Maybe tomorrow, maybe some day

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

My GP sent me a text message on 11th September asking me to book an appointment in two months time for a follow-up blood test and provided a link to do so. I followed the link, but the system wouldn’t allow me to book anything that far ahead. Six weeks appeared to be the limit.

I waited a little over two weeks to when it should allow me to make the booking, but the link turns out to be time-limited and has now expired so I can’t book anything that way.

I have just phoned the surgery to book instead, to be told that even they can’t book a blood test for the second week of November at the moment and I’ll have to call them back in a couple of weeks to sort it out.

I wonder what the odds are on all the appointments being taken by then?

The NHS is a truly brilliant organisation. It’s wonderful that someone can slip with the butter knife and slice their arm off, or trip and fall backwards onto a vacuum cleaner attachment whilst cleaning the house naked, and receive treatment without needing to take out a second mortgage or risk being declared bankrupt. How we have ended up in a situation where no-one is able to book me an appointment at my GP’s request to verify that a course of treatment is not causing a negative impact on other aspects of my health however is genuinely bizarre.

(Not that I’ve spent a lot of time there recently, but I was quite impressed that the person I spoke to on the phone knew it was me calling before I’d even finished explaining the problem 😀

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I’m so predictable

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

Yes, I forgot a reading again. Evening this time. I’m not happy about the heart rate in the second one either.

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Now we know the truth

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

I caught sight of the back of one of our cars the other day whilst my brain was on leave and realised that we’ve got something completely wrong. There’s obvious separation between the letters. Clearly it is a Nissan Juice. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

I’m now quite disappointed that it isn’t bright green, so we could go into town in a lime Juice.

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Who lives in a house like this?

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

The lawnmower hasn’t exactly seen a lot of action this year. Nor last year, come to think of it. This week however, the grass finally achieved a length needing cutting for the first time since May. Turns out that it has been disturbed so little that when getting it out of the shed, we discovered this nest in the roof space.

I’m assuming the shed has been home to a family of house martins/swallows over Summer.

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They don’t stop coming…

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

Yes, more tomatoes 😀 And a cucumber for a bit of variation.

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Don’t know what my excuse is today

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

But yet again I missed the afternoon reading. The morning one is perhaps a bit higher than I’d expect given recent results, too.

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Well, that explains all the noise

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

coming from the chicken runs earlier.

The egg on the right is extra large. The one on the left is… well… I don’t know… Emu?

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Blood pressure review

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

On Thursday I submitted the last of my blood pressure readings for the week to the GP. On Friday I received a text message from the GP saying that he was pleased to see the numbers are getting closer to where he’d like to see them. Then the question “How are you feeling in yourself?” followed by a link to a form to fill in for the answer.

I really don’t know what to say. “I’ve never felt so shit in my life” doesn’t seem to be a particularly helpful response, but if I actually start to list everything I’m struggling with at the moment it’s quite depressing. It feels as though I have a choice between coming off the drugs, having my life return to what passes for normal and accepting the increased risk of something quite unpleasant happening “soon” (which in turn would probably make my life quite grim), or keep taking the meds and having a marginally less grim life but still be unable to do almost anything I enjoy.

I’ve been pressing apples this week. There are far fewer than last year, so I’m actually doing less than half the work that I was twelve months ago, but taking the same amount of time. I was lifting bottles of juice out of the pasteuriser at one point and was quite insistently told to stop because I looked so awful.

This is not me, nor the way I want my life to be. I don’t really know how to “stop”. “Doing stuff” is how I am.

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Speidel hydropress bladder replacement

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

At least, for the older forty litre model. In spite of other plans, today mostly turned into a day of fixing things.

The most complex one was replacement of the failed neoprene bladder in said Speidel forty litre hydropress which became rather urgent when I discovered that it had already been hired out for tomorrow.

Fortunately we’d already been shipped the replacement bladder. Speidel provide instructions for doing this, but only for the rather lovely stainless steel presses they sell now, not the ones they sold fifteen years ago which are of a slightly different design. The new instructions do at least suggest a way forward, but require the disassembly of the water inlet/outlet manifold, all the joints of which are sealed with something sufficiently strong that I began to worry about damaging the parts whilst trying to separate them. A different approach was clearly required.

I removed the nut at the top of the bladder and fiddled the metal clamp off after wiggling the bladder around to release it where it had sealed together. That allowed me to push the bladder off the top completely and remove the internal nylon baffle, a seal (which I probably should have replaced really) a spacer.

Underneath I backed off the nut that holds the inlet manifold in place against the underside of the base — the only one that isn’t actually sealed.

That gave me sufficient play in the central bladder support that I could wiggle the bottom end out and release it completely.

Reassembly with the new bladder is then the reverse of disassembly, as they say in all good Haynes manuals. Positioning of the bottom opening of the bladder is important. There’s a raised central section of the press base that the bladder needs to fit around rather than overlap.

Once everything is back together it just needs testing to check for leaks.

A quick peak inside the old one demonstrates why you don’t want water from in there mixing with your lovely apple juice.

Whilst fitting the new bladder I discovered a manufacturing date on the side so I went looking for one on the old one. Looks like it says February 2010 to me. I guess that means it doesn’t really owe us anything.

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Forgot to take my drugs last night

Posted on September 30, 2026 by james

I was distracted. It happens. But then so does this.

And then I forgot to take them for the rest of the day.

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