To the Summit.

Slept really well again and again was woken up by containers being emptied and a concert of drilling from across the canal.

Wanted to sleep until 10 am and wake up feeling refreshed to cope with the 13.30 appointment with Michelle, from ARCA, the Council advisors and Elwyn, an employee from Summit.

Summit is the company that will be carrying out the adaptions to my electric wheelchair; they will make a mould of my body and use that to make the back and seat of the chair.

We do not know whether they will make the mould today or not, hope they will as that will speed up the process considerably if that is so.

I am very nervous about this appointment; probably it will be an appointment where Elwyn, from Summit will tell us all about how they make the mould.

It is a very grey and overcast day today, still quite warm, mind you I did have goose pimples on my arms.

Normally that means it is too cool, since the MS is means nothing and everything as my temperature gauge has become quite dysfunctional.

I can be cold in a warm place, when I was going out I would have to put a jacket and scarf on even in the heat.

Would feel every tiny breeze, the breezes that I used to enjoy as a welcome relief from the heat were like arctic winds to me now.

Last summer the only time I only had a thin jacket on was on June 31 when the temperature was above 30 degrees.

Even then the breeze was too cool for me.

Trying now to tell myself that I have nothing to feel nervous about but can feel my shoulders are starting to feel solid, everything is clamping up.

Have to do my best to try to relax, think that I will post this and do some arm exercises which should loosen my shoulders and arms.

Richie is making soup which will be very nice to drink just before they get here.

Have a good day everyone, wish us luck with Summit.

http://www.summit-benelux.com/index2.html

Glimpses of blue sky and sunshine.

2001



2006



2007


2008




2009

Sitting here in my now usual slumped position, aware that I am not comfortable but very difficult to almost impossible for Richie to get me any better.

Today I got woken by one of the rubbish containers being emptied with a loud bang this coincided with a huge spasm that pulled me down the bed quite a distance.

Richie had to adjust my position by lifting me upwards in the bed; luckily now my arms are stronger I can help my lifting myself slightly off the bed.

This means my shoulders and shoulder blades do not get dragged but sort of surf above and get placed gently.

Extra street sweeping today because the council employees have just put in a flowerbed outside one of the ground floor apartments.

If you are on the ground floor you can apply to the Council for a flower bed, this you plant and maintain yourself.

It is a nice part of the Amsterdam street scene that so many streets do have flower beds, there are many tall hollyhocks outside houses and quite a few fig trees too.

Shame it is just not warm enough to plant lemon trees and other citrus, be good to have fruit trees planted in town.

Nice to be able to pick an apple and good for the bird and insect life too which we do need as they help sustain life on the planet.

Wish human beings were too instead of seemingly bent on destroying as much of the planet as possible.

Real shame that it was decided to use so much oil for every single process so we now have an over concentration on oil use.

Real shame because the concentration on oil and pushing cars on people to the detriment of public transport has contributed to global ecological disaster.

Wonder what could have been developed if the car had not been push so hard, or they had designed cars that ran on electricity or gas even solar powered.

Perhaps now we would not be so dependant on machines that need fuel, perhaps we would be using more people and less machines and maybe people would be valued more.

Perhaps we would not need to fight wars to sustain our need for more and more fuel.

Maybe wind and solar power would be more developed and instead of car companies churning out cars they could be making other things.

Shame that the banking crisis and the whole economic collapse has not been used to try another way.

Why is business still being done the same way, seems they want to convince us that it is all over now and there is recovery.

It is not true surely all that happened is the banks and the car companies w e re given billions.

The people who have lost their jobs and their homes are still homeless and jobless and have no way to recover.

Seem to have got into a rant here which I did not mean to one minute I was talking about flower beds and then oil intruded.

Got so involved that I did not even inhale the bag of thc that Richie left for me before he and the dogs left to go to the park.

Heard the jublilant dogs leaving for the park as Richie set off with them on the bike, they love to run next to the bike.

Richie has to get them to slow down as they go mad and take off like crazy, there have been few times when people have told Richie off for making the dogs run too fast.

Seems they can’t understand that Richie is not making them run faster, in fact he would like them to run slower but slower is not part of a Jack Russell’s skill set.

Look forward to my heroes being back any time soon.

It is a very warm every now and then overcast but also glimpses of blue sky and sunshine.

I am going to sit back and enjoy, going to select radio in my favourites and go visit some blogs.

Hope you all have a pleasant day too.

Ozymandias by Shelley.

Slept very well today and was only woken by a sudden jolting spasm that seemed to drag me up and down in the bed.

Richie heard me and responded by fetching me a bag of the THC vapour from the Volcano vaporizer.

As soon as I had inhaled the vapour I fell asleep again only to be woken by Richie removing the bag from my hand.

He asked me if I wanted another and I said yes and got one quite soon after and as I inhaled that one I fell asleep again.

Knew that I had when I woke up again with Spike sitting by my bed making a little whimpering noise as he had not got my attention.

Poor boy, he turned and walked out just as I was waking up and immediately rushed back next to the bed and put his paws up against the bed to look at me.

He is such a sweet little dog, probably had been sat next to me for some time and popping up every now and then to check out whether I was finally awake enough to throw his toy for him.

As soon as I woke he got me his Kong so I could throw it up the room, of course this is even better if Marleen grabs it as then the game goes on even longer.

Richie came in with his coffee and switched on the radio, there was a program with Clive Stafford-Smith.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m69jw


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Stafford_Smith

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

http://www.videojug.com/interview/renditions-and-secret-prisons-2

He was talking about his work and his charity Reprieve, and reading from books he liked such as Shelley’s sonnet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley


''The central theme of "Ozymandias" is the inevitable decline of all men, and of the empires they build, however mighty in their own time''

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias.

‘I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptorwell those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear --

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

An incredible sonnet about the hubris, the arrogance of Kings to think that they matter more than anything else.

Ozymandias is long gone and forgotten and nothing remains of his erstwhile Empire but sand as far as the eye can see.

Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great Pharaoh of Egypt.

An interesting radio program which I enjoyed very much.

Then just when I was writing this Marianne arrived and we had a pleasant two hours chatting about her cats mainly, as one is at the Vet’s having plaque removed from its teeth.

Seems the Cat Boat, the floating Cat Sanctuary did not look after the cat so well as it seems he has had this infection for sometime, no wonder he was not eating so much food and even totally stopped eating for 3 days recently.

Poor Lewis as the plaque was untreated it became infected and hurt him quite a lot.

Hope that the Vet’s bill is not too high as Marianne can not afford it; this is really something tat should have been checked out by the Cat Boat when they took the cats in to their boat in February.

Marianne has done the right thing for the cats and Lewis will soon be able to eat pain free again.

On that optimistic note I would like to wish everyone a good Tuesday.

Gorgeous Hot August Afternoon.

Birds,Butterflies,Moth and Caterpillars of Trinidad.

Slept very well until the sounds of the three building sites and children going to school plus the theatre was doing something which meant great peals of beautiful laughter.

Exquisite laughter crafted in some of Amsterdams finest theatre schools by yougsters set to delight many.

The summer holiday seems over for most of our neighbours as the parking spaces are all reclaimed.

And the sound of people dragging their suitcases home is beginning to get less as more people have got home already.

The holiday season starts here at the end of June with the first sound of a suitcase on wheels trundling by off to somewhere distant.

The rest of the year generally the only other time those cases are heard is when the sir crew who live in our jstreet go to work.

Today is another baking hot day, Mathilde my physical therapist has been, she told me today is one of the last really hot days.

According to her it will be 20 degrees on Thursday which quite different from over 30 on Thursday last.

But I guess it is right for the time of year, already it is getting dark two hours earlier at 9 pm instead of 11 pm.

When it is dark it is even darker than in June/July as the weather gears down for what will be I hope a glorious Autumn and a fine Winter.

Yesterday the England Cricker Team won back The Ashes Trophy from Australia, we are saying goodbye to our Summer as Australia and New Zealand say hello to their Spring and Summer.

Funnily enough despite living in Northern Europe since 1962 I still can not get used to Summer warmth stopping.

I hate the clocks going back at the end of October denying us the sight of dusk at the end of the day.

But that does not happen until the end of October, for now it is still Summertime and kthe weather is hot and lazy with the only breeze being generated by the fan next to me.

Since I woke up I have been in a fair amount of pain today, it is o0ne ofthose pains that moves around and has now been just about everywhere.

I0t started in my knees and travelled up t0o my neck and back down lingering aro0und mysho0ulders while Mathilda was here and has now arrived back down by my knees.

But just like with the constant humming in my ears I register it but do not react to it; glad about that as there is little point in reacting.

I can’t change the event so best I just keep low key about it as that way I do not get any extra stress.

Going to ask Richie for a drink and some thc and a quick adjust of my position, starting to feel uncomfortable, think that I have slumped and slipped and corkscrewed.

As soon as my darling comes and has done that and I can sit happily again I shall post this and relax with a long glass of cold hibiscus tea, a lovely taste of home on this gorgeous hot August afternoon.