| Forced Days of Rest |
| Main Image – Yew Tree Berries |
| Hemp Agrimony with Lesser Bullrush |
| Music Score – Point of View – Morning Light Music This post may contain affiliate links, please read the Disclaimer for more info. |
| Golden russet autumn Beech Leaves against the morning Sunlight on the Ropewalk |
| I have to take time out today, and l took time out yesterday. Sunday started well enough as a morning. I managed to get a photography walk-in, but that didn’t happen today. A few reasons, 1] it was hammering it down with rain and 2] l was recovering from yesterday’s adventure into pain hell. However, before the pain arrived yesterday, I did manage to get the 16th compost turn done, so that was good news – hot composting batches require the pile to be turned once every three days. I have been going full steam for the last two weeks with the allotment since we were awarded it on the 9th. Time has been full throttle. There was a significant reason to get 80% of the digging/hoeing work done, and that was because of weather like now, like today and like yesterday afternoon when the heavens didn’t just open but smashed down the floodgates. Our weather these days is never straight forwards like it used to be. Now we have extreme weather conditions. Instead of rain, we have almost tsunami-styled rainfall or flash flooding rain squalls! The problem with hefty rainfall of ground that needs to be dug and hoed over is whilst it is good for the soil and the lives beneath and above, working that soil to make it ready for the upcoming season can be more complicated and more so if we get awkward weather fronts to follow – like cold snaps or hot waves. It can be the difference between working with moistened dirt and grounds to sloppy mud; l prefer the first. The second was nicer fifteen years ago when l was younger, and there were lithe bodies and wet tee shirts aplenty. The last time l was at the allotment was on Friday; l had hoped to be back today, but l have decided to exercise wisdom and recover from being so dreadfully ill yesterday. This morning my stomach and digestion organs felt severely bruised, as is typical of my particular illness or disorder or whatever the hell it is that plagues my body and has done so for nearly thirty years. |
| Sunday morning was sunny and l welcomed that. |
| I wrote a three-page letter to the doctor at my surgery last month in preparation for my triage telephone appointment last Thursday. Outlining and highlighting what l wanted answers to do with. My medical records are shambolic, and not just mine, but most of the patients in the UK are in the same boat. The NHS has nothing medical note-wise to do with my health from before 1999, which is already alarming. Then they have erratic and sporadic records from 2008, but nothing from then until 2017. Then there are records from 2017 – now. So when l was first diagnosed in 1994 with ‘maybe IBS’ – there is no record of it. The ‘single moment’ records from 2008, when the cancer was removed from my bowel in the shape of malignant polyps and fragments of diagnoses referring to a sliding hiatus hernia and GERD are present but not in detail. But, the recent endoscopy didn’t reveal either of those two conditions. My surgery cannot locate the triage nurse that informed me of that, and the records for that procedure are missing. Now we have to start fresh – Rory Matier’s health journey begins in 2022. So complete bloods and counts are to be taken on the 7th of October, and an Ultrasound on the following day. I have yet to get my stool sample in. It has been recognised that whilst l didn’t have oesophagus cancer, the probability that l have a significant issue below in my stomach is high, maybe not cancer, but a growth. I need to see specialists, but this surgery’s doctors – my new surgery team promised me to get answers once and all if possible and sort out a proper treatment plan. I am glad that finally, l might be able to get some answers. But happier that someone is listening to me. Also, if there is something l can take for the extreme pain l experience, l would be grateful. It can be challenging, not impossible, but hard work working through chronic and crippling stomach pains. This is where the beauty of true passion helps – with the gardening and the farming and everything l do with and in nature. It doesn’t make the pain and unpleasantness go away, but it makes everything more bearable that staying at home staring at a screen. |
| The ‘Nutty’ Eastern Grey Squirrel |
| In other news… The Open Day at Gazen Salts on Saturday went well, and l shall write about that; maybe this week, l also had a two-hour talk with the chairman of the committee, so that was good too. I am yet to know what monies were made, but l feel it was less than last year’s day unless we received generous donations, which would alter the balance. Provided all goes well today, and my stomach clears up correctly, l will be able to return to the allotment tomorrow. I need to be healthier than today because the most prominent area to be rendered and hoed is left. After that work is completed, l can rest for the remainder of the autumn period of September and October. Come November, Suze and l can then dress the raised beds and soils with a compost mulch which will feed the grounds for the winter and make them ready for the spring months next year. This then leaves us with the ‘trimmings’, the smaller tasks, the sorting out of the water harvesting requirements, a polytunnel, a chicken coop, establishing the two new worm farms and starting up the composting operation and not forgetting the transfer of Willow garden content. Making the allotment systems work in favour of us rather than against us. Plus, allowing us the critical task of deciding where the sowings are going and what we will grow. The Allotment Plotters will start as a series this week; l was waiting for some free time to start creating season one, and the design has now arrived. Talking of design and wrapping this episode up, the Earthen Wurmin design is to change in the coming month. This was decided so there would be a more precise definition between the merchandise designs you have not seen yet and the blog itself. The current design on the banners is a more administration colour format, which will stay, but significant changes are coming. |
| I did find the moment above quite funny – it’s not funny because we shouldn’t have plastic waste rubbish in the Delf stream. But the moorhen was walking across the twigs and logs on the stream a case of why did the moorhen ‘cross the stream’ sort of thing. It walked on the plastic bottle which upended and clonked the moorhen on the head and at which point the hen became enraged and started pecking the offender squawking at the same time! It reminded me of any of us when we step on something small or simple we didn’t know was there and then just go ballistic and jump up and down cursing and losing the plot!! “Bloody #### ####### ####@!! |
Earthly Comforts 
I’m glad you’ve finally find doctors to listen to you and I hope they’ll also manage to solve the problem! Poor moorhen, yes, I would have done the same 😆
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I know hahaha the moorhen was so funny 🙂
Yes let’s hope so.
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Ya shoulda’ put the camera on video – that would have been fun to see. Oy! to your ongoing medical mysteries. Everytime I read about your health care systems problems I thank the heavens for our rather efficient health care system – which everyone complains about but little do they know how good we have it. At least those of us who have good medical insurance. (and therein lies the problem.)
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I wish l had put video capture on Grace, but l was laughing at the hilarity of the moment.
As to the records – meh l give up.
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What a mess with your medical records!
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Hey Ashley, it’s a nightmare. I knew this would or considered it might happen.
In 1999 the NHS were supposed to be lining up to make a central hub of administrations that would mean that all the surgeries throughout the United Kingdom would be connected. That no records would ever be lost, that at the touch of a button, a screen would pop up in front of a doctor or a consultant in a hospital or a surgery anywhere in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland and they would see everything about you …… might be a big operation.
Obviously it was, it is annoying learning that the NHS only have records of my medical journey in 1999 and 2008, but only as moments, then from 2008 – 2017 as fragments and then only as a solid journey from 2017 – today … that is really irksome.
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I can imagine!
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I hope you get well my friend. Your pain might be the sliding hiatus hernia you have. 😍
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I don’t have that Sadje, the endoscopy didn’t find it.
You can’t naturally recover from a SHH which means l never had one and that the triage nurse was talking Martian.
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That’s really weird, why would they say that you have it when it’s not there. Now I’ve serious doubts about the health care in Uk
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I have had serious doubts about them since the early years of 2000. I was always confused as to WHY [there’s that questions again] no one ever checked my notes from one doctor to the next?
Now l know why!
What gets me is that from 1994 – today l have seen a total of 35 doctors across the entire width and breadth of the NHS, privately, alternatively – but mostly the NHS and they have no records.
What’s the point?
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Very strange!
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I’m sorry to hear you’re in pain. I hope the doctors are finally listening and able to provide you with answers. The mess with health records sounds like a nightmare!
I’m laughing over the moorhen!! 🤣
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Hey Kristian – yes the moorhen was funny as. To see a little bird just go bananas at a bottle was a once off. Who thought moorhens had bad days like us eh.
The medical records is just one long wtf moment sadly.
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So sorry to hear of your most recent bout of pain and stomach issues, Rory. I do feel that having to begin again from scratch where the diagnosis is concerned may be a good thing, however. It seems you are beginning to get medical personnel that are more receptive to your concerns and/or more knowledgeable. Whatever the case, my Heart is with you, as always, wishing you well. 💞
Thanks for sharing the funny moorhen incident. If she could only talk, I wonder what her expletives would have been. 😊
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Hey Betty, l agree that the journey may as well start afresh and hopefully we will get somewhere more positive quicker – BUT – if it is to take another thirty years, l don’t wish to know.
Ah yes the moorhen was so so funny, l did wonder what squikky sqwak sqawk stood for on was rinse repeat!
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I do hope this time it all works out well for you, Rory!
Maybe it was a good thing you couldn’t interpret the little hen’s complaints. 😊
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Maybe so, but golly she was seriously upset with that plastic bottle 🙂
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We can relate to that feeling, can’t we. 😊
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Oh very much so. Only tonight l have had non-stop bad luck and disaster.
First trying to cook chicken the oven broke, after five minutes, so l tried to cook the chicken in the microwave and it burned to a cinder … then l tried to cook some sweet potato fries and it killed them as well.
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Oh, my Dear, how awful!!!!
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Yes , yes it was Betty.
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🤗💞
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I’m getting there slowly but I am finally getting better at navigating your site, Rory.
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Yay Geoff 🙂
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My favorite cheer!
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Hahaha 🙂
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