Sad day

Called in at my dad's empty house to tidy up and collect some things for him.
It's surprising how odd things can bring back memories. I was OK until I picked up the breadboard in the kitchen. That brought back memories from over forty years ago and made me realise the huge change and upheaval this was for my dad and how he hides his feelings to spare the feelings of others.
As I held that breadboard I remembered happy times when my mum was alive, my two brothers were there and I felt secure and part of the family.
Strange that past happy times make me sad.

Yesterday was a milestone for my father. He moved out of his house into a nursing home. He has accepted this up to now pretty well. For him this is a massive life  change, I suppose he feels as though he is giving up his freedom. Or maybe not, as he has been dependent on family support for most things for tbe last few years.
Its difficult to imagine how life is for him, seeing ones confidence  and abilities eroded away
Over the last few months he has had several falls and been in hospital twice. He is finding life very diffucult.
For us its nice to get out lives back. I will have to get used to having more free time!

today is my 9/11, my 94 year old dad had a fall this morning and I spent most of today in A&E. They do not rush.
He has been admitted for further evaluation until they can decide what to do with him.
Wonderful.

Unfortunately,due to excessive consumption of alcohol I am having difficulty in typing this message.
I would just like to say 'A happy new year to all my readers' (all 2 of you)!
May the new year bring you much joy in all your endeavors.

As I look at the history of my postings, I can see they are pretty boring and don't really reflect the true me. I am just too aware of people and cannot relax enough to express myself properly.

The result is a really boring person.

For example, I look at my life, I reflect on my past and I suppose (like every one else) that I could have made better choices, better life changing decisions. I know one shouldnt look back in this way, maybe its a sign I am unhappy?

Finally had my broadband fixed!
After wrangling with sky for a while I eventually had a visit from a BT engineer. He changed the NTE and hey presto from 490 Kb to 2.5 Mb. magic.

Just come back from sunny Spain. Back to wet and miserable weather.
A good Spanish word comes to mind, estafar, when on Costa Del Sol, or indeed any holiday resort be very aware of 'holiday club' scams. These are a modern version of timeshare scams but with the name changed to get around the law. They are VERY VERY good at bamboozling people into signing thousands of pounds away. When they present you with a scratch card that wins, because it will, then you are already sucked in. TEAR IT UP AND WALK AWAY. You have not won 1000 euros or a camcorder just a 'free' holiday that isn't free.- there are so many catches its not free. If you continue, you will be brainwashed. not a nice experience!
 You have been warned ALL holiday clubs are a con...they will not save you money....even the genuine ones.
Never Never sign anything or give them any of your money. Better to stuff it down the drain than to give it to those conning bastards.

On Friday (the 13th) my broadband was running exceptionally slow. About 5 minutes to load one page. After pinging my local network, and sites on the web it took me about five minutes to work out the problem was with the ADSL hub at my serving exchange. I was getting load of errors and packet retransmits.


I have a laptop, a desktop and a Wi-Fi phone that cannot access the internet. Is it the PC …no. Even the dog agrees.

I rang the so called ‘help line’ to try and report the problem with my broadband. After about 5 minutes working through the menus I eventually got a ‘you are in a queue, please wait’, after another long while I spoke to a guy in Bangalore. He was absolutely determined to run right through his script, possibly twice, but very very slowly. He seemed to know less than my dog about broadband. After an hour of doing useless things like deleting my browsing history, cookies, remembered passwords, checking I was not on dial up etc. I even shouted at him, ‘I am an ex telecom engineer, I just want you to raise a fault for the diagnostics people to investigate’…He just totally ignored this. At this point I kind of lost the will to live and abandoned him.

Next day the broadband was ok.

I just love Fridays.