Chronicles of the Heart, Part 37 – some good news.

And the good news is, I have a cardiology appointment for July 12 at midday.

So hopefully, I’ll be able to make it this time, and I’m definitely using my powerchair (or, if I feel up to it, my manual chair, as it’s more manoeuvrable), not doing so the first time was a huge mistake, as was not telling the nurse who had me trek halfway across the hospital to bugger off. That set me back so far I still haven’t recovered.

I have – though I shouldn’t have to as the damned hospital has my records –  explained in detail why it is that keeping appointments is difficult:-

Change or bust…

For over a year I’ve done very little and, for several months, even less than that. I can’t even go to the pub now without provoking a health crisis.

The reason I’ve come to such a pass is that even the lowest level of activity  screws with my heart, can trigger angina, and causes it to generally malfunction – it feels like a wet leather bag sloshing about in my chest, and while I can breathe OK, in that the air goes in and out, it doesn’t benefit me in the slightest, I might as well be breathing for someone else for all the good it does me. And I have a tendency to faint, though that could be my heart meds.

None of which has been helped, in the slightest, by my cardiologist just fucking off (see my complaint to Arrowe Park Hospital, Wirral).

And all of this is doing me, psychologically, a great deal of harm.

So, the past few weeks, in between

The madness of Cameron – punish activists by cutting benefits.

Cameron, despicable arsehole that he is, has suggested that he might cut the benefits of activists (FT, but behind the paywall).

This is strongly suggestive of megalomania on an epic scale – he truly believes his critics must be punished!

But what constitutes an activist in his mind?

Doubts should be growing over Cameron’s sanity.

Note: I posted a shorter version of this as a comment on the Guardian page. It survived a couple of hours but has been deleted overnight.

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Doubts grow over David Cameron’s welfare blitz, says the Guardian.

Perhaps what really should be called into question is Cameron’s sanity?

Few, if any of his pronouncements or actions on the subject of welfare have been the product of a stable, normally-functioning, mind. Remember, shortly after he assumed power, his claims that hordes of families claiming thousands of pounds in Housing Benefit, turned out,

Air horn on a powerchair…

The Air Zound cyclists’ air horn has been a constant companion for about 12 years, moved from powerchair to scooter and, now, back to powerchair.

It’s easy to fit to a scooter, as most have handlebars of some sort, but powerchairs don’t, and present rather more of a challenge. This is my solution

Fitting cycle panniers to a powerchair.

Some time ago I said I’d write a post showing how to fit cycle panniers to a powerchair, for carrying stuff like shopping in a way that maintains the chair’s balance and doesn’t put potentially damaging strain on the seat back’s tilt mechanism (a simple ratchet device), the customary, but completely wrong, position for efficient and safe load carrying. This, finally, is it.

First, you need

Eggs come from grain, and milk from wheat – is stupidity becoming the norm?

According to the Independent “Fewer than half of young UK adults know butter comes from a dairy, cow”.

Now call me Mr. Picky, but that’s understandable, because you no more get butter from a cow than you get petrol from an oil well. What you get from a cow is milk, which can be processed into other products, like butter, cheese, and yoghurt, none of which you actually get from the cow, but from the processing of milk, in much the same way as crude oil is processed into petrol and a wide variety of other substances from plastics to pharmaceuticals.

However, while I can understand a young urban child looking at a block of butter and wondering where it came from, what I cannot understand is an educational system, parents included, that permits someone to pass through it and emerge at 16 so abysmally ignorant.

The Indie goes on to say:-

“Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!”

The late Ray Bradbury (I think), once wrote a short story, based on that children’s rhyme, about the day, when, eventually,the rain did come again, forever.

I think he had a point.

The proper Arrowe Park Hospital Update…

Er, oops…

So used am I to being sidelined and ignored by APH, I’ve just sat here and fumed for two weeks, while their email has sat in Sky’s goddamned spam filter since the 14^th. (After writing the previous post, I went to have my occasional clearout, and there it was – pity there’s no way to kill the damn filter, it’s more trouble than it’s worth and it can’t be trained.)

Retrieved and replied to, as under:-

Arrowe Park Hospital Update…

In response to my email of June the 14, posted here, there has