Mr Fat and the Doctor

I visited the doctor today, that's four times in the last week.  Now if you have read my blogs you will know that I am not one to visit the doctor if I can avoid it, it's a man thing, stupid.  But in my case there is another stupid reason, I don't really get on with her.

I have a fine relationship with the main receptionist and with the nurse who normally sees me for my asthma, but the doctor, no not really.

And three of the visits weren't actually visits to the doctor  but visits to the surgery.  Let me explain, I had heard a report on the BBC saying the at the NHS was not going to spend millions on advertising that the flu season was upon us and urging those at risk (me with my asthma) to go and get our flu jab.  Now again, I am normally on top of this and I usually contact the surgery in Sept at the same time as I am due my MOT for the Asthma, you know the one where you blow into the cardboard tube, have your blood pressure and weight taken etc.  Well I had the MOT and my blood pressure was normal and I was losing weight (well we all know that right!) but I forgot to ask about the flu jab.  Well, with all that nice weather we had been having it hadn't been at the forefront of my mind.

Anyway I then heard the report about the NHS not promulgating the need for it this year but that they expected the local GP's to contact their patients directly.  Well I don't think I have ever been contacted by them, but that's another story. so I decided on Monday 3rd October to pop in and ask when they would be available.  I was informed between 11 and 12  that coming Thursday or the same time on the following Monday (today 10th October).  So I began to ask when would we have been informed but without actually saying anything, I knew from the look, that they were not going to spend any money on postage or phone calls or text messages either!

Never mind, I called in, I knew, so off I went on Thursday to get my jab.  Now as it happens, on the Wednesday I had started to get an extremely painful back in the area of my right kidney and it was as if a knife was being stuck into me.  The pain had got so bad by Wednesday evening that I considered going to A and E, but I had loaded myself up with painkillers which had given some amelioration to the pain and so I thought I would just wait until Thursday, flu jab day, and see if I could get an appointment for Thursday night, or Friday.

Long story short, I spoke to another receptionist who I did not know and explained the symptons, she gave me an appointment for today, 4 days later.  I then spoke to the usual receptionist who was on queue control for the multitudes attending for the flu jab.  She then said, "hang on",  disappeared and came back with a sample bottle telling me to pee into into in the morning and come back at 9.30 am to see the nurse!

Friday morning, peed in bottle, attended the nurse who tested it and said that she couldn't find anything wrong, "although it is rather cloudy" and with that said she would send it off for testing.  Now between then and today I still had a bit of a twinge, a twinge I was aware of, but one that I would normally ignore, but having made the appointment and had my pee sent of for testing, rather than cancel the appointment I would keep it and so we come to today.

I arrived 15 minutes before the appointed time, kindle in hand, and waited.

Eventually, I got the call, went in and was told to sit down.  As usual no eye contact was made, she never makes eye contact:

"Your tests have come back, there is nothing wrong with your kidneys", says she, looking at her pc screen.

"Good" I reply, "and I can report that there is only a little bit of tenderness still there, so it was probably nothing" says I.

"Pull up your shirt and with one finger point to the area" says she. And I do.

"You probably pulled a muscle, just take some ibuprofen or something like that", she continued.

"Now we need to do something about your lifestyle", she then launched into. "That chap who was in just in front of you has a similar lifestyle to you and he has just had a heart attack", still hasn't looked at me.  "Empty your pockets and step on the scales please", she continues. I do, still fully clothed and wearing my shoes, asthma pump, step counter and car keys out of pockets!

"You are still to heavy and don't seem to be losing any weight" she says as she sits back down at her desk, "and your blood pressure is still too high", she continues.

"No, I don't think so" I respond, My weight is coming down and my blood pressure when the nurse took it in September, was normal, you haven't tested my blood pressure this morning, how can it still be high?  And as for my weight, how can you say I am not losing any weight, in the last two years I have dropped three waist sizes, the slacks I am wearing today were cleaned at the weekend and haven't been worn for over four years, even you must recognise that and also that I am not wheezing like a horse who has just ran the grand national"

"My scales aren't wrong", was the reply, "They do not have springs in them like yours at home and they are calibrated every year"! She went on. "Just look at your BMI here on the screen your ideal weight should be between 8 and 12 stone.  I pointed out that at 5' 11 inches or thereabouts that if I were 8 stones I would be anorexic. "Well it is 8st 13lbs, nearly 9 stone....." "Well that makes a difference, 13 lbs", says I and went on to point out that;

My scales did not have springs in them either, that they were digital, like hers, and they certainly showed me when I was not losing weight and when I was losing weight, but she wasn't having any of it retorting, "Well if you want to take the negative spin from my comments.....", and I am thinking 'How can I take it any other way.  With that she turned to her writing and pushed a script across to me for a blood test and turned back to her screen without another word.  I assumed we were finished, but thought I would ask and was given a peremptory dismissal.

Dear Amazon Kindle

My wife bought me a Kindle as a Christmas Gift last year .  I bought her a tablet for her birthday and she has downloaded the Kindle app to it and in a couple of weeks has already got a dozen books on it.  One of our children also has a kindle as does her husband.  We, and our daughter and her Husband have  hundreds of 'written' books and we regularly borrow books from each other.

Once we purchase a book we are pretty much free to do with them what we want, including lending to friends and family or giving them away!

The one thing, and it is the only thing that does bug me with my Kindle is, that if any of us in the family circle buy a book, unless we are prepared to borrow the device from the other family member, that's if they would allow us to borrow it, which even in my close family is doubtful and impracticable, we cannot 'borrow' the book to read and we then have to 'purchase it all over again'.

This is something that surely Amazon can resolve by setting up a separate section in the manage Kindle page where family members can be linked and books shared!

I look forward to your comments on this.

Regards

UPDATE

This is the reply that I received.  Now 10 out of 10 for the fairly quick response, but what they are effectively saying, unless I am reading it wrongly,  is, that if, as a family you are going to have multiple Kindles or you are going to download the app to your tablet or phone,  then you should register them under one user and of course that means one credit/bank account for all purchases!  Now I love my daughter and my wife but I refuse to pay for every single book that they might want to buy and I suspect that they would feel the same, and why should we.

They do say however, that, "we look forward to offering this feature in the future."  But, how long is a piece of string, so I find that part of the reply unsatisfactory.  I am no technophile, but I would have thought that this is something that they would be capable of putting into effect fairly easily, even if it was a simple case of the original purchaser of the book flagging it in the 'manage your kindle' area of the site with the name and email address of the family member who can access it on their device.  Amazon could then send a message to family member B stating that family member A has made one of their books available for transfer to their device, or am I just being to simplistic?

Hello Tom,

I understand your concern in this regard.

Lending of Kindle books is not yet available for Kindle or Kindle reading applications on Amazon.co.uk. We look forward to offering this feature in the future.

I am extremely sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience caused.

One of our aims is to provide a convenient and efficient service and I realise that we have not met that standard in this case. Please accept our apologies.

Customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the service and products we provide, and we are glad you took time to write to us. I have sent your comments to the business team.

Please feel free to forward further comments and suggestions about Kindle to kindle-feedback@amazon.co.uk . Each suggestion will be read and taken into consideration.

However, if you wish you can register multiple Kindle devices under your Amazon.co.uk account.

That means you can download and read your books on multiple Kindle devices as long you've registered each device to the Amazon.co.uk account where your Kindle library is stored. All available content will appear in the Archived Items of each device/app.

You can see all your Kindle content and send downloads to your registered Kindles or Kindle applications from the "Your Orders" section of the Manage Your Kindle page www.amazon.co.uk/manageyourkindle.

There is no limit on the number of times Kindle content can be downloaded to a registered Kindle device or application. Publishers determine how many copies of each title can be downloaded to different Kindle devices or applications at the same time so there may be limits on the number of devices (usually six) that can simultaneously have a single book or Kindle active content title. If the limit is less than six Kindles for a specific title, you'll see the message "Simultaneous Device usage: Up to X simultaneous devices, per publisher limits" on the website detail page. Currently Kindle subscriptions cannot be automatically delivered to the Home Screen of more than one device. You can download your Kindle subscription to another device from the Archived Items on that Kindle if both devices are registered to the same account.

The options for transferring content, and instructions for each option, are available in our Help pages here:

www.amazon.co.uk/kindletransfer

I hope this information helps.

Thank you for your interest in Kindle.

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In Her Name: - A Book Review

Indie Author Michael R Hicks, who goes by the Twitter name of @KreelanWarrior  published the latest instalment to his In Her Name Series of books on Monday 3rd October.  I immediately downloaded it from Amazon on to my Kindle at the amazing price of £2.21!!!!

This is a brand new book, number 6 in a series, and it is immediately on sale at the bargain basement price of £2.21.  The thing about that is, that while the price may be bargain basement, the story telling is anything but and indeed if you click on the link above to Michael Hicks site you can even get one of the books in the series free.  Daft or what, well no, not really.  I think Hicks knows exactly what he is doing, he also knows, without shouting it from the rooftops, that he is a skilled story teller, and that once you read one of the books in the series, he has you hooked like a master angler, who seems so effortlessly to catch his large fish and then begins to reel it in to it's eventual doom.  But, for the reader of an In Her Name book it is is not the doom of the fish that awaits you it is the surprise of finding a SyFy writer who weaves a seamless story of Love and War, Pathos and Humour and Space battles akin to the great Sea Battles of our History.

In her Name was released in the same way as the Star Wars film genre with the up to date (in terms of the future setting) books of:

Empire 

Confederation 

Final Battle

and then, like Lucas, he wrote and released three further books telling us how humanity, who had been colonising space for hundreds of years but had never discovered any alien life, stumbled across the one Alien life force that they would die regretting the meeting, and not understanding, WHY!

These books are:

First Contact

Legend of the Sword

Dead Soul 

If you have never read a science fiction novel in your life YOU MUST NOT be put of by the genre, Hicks does not sprinkle his books with unintelligible gobbledy gook that would put most of us of, no, his is a thought provoking opus of tenderness one minute followed by unforgiven brutality the next! In Empire a young boy witnesses his parents slaughtered and his planet decimated by the Kreelan Warriors.  There is the tenderness and growing love between him and another orphan in the 'workhouse planet' he is assigned to by his human rescuers, and then there is the renewed hatred for the Kreelans as he is captured and his second home is destroyed by the Kreelans!

All three books are fast paced and unlike many books it is sprinkled with characters who all have  a story to tell.  These stories all add to the spiders web of intrigue that Hicks so skilfully weaves adding political infighting between politicians and soldiers who believe that they are in a winnable war and are jockeying for their own seats of power, to Warriors of The Kreelan Empire whose only desire is to fight and Die with Honour for Her, The Empress.

Dead Soul, brings those of us who have discovered In Her Name, up to date with the Kreelans and how the war was started.  It seemed shorter than the previous novels, or was it that I was just reading faster,  and at the end the only regret you have is, that it did end!  You feel, when reading one of these books, elated, you feel hatred for the Kreelans, then you don't, how can that be, they are killing machines, they do not give up, they do not retreat and they do not regroup when they themselves are being killed in battle, they just keep coming, survive and win, or die, there are no alternatives in Kreelan warfare.    

It is this single mindedness, that Hicks I think, uses to bring out the best and the worst in his human characters .  The humans have to be as equally ruthless in their own defence, they have to be ingenious in the craft that they bring to survival and Hicks captures all of it and presents it to us in a way that makes us tearful and poignant, angry and aggressive but most of all he makes us not want to stop turning pages to see what happens next.

In recommending this author and his books to you I really am at a loss to tell you where to start whether it is with the first three books published, which are also available in an omnibus or now that he has finished the prequel of three books 'from the beginning', but, whichever way you choose to go, you will be hooked!

Good reading 

Series rating: A definite 5 stars out of 5

See also: Season of the Harvest - Book Review (also by Michael R Hicks)

Mr Fat - an update

I have to confess to having become a little bit despondent over the last month or so.  Don't get me wrong I am still of the mindset that losing weight, for me at least, is to be taken at a leisurely pace. But, it seems that I reached an impasse around the 19st 10 lb mark 276lbs. It didn't seem to matter that I had reduced my calorie intake and that I had increased my walking/exercise regimes, I just seemed to be static and in fact a couple of times I even went back up to 20 stone.  Last week, Thursday, I said to Ishbel that I was pissed of explaining the situation and she in her usual way reassured me, wives eh! always there whether you want them or not and in most instances the rock we that we rest on...

Someone said to me recently, "you are a fat bastard and YOU smoke, but, like a tortoise, unless the fags kill you which they probably will, you may well live for another 50 years"! What a thought that is, mind you that will make me a 105 when I die, so is that so bad?

So I said, "and why do you think I am like a tortoise"?  and the reply was this.

"Well you know that some tortoises can live up to 200 years of age and the reason for that is that they, as a living creature and like their internal metabolism, works at a much slower rate than most other creatures on the planet and this 'laid back' approach is one of the reasons they live so long.  You are a bit like that you never rush about and you most certainly do not appear to be in any hurry to lose that gut you have been carrying about for so long, but, (and this is the bit I liked most) you are still a bastard but not quite as fat".
The reason I liked it was because it was true, not the bastard bit you understand, the other bit. I see it and I feel it. I have said it before in other blogs, that losing the weight is making a tremendous difference to me and then of course there was the lifting of the spirits at the end of last week.

(Just found this 4th October) Tortoises: 255-years-oldA zookeeper tends to Addwaita, a giant Aldabra tortoise, at the Alipore Zoological Garden in Calcutta, India.
A tortoise’s long life span has been linked to the reptile’s slow metabolic rate. Experts reckon as a general rule, animals with a high metabolic rate die early, and those that burn energy more slowly can live on for decades. Reports in the media are frequently claiming that the world’s oldest tortoise has died – take Harriet and Tu’I Malila for example, who died at 175 and 188-years-old respectively. But, Addwaita, a tortoise that lived in Bengal is estimated to have been around 255 when it died, making it just a toddler around the time of the American Revolution. Its age was verified by a technique called carbon dating, confirming Addwaita as one of the oldest creatures of modern times. His long life ended when his shell cracked and a wound developed some months before his death from liver failure in March five-years-ago.

Remember I said that I mentioned to Ishbel about not losing any weight, well added to that was the fact that I was running a bit late on Thursday and Friday and so did not get my morning exercise done on the Friday.  I hadn't gone for a walk on Thursday night and decided not to, because I was fed up on Friday also.

Well, stuff me with a baguette filled with cream cheese and salmon, but I weighed myself on Saturday morning and I had cracked the 19st 10 barrier and had gone down  to 19st 9lb. So, straight on to the exerciser and then later that day before the grand kids arrived I went for a cycle run too.  then of course it was stuffing the face when the kids arrived with home mad Tapas on Saturday and a Magnum of champagne as a day early birthday drink for Ishbel.

Now on Sunday I am normally the first one up anyway and then I get the grand kids up and we have breakfast together before Granny and the parents surface and I had intended to do that but get on the exerciser before breakfast with the kids, but as usual they so knackered me on the Saturday that I slept in and was the last one up and so, no exercise was had.

Sunday birthday dinner was again home made with crusty bread and olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping and olives, although you have to be quick with them as 5 year old Shannon will happily demolish a whole platter of these and still eat her dinner, followed by two different kinds of chicken, thighs in sweet chilli sauce and breasts in lemon butter with garlic and pumpkin seeds and various other little herbs thrown in, with potato wedges and onion roasted in chicken stock (and I forgot to add the chorizo but nobody noticed or cared) with lemon rice mixed with peas and carrots  - so not a lot of exercise or walking done that day!

Monday morning, slept in, so no exercise, carried out the morning ablutions and thought, what the hell, stepped on the scales and roast me over a hot barbecue but I have now dropped down to 19st 8lbs or 274 lbs.  So, all my worrying was for nought from the middle of last week and the message is; stop worrying, I chose to do this slowly and there will be peaks and troughs, but I am still getting there and still feeling good.