Despite the forecasts there has not been the truly bad weather of the last few Winters here in the UK, or at least not in my part! Despite that I have not been out and about much, because of my back, but there is light at the end of a long tunnel! My walking is slightly more than a shuffle still, I am though able to do go around the block accompanied by hubby when walking Alfie. Otherwise, its the car for everything and then a short shuffle into various buildings. Very frustrating when you are used to racing about and standing for hours on end with the day job.
I finally got my appointment to the Spinal Clinic. It was OK; I wasn’t enthralled with the specialist, but you can’t like everyone! I was referred for a MRI scan and was told that the waiting time was now 8 weeks. Now, I have been waiting for the Spinal appointment for almost 3 months, and it was fairly clear that a scan would be needed. So, I telephoned the hospital and told them it simply was not good enough. When the head of Radiology was no help, I managed to get the attention of the Chief Executives Office….
Within 10 minutes of that telephone ending I had a further call and suddenly was offered an appointment for the following day. I have mixed feelings. I should not have to phone and make a fuss in order to get an appointment, nor should my profession influence the speed, but for goodness sake the NHS, whilst is a wonderful service is not fit for purpose. Too many managers and to few staff. From looking at a recent health professional journal, the new health proposals are not looking like improvement. So scan over and a week later, I now have the results. Now I am waiting another month for an injection into my spine that will hopefully do the trick. If not, then I need to do some serious thinking about the future.
Moving onto much more interesting matters! I was approached a short while ago by the on line Surrey Life asking if they could permanently link to my Guildford and District Blog, which is great news. Not such good news, I see this morning that the last week of scheduled posts have not published, which is slightly irritating on my post card a day theory! So that needs to be fixed.
I often write posts several weeks in advance. I have been working on two projects for this month – The Family History Writing Challenge and the NaBloPoMo theme for February which is the word of “Relative”. Whilst the posts are written in advance I am now catching up with proof reading them, before publishing. So expect a bit of an influx over the next week! Next up will be the A-Z Challenge in April.
I have written two guest posts for this month, one published on Catholic Gene, the other to be published next week. Keep watching the blog for details. I have also appeared on the Genealogists for Families Project blog. This is a really great project, whereby you loan $25 through the Kiva system and then are repaid. If you are interested click HERE to read more and join! I decided at Christmas that I would link my loans to genealogical and family dates.
February has always been a month of two special birthdays – My Aunt who passed away in December 2010 at 95 and my Mum. Their birthdays only a few days apart. So, I plan to make a commemorative Kiva loan in memory of my Aunt,who was such a inspiration to me and a very special lady. I also plan on making a further Kiva loan to celebrate Mum’s birthday. So that will happen over the next week.
Last weekend I had a spell of unwanted comments on this blog. So for a time I went to moderated and I wrote to Google. Since then, fingers and legs crossed I have been unwanted posts free! Welcome to the new followers to this blog. I am always delighted when people want to read my posts and make comments. I am quite behind on replying to comments at the moment!
I have also had a few nice comments about the Anglers Rest blog, (blush!). Last year we spent two separate weeks in the Channel Islands, on the super Island of Jersey. I have blogged about the first week and I am about to restart about the week we had there in the Autumn. You can read the Jersey posts HERE
Just before I go, Alfie has not made an appearance for a while, so here is a photo snapped last week.
Until next time!