"Well and Truly Cream Crackered...Knackered!"

Two more weeks gone west! I'm more than pleased to announce I'm still alive and now seriously on the improve. My life for the last month has been revolving around hospitals, pills and doctors appointments, what I can do, and not do!

This face shows where I've been, not where I'm going!

I wasn't finished with the unexpected though, my bowels shut down for 3 days, and for those who have never had this happen it's very trying, and trying, etc. So more pills and potions taken from both ends, not to harp on about this, but I thought it should be told about as it is a common condition of people after operations featuring lots of painkillers and morphine, so if I can notify/inform someone who reads this blog, that this could happen to you, and if you take action before the bind happens, well then it's all been worth it!

My lovely wife kept saying (and others too) the sun will come out soon and she/they were right!

I wanted to make a recording of my first doctor's appointment so as to get everything right, and not forget anything, I was told no you can't, then I pushed the issue, as it was for my wellbeing and health, they said don't do it, so I did! All the response I got from the doctor and nurse was mostly the simple word, no, no and no, repeated with a "dead pan face" (rather appropriate). Gee it gave me heaps of hope when then they said another 4 weeks in the sling, so they took my stitches out and  I headed out into the wide world with NO still ringing in my ears!  Afterwards talking to Angela who had been a nurse all her working life, she said she would also have said no to being recorded, in fear of being sued and held accountable to what was said! Going home in my uncle's car, after listening to my story he said that I'm cream crackered! So now I can actually smile when I hear the phrase "Cream Crackered" and will forever be adding "Knackered".

So I took to the streets and walked to Bournemouth, here is a selection of what caught my eye.

Boscombe beach and the chalets

I did manage to catch up with my cousin Raymond,  I hadn't seen him since 1984, way too long. He's in the travel business and told me about the arrival of the American Greyhound company that services London with buses (with wi-fi and power plugs) from Southampton, Bournemouth and a few other locations. Must give them a go.

These rhododendrons are beautiful, but considered a weed and being cut out of the landscape of St Katherines Hill, just behind me, where Ken and I often go for walks

Now I was looking forward to be heading away for the weekend to the Jazz improvisation workshop that I enrolled and planned for from NZ months ago, being held in North Devon at Torrington. The month before leaving NZ was so busy with finishing jobs and having my 60th birthday party, that I had little workshop preparation and playing, in spite of Pete Canter's information and  practice mp3s being sent 3 months ago. The night before, I opened the sax case just to make sure I could actually hold it comfortably and gave it a quick blow to confirm I should take it.

Auntie Angela's roses

I had arranged my first Warm Showers visit (this is an international group of people who host touring cyclists, we  are hosts in NZ and now I was about to be on the other side of the fence) and contacted Phil Creasey in Barnstable only 13 miles north of Torrington. I made sure there was a bus, although this wasn't needed as a couple of the workshop participants were coming from the Barnstable area and kindly gave me a lift.

Back to Phil the Warm Showers host, he was great! He introduced me to his 18 year old neighbour, another sax player, and we talked shop on sax and music issues, nice lad, young and switched on too.

The Central church in Barnstable.

Walked into town via the Tarka cyleway along the river Taw, which at this point was tidal and therefore salty at times. Now I started to enjoy the idea of cycle touring again, and started to envision being back on the bike and cycling once again. Phil took me out to several local beaches and spots of interest, it was good to get information about local matters, it really fills out the flavour of a place and driving around the little Devonshire country lanes is amazing (the photos can't do them justice) .

Saunton Beach

Phil you gave me hope, realising I'd lost my way somewhat when I started my journey.

The Jazz Workshop was both brilliant and a challenge Many of the others were workshop junkies who knew the ropes and with my lack of prep, it was very tough in places, however from adversity comes diversity and intensity. We had nine sax players and one trumpet player which I thought gave some needed variety. I did sort of have an eye on England's first game in the World Cup, but many of the other Saxers on the workshop didn't even know that England were playing! These people in this house in Torrington, it's safe to say did!

Views from Torrington

Now heading back to Christchurch but not before another foray out into the wilds of North Devon out on the cliffs and headlands looking toward Wales, I was reminded of home with the Romney sheep actually in lamb at this time of year, very late, like early to mid summer and obviously close to lambing! Tame too as we could get almost within touching distance of them. I loved the stone fences and gates, interesting to also see gorse and heather.

Looks like lots of locals have been stoned for quite a while!

It was my suggestion to finish Devon off with a Devonshire Tea, so Phil and I stocked up in the little local shop, choosing scones, a pottle of cream and was shown the range of local jams to go with it.  Me being me, I chose this nice jar of local Exmoor Marmalade with Rum and took all our selection to the till to talley up. The assistant, said "do you know this is not jam", I said "it looks ok to me". She said  "oh,  no it's not jam". Anyway we enjoyed them immensly.

The train journey home was not without an event. I didn't realise I did not have my Kokopelli hat on until I was two trains into my journey. It's all good though, I must be getting back to normal as I'd left it in the front of Phil's van and the "hat to end all hats" will be returning to my bonce very soon. I do feel naked without it. The trouble is, most people don't like either option, me with orwithout the hat, both are a shock to the classic English reserve though it does start many a conversation. I'm lost with and without it.

Now I'm looking forward to returning to London to go to the British Museum Exhibition of Rennaisance Masters (more than 100 works by Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Titian and more) and intend to also go to the Tate Modern Museum.

Still no busking or clowning happening yet, however it's in the wind.

Just swanning along now in Dorset

Cheers and Ciao
Jimu

81 Today and Counting!

As I review my words on the last blog
"Really scraping the bottom of the barrel"
This was certainly not true, I've now found a new low, didn't think I could ever get this low, Don't worry I won't bore you with the detail, although the experience and the emotional ride was equal to any I've been on before and want to share these from my perspective!
You can always fast forward to the pictures!
I left the last blog at the waiting for the operations stage.

I was still walking around with broken bones and starting to get back into my drawing activites. Improving quite rapildy almost feeling good! (bit of an omen that!) Ken and Angela most kindly lent me allot of their drawing kit, sketchbooks, pencils, brushes and tubes of water colours. 
Here is some of Auntie Angela's work.....

I had  made a start sketching this ancient window ruin in Christchurch, going back to the 7th Centuary!

This chicken was just to make me feel home sick!

Upon returning to home base was told that my number had come up in the NHS at Poole Hospital and needed to report tomorrow at 7.30 am .

Getting there on the dot of 7am,....it was a very Salvador Dali experience (who I'd watched a TV programme about the nght before), surreal in the extreme. At 9 am I was wheeled into the Theatre, not to perform as a clown but to be the main act!
The aneasethists team all dressed in blue and smiling/joking allot, were all bright and cheery for a Wednesday morning.  It's amazing what one notices and is accutely aware of at this time
( I noticed my surgeons hairy chest peaking out of his vee necked gown!
Apparently my shoulder was "Well Mashed" I did a proper job of it, however it's all ok now, The next day I managed to record Mr Southgate, my surgeons visit and advice on the iphone. So once I figure out how to put this on the blog page, you'll hear it here, straight from the horses mouth!

I awoke from the operations, in the B2 Trauma Ward Bed C2 lying face up (coming 2), this was to be my posture for the next 24 hours. Any movement, however far was difficult and a challenge, I had both wings clipped and felt like I was pinned to the bed.  I managd to drink half a glass of water, that was all I could lift, needing two handed support to get it to my mouth! Pouring myself a glass of water was a physical impossibilty. When my evening meal came....  I took so long drinking the hot soup that the rest of the meal was well cold....I laughed (inside) when I saw the banana, another joke, I thought!
However I ploughed through the rest of the meal, with the whole evening to use up eating.
I hadn't anything from my bag on the bed (and nothing within reach, the buzzer to bring the nurse had fallen over the side. As my blood pressure was low, (to the nurses and doctors eyes) they were concerned that 85/54 with pulse of 66 was way too low) I knew better as my normal pulse is 90/60 with pulse of around 50.
 I wasn't worried, however they were, and took my BP reading at 2 hour intervals throughout the night. Most of it, I felt like a cast sheep!
After getting handed my iphone I managed to record thoughts from the end of my little finger....this was all I was able to do!
Needing to get more water poured, or ask for more morphine, or get another cardboard pee bottle, I attempted to use the buzzer...it wouldn't work...I pressed with both hands still no joy...and had to get it checked at the next BP visit. The nurses press however worked for her!
This brings me to the subject of Nurses......some are doing a job, others come in say there name and chat while they help you, there is a world of difference between the two, and healing is given a double dose with the later IMHO. I must mention Merle and Angie, true ladies of the night! (life savers)

In the morning I battled the ticking of the breakfast menu selection, only to be handed a bowl of corn flakes and kindly asked  if I want sugar on me corn flakes! The slice of toast with knife and those little foil sealed butter and jam containers I eventualy (those of you who know my love of toast and jam, will not believe this) I asked the nurse to do this for me! 20 minutes to eat a single slice of toast....another record!) The final piece of icing on the cake was watching the nurse zip up the fly on my trousers! (without asking!) as she helped me dress to head for the dispatch department (dis guy did  have a few extra patches, than when he came in ......dis-patch....get it?)
My other local uncle delivered me home to Christchurch, Dorsest, but not before meeting Ryan another cyclist with the same injury, who had spotted me (the hat actually) the previous week while attending the fracture clinic in Poole..
So now I was back to the unable to dress, undress myself, or tie my shoe laces stage.......again!!!
Now on 4 hourly 7mils of morphine and dreading getting into bed I started reading Mark Beaumonts book "The Man Who Cycled the World", the comparison in our situations not lost on me!
I now, know what it must be like, to be a butterfly and pinned (alive) onto a species/specimen card, in one of those entimologists drawers..... as that's exactly how I felt when I awoke in the morning!

I still can't quite believe the rapid improvement each day brings, though still can't butter me toast.......yet!(not completely true now, but good for effect!) Trying hard to live up to uncle Ken's opinion that I'm a smooth talker.......with the ladies.

Yesterday I wandered into town on an English summers day with raincoats and grey driving rain...here are a few pics

This is Ivo and Kokopelli the clowns skeeming up their next meeting

I also revisited Christchurch Priory, a most impressive building started in 1094, and is built mostly in the  Norman style of heavy columns and rounded arches.

Very similar patterns I've seen in Shioji doors in Japan.......interesting!!!

Genuine hand forged metal hinges and catches.

Just off  Bridge Street Chch, Dorset.

 Local Real Estate window, Thatched Cottage...only half million quid!

Spotted this at the Wimbourne Market last week, it's a wheelchair scooter called a "Nippi"

Apparently you wheel onto it, lock your brakes and even drive it while seated....gootta be real cool (with the right hat) and more storage for saxes too!

A highlight of last week was the dutch woman who stopped me in the market admiring my hat saying "Good job your hair is not that colour!" to which I took my hat off..... she nearly turned as red as my hat!

This is uncle Kens birds nest monitor, scavanged from the reversing TV camera's in some delivery vehicles.

Started with 8 eggs, now hatched and down to only 4 live chicks, I'm told the fledgling rate is even lower than this!

If you've read this far expecting  busking, clowning, biking news,......sorry it's not happenin yet!

 This blog post title is

"81 Today and still Counting"

This refers to the people I am living with and the way I've felt these last two weeks

.

I've been given the experience of being 81 years old...and it's great, I'll take it any day to the alternative.

Certainly wouldn't have been having these gifts if I'd stayed on my bike!

Next  blog.....another adventure.

till then...stay safe!

Arohanui

 Jimu

Plaster and Casts

Plaster and Casts

Hello all from Sunny Southampton.

11 days since my arrival at Heathrow airport.

My adventure starts in earnest, right here

Blog 1.

Where does one begin because yesterday's event has cast a shadow brighter than the English summer.....I’ll keep you in suspense!

The Lad himself with two saxes squeezed into one case, the modified 1935 Conn case.

Here is the expectant, exportant, expatriot, extraordinare, exclaiming his busking birthright outside Wellington airport exuberantly, simply “Wild at Heart” saying arrivederci to NZ for Europe.

Intro to UK life saw me staying 6 days with my (nice) niece Fiona and boy friend Dan in the South London area of Tooting Bec, who very kindly gave up the only bed to sleep on a blow up bed down stairs. Using the Oyster card on the tube and other above ground trains is very easy, efficient, tho I did get on several wrong platforms. On one occasion coming out of the station, which has similar exits and entrances, I took the wrong one getting a little lost. Here comes the interesting bit, I asked a man pushing his pram down the road, holding his iPhone, he said “hang on a minute, we’ll test out this phone" and within 30 seconds, it has found exactly where we were, then he typed in my home street and bingo, “walk down here, then second on the left”. So this is being used by every Joe Bloggs, probably across the whole of the UK.

There are heaps of photo opportunities for some one like me and while sitting in the tube deleting and sorting I realized just how easy it was to shoot on the fly in sort of stealth mode. I was taken by the amazing array of people and personalities I saw. These are those!

My laptop computer which locked on the blue and black screens of death, actually burst back into life, so away I went exploring some busking spots in Covent Garden, The Embankment, Jubilee Bridge and around the London Eye, the huge ferris type wheel.

Covent Garden I’ve discovered the famed hallowed busking spot, for me is over-regulated, needing to do an audition, which is only every two months and only two live spots for music and no saxophones strolling around. I went into the office for the Covent Gardens and got to chat to the organizer. They had no information fliers or rules document to look at. Apparently the Gardens is privately owned  and run, she said she would email me some info, so far nothing has came into my inbox. I was taken by the Bomb Threat procedure list pinned in the office wall and decided Covent Garden is not for me.

Going past these very good buskers playing classical music, upon seeing my Kokopelli hat, the leader shouted out, "this is Ravel's Bolero for the man with the hat” I thanked them and remained on the rail above to watch. These buskers had a collector who went around the rail asking to put in the hat. Something I wanted to do, but to be actively asked was a new experience for me. Upon their final bar I frisbeed my hat into their hat missing by only three hat widths.

After recent (unsuccessful) attempts in NZ to take an older G4 Mac proved beyond me, and experienced Mac users, so being naive, and stubborn saw me visiting the Apple Store in London’s Regent Street. What a shop, what an experience. I’ve been in Mac stores in Chicago, this store has roving blue t-shirted assistants, called “Geniuses”. Already I have experienced the lack of service and steely looks that pervade in large cities all over the world, but this Mac store manned with 150 blue shirts has full and free use of all the tables loaded with all the latest Apple products up and running with Geniuses all around. They have a tutorial area at the back on all sorts of subjects where the audience sits there with their own laptop following the presentation. This is innovative and brilliant, though my own piece of plastic remained hidden in my wallet.

My focus for these early days was to find suitable transport (a bike) and unexpectedly from the Cafe Sax forum came an offer to use a touring bike from Bill, more commonly called “Old Git”, for the duration of my trip. 
Wow. I was blown away and took the above ground train to Croydon. Yes, more than very suitable and beautifully assembled and put together with love and care as Bill is a retired bicycle mechanic. Next job was to find/get a suitable trailer for all my gear, and a quick hunt around shops on the above bike revealed nothing available. I ordered a Bob Yak trailer on the internet, from a specialized shop (in Somerset) on next day delivery which dutifully arrived in Croydon, we unpacked and with minor shortening of the supplied special rear axle (another story). This is the result.

So next day I'm eager to start, still not having been able to find a suitable map. Totally undecided which direction to head I went to Halfords, the chain (get the pun) of cycle shops, once again no suitable maps. Sitting outside thinking about my dilemma a local asked if I was lost, my reply was “this is day one of a cycle trip for 6 months and I don’t know where to go”.  He said “Go to the West Country”. I said “Go West young man ... eh”, he said “Yeah go to it, write about it!!

So I thought the only road I half know is the one I came on from Croydon, which is in the direction of Brighton, where my father was born, yup I need his help right now so off I went  at 11am, not even knowing the distance. I pedalled  through Croydon and the continuing suburbs stopping to ask the way on the back roads to Brighton from a couple of likely lads unloading some building materials “oh it’s a long way, your best bet is the A23. You’ll be buying a stick of rock in Brighton at 6 pm”. I said “I’ll be buying something well before then” continuing on to have breakfast in Coulsdon, a hot bridie pie and brownie.

I biked through fields with daffodils, while days before in NZ, I was biking through Autumn foliage, and on through the recognized bicycle routes following the signs. Getting into Brighton around 6 pm, but shunning the stick of rock idea, I found a backpackers next door to the Globe Hotel in Middle Street and dragged the bike and trailer into the hostel.

My room mates were one young 6ft5" Irishman, a Canadian tree planter and an older Frenchman with skateboard and Macbook laptop playing videos on his top bunk! The Irishman turned out to be a muso who had travelled the length and breadth of Ireland for years (so he said) so I opened my sax case and gave them a little blow, and the Irishman immediately started drawing me up a list of places to go in his home country.

Now it was Sunday morning and these fellows had been out drinking the night before, so we all went out to breakfast. My tall companion ordered two beers (for starters) and one of those “everything" cooked breakfasts. I hopped onto my bike saying goodbye and headed west to find my uncle and auntie 35 miles west in Rustington.

It was quite an experience to be around family, seeing patterns in myself. Refreshing contact with distant cousins and their children. My cousin Richard’s art work a drawing of a field mouse done aged 17, and a painting by my Uncle, only one of many, (below) made me realize where I get my artistic tendencies.

Uncle and Auntie took the visiting colonial to view the Bluebell forest which was magnificent. Learning a lot of family history as we walked through taking lots of photos.

Off I headed for Southampton biking through Portsmouth where Terry another local cyclist stopped me, found out where I wanted to go then informed me I was going the wrong way and cycled with me on the route to Southampton, stopping at his home for coffee. (Nice one mate, you're a gem).

Now we get to the title of this blog “ Plaster and Casts”.

There I was, biking along in traffic when a small truck pulled out from a side road looking to overtake me. I was just going straight ahead, crossing a left turning intersection, He started to turn left which would run me over. I choose to quickly turn left to avoid this and crashed the bike on the road. Several people stopped including the driver of the offending vehicle and a larger truck immediately behind me, the driver saying  “I saw the whole thing and he was in the wrong”.

So picking up the pieces, the guys who caused it all took me to my intended destination to meet Pete Thomas, the creator/administrator of the Cafe Saxophone Forum, and supreme saxophonist.

Off we went to the Hospital to get checked out. The photos tell no lies.  Xrays for my hand were in fact xrated. I’m told my knee, shoulder and bruises are minor issues however I’ve broken my right thumb and the xray below is my left shoulder (which they didn't find out till a week later that it also was broken)........coming up 10days now since the accident, possible 7 more days max till I get the operations.

So where to from here, I certainly don’t know........... so you will have to wait for my next blog.
This has been like no other.

Will the Saxman return?

Will Kokopelli perform out there in the street?

Till the next blog....

Cheers and Ciao

Jimu

Post script

19th May

Add to the thumb I have a broken clavicle, and will need corrective plates and pins! Have contacted my World Nomads travel insurance who say I am not covered (due to the reciprical agreement between UKand NZ for health care, read the fine print...mate) The hand specialist has 22 in his waiting list + others to add, so my likely senario is next week some time.
Really scraping the bottom of the barrel, however my relatives in the form of Uncle Ken (the distant Kokopelli hat fan) and Angela, my Auntie have been very kind supportive and most helpful. Don't know what I'd have done with out them, so I'm busted up, walled up, and pondering my next steps.

Yes the computer has arisen from the dead and I have wi-fi.
Special thanks to Pete Thomas and family, for helping me at this time!

Possibly the next blog will be soon, as I have time on my bottom!

To all those who said, "Can I carry your bags on this trip".....it's not so rosy at the moment!

I accept and take the rough with the smooth!

No other way!

Whew!....and you didn't experience this!

More to follow.

Jimu