Mr Fat: thoughts for the day Christmas Eve 2014

I do hope this is not to maudlin for you, it is not intended thus, forgive me if so......

One of my dear cyber friends and Indie Author Brian Meeks sent me a Christmas wish earlier today with his kind thoughts on my condition and hopes for my continued involvement in life.  Well, all I could say to ALL OF YOU out there reading this across cyber space and who continue to be an inspiration to me, taking someone you have never met in life, into your own lives,  and then continually sending messages of support, love and well being.  It is you guys out there, along with my family and British friends who continually pop in to see me, who are the real inspiration to me and my family...........

Dear Brian, my strength and the little success I have had in life, has been down to the fact that most people are good, nice and supportive. I have had that support from family and friends and in the workplace, the latter especially, which allowed me to be known as a very good manager when in reality I was surrounded by a fantastic & supportive workforce.

My family and friends,  both who are here but also like you who are my dear dear cyber friends, give me two things: 1. A pragmatic acceptance of my fate and 2. The energy of the good thoughts and wishes to tell Mr Tumour, ' you are here and you are advancing, but we aren't going to let you take our Husband our Dad, our Grand Dad OUR FRIEND without a fight ' and it is that energy that keeps Me saying, ' get stuffed, mate, I'm  not ready to leave yet ' You and everyone out there, even now are always on my thoughts and I truly wish for a magical holiday season with family and friends for every single one of you,  as mine is and always has been since the birth  of my first child and that magic exploded on the birth of my first grandchild and continues to do so and will keep me here for a long time, being the pain in the ass that I sometimes am.......MERRY XMAS TO ALL MY FRIENDS🎅🎄😍 👪


And then today, one of my best friends turned up bearing Gifts and Flowers and when I asked how he was, as he too has recently been diagnosed with stomach cancer:

My thoughts turned to him as he reports that he has been scheduled for an operation on 20th January, 2015.

He will endure a 5-6 hour operation, they will remove the tumour and everything it touches, left kidney, spleen, pancreas and at least half the colon, as a minimum, intensive care for 2-3 days, hospital, 2-3 weeks, recovery time 3-4 months, he couldn't tell us the prognosis until the surgeons have been in, removed the contaminated bits, and the surgeons can see how good or bad it really is. But what they are sure of is, it must come out and now...

 This type of cancer does not react to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, surgery is the only option.

I have told my Friend, Ricky Everett that like me he is a survivor, think about him in a positive way guys. Like me, he will feel the power of your goodwill. Xxxxx

To everyone out there reading this today, whether you are a regular visitor, and if you are, my sincere apologies for the paucity of posts over the last year, I really shall try to rectify that shortcoming in the new year, it's not as if I don't have the time these days, I wish you and those of you who have just popped in for a wee look,  the very best seasonal wishes to you and to your family and kin.

Don't think sad thoughts for me and Ricky or for anyone else who you might know and who is in a similar situation. Think joyous thoughts and celebrate the lives that we and they have and the life that we and they still have.

For some of us it can be a long road to the end, for others it maybe shorter, but I for one would like to see happy smiling faces and receive happy positive thoughts from anyone, rather than they, you  thinking, 'how sad'.  ENJOY EVERY MINUTE YOU HAVE

Ishbel and me of to the Royal Opera House 

On Holiday Feb 14

(L_R) Jennifer, Lacey Mae, Me, Steve (sil) Shannon, Mollie, Ishbel
 Family Breakfast pre Xmas shopping

(L-R) AJ , Marie, Ishbel, Charlie, Holly, Peter (sil)
Family breakfast pre Xmas shopping

Tom and Ishbel

A very Merry Christmas to you all

A Ramble

Well, 2012 is just about over and we, Ishbel and me, are ending it, the way it began,with 6 year olds Charlie and Holly, of course last year they were 5. There cousin, Mollie, 9, going on 10 is still the petite and most gorgeous creature on the planet, as are all of our grand kids. O.K. I'm biased but we were just talking about this recently, Mollie and me.

It was her, she started it,and it was about three weeks ago, the telly was on in the corner but it was just being used for music, music and books that's the big things in our extended family, sure we like certain TV shows and movies, but music and books are the main attention grabbers with all of us.

So, anyway the music was playing through the big box in the corner and after a while the picture of what is playing defaults to a random slide show of the photographs on my computer and comments were being passed to and fro about the various stages of growth when Mollie turned to me and said, "Grand dad, was I a beautiful baby?" We'll, before I can answer grandma chirps in with a, "of course you were darling, all babies are beautiful"

But Mollie knows her granddad and turns back to me with those enormous and beautiful brown eyes and says, "Well granddad, was I" Now what can one say to a 9 year old girl when asked that question, but answer truthfully.

"Off course you were my darling, you were one of the most beautiful babies ever born, well at least for the first couple of weeks, but then like most babies you turned into an ugly pumpkin, in fact one of the ugliest" Mollies reaction to this was, "Oh grandad!" And her 6 year old sister Shannon sniggered and laughed until I told her that she was even uglier and truth be told she was, she really was.....

Then of course there is Charlie and Holly separated from Shannon by a couple of weeks, they weren't too ugly when they were born and I think the fact that Holly had to be placed in an incubator with all those wires and attachments seemed to make her look so beautiful, but once again they older they got the uglier they became but as with all four of them, somewhere between pre school and school, they seemed to blossom turning into beautiful little people. People with personalities, people with thoughts of their own, able to converse and read and take on things that are happening around them.

Last Sunday, Holly and I were in the car on our own on our way to pick up grandma and as usual the gramophone needle she has been infected with just keeps going and going and she was telling me all sorts of things when suddenly she started telling me about the children who were the same age as her who had been shot in America! What! She is 6 and she wants to talk about Sandy Hook.

I have to admit I was thrown and stuttered, I don't stutter, ever. But this made me miss a beat. So I asked what she knew. She replied that her and Charlie had been in the car with mummy when it came on the news that a bad man had broken into a school like theirs and shot a lot of the children! I asked her how that made her feel. She said it made her "feel sad as Santa would probably already have their presents in his sack and they won't get them and their mummies and daddies will be sad too. Once again I have to admit to being a little thrown by the turn the in the conversation and just as I was preparing to give a profound reply, we had arrived outside the department store grandma works in and Holly says, "Where is she?"

Ah the sweet refrain, in this case, for me at least, of safety. I don't know what I would have said to Holly on that subject as I certainly couldn't repeat what I and others had been saying in the office about the person who did this and the stupidity of the laws in America that allow you to buy a gun with very little background checks, or of a country that has so many guns that even if you are not allowed to buy one, you seemingly can easily obtain one along with super magazines to hold extra bullets to allow you to kill more people or children with one squeeze of the finger, but you can't buy a kinder egg as it has been deemed unsafe and a child may choke on the small toy inside the chocolate egg! Merry Christmas to the NRA then for their continued obstinacy on gun ownership.

We had a visit in September from Julia R Barrett and Oscar from California. Friends we made on Twitter, it was a fleeting visit but highly enjoyable and cemented our friendship or at least Ishbel and I hope it did. Oscar has promised that if we ever manage to get out there to visit that he will be taking me to watch the San Francisco Giants Baseball team in action, their home team. Julia and another Twitter friend Tim, TWDitmer, seem to have a bit of a grudge fight going on over their respective teams and the conversations are funny to observe as they discuss live, the merits of their respective teams as they play bat and ball..... Bless

Twitter has brought so many people into our lives this year, far to many to mention but a few special ones are;

JWManus
PenelopeRomance
Wee Mickey, Michael Hicks
Julian Stockwin
ChefJohn Malik

and so many more and Marylin Warner who is not on Twitter but always has a kind word, even for an old fart like me, through the medium of her blog which can be found at:  Things I want to tell my Mother

Oh, we went up to Inverness at the beginning of December (I know, still no blog..... There is a draft in here some where) for our niece Sarah's wedding to young Mark Surherland. David and Jill, Sarah's mum and dad gave them and us, a perfect day, weather wasn't great but then it was December, but it did stay dry for the occasion and the reception and party after, just hit the right note. We wish them many happy years together as a married couple to add to the seven they have already been together.

I hit a bit of a hiatus in September too after Julia and Oscar left, nothing to do with them, work related and it can be seen in the number of blog posts I had been writing prior to that, in double figures every month up to then, and then barely in single figures. Still recovering from that but really hoping that 2013, as we do for every year, turns out to be better than the last, for all of us.

Politicians and politics have been getting right up my nose this year but I haven't really even been able to find the where with all to even berate them on my blog. In many respects I think it has been a case of, 'well, you ignore us and do what the hell you are going to do anyway, regardless of what the majority thinks, so I have been ignoring them, which is not good. But even political commentators on twitter are largely as bad as the politicians themselves bad mouthing the other party for things that they do ignoring the fact that the party they support, do the same things, but it's OK when they do, cos we support you. One guy this week was whingeing on about the number of Conservative party donors who were awarded honours in the New Years list, but what about the number of Labour Party donors who get the same honours when Labour is in power; hypocritical dick heads, all of them and they wonder why we are sickened by them all! Even one of my favs in the Labour Party Diane Abbot was having a go this week about biscuits of all things - give it a bloody rest will you ....

Oh, Got a surprise comment on one of my recent blogs from Rob McMeekin, a name from my past who hopefully will be in touch again soon.  One of the Nicest, Most Helpful, Well Mannered Men on the planet and my good fortune to have been acquainted with and I suspect the good fortune of everyone he comes into contact with #TOPMAN

So, anyway this has just been a wee ramble and I hope not too depressing and all it remains is for Ishbel and me to wish you all;

A Happy New Year 

Julia and Oscar

How many friends have you made on Twitter with whom you interact with but have never actually met?
Well, in the case of Ishbel and myself we have around 400 followers between us and a fair proportion of those that we interact with.  The ones that we haven't interacted with is not to be judged, we hope, as rudeness on our part or we trust on their part.  It's just that you get 'talking' to and engaging with some and you and the ones that don't always interact are following each other hopefully because we like what they say, and how they say it, and again, hopefully, sooner or later we will each catch up with the other and have a bit of chit chat and really get to know each other.

But, how many of them do you personally know and make real, rather than virtual friendships with? Well, obviously we know family members and close friends. But for many of us we may have 'friends up and down the length of breadth of our country and many many more all over the world.  A large proportion of them we might be fortunate enough to meet in the country and we may even get to meet and get to know a few more across the world if we are fortunate enough to be able to travel to their country of origin/ residence.

If you do get that opportunity, will you worry that when you actually meet that you might not 'click' in person. Or that on meeting you, or they might take an instant dislike to the other, it happens in real life sometimes, you meet someone for the first time and there is just something about the other person, you don't know what it is, you can't put it into words, but there is something there that you don't like. Or you meet up and invite them back to your home and they don't like it for whatever reason and they can't hide a hint of disappointment and that serves to make the visit a little awkward, it happens, I'm sure......

But no worries on any of that score when Ishbel and I met the totally gorgeous and beautiful Julia Barrett and her equally handsome other half, Oscar.  They had planed a trip to do a bit of trekking in Wales but couldn't get a fight to Manchester which would have been a better airport to fly into and then a short trip to Chester before meeting up with their guide and starting their trekking from their tomorrow. So they flew into Heathrow and we offered them a bed for the night and duly met up with them at Heathrow Airport.

Surprisingly, it didn't take them long to get their baggage and get out onto the concourse to meet up with us, with everything we hear about arrivals and the time it takes them to clear customs after landing at 11 AM they were out and clear by 11.45, so well done to Heathrow for that.  And then knock me down with feather but the M25 was surprising fast moving and with no hold ups or delays going round clockwise and we were back in the house in an hour.  One can only assume that the Olympics and Para Olympics have had such a positive effect on the country which has even been embraced by road users, it'll probably be back to being Europe's biggest car park on Monday tho!

As soon as we met we met and introduced ourselves we were chatting like long lost friends who had just got reacquainted, and that was the theme throughout the short visit.  Interestingly we also found out that we share the same wedding anniversary, we each have three kids of similar ages to our own; girl, boy, girl and their youngest is a Jennie too, who knew we had that much in common, we like similar TV shows but like me in the past, their faces contorted on learning that beautiful smart Ishbel likes WWE wrestling, although I suspect it is the hot ( or so I believe) sweaty muscular bodies more than anything else that attracts her, the only question is why when she has me?

Last night, not worrying about the effects of jet lag we had booked tickets for The Jersey Boys about Frankie Valli (with an 'i' and not with a Y as Italian names must end in a vowel, as we discovered) and it was a great show thoroughly enjoyed by us and the rest of a very appreciative audience.  Before the show we went for a meal in a Thai restaurant at 42 Rupert Street overlooking the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue before heading round to The Prince Edward Theatre on Old Compton Street

After the show we meandered back down the street and went for a PINT in The Duke of Wellington which was loud noisy and very very busy both inside and out with the 'doormen' continually trying to keep the large number of drinkers on the pavement off the road! It was only later that Ishbel informed us that it was a GAY bar, she does know these things, but hey who cares!

A quick stroll round Piccadilly Circus and then it was back on to the underground, the train and home by midnight before we all turned back into pumpkins.  Julia and Oscar were by then beginning to feel the effects of their long flight but clearly Oscar has less stamina then Julia as I had, eventually to prise both her and Ishbel's death grips from their wine glasses and send them off to bed at 1.30 AM, gosh, even when knackered women refuse to stop talking, WHAT!

We were all up around 8 AM today and then had a nice leisurely scrambled eggs and salmon with a glass of bucks fizz and more talking  before heading back in to London for them to catch the train to head of on their trekking and hiking ( no one will mention the fact that I missed two turn off's and we missed the train they were to catch - No one will mention that - and any way the women were still gassing while me and Oscar on the other hand were having some intelligent conversations, WHAT!)

SO a great time was had by all and Ishbel and I had a fantastic time with our new REAL friends and hope that it is not to long until we meet again.....