As you can probably tell from the sparse posting, I'm not doing amazingly well at the moment.
Despite that, today was a gloriously sunny day, and I went into town fully intending to make the most of it. I had a lovely picnic lunch by the river in the park, then I went into town, planning to drop in on the shop that we had booked to do our balloon decorations for the wedding, because I figured they were a likely candidate to have some other party supplies I wanted.
They didn't.
I know they didn't, because when I rolled up to the shop, there was a big "To Let" sign over the door, and the windows were soaped over, and when I found a gap to squint through, the shop was completely empty apart from a couple of cardboard boxes. Their website had been taken offline, and their phone number just rang and rang and rang.
I can only assume they've gone bust. It's late March. The wedding is in May. I wonder if or when they were going to tell me.
So, if anyone can recommend a balloon decoration firm in the Warwickshire/West Midlands area, reasonably priced, who might still have availability for a Saturday in May, that would be helpful. Yes, I can JFGI, but I thought I'd ask for personal recommendations first.
I had a semi-fruitful search for the additional party supplies I was looking for - as in, I found some, but they were quite a bit more expensive than I could justify. Scratch that idea.
I got a cup of tea, which helped, and then started to make my way back to the other end of town to be picked up, and that was when I realised that one of my Awesome Wheels had a flat. Happily, since I was being picked up anyway, I was rescued within the hour - unhappily it's a real flat, pump it up and you can hear the air hissing out, rather than just a bit of a drop in pressure. Tomorrow I'm off to see the chaps at Leamington Shopmobility to find out how much it will cost to sort out.
I'm trying to focus on the positive - I had my lunch in the sun by the river, I did get rescued, Shopmobility will be able to get me mobile again one way or the other, and at least I found out about the balloon place now rather than in six weeks' time - but it does feel like it's been rather a crappy day.
Showing posts with label shopmobility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shopmobility. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Monday, July 12, 2010
Grounded
It's been a glorious month of whizzing about in my new wheelchair. From posting my own letters unaided, to trundling around shops at my own pace, to attending meetings and events, it has been amazing.
Right up until Sunday morning.
I connected the wheels to the charger and, instead of charging, it started beeping at me in a most distressing manner. A flustered few minutes with the manual, looking up the "acoustic signal" in the two-page Error Messages table, revealed that one of the wheels knows the charger is plugged in, but cannot detect a current. Swapping the charger plugs over showed that the issue was with the wheel, not the charger. The wheel must be sent for repair.
Then I burst into tears.
Sounds silly, doesn't it? Until five weeks ago, I didn't have powered wheels, and yet I was perfectly happy. But having grown used to them, the idea of them being taken away was simply shocking. It was almost as bad as the first time I fell over and couldn't get up. A huge sense of bewilderment, frustration, anger... even betrayal, if it's not too weird to use that word about an inanimate object or your own body. And powerlessness. That's a big one.
Technically the wheel hasn't been taken away yet. It's sitting right here in the room with me. A flurry of emails and phone calls has resulted in a "pass the parcel" arrangement, where the manufacturer will send a brand new wheel to the vendor today (or possibly tomorrow seeing as it's already after 3pm), the vendor will check it and courier it on to me, and then in a few weeks' time when a rep from the vendor happens to be in this neck of the woods, he'll take away the defective one. I've been told to keep the brand new wheel, probably because the expense for them of reversing the whole process to move a repaired 24-inch, 11-kilo wheel across the country in order to exchange for what will by then be a used one is not cost effective.
I am really, really, REALLY regretting that I was dumb enough to get swizzed into purchasing the wheels from the big national chair vendor rather than my first choice, the local Shopmobility (not licensed to sell the chair I was assigned, but could have sold me the wheels. It's a long, boring, complicated story). If I'd stuck to my guns and bought from Shopmobility, I could have been down there in a taxi sorting it out face to face by now. But hopefully I've been enough of a pain in the backside to the current vendor that they will come good and I'll have a new wheel in a couple of days.
So. I still recommend the e-motions - frankly, even this one month would have been worth re-mortgaging a kidney - and I cannot wait to get my shiny new wheel, but I'd really suggest being prepared for the fact that it may go wrong, and shopping locally if at all possible.
Edit added one week later, on Sunday 18th July 2010
Instead of a courier with an entire new wheel, they sent a repair guy on Saturday morning. Unfortunately they had only provided him with half the wheel components, and naturally this did not include the half that was malfunctioning. So it looks like I've got another week with no power. Well, either that or going round in circles.
Right up until Sunday morning.
I connected the wheels to the charger and, instead of charging, it started beeping at me in a most distressing manner. A flustered few minutes with the manual, looking up the "acoustic signal" in the two-page Error Messages table, revealed that one of the wheels knows the charger is plugged in, but cannot detect a current. Swapping the charger plugs over showed that the issue was with the wheel, not the charger. The wheel must be sent for repair.
Then I burst into tears.
Sounds silly, doesn't it? Until five weeks ago, I didn't have powered wheels, and yet I was perfectly happy. But having grown used to them, the idea of them being taken away was simply shocking. It was almost as bad as the first time I fell over and couldn't get up. A huge sense of bewilderment, frustration, anger... even betrayal, if it's not too weird to use that word about an inanimate object or your own body. And powerlessness. That's a big one.
Technically the wheel hasn't been taken away yet. It's sitting right here in the room with me. A flurry of emails and phone calls has resulted in a "pass the parcel" arrangement, where the manufacturer will send a brand new wheel to the vendor today (or possibly tomorrow seeing as it's already after 3pm), the vendor will check it and courier it on to me, and then in a few weeks' time when a rep from the vendor happens to be in this neck of the woods, he'll take away the defective one. I've been told to keep the brand new wheel, probably because the expense for them of reversing the whole process to move a repaired 24-inch, 11-kilo wheel across the country in order to exchange for what will by then be a used one is not cost effective.
I am really, really, REALLY regretting that I was dumb enough to get swizzed into purchasing the wheels from the big national chair vendor rather than my first choice, the local Shopmobility (not licensed to sell the chair I was assigned, but could have sold me the wheels. It's a long, boring, complicated story). If I'd stuck to my guns and bought from Shopmobility, I could have been down there in a taxi sorting it out face to face by now. But hopefully I've been enough of a pain in the backside to the current vendor that they will come good and I'll have a new wheel in a couple of days.
So. I still recommend the e-motions - frankly, even this one month would have been worth re-mortgaging a kidney - and I cannot wait to get my shiny new wheel, but I'd really suggest being prepared for the fact that it may go wrong, and shopping locally if at all possible.
Edit added one week later, on Sunday 18th July 2010
Instead of a courier with an entire new wheel, they sent a repair guy on Saturday morning. Unfortunately they had only provided him with half the wheel components, and naturally this did not include the half that was malfunctioning. So it looks like I've got another week with no power. Well, either that or going round in circles.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Did you ever have a couple of days when things just went... right?
It started on Tuesday, worryingly enough with the laundry. Anyone without a tumble drier will understand where I'm coming from - I have enough space to hang up to dry all the clothes that I wash, but the things like towels and sheets cause a bit more of a problem unless you (1) don't care about your heating bill, (2) have the space and strength to wrangle with acres of heavy, damp cloth and (3) don't mind a climate inside your house that is similar in heat and humidity to a tropical rainforest.
So I decided that a graceful admission of defeat was called for, and looked into laundry services. I knew of service washes and I figured that although taxis to and from a laundrette would be expensive, it would get it done, one-off expense, and that would be that. So I made some phone calls.
Ten minutes later and an arrangement had been made for someone to come to the house after I'd got home from work, collect two black bin-liners full of laundry, and bring the contents back, clean and dry, at the same time the following day. Simplicity itself.
Off to work, where I had a busy and productive but thankfully not too awfully hectic afternoon. More and more Christmas-themed things are being ordered. At the end of the afternoon, I finished everything that wanted doing, made my way down the stairs, and reached the bottom just as my cab arrived to take me home.
At home I relaxed for half an hour, then a polite young man collected my laundry, then about ten minutes after that Steve got home, bearing fish and chips. Delicious. That consumed, it was time to go to knitting group for the rest of the evening, where I had a great time chatting with my friends and making steady progress with my current project (Christmas present, sorry). A couple of hours later Steve came to take me home and then I snuggled into bed with a heat pack and a good book. Hot chocolate was offered, but I didn't think I'd stay awake long enough to drink it.
You'd think it couldn't really get much better, and so I may have approached Wednesday with some trepidation. Wednesday, being my day off work, has a horrible tendency to become a Busy Day as I cram in all the stuff I haven't been able to do during the week (I'm home in the mornings, but I can't go out and get stuff done as I have to save my spoons to be able to go to work). This week was looking particularly harsh as it was going to entail a trip into town which is sometimes a real adventure. I braced myself and called Shopmobility to check availability of scooters (I didn't have the spoons to drive my own all the way into town and back) - no problem, a scooter will be ready and waiting. Called a taxi to take me into town, taxi was outside my front door within five minutes.
It was like falling through a door that you expect to be heavy and then someone on the other side opens it before you realise.
First task was to go to the post office to post a thank-you present to the charity which supported me with my DLA appeal. There was no queue, just straight to the desk and sorted.
Second task was to go to the building society to transfer the big lump of DLA back-pay (the money they should have paid me over the nine months leading up to the appeal) into my ISA. No problems whatsoever.
Third task was to go to Boots and fill my prescription. A fifteen minute wait was about normal, I sat and relaxed for some of it and got a bit more knitting done with the rest. The pharmacist was thoughtful enough to bring the bag over to where I was sitting rather than shouting to me, which was nice.
Finally, I had to go to a bank to set up a new account in order to use Direct Payments to hire a Personal Assistant for a few hours a week as per my Social Services assessment. It must be a new and separate bank account so that the payments are transparent.
To briefly explain: DLA is money I get in recognition of the fact that I have various additional expenses due to my disability. I get £46.75 a week for Mobility. But no one cares whether I use it all for taxis, or whether I use some of it to repay friends directly or indirectly for giving me lifts, or whether I count shopping delivery charges, or whether I blow it all on cat food. It's up to me how I spend it - or indeed if I save it. Direct Payments, however, is more like reimbursement of a Personal Assistant's wages. So I will hire my Personal Assistant and I will pay them, and Social Services will give me the money to pay them. However, all of this money must be directly accounted for. If I've been granted 10 hours of care, but I only use a PA for 5 hours, then I will only get the payments to cover 5 hours of care. So there has to be a dedicated bank account for these payments to make sure everyone involved can easily keep track of what money should be and is going in and out at any given time.
The whole thing is a bit chicken and egg, really - to get Direct Payments, I have to go into town and set up a bank account, but that's a major excursion for me, so really, I need Direct Payments to pay a PA to go into town with me to set up a bank account so I can get Direct Payments to pay a PA...
Anyway, it's a task I've been sitting on for a couple of months now, waiting for a day when I had enough spoons AND enough time AND during bank opening times, to be able to try and tackle it by myself. I admit, I was also a little anxious about whether a bank would let me open an account when I don't have a driver's licence or a passport, and I can't say how much money will be going in and out of the account, or when.
But today, ah, today I was charmed... I picked a bank on the basis of "first one I saw", mosied in, explained I wanted to open an account and was told someone would be with me shortly. Shortly enough, someone was with me, ushering me into a private room and offering me a hot drink. Opening an account? No problem! Your wages won't go into it? No problem! Chequebook, no fees, no problem! No passport or driver's licence? Well, I'm sure something in this sheaf of documentation you've brought along will suffice... WIN.
It got better. Steve came to meet me for ten minutes in his lunch break, which meant that not only did I get extra bonus hugs, but I also got to offload the enormous bag of medication which was starting to get in my way. I found a quiet restaurant with a decent lunch offer (a main course and a drink for £8.50) so I decided to treat myself. Then I started to make my way back to Shopmobility via a couple of shops and found (1) a nice top and (2) a book from a series I'm collecting which was reduced from £6.99 to 50p because the cover had got slightly torn. Dropped off the scooter and made my way to a nearby bakery where I had a cup of tea and a chocolate fudge brownie while waiting for a taxi to pick me up and take me home.
But we're not through yet! There was post waiting for me at home - I've been invited to another interview, which is nice, although I know better than to hold my breath. They want my permission to contact my current employer for a reference, which is fine, but I really should give my current boss a heads-up first.
And finally, to round it all off, the guy from the laundry brought back two big bags of nice, clean, dry, folded towels and bedclothes, and that was when I discovered that the price he'd quoted me wasn't per-bag but for the whole lot, so it only cost me half of what I was expecting! The amount of pain and hassle it saved me is phenomenal, so I expect I will be using that service a lot more in the future.
More days like this, please.
It started on Tuesday, worryingly enough with the laundry. Anyone without a tumble drier will understand where I'm coming from - I have enough space to hang up to dry all the clothes that I wash, but the things like towels and sheets cause a bit more of a problem unless you (1) don't care about your heating bill, (2) have the space and strength to wrangle with acres of heavy, damp cloth and (3) don't mind a climate inside your house that is similar in heat and humidity to a tropical rainforest.
So I decided that a graceful admission of defeat was called for, and looked into laundry services. I knew of service washes and I figured that although taxis to and from a laundrette would be expensive, it would get it done, one-off expense, and that would be that. So I made some phone calls.
Ten minutes later and an arrangement had been made for someone to come to the house after I'd got home from work, collect two black bin-liners full of laundry, and bring the contents back, clean and dry, at the same time the following day. Simplicity itself.
Off to work, where I had a busy and productive but thankfully not too awfully hectic afternoon. More and more Christmas-themed things are being ordered. At the end of the afternoon, I finished everything that wanted doing, made my way down the stairs, and reached the bottom just as my cab arrived to take me home.
At home I relaxed for half an hour, then a polite young man collected my laundry, then about ten minutes after that Steve got home, bearing fish and chips. Delicious. That consumed, it was time to go to knitting group for the rest of the evening, where I had a great time chatting with my friends and making steady progress with my current project (Christmas present, sorry). A couple of hours later Steve came to take me home and then I snuggled into bed with a heat pack and a good book. Hot chocolate was offered, but I didn't think I'd stay awake long enough to drink it.
You'd think it couldn't really get much better, and so I may have approached Wednesday with some trepidation. Wednesday, being my day off work, has a horrible tendency to become a Busy Day as I cram in all the stuff I haven't been able to do during the week (I'm home in the mornings, but I can't go out and get stuff done as I have to save my spoons to be able to go to work). This week was looking particularly harsh as it was going to entail a trip into town which is sometimes a real adventure. I braced myself and called Shopmobility to check availability of scooters (I didn't have the spoons to drive my own all the way into town and back) - no problem, a scooter will be ready and waiting. Called a taxi to take me into town, taxi was outside my front door within five minutes.
It was like falling through a door that you expect to be heavy and then someone on the other side opens it before you realise.
First task was to go to the post office to post a thank-you present to the charity which supported me with my DLA appeal. There was no queue, just straight to the desk and sorted.
Second task was to go to the building society to transfer the big lump of DLA back-pay (the money they should have paid me over the nine months leading up to the appeal) into my ISA. No problems whatsoever.
Third task was to go to Boots and fill my prescription. A fifteen minute wait was about normal, I sat and relaxed for some of it and got a bit more knitting done with the rest. The pharmacist was thoughtful enough to bring the bag over to where I was sitting rather than shouting to me, which was nice.
Finally, I had to go to a bank to set up a new account in order to use Direct Payments to hire a Personal Assistant for a few hours a week as per my Social Services assessment. It must be a new and separate bank account so that the payments are transparent.
To briefly explain: DLA is money I get in recognition of the fact that I have various additional expenses due to my disability. I get £46.75 a week for Mobility. But no one cares whether I use it all for taxis, or whether I use some of it to repay friends directly or indirectly for giving me lifts, or whether I count shopping delivery charges, or whether I blow it all on cat food. It's up to me how I spend it - or indeed if I save it. Direct Payments, however, is more like reimbursement of a Personal Assistant's wages. So I will hire my Personal Assistant and I will pay them, and Social Services will give me the money to pay them. However, all of this money must be directly accounted for. If I've been granted 10 hours of care, but I only use a PA for 5 hours, then I will only get the payments to cover 5 hours of care. So there has to be a dedicated bank account for these payments to make sure everyone involved can easily keep track of what money should be and is going in and out at any given time.
The whole thing is a bit chicken and egg, really - to get Direct Payments, I have to go into town and set up a bank account, but that's a major excursion for me, so really, I need Direct Payments to pay a PA to go into town with me to set up a bank account so I can get Direct Payments to pay a PA...
Anyway, it's a task I've been sitting on for a couple of months now, waiting for a day when I had enough spoons AND enough time AND during bank opening times, to be able to try and tackle it by myself. I admit, I was also a little anxious about whether a bank would let me open an account when I don't have a driver's licence or a passport, and I can't say how much money will be going in and out of the account, or when.
But today, ah, today I was charmed... I picked a bank on the basis of "first one I saw", mosied in, explained I wanted to open an account and was told someone would be with me shortly. Shortly enough, someone was with me, ushering me into a private room and offering me a hot drink. Opening an account? No problem! Your wages won't go into it? No problem! Chequebook, no fees, no problem! No passport or driver's licence? Well, I'm sure something in this sheaf of documentation you've brought along will suffice... WIN.
It got better. Steve came to meet me for ten minutes in his lunch break, which meant that not only did I get extra bonus hugs, but I also got to offload the enormous bag of medication which was starting to get in my way. I found a quiet restaurant with a decent lunch offer (a main course and a drink for £8.50) so I decided to treat myself. Then I started to make my way back to Shopmobility via a couple of shops and found (1) a nice top and (2) a book from a series I'm collecting which was reduced from £6.99 to 50p because the cover had got slightly torn. Dropped off the scooter and made my way to a nearby bakery where I had a cup of tea and a chocolate fudge brownie while waiting for a taxi to pick me up and take me home.
But we're not through yet! There was post waiting for me at home - I've been invited to another interview, which is nice, although I know better than to hold my breath. They want my permission to contact my current employer for a reference, which is fine, but I really should give my current boss a heads-up first.
And finally, to round it all off, the guy from the laundry brought back two big bags of nice, clean, dry, folded towels and bedclothes, and that was when I discovered that the price he'd quoted me wasn't per-bag but for the whole lot, so it only cost me half of what I was expecting! The amount of pain and hassle it saved me is phenomenal, so I expect I will be using that service a lot more in the future.
More days like this, please.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Knitting seems to work
An eventful and highly enjoyable day yesterday. I had arranged to go over to Norwich and meet a friend to go shopping and generally spend a bit of time together.
At about 9am, the Scarf In A Bag kit mentioned in my previous post arrived. It wasn't precisely what I was expecting - I had an idea in my head of there being a cheap but durable bag, with handles, maybe with a zip, which I could use to carry my knitting around. It turned out to be more "Scarf In A Plastic Packet". Still, the plastic packet did contain everything it was supposed to, so I decided that I would take it with me and learn how to knit while on the train.
So I did, as you can see. There were a couple of false starts while I was trying to cast on, and when I finally got my fingers and wool and needle in the right places and made the first stitch, then I couldn't remember what I'd done, and needed several more attempts at the next stitch. But after that it was really easy, just repeated the same actions until I had the right number of stitches to be getting on with.
The "pattern" for the scarf is not exciting. You just keep going and going and going with the same basic stitch until you run out of wool. Sounds good to me, it makes sense that before I try anything else I should be able to do the basic stitches in my sleep.
Mind you, it's still made a good attempt to confuse.
As a non-knitter it took a while to decipher this:
"Work in garter stitch (every row knit), noting first row is a WS row, until you have sufficient yarn remaining of the 2nd ball to enable you to cast off, ending with RS facing for next row. Cast off knitways."
Knitways? WS? RS facing? Did I neglect to buy the Collins English/Knitterish Dictionary?
There's also absolutely no indication, anywhere, of the correct manner in which to change from the end of the first ball of wool, to the beginning of the second. The obvious solution seems to be to tie the two together, but I don't want to make a big ugly knot in the middle of the scarf, and given that I was never a Girl Scout it is likely that such a knot, tied by me, would lead to an extremely weak point in the scarf, which would eventually undo itself and unravel the entire thing.
That's odd, because the instructions and diagrams for Casting On, Knit Stitch, and Casting Off are really, really clear and simple and easy to understand.
Anyway, I had quite a few respectable rows done (and still the same number of stitches as I started with) by the time the train pulled into Norwich.
Once again, I'd like to praise the wonderful service that is Norwich Shopmobility at Chapefield. Friendly, helpful, efficient, and two minutes and £1.50 later I was impressing my friend with my amazing driving skills. It was nice to be going shopping with a girly friend - Pip is wonderful, but a man in his late 20s fielding an energetic two year old is not an ideal partner for a disabled woman who wants to get clothes.
I wasn't feeling well enough to be able to try on any skirts or trousers, but I tried on and bought a couple of tops which I really liked. After a while I couldn't get on and off the scooter any more to go into shops, so I sat in Castle Mall enjoying a smoothie (banana and strawberry, mmmm!) and looking after the bags while my friend went in and out of shops. Then we went to the train station to have a cuppa and fill time until the next train home. It was marvellous to have a giggle and a chat, and while my exhaustedness meant I was glad to get on the train to head home, I did feel sorry that I couldn't stick around longer, get dinner and stuff.
Getting from my flat to Lowestoft train station is easy. You go straight downhill towards the river, along with the flow of the one-way northbound traffic, cross the bridge, and you're pretty much there. Taxi fare about £4. Getting back, from the train station to my flat, is another matter, particularly since the corresponding one-way road for southbound traffic is currently closed, along with many others. Last time I had to get a taxi home from the north side of the bridge (just over a week ago), what should have been about a £5 fare was more like £9, and it wasn't because the taxi driver was messing about - all the roads we wanted were closed.
But, it's not like I have a lot of choice in the matter. So when the train arrived at Lowestoft, I got in a cab, told the driver where I wanted to go, and when he pulled a face, explained that I knew the roads were snarled up and it would cost over the odds and that it wasn't important, I trusted whatever route he felt was best. At that point he amazed me by saying "Call it a fiver? That's about what it would normally cost, after all." and he turned the meter off. I felt kind of bad about it, but apparently a lot of the cab drivers are getting rather upset about having to effectively overcharge people. So I thanked him, and was happy.
Needless to say, today I am in a total state. Leaving my bed only to go to the loo or get a drink, and that crawling, crying in the half-hour before the Next Dose of painkillers, the lot. It's taken several hours to compose this blog entry. But it was really really worth it, because I had a great day.
Edited a couple of minutes after posting to correct a bit of grammar and add tags.
At about 9am, the Scarf In A Bag kit mentioned in my previous post arrived. It wasn't precisely what I was expecting - I had an idea in my head of there being a cheap but durable bag, with handles, maybe with a zip, which I could use to carry my knitting around. It turned out to be more "Scarf In A Plastic Packet". Still, the plastic packet did contain everything it was supposed to, so I decided that I would take it with me and learn how to knit while on the train.
So I did, as you can see. There were a couple of false starts while I was trying to cast on, and when I finally got my fingers and wool and needle in the right places and made the first stitch, then I couldn't remember what I'd done, and needed several more attempts at the next stitch. But after that it was really easy, just repeated the same actions until I had the right number of stitches to be getting on with.
The "pattern" for the scarf is not exciting. You just keep going and going and going with the same basic stitch until you run out of wool. Sounds good to me, it makes sense that before I try anything else I should be able to do the basic stitches in my sleep.
Mind you, it's still made a good attempt to confuse.
As a non-knitter it took a while to decipher this:
"Work in garter stitch (every row knit), noting first row is a WS row, until you have sufficient yarn remaining of the 2nd ball to enable you to cast off, ending with RS facing for next row. Cast off knitways."
Knitways? WS? RS facing? Did I neglect to buy the Collins English/Knitterish Dictionary?
There's also absolutely no indication, anywhere, of the correct manner in which to change from the end of the first ball of wool, to the beginning of the second. The obvious solution seems to be to tie the two together, but I don't want to make a big ugly knot in the middle of the scarf, and given that I was never a Girl Scout it is likely that such a knot, tied by me, would lead to an extremely weak point in the scarf, which would eventually undo itself and unravel the entire thing.
That's odd, because the instructions and diagrams for Casting On, Knit Stitch, and Casting Off are really, really clear and simple and easy to understand.
Anyway, I had quite a few respectable rows done (and still the same number of stitches as I started with) by the time the train pulled into Norwich.
Once again, I'd like to praise the wonderful service that is Norwich Shopmobility at Chapefield. Friendly, helpful, efficient, and two minutes and £1.50 later I was impressing my friend with my amazing driving skills. It was nice to be going shopping with a girly friend - Pip is wonderful, but a man in his late 20s fielding an energetic two year old is not an ideal partner for a disabled woman who wants to get clothes.
I wasn't feeling well enough to be able to try on any skirts or trousers, but I tried on and bought a couple of tops which I really liked. After a while I couldn't get on and off the scooter any more to go into shops, so I sat in Castle Mall enjoying a smoothie (banana and strawberry, mmmm!) and looking after the bags while my friend went in and out of shops. Then we went to the train station to have a cuppa and fill time until the next train home. It was marvellous to have a giggle and a chat, and while my exhaustedness meant I was glad to get on the train to head home, I did feel sorry that I couldn't stick around longer, get dinner and stuff.
Getting from my flat to Lowestoft train station is easy. You go straight downhill towards the river, along with the flow of the one-way northbound traffic, cross the bridge, and you're pretty much there. Taxi fare about £4. Getting back, from the train station to my flat, is another matter, particularly since the corresponding one-way road for southbound traffic is currently closed, along with many others. Last time I had to get a taxi home from the north side of the bridge (just over a week ago), what should have been about a £5 fare was more like £9, and it wasn't because the taxi driver was messing about - all the roads we wanted were closed.
But, it's not like I have a lot of choice in the matter. So when the train arrived at Lowestoft, I got in a cab, told the driver where I wanted to go, and when he pulled a face, explained that I knew the roads were snarled up and it would cost over the odds and that it wasn't important, I trusted whatever route he felt was best. At that point he amazed me by saying "Call it a fiver? That's about what it would normally cost, after all." and he turned the meter off. I felt kind of bad about it, but apparently a lot of the cab drivers are getting rather upset about having to effectively overcharge people. So I thanked him, and was happy.
Needless to say, today I am in a total state. Leaving my bed only to go to the loo or get a drink, and that crawling, crying in the half-hour before the Next Dose of painkillers, the lot. It's taken several hours to compose this blog entry. But it was really really worth it, because I had a great day.
Edited a couple of minutes after posting to correct a bit of grammar and add tags.
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