Not a good day

It is my Dad's birthday today, so after I'd done what I had to in the house, I readied myself to go off to Laugharne to deliver a birthday card.... The 205 decided to die horribly, the engine would turn over but not one solitary cylinder would fire... and this continued until the battery was too flat to turn the engine over.... JOY !!

so I re-charged the battery (2 hours) then tried again thinking maybe the engine was flooded, no joy exactly the same again, so I ripped out the HT leads and checked they all had continuity (they did) except for one the one coming off the HT coil (only THE most important one) ... so I took it out and cleaned it, closed the gap on the clamp and sprayed it with WD40 (the cure all) and low and behold the engine at least fired, eventually it started but I really am going to have to sort out the HT leads, probably get a set from Halfords... it does explain a lot actually it's been getting harder to start as the months have wore on, and I was thinking it was a carb problem.... apparently not... Anyway I was just settling down to starting the household chores as a good house husband should after my Internet fix, when Andrea comes back with shadow boy with a lump on his forehead the size of a hens egg, apparently somebody had tripped him up in the playground (it's a jungle out there tell yah). He's ok.....

Nothing much else to report except the CSA have sent me a wad of complimentary payment slips, which was nice of them to think of me, they don't seem to have registered or acknowledged that I'm unemployed and any spare money flying around is going towards the kids living with me and not two who couldn't give a flying fandango where their father is. So the CSA will have to take the back burner for the time being, no doubt as soon as I pop up on the national insurance radar they will swoop like a gannet. But until then they are the least of my worries.......

Don't panic Mr Mannering

I had my first nights semi decent sleep last night, I only woke up once choking for breath, instead of my usual 8 or 9 times... it looks as if the antibiotics are starting to do their job.... thankfully, because I don't think I could have managed another few days of no sleep and gagging for breath. I did manage to throw a glass of juice over myself the other night, I had a coughing fit and when it stopped I was so dog tired I just rested the glass by my side thinking I'll need that in a few minutes and then promptly fell asleep, only to be woken up in a typical Lance Corporal Jones style whilst on sentry duty "them fuzzy wuzzies don't like it up em !!!".... the bodily jerk of waking up emptied the entire contents of the glass over myself, so I retired to the bean bag as the other sofa wasn't in the same comfort zone.... dripping wet (I didn't care) ....I woke up draped over the bean bag like a human sacrifice for some Inca God (yes it was a red coloured juice), arms to the side like I was in a reverse parachute free fall, all that was missing was the golden jewel encrusted sacrificial knife embedded in my chest and some bloke with wild eyes, dressed in feathers and a skirt standing over me........that was a bad night, but I was past caring at that stage, and so very tired.

The weather has improved slightly we have blue sky now and it's fairly mild out, which has to beat the torrential downpours we've had since the Siberian freeze we had a few weeks ago, where it got so cold our bore hole froze over, we don't have mains water here, we are too far out in the country, so we have a 120 metre borehole, thankfully it was only the surface pipe which froze, well I say surface pipe it was buried under the concrete and down a decent depth, but the Siberian permafrost got it and our water stopped, we ended up having to run an insulated ethylene pipe over the ground to restore our water, then of course I had to bleed the Heath Robinson water pipes that criss cross around this house like a spiders web to get the massive air locks out of the system, not good when you're feeling like death warmed up.

But hopefully it's all sunshine and smiles from now on, I've still got over 20 days of antibiotics to take, they are pretty strong ones and they upset my stomach a bit, but well worth the discomfort, I should have listened to my wife when she said "that's a nasty cough you really should go to the doctor"..... I know I should have....now

The only other thing of note was a call from the caring CSA, checking to see if I had a job yet..... hmmmmm "The eye of Sauron" stirs in the east......

Oh Joy is me

I've got adult whooping cough, (yes that picture is the bacterium causing my cough) which I had as a young child, I do have vague memories of being taken into a steam thickened bathroom by my mother to ease my breathing and the panic you feel when you can't breath properly. But when you have it as an adult it's different, it started about 3 weeks ago with a dry cough, I thought it was just that a cold/cough, then I had about 10 days where I felt fine, then one day I woke up from sleeping not being able to breath and what I can only describe as a claw around my chest and throat.... it was awful, I've spent the best part of two weeks sleeping on the sofa because of my constant hacking and sucking in of air and the inevitable retching and almost throwing up (too much information I know) at the end of my coughing fits, all of which doesn't lend itself to happy marital relations, especially at 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am, 6am then give up and get up with the dawn chorus....again.....it's like ground hog day every night, except worse.

Needless to say I am shattered for the rest of the day, feel completely washed out, and on top of which I think I have broken one of my floating ribs, with my over enthusiastic coughing, (common apparently in adult whooping cough) because I can feel it bump over where once it didn't when I breath, and I get the odd stabbing pain, all too reminiscent of when I broke three ribs on the way to a disastrous cave rave a few years back, well I say cave rave, it was more a bunch of people high on a hill in a natural limestone cave who drank large amounts of beer, whilst I rolled about on the floor in agony.

Anyway I've been to the doctors and they have diagnosed whooping cough or "the 100 day cough" as it's known in China, and they have loaded me up with Co-Codamol and antibiotics peculiar to the bug which causes whooping cough, lets hope it's not a long haul.....