New Year

Hello COVID Year 3

/ Tony / Leave a comment

R**s came home for the weekend on Friday. We have not seen him since 30th December. He likes to be in his flat over the New Year as fireworks upset him, and at his care home, they are able to minimise any startling noise. So it’s a lot calmer for him.


The home went into ‘lock-down’ on the 2nd of January, when one of the staff tested positive. As per the Government guidelines (sic) they were not allowing home visits until there was 28 (?) clear days without any new infections. That changed about a week ago to 14 days, and so he was able to come and visit for the weekend

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Leeds Civic Hall

We had his assessment on Wednesday, which was very traumatic. The Social Worker went through everything with us, and noted everything about him. This should have been done before the funding meeting, but there was nobody available at such short notice, except for the Duty Social Worker. He had little or no knowledge of R*** or his case, so could only go on what he was being told.


The case now has to go to a panel, who will decide if it is an appropriate placement. If it is, and I think we all made a good case, then it goes to a Financial Assessment to see if some of the funding needs to come from R***’s benefits, before going to yet another panel for financial approval.
It’s just more worries on top of more worries, especially as this is likely to happen every year.

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Work is turning into a bit of a chore at the moment. The Assistant Manager left, and it seems that people are jockeying for the position. To be honest, I don’t think any of them are capable. There is more to a managers job, than simply telling others what to do. The boss has her favourites though, so it is down to her as to what happens.


I’m still half-heartedly looking for something else. This job is getting a little too strenuous for me these days. But I don’t want a job that has any form of responsibility. I had enough of that over the past 50 years. I’d love a job, where I can sit at a desk and tap details into a computer system. I wouldn’t want a phone as I’m not very good with people on the telephone. In fact, I’m not very good with people full stop.

Happy(ish) New Year . . .

/ Tony / 2 Comments

The Crown

Didn’t get off to the best of starts! We stayed up to see the new year in by watching the annual Jules Holland Hogmany show. It had got to about 00:40 and K*** decided she was too tired to stay up any longer. I thought I would check some emails that had been pinging away since midnight. I fired up the laptop, which I had shutdown earlier. It can often take 5 minutes before the machine is usable, and during this time, I must have closed my eyes. When I opened them again the time was show as 02:50. I had know idea where I was, what I was doing, and wasn’t too sure who I was.

We decided to resurrect our tradition of a News Year’s Walk. K*** quite fancied trying a pub in Boston Spa that had recently reopened. It’s a 5 mile round trip and by the time we got to the pub, we were ready for a drink. The service was appalling! There was only one person serving at the bar, and he was also taking food orders. It took at least 10 minutes to be served but we eventually got our drinks and began to warm to the place. Warm that is, until we decided to have another drink. I’m not sure if it just bad luck, but it again took 10 minutes before I was served. Not sure if another visit is on the cards!

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R***, our youngest had gone back to his care home on the 30th. He usually goes back before New Years Eve as he struggles with the noise of fireworks. In his flat, they can ensure that the noise doesn’t disturb him, which is something we cannot do here as there are usually fireworks being let off most of the night. It works well for all of us and to be honest, he was ready to go back. He was sat waiting in his room, and as soon as his primary caseworker arrived in his car, R*** was downstairs and ready to go. It is really reassuring to know that he thinks of his flat, at the care home as his other home.

Then yesterday, we got our usual daily call (or so we thought) from his care worker, who informed us that because of the rising number of Covid cases in the area, the place was going into a mini lockdown until the end of January. It was not unexpected, and we were just glad he was able to come here for Christmas, and glad he got back. It was around this time last year when the country went into full lockdown, and Rhys was not able to come here for about 5 weeks. The year before we went into lockdown in March and it was July when he was ‘released’ for want of a better word. Then in October 2020 we had another lockdown and we were not sure if he would be allowed home for Christmas at all.

But through it all, he has amazed everybody with how well he has coped and understood. It could have been so different. We are convinced that this is partly due to him having a planner, that shows what days he is where and the team that look after him. They know him and know just how far they can go. Couple that with the fact that he is no longer on any medication for his condition, we continue to be amazed.

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Yesterday also brought some news that was expected. Another member of the team at the cafe where I work has decided to leave. That makes three of my friends leaving in the past three months. It leaves me worried about my position. A*** was at one time the top person in the team. The one to go to for help or advice. An expert in her job as a Barista. But she seems to have fallen out of favour with the management since our new team member started. He is one of those annoying people that will do anything to please. At least he thinks he is pleasing.

Anyway, she is going which leaves only one trained Barista left . The manager can do it, but she is not going to want to work six days a week. So I think it is going to be a big change all round, and I cannot forsee the outcome to be anything but a disaster.

Last of the Year . . .

/ Tony / 2 Comments

This is the last (probably) post of 2019 and in a spirit of adventure, I am attempting to use the WordPress ‘Block Editor’ as opposed to my usual editor ‘Open Live Writer’. I’ve used Open Live Writer (OLW)ever since the demise of the Windows Live Writer (WLW). The last release of WLW, which was part and parcel of the the Microsoft Essentials package, was back in 2012 and the software was finally discontinued in 2017.

I have also used Microsoft Word as my editor, which given the complexity of that software, works quite well. At the end of the day, you have work with what works best for you, and as OLW is very simple to use, I’m probably going to stick with that. Although it has not been updated since 2017 which may mean I have to think again soon.

I am not entirely convinced that the Block Editor is for me. I think it might take me a little more time to get used to it, but for now I think I will stick to Open Live Writer. Better the devil you know and all that.

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So I’ll just wish everyone a Happy New Year, and here’s to the next one

Wasn’t expecting that …

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I got a text message from my boss, who is in Mexico at the moment for their annual holiday. The text said that she had received a ‘picture message’ from me, but could not open it. I quickly checked my phone, but I hadn’t sent a picture message to anyone, which I explained. It was then I noticed that there was an extra charge of £3.84 on my next bill. Very puzzling!

I went on to the providers website, but could find no nothing to say what the charge was for, until I got my next bill. The online ‘chat support’ was available, so I sent a message, basically asking questions: 1) who sent the picture and 2) what was the charge for.

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I had a very informative ‘chat’ with someone using the alias ‘Zahir’. He explained that I had sent an MMS message to eight of my contacts on the 1st January. I disputed this and explained that I had only sent a text stating “Happy New Year” to a group of contacts. He then informed me, that a group text, with my provider is sent as a text to the first in the list, then as a picture message to the rest. The picture being charged at £0.55 per message. It was then that I vaguely remembered being told this before. I thanked Zahir (or whatever his real name was) and quickly closed the call.

**Note to self: NO MORE group text messages !

A new year … new beginnings? Perhaps …

/ Tony / 2 Comments

So, all those promises I made to myself about getting a part-time job within two months, turned out to be just bluff and bluster. Well …not really. I have been looking, but maybe not as hard as I could. At the moment, things are working out quite well and there is no urgency for me to supplement the pension I’m getting. Of course, that could all change. As R*** starts to increase his respite stays, income we get for him may (will) start to decrease and that’s when our financial situation will alter. But that’s in the future.

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Yet again, one of this years New Year Resolutions has been broken. I shall go into a little more detail here, if I may. K*** had wanted to watch the Robbie Williams new year show (I didn’t) and in the spirit of compromise, I gave in. My opinion …total rubbish … sexist and egotistical does not describe what we watched. Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, we watched the London fireworks (fireworks on the TV don’t really work for me) and then K*** went to bed. I quickly changed channels to watch Jools Holland and his, now famous ‘Hootenanny Show’. Where is this taking us, I hear someone ask? Well, it was during a performance of Tilted by Christine And The Queens that I once again resolved to ‘post everyday‘ which I quickly modified to every two days. As the date of this post shows, that was a fail! It is now modified to ‘post more often‘, but even that may yet be modified.

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Now here’s a question for you. What do you use to write your blog posts? I know I’ve asked this before, but that was before I started with Windows 10. The reason I ask (again) is that I tried today to use the desktop WordPress app. It started okay, and I was able to write and my work was saved as a draft. But then the program crashed … repeatedly. It crashed so many times, that it became unusable in my opinion. So I’m back using the faithful Open Live Writer which works without any problems. Just wondering if anyone who uses the Windows 10 WordPress app have had similar problems.

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Wait a minute! Where does the “new beginnings” part of the title come in? I just thought it was a good sound bite!

The Next 12 Months

/ Tony / 1 Comment

New Year Resolutions. Do you make them? Do you keep them? Should I make some? More to the point, will I keep them if I do? I have never really bothered with them before, as I always knew that they wouldn’t last beyond they second week in January. With that in mind, I have decided to make some New Year Intentions instead. I like to think that these are similar to resolutions, but there is no guilt if I don’t happen to complete them.

So here goes:

  1. Write a blog post every week (at least)
  2. Identify a ‘theme’ for some blog posts
  3. Lose some weight (at last)
  4. Get a new job (already started)
  5. Eat better (cut down on the chocolate bicuits for a start)
  6. Drink less alcohol
  7. Take more exercise (or more exact – take some exercise)
  8. Learn how to crochet
  9. Write more, including planning my writing better
  10. Read more
  11. Complete my ‘Intentions’
  12. Learn how to knit with circular needles

There we are. Twelve intentions for the twelve months of 2016. Some of them are going to be harder than others, and some of them should only take a little will power. But with this post, I’ve at least begun with number one on the list.

When I started this post, I was struggling to get past six ideas (getting tired of calling them intentions now) but by the  time I reached number twelve, I had thought of another two, but I’m going to leave the list as it is with the ‘extra’ two in reserve.

 

Happy New Year

/ Tony / Leave a comment

     Well 2011 came in without much fuss really. Watched the usual ‘Hootenanny’ with Jools Holland. When I say usual, I refer to his guests, who tend to be the same guests as previous years. Makes me wonder if he records more than one years show together !

     Eldest, not at home for the first time. He now has a job, working as a ‘Guest Assistant’ at the local cinemas/leisure complex. Literally local for him, as it is only 5 minutes walk away. So he was working until 22:30/23:00 on New Years Eve, and he felt it was not worthwhile coming back here at that time. I also think the problems we are having with the youngest may have swayed him a little.  Of course, Mrs H not at all comfortable with this, as it is the first time any of us have not been around at New Year. We may have to get used to it now though.

     Youngest woke up and had an ‘episode’ at 03:00 on NYD. I don’t think he really went to sleep, but he eventually settled down at around 04:00. So not a good nights sleep. at least the fireworks did not seem to upset him this year.

     So … work.  On the surface, not a lot seems to have changed. We have a recruitment freeze, but that’s been ongoing for about a year now, in some form or another. There seems to be a squeeze on spending. Management is now actively looking at what people are spending and what they are spending it on (which is about time) and if they are getting the best value for money from the current contracts. It can be quite frustrating to have to buy something from one supplier, as per contract, when you can get the same thing cheaper from a different supplier !!! Procurement are going to have to get their heads around problem.

First day over and done

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   That, as they say, is that. Day one down. Only 364 until 2011 !!!! When you think about it, it’s not really a long time. Or is it just me, dreading the countdown to next Christmas smile_sad

   Eldest lad goes back to his flat tomorrow. Mrs H is not going to be to happy about that. She hoped he would spend the day with us today. That did not happen. He went to the New Years party at the village hall, after we had had a few drinks in the pub. I think we expected him home around 2am or maybe 2:30am. Mrs H rang him at 3:30am, just to see where he was, and he texted back to say he was at a friends and would be sleeping there. Now, would you not think he could have let us know ? Anyway, we thought that he would be kicked out about 10:00, but no, he arrived back at just after 2:30pm. A quick hello, and it was up to his room to chat on the computer with all his friends. Saying that though, it was 2:00am when I finally stopped chatting this morning smile_embaressed

   So it has been quite an odd day really. We did not get out for a walk. Youngest would not go anyway, but he has been a bit off today. He had his medication for the first time in 5 days, as he seemed to be getting quite upset. He started with a cold sore, and both of us think that this may have been causing him a bit of pain. Mrs H has been attacking it with Tea Tree oil, and it seems to be working. He goes to his weekend group tomorrow, which is useful. It means me and Mrs H can get the eldest, and all his washing, back to his place without too many problems. He is then on respite from Monday until Friday, so it is going to seem a very empty place next week. Shall Mrs H and me do the quiz-nite on Tuesday ? Probably not, but never say never.