Not the last blog :-)

Good morning folks

I trust this finds you in finest festive fettle.
An uncustomarily short(ish) blog.
I am sure you’ve got better/more pressing things to do right now!
The good (?) news is that this is NOT the last blog.
With three clicks and a painless paypal payment (paypal feels like Monopoly money, that is my downfall) I renewed my WordPress subscription and domain registration.
Therefore LADFROMTAD.COM lives on into 2024.
(And insomnia is a great way to get things done when you really should be sleeping, but just can’t!)
Several reasons, discussed below.

The Nipper

(Not a reason, but something that put things in perspective in a big way for me).

How much personal stuff does one share on a blog post?
I thought long and hard about this.
Life isn’t just unicorns and chocolate boxes, sometimes real life is just awful and everything is $hit…
Writing is cathartic for me, it is one of the main reasons I write this stuff (even if nobody reads it!)

The Nipper has been unwell, very unwell.
Thankfully she is on the mend now, but has been through a very rough time and will take some time to recover.
She started to feel unwell around the end of November and went downhill fast. I tried to get her into hospital (01/12), visiting Selby, York District and a Leeds Outpatient clinic, and was sent home each time. On the Monday she was getting worse so we managed to get her admitted to York (04/12), she had chronic diarrhea with severe stomach pain and fever. She was diagnosed with Gastroenteritis and discharged 4 days later, but she just kept deteriorating to the point where we were seriously, seriously worried about her and took her back into York on the Saturday (09/12), where she was seen by a surgeon on Sunday afternoon and taken into the operating theatre at 20:30 on Sunday night.

She came back on the ward at 00:30 and the surgeon gave us a bleak report, telling us that her stomach has been “like a warzone”. Her appendix had burst some time ago and the infection had spread to other organs. When a surgeon is telling you all these terrible things, things go into a horrible slow motion nightmare. Lina and I spent a week doing 26hr shifts at YDH, trying to help the young one to get better, to get through another attempt at inserting a cannula into forearms bruised with failed attempts at getting needles into veins that didn’t want to show. It was tough for a 9 year old.
The nurses were like angels, working their own 13hr shifts and never complaining, ever.

After 5 days she was off the morphine and off the IV antibiotics and drip, so we were sent home. She is still not right, there is still something that has not been fixed and as we have been discharged, we were told to see our GP, who told us to go back to an out-of-hours clinic, (again), who themselves told us to go back to our GP. The cycle starts over 😦

It is heartbreaking to see your own child suffering in pain.
To see them terrified, begging, not to have more needles stuck in them, but you just have to put your trust in the medical staff.
It is just sad that this was not spotted earlier, when a routine operation would have cleared things up and we’d have been home, long ago, well on the way to recovery by now.

But, we are grateful, things could have been a lot, lot worse.
We are especially grateful for all the amazing support, messages, cards, presents and good wishes from everyone, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
Work have also been brilliant, I am very fortunate in that respect.

Crocked!

Keeping it brief, and in the grand scheme of things a tiny, microscopic detail. Running (when I could) was almost keeping me sane, so it was almost inevitable that I got injured. A knackered hamstring.
Running was right at the bottom of the list of priorities right now anyway.

2023

If you ignore December, it has been a good year!
Had to sell a lot of personal treasure (and a lot of junk) on ebay. None of which were easy, straightforward sales, most of which resulted in a loss.
Repeat the mantra (which I never learn) after me “ebay is not a way to make cash when you are skint!”

Inlcuding a keyboard now playing in a church in Nigeria!

A fishing chair, weighing close to a hundredweight, which (despite being brazenly advertised as COLLECTION ONLY) didn’t get sold 4 times.

The van had to go 😦

The Honda Jazz came and went (to Ilford). Good riddance!

The Micra came into my life 🙂

We had some good fishing trips.

Moved house (Lard was not available).

Running was up and down, but a HUGE improvement on 2022 🙂

An obsession began with the stairmaster, temporarily on hold.

The Nipper climbed her first ever mountain, (which was also my first ever mountain), Great Gable.

And I finally got up to Bonny Scotland after dreaming about a trip up north for almost 10 years…

…just in time for Storm Babet!

2024

Sometimes it’s best not to make plans.

Youtubing?

Well, last month I said that this blog was ending and I was starting a Youtube channel, but seeing as I haven’t got a camera and I can’t run, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, hence my decision to carry on scribbling this nonsense. Hopefully, possibly, watch this space???

Podcast of the month.

I listen to a LOT of podcasts, most about running, training and/or mountains.
This one is a bit different. Obsession and addiction. Something I can also relate to, and not as dark as you may think, but a massive eye opener (with cursing and profanity, you have been warned).

https://www.richroll.com/podcast/david-choe-626/

Raiders round-up

No news is good news and as it’s still the close season, we aren’t getting beat.
Onwards and upwards, come on you Shipbuilders!
However, the club is trying to break a world record in January.
260+ people at an exercise class.
Niche? Who cares! If it raises money for charity, it’s all good.

And finally

Although it was during that past lifetime phase that we are all trying to forget called the “Lockdown”, there were some happy, bonkers times too 🙂
(Apologies for the Nipper eating on film, I had 5 minutes before work (Zoomland) to get ready and give her her breakfast, so I naturally assumed I could fit that in and film a 3 minute Vlog in that time before my first call of the day, clearly I was wrong!