This week has been a little better in general for me.
One of my pleasures on every other Friday morning is to visit my friend Sister Mary Richards. She is 95 years old, a retired Catholic Jesuit Nun and we have been friends since late October 2004. She now lives in an assisted living apartment at the Great Hospital, Norwich. Sister Mary has been an inspiration and has had great influence upon me, and especially from when I moved to the Norwich area in June 2006. I really enjoy my fortnightly 1½ hour long visits I have with Sister Mary and she still manages to inspire and influence me. Recently during one of our visits she encouraged me to write down my story beginning with the incident that ultimately brought her into my life and I have agreed to do that on the single condition that it is only offered for publishing upon my death. I also have at least a couple of funny stories involving my interactions with her, but I think I’ll save those to tell another time.
Another highlight of my week was feeling well enough to go fishing at the bottom of the hill on the River Wensum between the Norwich Yacht Station and the Bishop’s Bridge. Not one but two short session and on the second I took 7 year old George along with me on his first ever fishing trip. We landed two small Roach on bread paste under a waggler but missed several more on the strike. Katie asked me to mind 2 year old Arthur for a couple of hours on Friday morning while she went to work. This was the first time Arthur had been with me without his brother, but he was absolutely fine. First we popped into Angling Direct to buy a new disgorger to replace the one I lost earlier in the week and a couple of new floats and float rubbers. The guy at the till informed that if I spent another quid I would qualify for a free 3 metre long whip introduction to angling set-up because I had walked into the shop with young Arthur with me. Arthur and I then went to Waterloo Park for an hour and he was as good as gold on the play ground. During the afternoon I was unwell again and enough for it to prevent me from going to my lottery funded Softly Softly Yoga session again ….. I’ve been too ill to attend these session for far too long and come Hell or high water I am going next Friday afternoon. It was also my intention on my way home from Yoga to go and have a cuppa with my friend Clive as he has just been discharged from a 3 month stay in hospital, alas I was yet again thwarted by my illness, but there is always next week
Presently my creative writing is sort of languishing in a lethargic literary labyrinth. I know where the story is going and where it ends but I have decided to lengthen that journey, adding a few more twists and turns. In late March due to me having contracted Pneumonia and then whilst still being ill and discharged from hospital, I postponed my first novel’s late April launch which would have coincided with the 80th anniversary of the commencement of the Baedeker air raids upon Norwich and which was the real and now historical event I have chosen to close my first novel. It was an overly cautious and now looking back on it also a foolish decision made on my part. However, I was originally discharged too early from the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and I then almost immediately I contracted a serious ear infection that placed me straight back into hospital due my local GPs concerns over my suppressed immune system and any subsequent complications that may arise.
During my bout of Pneumonia my diuretics were withdrawn and this overturned all of the good work they had previously been doing at reducing my size and weight; basically I was pissing away this excess fluid and I was on target to bring myself down to a comfortable 85kg. Alas, I am currently languishing at 101kg, but the diuretics have been reinstated and after only a single week I am starting to shed some of that retained water mass.
My exercise is rather limited at the moment and has been since the onslaught of my Kidney failure. A build up of oedema around my heart and lungs is continuing to make me breathless, tired and unable to maintain anything physical for more than a few minutes. I have realised my limitations and have now attained myself the position of being able to do light housework, hobbies and projects in 30 minute long sessions accompanied by 90 minutes of rest. This has also given me the opportunity to undertake a daily moderate 15 minutes long Tai-Flow module 1 Tai Chi exercise, which I have been following after a 30-45 minutes rest with a 15 minutes long session comprising of 10 repetitions of basic stance and the first four positions of Tai Chi Staff exercises. I am stiff, ungainly and rusty through lack of practice, but my Holly wood staff is now a pleasure to use since I debarked and oiled it. The online advice given by present day Medieval Marital Arts Staff Fighting Masters indicates that my staff is too short and all though I’m not following any of the European staff fighting styles I would tend to agree that a staff of the length they recommend would be better balanced and allow me to make more fluid and graceful movements. To that end when Lois & I go out anywhere I have my eyes focused on the hedges, tree stands and copses seeking out a suitably straight growing piece that I could make into a staff that has length that is 115% of my height. To date I have seen some suitable growing Beech, Blackthorn, Hazel and Hornbeam that may become new staff candidates once the winter arrives. Even then it is going to be a long and drawn out process as the freshly cut timber will require at least 18 to 24 months to season in a dry dark place prior to debarking and oiling, so I think I am going to make the selection of a suitable piece of timber, harvesting it, seasoning and producing a staff an annual event that will encompass a different indigenous hardwood species each year.
Norwich Community Chaplaincy.
Hmmm! For whatever reason I seem to keep forgetting to fill out the application forms for a voluntary position prior to going on the training course in September. First a hospital admission got in the way, then our wedding got in the way, then my mother died and then I was quite ill again and as always it is precious time that is constantly slipping away from me. However, on Thursday morning I sat at my keyboard for a couple of hours and got the application forms filled out and emailed off. Now I have to wait a week or so to see if my application was successful, because if it is my weekly two hours of training will begin on Tuesday the 6th of September and will continue until mid October..
Gareth’s Glorious Games seem to have taken a back seat although they are still going out on loan to various clubs and groups, but making and painting new games has ground to a complete halt. Partly because of my illness but mainly because of the heatwave and my lack of enthusiasm at wanting to work up a sweat rather than lounge about on the sofa with my Kindle. The cooler weather is just around the corner and with it I will begin the work on the games again.
My friend Tony wants a portable wood-burning stove suitable for camp cooking on and I want some MDF discs laser engraved so guess what he and I are getting for Christmas from each other. I have found one of those short DIY video projects online and this one seems to be the home-made gas bottle stove design that ticks all my boxes: http://www.facebook.com/craftypanda/videos/1110197826579220
There are a couple of suitable donor gas cylinders that I’ve had for some considerable time, they’ve both been earmarked for repurposing. I would now like to convert them into wood-burning stoves and it will be Tony’s that I make first, mainly because Tony wants to use his stove as soon as I can physically make it, but also because I want to build his as a working prototype for the wood-burning stove I want to use next year. My repurposed gas cylinder wood burning stove will be used almost exclusively for Cast Iron Dutch Oven and Cast Iron Skillet cooking that will be featured as video segments in my Go-With-Gareth blog postings and on my YouTube channel and as such I may need to make specific modifications to it to suit both me, my style of cooking and the Cast Iron cookware pieces that I use.
On that note, I’ll close this week’s blog post with a link to the recent video of me cooking scrambled eggs in a Cast Iron Skillet for the very first time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26lGE43MgMI so please like the video, subscribe to my channel and ring the little bell to keep up to date with the video segments of this blog.
gowithgareth 
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