Sunday May 19th 2024 "Are we planning something impossible physically ? If so, I think we should be told!"

It's Sunday - yikes!!!! And just two days before my appointment at the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch, with the surgeon who gave me my hip replacement on April 3rd. 

the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch, where the hour of 

my appointment draws ever nearer with each passing day

Yes, the hour of my appointment draws nearer with each passing day.

[Well, it's hardly likely to draw further away, is it? - Ed]

Well, luckily Lois and I don't have to think about any of that this morning, because we've still got the joyous company of our daughter Sarah and her lovely twin daughters Lily and Jessica staying with us. After a lovely lunch with all 5 of us, our visitors go home to Alcester.

Our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins

Lily and Jessica have lunch with us before

driving home to Alcester

And after Lois finishes taking part in her church's Sunday Morning Meeting on zoom, she comes upstairs to join me in bed for the afternoon.

The thought of the appointment is definitely casting a bit of a shadow over us now, but this afternoon we manage to lighten the mood, a little at least, by thinking up, planning out, and listing, all the fun things that we're hoping to do after Tuesday, if the surgeon gives us the okay. We've even included pictures to show him, which is spoiling him really!

This is just a couple of some of the crazy contortions we've always wanted to be able to achieve. I expect you've been wondering about trying these too, haven't you!

Yes, we're being maybe a bit too inventive with our ideas, with some being a bit too ambitious physically maybe or even downright impossible - but after all it's our big chance to "run them all past him", and we don't want to have to keep going back to him with fiddly little amendments or our latest ingenious ideas for minor variations etc, that's for sure!

We like to keep things simple - that's our way haha!!!!

I expect you remember that Lois and I are big fans of the Milton Bradley board game "Twister", and it's lucky that we decided 18 months ago to downsize to a house in Malvern, because it's apparent that Twister is the number one game of choice amongst older people here, not least among the former academics amongst us, a fact that a recent article on the local Onion News hints at. See below for details!

a smiling Professor Astbury being led away by paramedics

Poor Astbury! But I'm sure he'll get good care and attention in the coming difficult few weeks and months from local medical staff.

Or will he? Lois and I definitely have concerns. 

Let's hope that in the Worcester area at least, NHS medical staff outnumber the growing phalanxes of NHS diversity and inclusion officers, a danger highlighted by a letter to The Times from Dr. Tim Howard of Wimborne, Dorset, a letter quoted in full in this week's copy of Lois's magazine, "The Week", which gives a digest of the week's news from home and abroad.

Is there anybody left in the UK who isn't working on diversity and inclusion? I think we should be told, don't you. 

What about the country's civil servants alluded to in Dr. Howard's letter? Look at this other featured letter quoted in this week's magazine:

What a truly crazy country we live in !!!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!