7 January 2011

Apologies about yesterday’s joke, it could be said to be a bit ;near the knuckle’. Having written that I was curious to know  the origin of this idilom. It is said that a joke is ‘near the knuckle’ if it refers to sex and therefore might be offensive to some people. In other words, in this context, ‘near the knuckle ‘ would mean indecent. That doesn’t help us much with the origin which may be from the old proverb ‘the nearer the bone, the sweeter the flesh’. Obviously the flesh nearest the knuckle would be more sinewy and less tender and therefore not so good.

Anyway, the reason behind the joke was, as predicted, England won the Ashes last night and by an innings and 83 runs which was the first time they have ever beaten Australia by an innings and by winning the Ashes themselves in Australia, this was the first  for 24 years. A well deserving Alistair Cooke won the ‘player of the match and the series award’ . So all in all a very satisfactory result.

This morning I was meant to go to Addenbrooke’s Hospital to have my cataract either assessed or dealt with. About 10 minutes before the ambulance was due to pick me up we received a call from the hospital to say that the appointment had been cancelled due to the indisposition of the person who was going to see me. Alice was actually quite relieved as she was not keen for me to go anywhere near the hospital at this particular time with so much ‘flu about.. Lynn, the OT, dropped in this morning to check on something but refused to see me as she had been in contact with people who had colds and she was anxious that I should not catch it. It seems that everyone is concerned that I do not catch cold which could turn to pneumonia and carry me off!

When I checked the statistics for this blog last night I was interested to see that the fall off over the festive season has now righted itself and the current daily rate of hits, over the past seven day period, was in excess of 3200

I discovered today that my main telephone line is out of order and probably has been for some days. I spoke to somebody today he said that he had left a message on this line three days ago. When I tried to pick my up messages all I got was a hissing noise. I contacted Orange, who provide my broadband, and they were unable to find anything wrong with the line and suggested  that it has to be my equipment. The only way to resolve this was to agree to a relatively expensive visit from an engineer which was to have been over the next 2-4 days until ‘my lovely’ pleaded with them, and explained that I was disabled, and they agreed to come tomorrow afternoon.

Since I moved all my equipment from the office into the study their is a nightmare tangle of wires which it is almost impossible to see which comes from where and as I am unable to move or bend down and examine the whole business it has to be left to others who really don’t know what they’re doing. Thus the need to call in third-party help which irritates me beyond measure knowing I could solve the problem in minutes if I was mobile.

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