lizblog

Memories

I went for a walk this afternoon. I went to Mollicar Woods. This was my local stamping ground when I was a kid. I was an outdoor girl, my best friend was Buzzer (David Boothroyd) and we walked everywhere round our homes up to being 12 or 13. I think our favourite thing was to take our lunch (always a tin of beans and sausage and a tin of rice pudding), an old pan and a box of matches down to Mollicar Woods. We had our favourite place, nestled in a bend of the stream.

There we would make a fireplace of stones and light a fire and "cook" our dinner. The most memorable day was a wet one, not actually raining when we set out, but heavy grey skies. We took Smokey along, a neighbour's dog and off we went to the woods. We lit our fire, got our beans and sausage heated up and eaten, then it started to rain, just a little.
Being intrepid explorers, this didn't put us off, so we washed the pan and continued to hear the rice pudding. The heavens opened. The rain lashed into our rice pudding leaving little puddles where it landed. We began to laugh .... spurting rice pudding ....

All of a sudden there was an almighty crack. We thought someone has fired a gun. So did the dog .... he shot off as fast as his legs would carry him. The we noticed that one of the stones next to the fire has exploded ... made of slate, it must have had a crack in it filled with water that heated up in the fire and split the stone. It was certainly dramatic.

We spent the next worried hour or so looking for the dog who, of course, had just run back home. We eventually arrived back home soaking wet and none the worse for the experience.

I had a little ash tree .......

... it looked a bit like this but with more branches.
I for got to take a picture until the branches were
on the floor. Ooops.

Some time later ..... with sore hands, slight damage involving blood, good use of two saws and a good deal of hard work ...
it looked like this:
   
Just needs 12 months to season and dry out now.

Blogged ear

So, 'ear it is, one of my very bunged up ears as I assume it looks inside. The bit coloured yellow should be empty of all but air, thus allowing those little bones to vibrate against the ear drum passing all that lovely sound into my nerve endings. As it is, those little bones are all glued up, my ear drum feels near to bursting and very little vibration is being passed to anywhere. The nearest way I can describe it is to liken it to having ones head under the bath water. Imagine what it is like when someone speaks to you when both your ears are under .... it's a bit like that only mostly what I can hear is a continuous hum from the pressure and the sound of my heart beating. At least I know I'm alive.

I am obediently taking antibiotics, decongestants and breathing Olbas Oil steam, but they just get worse. Now I can't hear the TV or radio, even when they are turned up loud unless my ear is right next to them, my left ear that is. I can just about still hear people talking on the phone provided they speak up, trouble is, I don't hear it ringing.

Interestingly my friend Ali with whom I spent the New Year has the identical symptoms to me, but started a week before me. Started off with a vague sort of cold which dragged on but didn't ever really come to anything, followed by sudden earache and sore throat about a month later and then gradually filling ears. We both went though a stage of hearing distorted sound where some voices sounded like Daleks and music sounded as though it was being performed on a honkey-tonk piano. Could it be that we are both suffering from a slow acting virus?

At the moment I am off school as I can no longer hear well enough to have any clue what the children are saying to me. Makes teaching impossible, particularly with 4 year olds. I shall go back to the doctor and see if he has any other useful suggestions though the last time I went all he was able to offer was to comment that my ears were bunged up .... I already knew!