Update 24

This week can I please start with the good, rather than medical update? The trip to Wales could not have gone better. Everyone involved pulled out the stops and as for the meal and ‘Tyddyn Llan’ hospitality - just perfect - thank you especially Bryan & Susan, Igor & Ellen. Here are some pics

Michelle rang on Monday to propose reducing my steroid intake again - from this morning I am going back down to 6mg per day but further reductions will be monitored carefully to try and limit those previously experienced restrictions to my hearing/speaking and tasting senses. Speaking of which, I have an appointment at a new clinic on Thursday December 1st when there will be an attempt to find out why I am having trouble swallowing some foodstuffs. I suspect my mouth is producing significantly less saliva than is needed. Happily I am still finding those Burgundian lubrications of particular benefit, but I’m not being narrow minded. The healing properties of Pinot Noir from Oregon and from the Greywake vineyard in New Zealand have also been recently revealed. It’s the fruitier grapes that are winning over my recalcitrant taste buds.

An inexplicable wave of real decadence swept over me last Friday around 4pm. I suddenly felt the desire for a glass of bubbles, a desire supported by Mrs B, and so a cork was released, now I’m trying to find a supply of Cremant de Bourgogne from La Cave Co-operative at Buxy. We drank bottle after bottle when we lived in France and there must be a UK distributor - the search is on. Before Brexit of course I could just have a case shipped directly to me. Maybe this lack of easy availability is one of those ‘Brexit benefits’?

Politically I have allowed myself to be misled. Just because Rishi Sunak did not present as being as stupid as Liz Truss, I assumed he might be a potentially good thing but that has not come to pass. He is just as determined to be every bit as negative as his friends in the ERG - surely the organisation most determined to keep the UK on its knees: no to immigration, no to any closer relationship with the EU, no to improving the Northern Ireland Protocol. Pretty much “no” then to  anything that might move our economy up a gear or two. Alongside him, sitting on the fence for most options, is Labour’s Kier Starmer, terrified of expressing any view (however sensible, such as that Brexit is not working) that might be contested by a potential Labour voter - hence, an inevitable vacuum of leadership. The country yearns for a dynamic opposition to lift us out of the gloom of the last twelve years of Tory mismanagement and cronyism: the sale of honours, the hugely profitable PPE deals exclusively available through friends of government, the breaking of international laws, the abuse of the judiciary, the defence of indefensible ministerial behaviours and so the list goes on. 

In a surfeit of optimism I did ask whether the Frost/Johnson Brexit might be on the way out but in his latest interview, Jeremy Hunt threw his faith totally behind exploiting the (as yet unspecified) Brexit benefits - what on earth are they? Where on earth are they? No one seems prepared to tell us.  

I got a bit carried away yesterday and, frustrated by the poor surface of our dining table, I scraped it in preparation for re-sealing with Danish oil today. So DIY is not yet completely over for me