Saturday 29 June 2013

Death Of A Salesman

After a night of deep, restful sleep and a late get up I'm feeling slightly more positive this morning. All the things that were bad are fixable. Yes it is not nice having to have meds increased but once done I could be stable for another two years, or more.

Dr Wort recommended that I increase my intake of oral steroids for a few days to see whether they would calm the irritation down. I took three doses instead of two yesterday and my coughing and mucus production have both decreased. I will take four doses today and tomorrow and see what happens. If it works I'm to remain with the increase for a week and then gradually decrease again. It's worth a try.

I was shattered yesterday so only got to write the basics of my trip to London. Andrew came with us as he has never seen an Echo being performed and thought it would be a good learning experience. I had no objections so agreed to him sitting in with me. Unfortunately the person doing the Echo was a newbie and not given to chatter so instead of having the lovely chatty, informative experience I usually get there was complete silence throughout. Andrew knew enough to get something out of it though and though the image of the end of my line bobbing about inside the heart was very cool. It threw the radiographer though, who uttered his only sentence. 'What is that?'  I explained it was my line, how could he not have noticed/known what it was? I must say I wasn't impressed.

After seeing the doctor and Carl we headed off to my favourite London greasy spoon and biker cafe near the north circular. The meals were huge and delicious and I almost managed to finish mine but a fried egg, a rasher of bacon and half the beans had to stay behind.

The traffic in London and on the M1 was horrendous so it took us almost three hours to get from the Brompton to home and that is without the cafe stop over. No wonder I was tired, especially as I'd volunteered to drive. So I settled on the settee, mug of tea at the ready and watched the tennis. Murray won his match in straight sets so it was an uplifting end to a very stressful day all in all.

Today I am out and about again, though at a more leisurely pace, as I do the Tesco run. Then it is back on the settee to watch Murray's biggest rival Djockovic in action followed by the qualifying for the British Grand Prix which I'll have to record. Thankfully Sunday looks like it is going to be a quiet day.

The Apprentice Watch

Eyebrow Alex is no more! Stabbing in the back by Myles and his poisonous prawns, disaster!

The task this week was to come up with a ready meal brand. The candidates had to decide the recipe, cook samples and brand the meal before trying to palm it off on some of Britain's biggest supermarkets.

At last Alex was given the chance to be PM and sat his team, consisting of Jordan, Myles and Lip Gloss Leah, down to discuss their target market and quickly came up with kids meals. Alex decided on a brand called Poppity Ping, Welsh for microwave though I have say I'm Welsh and I call it a microwave. Still it was a good idea particularly as Alex wanted to do meals from around the world and give the kids a bit of a geography lesson at the same time. Myles wasn't impressed and pulled rank with the fact that being a father he knew that kids were more likely to go for something weird and horrible. And so Deadly Dinners were born complete with black packaging and skull motif.

Over on the other team Neil took charge, which was a bit of a feat considering he had Luisa and Francesca on his team. Luisa quickly got rid of the competition by shoving Francesca into the kitchen to do the cooking despite the fact Francesca never cooked and Luisa did. A quick recipe was dictated to Francesca over the phone and she was told to get on with it. The immediate impression was that should they loose, Francesca was being set up for the blame. Which is exactly what happened when the meal, aimed at busy professionals, was judged to be too bland. Karen wasn't going to let Luisa get away with her plan though and slapped her down with some telling questions about her own cooking ability, which by Luisa's own admission, is quite good. 'So if your are such a good cook why didn't you go into the kitchen?' 'Um' said Luisa, suitable quelled.

In the end Deadly Dinner got a mauling for sending all the wrong messages. As someone pointed out, you just don't call something deadly, slap a skull on the packaging and then include prawns, a well known source of food poisoning, in a meal for kids and expect mums to be happy buying it. To be fair the kids did love it but the mum's hated it and as they had the buying power Alex's team was doomed.

Alex admiited his mistake in listening to 'expert' Myles, siting his lack of experience with children as the cause of his downfall. And to be fair Myles did put his hands up to the fact it was mostly his fault but Alex should have spotted the flaw and so was fired. He took it well and gave us another glimpse of his Del Boy coat as he headed to the taxi. I will miss him.

My pick to win is Neil, that's if he can keep one step ahead of devious, back stabbing Luisa.

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