Visits
14 August

There's been a lot of visiting in the last fortnight.

Firstly, Ross and I travelled down to Lowestoft to see Colin. We'd not seen him for over two years when he came to stay with us here in Crosby and it's been four years since I travelled down to East Anglia.

The journey down was a horror. Actually, that's untrue. The section from Warrington to Sandbach on the M6 was a horror as we spent an hour and a half crawling along at 15mph. Lowestoft itself is not an attractive place. However, Colin more than makes up for this and his friendly hospitality was as engaging as ever. We talked of many things amongst which was technology and he's shown me the simplicity of downloading through peer-to-peer networking.

It was also a good news weekend for the space shuttle astronauts who landed back safely on earth and the Russian submariners who were rescued from their trapped submarine. Less good news was the untimely death of Robin Cook and there's no more news of Mo Mowlam, who has been critically ill in hospital.

Monday back in Crosby, Ross and I spent some time down on the waterfront watching the tide coming in and cover the Antony Gormley statues. It was strangely exciting and moving. I remarked to Ross that the tide mediated between the viewer and the art objects in that, as it ebbed and flowed, it either granted or denied access to a frontal view of the figures. He was quite impressed by my insight.

Ross spent Wednesday night in hospital. He was there to have some tests done on the state of his bowel. The medicos are trying to determine whether or not he has Inflammatory Bowel Disease. It will be October before he gets the results. My little bunny has been somewhat withdrawn for some time now. What with holidays, his sister's wedding and seven hour car journeys to and from Lowestoft, he's had a demanding time of it. When you add into that an underlying worry that there may be something wrong, I can understand why he's been so distant. However, none of this helps my occasional feelings of neglect.

It's not at all surprising that the room Ross was in on Ward 12 was not an overwhelmingly jolly place. As I arrived on Wednesday night for a (brief) visit - performed out of loving duty rather than any great desire to visit a hospital - one of the other denizens was well on his way to breathing his last. Luckily, and I do say this in all loving kindness, the guy didn't last very long. The quick glimpse I unwittingly caught through a gap in the curtains disclosed someone whose skin was the colour of French mustard so the renal failure must have been quite acute. The surrounding family were, of course, very upset to see grandad go but I was glad for Ross's sake that it all happened in the early evening rather than the early hours of the morning.

We were back at the hospital today. Before the procedure last week, Ross was sedated through an injection in the back of his right hand. It felt a bit sore and bruised when he came home. However, this has not improved and his hand has been feeling more and more numb. So we phoned NHS Direct and they directed us to Accident and Emergency where, after an hour's waiting around, a doctor explained that they had probably caught a nerve and that it should right itself within a fortnight. I still hate hospitals, though.

From work there has been contrasting news. Ian left work hurriedly on Thursday afternoon and before midnight had held his son, Sam, in his arms for the first time. John, however, is doing himself no favours. We believe that we have been able to smell alcohol on him for some time. On Saturday, the day before his granddaughter's christening, he fell down stairs and broke both of his hips; one has been re-set and the other has a pin in it. We won't be seeing him for a while.

Much better by far was my sister, Linda's, visit to Crosby on Saturday. With her came husband, Ian, and my goddaughter, Mary. The disappointment of the day was the weather. We'd hope to have a picnic on the beach but ended up dining in the kitchen. Still, it was a very jolly affair.

We did manage a little time on the beach for Mary to make sandcastles and for Ian to wrestle with flying a kite. Everyone was very impressed with the Antony Gormley's. And Mary and I had a good time making pictures in the sand.

Linda was very complimentary about our garden. It's been a while, October 2001 in fact, since she last saw it and, as she said, it has matured considerably since then. Best of all has been our fine harvest of plums. We'll be eating them in a couple of crumbles later this summer.

Amazon came up trumps this week. A while back I spotted a boxed set of five Pedro Almodóvar films which included Bad Education. At nearly £50, this felt like reasonable value for money and yet still expensive. So, I've been waiting. This week the price dropped to £24 and I pounced. Not only was this a real bargain but I put in for the free delivery and received the parcel the following day. Great service all round.

Ross and watched Live Flesh on Friday which was very good. I realised very quickly that I had seen it before and, before long, so did Ross. We agreed that we had watched it together on video when we were down in London. I checked back in this journal and found no mention. Odd. I'm looking forwards to seeing the rest of the films including Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down starring a young Antonio Banderas which I first saw with Richard some fifteen years ago.

Big Brother came to an end, thank God. This has been the least talked about series at work and the franchise must now be in its terminal phase. Anthony won - mainly I should think because of his cock and buns story.

Much better by far is the advent of Lost. The first three episodes promise some fairly superior television which does not underestimate the intelligence of its potential audience. I'm going to give the programme a few more episodes yet before I give it a star rating but all of the auguries are good.

We're promised lots of back history from the crash survivors plus multiple weirdnesses on this peculiar island that they've landed up on. All in all it sounds like a cross between Survivor and Twin Peaks. We just have to hope that it doesn't end up going up its own arse like Twin Peaks did with weirdness for its own sake. The only real difficulty with the current series is that it is already a year old in North America and so all of the plot is available via the Web.

Among the large cast of main characters we find the toothsome Ian Somerhalder and, more interestingly, Dominic Monaghan, late of Lord of the Rings and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.

In all probability, young Dom need never work again what with his long term income from Lord of the Rings. So, taking on a TV series, playing a heroin addicted musician, must have seemed like a change and a challenge that he could well afford to make. He must have been extremely surprised what it all came up good again.

Another lost Brit in the cast is Naveen Andrews who, long, long ago, was am extremely sexy bisexual teenager in Buddha of Suburbia. Now, he's an extremely handsome and sexy man this time playing a former member of the Iraqi National Guard - well there's a bit of a turn up for American TV.

I've already become aware that the nights are beginning to draw in. It's getting dark from about 9:30pm nowadays. There are early signs of Christmas too with the publication of Philip Oliver's 2006 calendar. We like top totty in their underwear. More scans if they become available.