeled into the theatre, compus mentis. And I then had to hold onto my deadened arm on the way back to the ward.  Have you any idea how heavy and badly behaved a completely dead limb can be?  It ran amok, smashed the drip and whacked a nurse in the face.  Behave yourself you bxxxxrd, I muttered at it as it fell off the end of the bed; again.

Back to the house and the Candy man cameth...  he was small and wiry and hopefully strong enough to haul the beast of a range cooker out from the wall and see why the main oven wasnt heating.  He was of the genre of workman who liked to convince you that he was an expert.  'Oh what a builder', he exclaimed within seconds of discovering how the cooker had been installed.  By the previous owner who was a builder.  The Rangemaster had been siliconed to the wall.  'I will try and get it out but I dont have the right to dismantle anything in the kitchen.  You may have to get someone in to get it out'.  We ran away and hid in the hallway and left him to moan and chunter.

Eventually he hauled it part way out and changed the thermostat and invited me to put my hand into the very hot oven.  He then went and I was happy for an hour until I discovered that the reason the oven was hot was that he had turned on the grill function and the main oven still wasnt heating.   Hurrah though, OH is capable of ringing up and demanding a new appointment.

Back to cooking in the side oven which is one hand span wide and a half arm deep......

Went for a walk in a wood above Newby Bridge.  The trees were tortured into strange shapes and we were in mist by a couple of hundred feet.  People and dogs appeared out of the murk, crying out cheerful greetings and saying at least the gale hadn't happened yet.  

Back to the house and a man came up and said hello to OH and then tore off up the lane. 'that is Norman' said OH 'he lived in our house for 60 years'.  Norman looked like Bruce Forsyth.  He had, apparently accosted OH in the garage, back in October and invited him to guess what he had in his pockets (leeks, before you are too traumatised to ask...)

RJ had sorted out some interviews for the end of this week and the start of next.  He snored on the sofa, dog snored on the hearth (carefully avoiding the large Persian run on which he is not allowed to place a paw) and OH spread himself out on the sofa and asked what was for supper.  This is all wrong.  Need to get back to France before they go into spontaneous hibernation.....