What time is it?

Or something like that I said as at 7am this morning my friend called me "Did you ring me" he asked. "No" I said dozily. "Oh well, sorry to disturb you, bye."

So I was up and I really could have done with the sleep if the truth be known!

Anyway that was a rude old start to the morning :-) SO I got up and started work early - I will be looking forward to my bed tonight though.

Some good news is that Steve Kelley's Blog has just got an award (see below). So congratulations to Steve on that - it is excellent news.


Today I managed to get really cracking on some work at last. The Web Site has been finalised over the weekend and should be ready to go up and be hosted in a few days time. It has been a long hard road and so disruptive and instructive all at the same time. My business partner and I knew there would be times like this. Indeed, this is one of those times where we are just coming down from a really high point caused mainly through the chaos and stress that the creative process has put us through. You see we are methodical process driven people who work through things and get stuff done in a planned and organised way and we drive through our workload without a problem when we get moving properly.

I hope that I'll be able to publish the web site this week before I go to Scotland that is.

Well it was 2 am

When I eventually got everyone home and then drove myself home. All was OK until a friend rang at 9 this morning. I needed that - Not!

Next week going to Scotland will be nice - apparently that is some event, it sounded a bit frightening to me. We get there around about lunchtime and the advice is - go to bed and get a few hours sleep then they go out and do many hours drinking and enjoying themselves. Then they get back in time to get a few hours sleep and have brunch! Then the real thing kicks off.

I feel my Liver giving way already. :-)

A quiet day today - it will all kick off again tomorrow when we get back to work....

Nitty Gritty

The web site getting launched is like pulling teeth, an absolute nightmare at the moment as it doesn't get any easier to finalise. It looks OK now but there are some areas that need improvement but the Designer/Developer is giving us a hard time over it. A bit of a shame really as you'd have expected that one review and changes would be included!

Anyway, I am sure that a "chat" on Monday will resolve that and we can at last put the site out there, live. There is so much work still to do but I managed to get the research polished off for the background of the Business Plan. A few more weeks and it will be Christmas and I will be working flat out getting letters and cards written. I hope to "encourage" all my friends to look at the website and also to fill in my questionnaire too so that I can have a file of evidence on what people want from what we are doing.

I am off out today, doing the driving for my friend and his son, as I did a year ago. It seems only fair as he is driving me to Scotland and back next week. I shall be abstaining from drinking which is no bad thing given that these guys will have their meeting, a nice meal and then they will repair to the Conservative Club and drink anything less than conservatively :-) At least I can run them home and then get back to my bed - last time it was 1:30 or 2 in the morning!

I don't even want to think what it will be like next week!

Attitude

I had a thought tonight walking back to the house after a nice Curry and a few beers with Flocky Bicep and a potential member of our Lodge. The thought I had came from meeting an old friend who's Brother-In-Law has cancer - non Hodgkinsons Lymphoma type - and is receiving a good old thwack of chemo for his troubles.

His attitude - is - well, resigned and dour and this, in my humble opinion (and his) is not the way to tackle this. OF COURSE, it isn't easy to face up to it and OF COURSE it isn't nice and OF COURSE it knocks you about a bit but the very last thing you need to do is to take a negative attitude to it or to have a resigned attitude.

In my mind I firmly believe that Cancer made me a much better person. Many people have alluded to this quite assured and almost arrogant person they knew before the cancer to someone who has a real empathy with people - especially those in a similar situation. Cancer took me from being one sort of person to another. I explained to my friend about how things were really good for me at the moment. Whilst life wasn't straightforward any-more it was so much better, I also laughed about my "I'm Not Dead Yet" Monty Python Tee Shirt. It's all about attitude, I'm convinced that if you want to "roll over and give up" that you will get your wish. I was determined to beat this and to show everyone else that there was no shame in having cancer, that it wasn't something to be scared of and that you can get on with your life and continue as long as you had the will and the humour to do so!

I feel sorry for the guy with the wrong attitude. You have to make up your mind to battle away with what you've got or have a laugh trying.

Cancer changed my life and "made me" what I am today. That's no bad thing.

Spotify and WE7

Amazing you can get your favourite music piped to your desk these days. I've been able to rediscover lots of music and just set up play lists and listen when I want. If I don't like a track I can skip it.

Its interesting that technology can do this for us. The team are over here today. My business partner hasn't been terribly well this week so we have slipped a bit. We hope to get the website sorted out pretty fast as it should have been live this week. Our emails are working though which is cool.

I'm having to reload lots of software and that's bringing its own fraught moments as I am having to muck around just to get this new laptop to see the network - the arrogance of the business that released something that just doesn't work properly. I hope we never do that.

Relaxed about things - and then again

Last night was a difficult sleep night. I can only put it down to getting the letter to go in for the flexible cystoscopy. Yet, I know there isn't much I can do about it or about the outcome and I actually feel quite OK about it. I realise that it is one of those things that I have to do regularly and if it is good news then Christmas will be that much better.

You get to know straight away which is pretty impressive (one way or the other) and I suppose that for that I should be grateful. I think I should be OK and Mrs. F. says she is around that day so once I get "done" she can come and pick me up. I might ask her to drop me off so I can find the place first - it is the local Hospital. I must also remember that I need to do a urine cytology sample a few weeks before hand too.

I think, given the fact that I've had one of these before and I've had numerous BCG instillations that I'll be OK. It is all pretty much over and done with quickly and so it is just the stinging that I need to deal with. I have a strategy for that and agreed that with my Consultant and that is to arrive with a bottle of water and some pain killers and take those as I arrive about 15 minutes before the procedure. Hopefully that will help sort things out.

Scopes Away

14th December in the morning for my flexible Cystoscopy - late morning so I'll have a good chance to hydrate ready for it and as long as I thwack back a few pain killers early on I should be OK - although having said that of course it may be different to the first one of these I had. I imagine that I shouldn't get the stinging I got first time. Famous last words indeed. I think the family are off to see the Nutcracker that day. It somehow seems appropriate :-)

Let it all out

It was an interesting comment, chatting to a friend who just went in to melt down, middle of a restaurant. Luckily his mates were with him and the waiter got turned away as did other helpful people in a nice way of course. It was interesting as I also read about someone not knowing what to do whether to laugh or cry and I can fully understand that - almost a daily occurrence things just set you off or trigger responses.

I was never receptive to these things before. With today's full on internet information you get a lot more stimuli than before and somehow I'm more connected to the news and people's experiences than I ever used to be which I fully attribute to the realisation of my own mortality.

Someone did say that your whole body goes out of tune and out of equilibrium, your natural balance of hormones just get out of sync. Your ability to call on reserves such as adrenalin for flight or fight situations often calls on reserves that are almost empty or are empty. Whether that is so or not, I'm not sure but I often have these moments, several times a day where I stop myself getting involved too deeply into something that will result in me feeling bad or make me get emotionally involved.

I'm sure there is something about this somewhere - there was certainly some stuff in the Post Cancer Fatigue document I read but in this country we treat the symptoms and are beginning to look at the cause but no one thinks too hard about the emotional wreckage that Cancer leaves behind for you and your friends and family. Interestingly MacMillan are doing something in their survivor programme. Learning to live in this post cancer world may take a bit longer than I thought.

Hennesey XO and a Chinese to savour

What a lovely evening. The Chinese restaurant was heaving - which on a Tuesday is pretty good as nowhere else seemed to be. A superb meal and a wander up to K's house and some rather nice XO Cognac and a few hours setting the world to rights was all we needed to round off a lovely evening.

On a cold winters evening a lift home from V was also most welcome. Just time to review my emails and consider what we spoke about and what I learnt tonight.

Most importantly - I have some very nice friends and we share very similar values. I feel uplifted and happy to have decided to have spent time with them. That will do I think.

We had an interesting conversation on "values" and I'll try and work some of that in to the blog down this week. Now back to the issue of trying to sort out all my misbehaving laptops and PCs!!

The pain starts when

You pay the bill. End of Root Canal work today and I suppose, on reflection, it wasn't too bad. I needed a few Ibuprofen later on when I got back but it was a difficult one, so he said, and I needed my jaw jammed open. I was there for an hour and 15 which was a long time. I was a bit too tense to start with but once the tooth was ready it was OK and I started to breathe a bit better.

This just leaves the extraction to come in a few weeks time, I gave myself a few days between Scotland and having this done. It will be early December and whilst I remember having it done some time ago - I have given myself a fair bit of time between then and Christmas to allow me time to recuperate.

I am out tonight with some of the team for a Chinese meal and I have to say I am looking forward to that immensely. It's nice to get out and have a chat with my friends. Unfortunately one of them has had to cry off with something approaching "man Flu" - poor chap :-)

My computer woes grow and it is just a pain trying to get this computer to talk to the rest in the house. I can see that there may be "words" soon if it doesn't start to work properly. It's just pants that this can be allowed to be the normal experience people have with their computers.

My fault for setting the house up with shared printers and services.

It's very cold here today and my feet are freezing - I may decide to go back to my warm office environment in the next week or two.

Whatever I did Yesterday

Has disappeared today and about midday the network on my PC broke again and I was left without network connections and without printing just when I needed it. I hate IT, I hate PCs and Technology just sucks, it never ever used to be this difficult, someone just decided to screw it up and make it insensible to us. And I know what I'm doing (or have a rough idea).

So today was reasonably OK and was a bit sticky being a Monday. My Car Alarm went off at some ungodly hour as Mrs. F. had popped the boot (trunk) and it was frozen solid. She decided not to get the stuff out as she couldn't open it and reset the alarm. Well all was OK until it defrosted and I couldn't find the key to switch off the alarm. It sure got my attention and probably everyone else in the neighbourhood. It switched itself off before I found where the key had been cunningly hidden - not in the drawer where the car keys are kept but in the kitchen drawer - silly me for not using the full set of receptors and mind reading capabilities I should have been born with! Anyway, the morning got off to that sort of start.

The day didn't get much better with the technical issues and reviewing the web site was a bit of a yawn but worthwhile. Later on Flocky Bicep called to say he could make the afternoon meeting of one of our related Lodges and so he came and picked me up and we went there for a very interesting meeting, we came out, grab a beer and some snacks and then went into our practice session afterwards.

Dentist for me in the morning at the crack of Sparrows. It should be, I hope, a simple procedure and I can get back to meet my Business partner and we can finalise the web site. We are then off in the evening for a few beers and a Chinese meal. I haven't had a Chinese meal out for about 3 years I guess so I am really looking forward to that.

I started a thought process today about some of the problems I've been having over the past 4 and a half years and have noted that I've always had problems in terms of self criticism and blame. It's in my nature so I reflected that I do look back at things I've done and decisions I've made and reflect on these in negative ways. There are things that I've done that I'm not proud of and there are things that, given a second opportunity, I would do differently. Everyone must have the same thing surely? The trouble is that I look back and defy all logic (as I am applying hindsight and modern values) to give myself a hard time about things that are history. I should be considering learning from these things but what I do is give myself a hard time about it. I even think about the time back in the 70s when smoking at concerts was OK, most people did it and I feel bad that I may have blighted someone's life for doing that. It isn't logical, it may or may not be true but there is this self-harming type of mindset. It doesn't want me to move on, it wants to pull me back in to the dark ages. It is as if there is some sort of self-destruct mechanism in place.

It's me that does this and I am my own worst enemy, always have been. I don't think I have a low opinion of myself or low self esteem but I just think that I have set myself high ideals and fail to meet them. I can't set low ideals, it isn't in my make up to do so.

It's a funny old world where you know what the problems are (or think you do) and you know how to get out of them (or think you do) and yet I choose to be negative about it. I will happily set on myself rather than work out a way to turn it to my advantage. It's the regrets for the past that are difficult to shake off I find, I'm not sure where I find the benefit in going over old ground to beat myself up over something I cannot change. I'd prefer to go over old ground and say don't do that again or don't make that mistake again, learn from the experience.

It just goes to show that Psychology and its branches wouuld not have been a good career move for me - I'm glad I didn't take that path :-)

Go with your gut feel

Sometimes that's the right thing to do I find. This problem with my new PC has been bugging me and so I thought let's think about this - it happened on the old PC recently when an update came in and by turning off the IPV6 setting I got it to work, I also thought, I would clear out all the old settings. As insurance I have downloaded some network tools and spent about an hour today sorting it out. Glory be, I can now see files, printers and everything else on-line.

Thank goodness for that - go with what you feel - worked for me.

I seem to have settled down a bit after quite a few months of being a bit fragile. I wasn't great last night and today, being Remembrance Sunday always fills me with sadness and Elgar's Enigma Variation - Nimrod - wrecks me every time I hear it, it is a haunting piece of music. All those people who died in all those wars, it just seems such a terrible price to pay for liberty and freedom. So I get a little down on this day every year, thankful but down.

I think the end of Summer also doesn't help the dark mornings and afternoons, the rain and general greyness are pretty depressing.

Yesterday was nice, I got a round of applause for my delivery of a Grand Lodge Certificate which was a bit of a shock, I've never had that happen in Lodge before but lots of people enjoyed it so that is great. It was a very nice meeting yesterday which was pleasing - just like it should be, it's about people and getting on with each other and enjoying other people's company. All very special as it was a 50th Certificate too.

At least I've fixed my PC so I am pleased and today was the end of the F1 season so I'm a bit sad about that but it was good going down to the wire in the very last race.

Someone mentioned Christmas to me - I knew it was Christmas as in August the adverts started :-) I need to try and get that sorted, at least I can do what I normally do and use my PC to do my Christmas Shopping.

A good afternoon

I hope - off to the Lodge. I'm Treasurer and I also get to do a bit of work today - that is presenting a Grand Lodge Certificate to one of my candidates. That will be great. I hope that I remember what I have to say and that I can read my crib notes too.

It is an old friend's 50th year in Freemasonry so he also gets a special recognisition certificate today it should be a nice pleasant afternoon and evening. It is our last meeting of the year.

Life's pretty good and I should get my tooth finally fixed on Tuesday. That will be interesting. It wasn't as bad as I thought - but I still have Tuesday morning to go.

This new computer keeps disconnecting itself from the home network which is such a pain, I've managed to get it to work occasionally but it just isn't playing nicely....

I haven't heard when I am due in for a scope, I hope they give us good notice as there is so much going on these coming weeks. Life's good - that's important.

I will be glad to see the back of this week

For no other reason than it has been one of those weeks that has just been hard work. It doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere and yet I know, deep down, that we have made massive progress this week it has just been like wading through clawing mud to get there.

I really cannot wait until the web site is up and running and when I will be able to let everyone know about it because that is when things will start to accelerate. Indeed it has been a bit of a "Phoney War" in terms of what we are doing generally as we don't appear to be doing anything. However, I am sure that will all change soon.

I was thinking of how well I feel and that's good stuff really, I do feel good still but the one thing I have let go is exercising. It must have been 4 weeks now and I'm certain that if I got back to doing that the weight would just fall off me as I am still losing weight gradually and fit into my shirts and suits again now which is a great relief I can tell you.

Perhaps when we get through this hard section of work I can recommence.

Bumpy days

Only bumpy because we are trying to get to a final point in the web site to get it finished and published. The creative process is quite bumpy and start / stop by its very nature it has to be I suppose. It isn't like good old logical project management where things get a tick or a cross a 1 or a 0 whether they are done or not!

So we have been looking over and over at out web site and its layout, the images and the way spacing is used etc. It is hard work and of course the more you look the less you like it so it is nice to get some outside opinions. We have really bootstrapped the web site but it does look slick even though it isn't for our final audience yet it looks as if it is.

Everything has just taken an age today down to silly things like getting an image to go on the site has taken me a couple of hours.

It is blowing a gale outside and at the crack of dawn this morning, some tree feller types came in and started hacking down next door's Yew tree. All very well but it couldn't have been much past 7:30 and so there was all that noise of chain saws and pulping machines outside the house until about 10:30. The gales look to be increasing and we had what looked like a baby twister out here a few minutes ago, a squall cam and picked up all the leaves on the road and dumped them against the windows and front of the house.

It looks as if it has calmed down again for a short while and the rain has stopped. All in all it has been a miserable, windy, wet and a dreary day and the work hasn't been much better either.

A nice evening out

And the last until Saturday. It was a small, friendly evening with some very nice people and we made the very best of it and filled in for missing officers and just got on and had a good time. That's what it is all about really and so tonight went really fast and I was home by around 10:15 so that too was good.

Today was a good day as we looked back over the past months, looked at the website and realised how far we had come in 5 months since our Boot Camp in June. Goodness, I've had an operation and good news since then and wasn't particularly great come June if I remember.

No problems. We are close to our major goals - those of having web site and sales messages in place. I've got 3 potential backers to talk to - after I've got the web posted and we are about to break cover after all these years, working in the background. It will be quite exciting. I've managed to start to change profiles and set up links but that is a tiny bit premature as I don't expect the web site to be up until the 19th November at the earliest.

We are a couple of months behind but, nil desperadoes, we shall just get on and tackle the next piece in the same methodical manner - it cannot be rushed.

I'm feeling relatively OK but concious that I am beginning to run out of steam a bit having done about 4 or 5 weeks full on. I am trying to get the children to make up their minds about a winter holiday but no one (once again) wants to make a decision. I hope that they do soon or else we just wont have a break and that is really what we could all do with.

We got the first look at

The web site today and I've started changing my business profiles to allow the web site to link up with my profiles. The site isn't live yet, far from it, but it has a certain wow factor now that the animation is working and the words are laid out on their various pages. There is still some way to go as we actually need to go and buy the pictures which will up the quality and just check over the wording which now, seeing it on a web site, looks wrong. But that is how these things work and hence why it is in test mode and hidden.

I'm off out tonight to a Lodge meeting, just as a visitor, which will be nice as I don't need to do too much, just turn up, stay awake and enjoy myself.

It's only Wednesday - it feels as if I have done a full week or work already. By the end of the week I will be exhausted! It all kicks off this weekend as it looks as if I only have one weekend free from now until Christmas! Crazy.

Life's good, my tooth appears to be fine, no real pain as such which is good, still slightly numb but probably to be expected after such serious work. I guess I'll be called in for a scope next month or January but I don't have a date as of yet.

A night out with friends

A great night out and as usual we had a good time but slightly tinged with sadness that one of our number had suffered a bereavement. It is the second time this year that he has had to deal with this and we sort of agreed that we are "or the age" where this is bound to be a common occurrence amongst our parents and even some of our older friends.

It is doubly sad because KP, who has an awful lot to do with me starting blogging in the first place, has had his own bad luck in terms of losing his job and retraining to find that the retrained jobs didn't exist and finally he has got himself a job in the Charity Sector which is just great. The Third Sector doesn't pay huge money but the work is infinitely more satisfying and re-builds your confidence, I know it did in my case and I am very grateful for it. I am though a tiny bit concerned over my confidence levels about what I am doing now, I do feel extremely confident that I can do what I am doing now and I am growing into the role. I felt it tonight as I was suddenly entirely behind the new business and could (at last) actually articulate what the business was about.

I have a slight headache from the work on my teeth earlier but have decided to have a glass of Scotch in a minute to see if I can numb the pain :-)

Everything is right with the world tonight. My Daughter A has returned from my parents and both L and A have a wonderful Dolls House and all the accessories to go with them. These were my Mum's pride and joy in the old house but they cannot go into the new one. I hope that she will be pleased that the girls have one each and they will be treated with the reverential awe and respect that these wonderful pieces of craftsmanship deserve. I was amazed to see the minute detail in each of the rooms (one house even has electric lighting). Sad in one way that these things had to go but I hope that them staying in the family and being treasured by a new generation will be some sort of comfort for their loss?

I've also got a whole load of books from my Dad that can go onto my library shelves to be read later. I have so many books that I should actually have retired when I was 25 so that I could read them all :-)

Life's good tonight, I feel really charged after seeing my old school chums, they always lift my spirits and we are very comfortable with each other's company - if you know what I mean - like an old pair of slippers :-)

OK - That wasn't so bad

I have to say if I never had Root Canal work again it would be once too often. I mean it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be and I've still got some work next week to finish off. I had to have a second shot to deaden my tooth. It was just a lot of work in an awkward place so took time and wasn't straight forward. The x-rays of the other side - to be taken out showed a tooth that may be a bit difficult to get out (a Wisdom tooth) although the one next door I had extracted cam out easily enough - this one may prove difficult but that is for a few weeks time, let's get this one done.

I have to say that the dentist is very good and I don't fear going like I used to but I did find myself unusually anxious only because Root Canal has a fearsome reputation - I can imagine if you hadn't got local anaesthetic it could be awful.

Anyway, it is with some relief that I sit here drinking my tepid coffee. Out with the old school chums tonight - although one is possibly not going to be there as his Mother-in-Law is very poorly in Hospital and may not make it through the night. Terrible news. So with that shocking bit of news and my mouth making throbbing recovery I will take my leave.

15 minutes to go

And I feel quite anxious about my visit to the dentist - it was nice of Flocky Bicep to drop by earlier and that took my mind off things for a while.

I have to say it is with some trepidation that I go off to see my dentist. Finger crossed it all works out to plan.

OK That's good

Mr Angry apologised for bad behaviour last week and bought me a pint of beer to set that apology right in a bloke to bloke sort of way. I graciously accepted and we carried on without it being a problem - that IS the way to deal with such things. I could hear him chatting to a friend of mine saying that he had really rattled me but luckily my friend was on the right wave length and said that all was forgiven and a beer was the right payment! Too right, things are back to normal and on an even keel. His wife isn't at all well but there you go.

I had a long liquid lunch - it wasn't meant to be like that but it just was. I met a friend of mine who has now been out of work for 7 months at 12:30 and we managed to drink and chat for the best part of 5 1/2 hours which meant I got home way after 6 and needed to stock up on food as I hadn't eaten all day!!! SO I threw down food and then Mrs. F (Bless Her!) said did I really want dinner to which I had to reply that if I didn't I would be totally unable to function! So I had a massive supper and then went out and had a few more beers in the evening!

Home now though thank goodness.

What will you leave?

I wonder what my legacy will be? I wonder what good I may have done in my life and what difference I will have made? I say this because I read a very moving tribute to some children's grandmother. They listed all the things they remembered and liked about their late grandmother.

They were the usual little things you remember about your grandparents or your relatives. there was a nice one about sneaking out for a MacDonalds which rather amused me but that sort of mischief has to be something that sits in your memory from years back.

I imagine you make many impressions and leave many legacies in your life, you mentor others as you were probably mentored.

I often thought that you had to have made a big impact but now I see that even the smallest things have an impact and affect people's lives.

I recollect a number of occasions where something almost insignificant and perhaps shared by just a few people made a profound affect on me. I recollect the words of wisdom from people I knew in passing - the odd phrase or gesture or anecdote - and consider that those people made an impact that they probably never realised. So we all make our mark and we all leave something, somewhere. We may not realise it at the time but our words and actions, our deeds or non deeds, our helpfulness or not all have an affect on someone. All I can continue to do is continue to do what I do.

I remember saying that I thought it was too late to change the world and perhaps that may be true but because it is late it doesn't mean that you should stop trying.

Interesting call

In case said "dickhead" turns up tomorrow and rattles me, friend called and let me know the circumstances behind last Monday's silliness. I'm OK with things. I did fancy letting the guy have a little more room to explain himself this week but I will gloss over that anything happened and if he does then that will be an end to it, we all make mistakes and I probably come off the rails more than many although I have to say I tend to do that in a different way and I tend to crash and burn and just end up as some whimpering idiot to my friends.

Last week was a bit strange as I didn't get the feelings I normally did going back to work. I felt that perhaps I couldn't go back there in any other role other than the one I am in as a part time consultant. I've been invited to the Christmas party this year - I guess I ought to go but just be careful what I wish for so as not to set my expectations too high or too low. These things can be somewhat tedious.

I'd really like for some outlook on my future there. I am doing good work in supporting the team but I'd like something a bit more substantial to get my teeth into. The thing is that the work I do is valued, its just that I sometimes don't see the value of the work I do. To me the things I do that I think are normal are outside of most of their experiences and they certainly don't do problem analysis and solving the way that I do so perhaps there is a value there. I just want to make sure that they are deriving some real value from my work.

The weekend was given over to repairing my friend's laptop which is now done and to doing some accounts that I needed to catch up with. My network crashed and my printer needs sorting out which has given me a few issues trying to complete things today. I do need to do some focusing on my time management this week. I have a number of meetings, the first of my trips to the dentist and I am out three nights this week too!

I think that an early night will be useful so that I can get a good run at the week ahead.

The Business Cards

Arrived on Friday - they look the business - well, they would of course.

Today I fixed my friend's Laptop PC, his kids had managed to infect it with something that looked and acted as if it was actually helping you and yet all along it was tricking them and screwing up their PC.

I managed to start it up in isolated mode and clean it all up there were hundreds of adaware, malware and trojans on it. Clever little program - it turned off all the firewalls, virus checkers and defenders and I had to go in using safe mode to fix it. Hopefully it is all done and he can now reuse it. I've even speeded it up for him too so with a bit of luck that will keep it clean for him for a while.

If he had had to pay someone in a shop to do that it would probably have cost £180 given the amount of time I had to attend to it whilst I did the analysis and effected various cures.

I'm feeling pretty good still, I was impressed that I'd lost weight and was now able to fit into my suits and shirts again. It is amazing how much of an uplift that gives you.

I need to do some more work over the weekend on administration as I find myself busy for the rest of November and December. It is hardly believable but I only have one free weekend between now and Christmas. It means I probably wont get up to see my folks before or after they move and maybe not until the New Year. Having said that, I am getting pressure to go away for a few days around Christmas as we didn't have a real holiday this year.

I feel that it is going to be a very interesting time these next 4 to 6 weeks.

The Art of Distraction

I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted.

The level of interrupt is quite high even though I'm not in an office or really involved with anything beyond what I am doing. I do tend to deal with things immediately they arrive. That way I don't have them hanging around my head. It is clearly one of those things I've grown up with I don't like leaving things in my in-box. I'm good at deleting stuff that is noise but quite a lot of things demand my attention if only for a few minutes, like small items of research and articles and news that relate to what we are doing. These distractions and time wasters just pull on your ability to tackle work in an organised and concentrated way. I have actually moved away from the computer and have been using my flip chart more and more to get my ideas down rapidly and then I can document them later. I can still write and draw faster on a bit of paper than on a PC any day.

Here's a little victory though, I finally fit back into my 16 1/2" shirt collar shirts, so all the really nice shirts I bought about 18 months ago are once again able to be worn as are my suits etc. It is also nice to see that all my belts are in a notch. I've dipped below 16 stone and I am very slowly heading downwards, I'm about 15stone 12lbs at the moment which is rather pleasing considering I haven't been doing any exercise for the past month. I am being quite careful about what I eat but the start of the Masonic season always makes things a bit difficult as the meals feel like they are chosen by my late Grandmother who always suspected that my mother wasn't feeding me enough and so made up for it by baking huge vats of stuff for my visits :-) So you get something like a soup starter, a Steak and Kidney Pie and then that is followed by some stodgy pudding like Jam Roly Poly and Custard!! Oh and then there are Cheese and Biscuits afterwards. Too many of those and I'd soon be back where I started.

At least at home I am limiting food intake and eating sensible foods.

I just realised the big distraction this morning - writing this blog entry :-)

The Office

Not the one with Ricky Gervais but the office of the Charity where I do some work occasionally :-)

I popped in on my way to lunchtimers and met the folks, it is quite nice to catch up with them but I am so glad that I don't work there any-more. What I am doing at the moment is so engrossing and so interesting that to go back to that sort of sedentary life might just polish me off BUT - let me not underestimate how glad I was to have that bolt hole and sanctuary during my recovery. I cannot dismiss that - the money - which is and was paltry wasn't the main thing, and making a difference was important so was recovery, rebuilding "me" and whilst I'm not fully reconstructed - there is a way to go until I'm healed - it was probably the very best thing that could have happened to me at the time.

I enjoy the people of course and I like the office up to a point but if they saw the amount of work I am getting through here and what they do - it would amaze them. Tell the truth it actually amazes me too.

I was declared the Chairman of the London Lunchtimers (at lunchtime) and we had a great meeting and a friend from Denmark or Damnark as his business card said (he mistyped it!) arrived too so that was great. As often happens, I met a chap last night at the Mark meeting and he did a response to a toast speech. He happened to also be at the meeting today - that's the coincidences that you tend to find all the time. A happy time and followed by a Shriners meeting where we had a Frenchman, A Finn and an English guy join the Shrine. Very interesting but they are trying to get me in as Treasurer, Secretary and all round good guy. I am however doing enough as is it. Perhaps in a year or two.

The business is really beginning to look good but the images for the web site are giving us headaches at the moment. It is very difficult to stop people pigeon holing the business and so we are trying to be quite cute with out images. We signed up for the hosting package and soon hope to have email and the web site in place - it will be a major hurdle and at last we can "come out" and start to put ourselves about and go for funding. It is a phoney war at the moment.

Talking of war I was able to do my Chairman's moment today which is nice. I did a bit about the national charities and what they had done plus a bit about Remembrance Sunday in 2 weeks time. Here is what I said - I hope you like it:

"Chairman’s Thoughts"

"I’d like to thank Brian for telling us about Prostate Cancer – which now ranks as the highest Male Cancer above Lung Cancer and Colon Cancer.

In 2004, £1 million was donated to The Institute of Cancer Research for research into prostate and testicular cancers. Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer affecting men in the UK. Each year 27,000 cases are diagnosed and 10,000 men die of the disease. ‘The Grand Charity of Freemasons Chair of Molecular Biology’ is currently held by Professor Colin Cooper who is working on developing a test to identify the aggressiveness of an individual’s prostate cancer. If successful, thousands of patients will be spared unnecessary treatment, whilst those with an aggressive cancer can be given the life-saving treatment they require to fight the disease. Our Deputy Chairman and I were privileged to meet and hear Professor Colin Cooper talk about the progress he has made in that work. There are some major breakthroughs coming. What scared me was that up until 14 years ago – there was little if any research at all into Prostate Cancer at all. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak you will be mightily impressed.

In 2008, it was decided that a substantial grant should also be made for research into a women’s health issue and a grant of £1 million was approved for Ovarian Cancer Action. Ovarian cancer kills 12 women every day in the UK and tragically a lack of awareness of the disease and its symptoms means that women are often diagnosed only after the disease has spread to other areas of their bodies, with an impact on the opportunities for treatment. Professor Hani Gabri – a leading expert in the field – is undertaking this research at the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre in London. Complementing this important medical research, the grant is also being used to help Ovarian Cancer Action reach more women with information about the symptoms and potential causes of ovarian cancer, with the aim of increasing the survival rate.

One of the reasons I joined Freemasonry was a belief that it helped others less fortunate than myself. What this brings home is that the benefits of this work affect everyone in this room and our children and our grandchildren so let us not underestimate the scale and the enterprise of investing this money. As a Cancer survivor myself, I can tell you how much I appreciate what these scientists are doing to identify cancers early but not just that, this work is fundamentally about prevention in the long term which has to be a good thing.

I am reminded that it is again November and soon it will be Remembrance day. The day before we have the pomp of the Lord Mayor’s Show and the next day the sombre but respectful tribute to all those who have perished in the service of their country and in many cases their adopted country. Last meeting we remembered the few for it was 70 years since their great exploits and so today I’d like to consider the many. There are no remaining Comrades from the First World War which is perhaps 3 generations removed from today’s children but a grateful country continues to remember into the next century that war to end wars. The second World War and the wars that followed continue to take their toll on our brave service men and women and in more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, lives are lost, bodies are maimed and they will continue to do this. It is right that we should spend at least those few moments in silence remembering their sacrifice."

News of my reputation spreads far and wide

In a strange twist my exploits on Monday night have taken on a life of their own.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. — Winston Churchill

I find it funny that whilst I knew that I was pretty menacing, no one had ever seen me in my "evil, nasty, menacing but calm" way before so that's impressive. I have yet to see how I get on with him next Monday :-)

That aside, tonight was an enjoyable meeting of two of my Lodges and I'm the Chaplain and get to do some really nice readings. We had a nice meal and as it was Installation there was port and cheese and biscuits afterwards which was also very pleasant.

It was announced that I was OK at this meeting which really pleased everyone and so there were many people saying how well I looked now. I also got comments saying that I now fitted back in to my old suits - which I do which again is nice.

The amusing thing about this is whether I looked like poo before if I look all right now :-) However, the nice thing about Freemasonry is people are genuinely interested in you and thats part of the magic sauce - frankly all the talk about secrets and all of that is - as I like to say bollocks - they were written down in an expose of the craft in the 18th Century - all the words, all the signs and everything so there aren't any secrets at all. The secrets are nothing to do with the ritual, the "funny handshake" (thanks Monty Python!) and all that, the secrets are within every member. If you are interested enough you will unlock those secrets within yourself. Mind you for the rest of the world it is fun to poke fun and call us Lizard People (didn't you know that we are from another planet and it's all a big conspiracy). I always make the joke when that one is mentioned to ask whether there are many flies around today? Most people say there aren't so I just lick my tongue make a sort of gurgling noise and blink :-)

Tomorrow I become the Chairman of the London Lunchtimers Club www.lunchtimers.org and I am really looking forward to having a year in the Chair although I have already taken 3 meetings this year already as Vice Chairman.

We will host the UK Shriners who have been granted a licence from the US to set up over here and in Europe. They do great work right out there in the community of course and so it will be interesting to see what we make of them in the UK. Incredibly I actually know a number of them already! How small a world this is.

We forget how productive we are

And today was no exception as we cracked on and did a load of work to sort out company business structures and how things would hang together. We are desperate to get the web site up and running in the next week or two. It will make such a difference and our business cards should be here this week along with our domain, email addresses and all that sort of stuff.

We are quite hard on ourselves about our progress and yet, when we went through the plan and saw where we actually were, we can see that we have come a long way. I guess we are 4 to 6 weeks behind schedule and as such will have to think about when we get to start meeting people and discussing the small matter of finance.

I met a friend of mine last night who has bladder cancer and gave him my good news and his is that he is now clear again but on three shots of BCG maintenance just before Christmas. The young lad with Appendix Cancer is going to have an operation in the New Year. He could have had it sooner but it would render his Christmas over as it takes 13 hours in surgery and 3 weeks to recover apparently. I can't say I envy him that operation nor the recovery afterwards. I find three days in Hospital a bind, a couple of weeks would see me stir crazy.

And so I want to go to bed and my brain

Well that has other ideas altogether. Yes it wants to keep playing mind games and solving puzzles that I don't altogether remember setting for it. Things like how I can build a UK wide sales force, logistics channel and service offering (well you asked me...).

To give you a rough idea of the way my brain is working; today I did a competitive analysis of the businesses identified as being nearest to us, I did a massive spreadsheet of figures and came to the conclusion that I had already answered the question before I set off to do the spreadsheet which proved it. You see there has always been this problem. It started at school where I, and my parents, were warned that I always had the right answers but never showed how I got to the answer. I therefore lost points, not because the answer was wrong but because I could not demonstrate how I had arrived at my conclusion. For all of my life I have had the same problem. It sounds vain to say that I am always right for that isn't correct but generally, I can be given a complex set of variables and will be able quite quickly to give an opinion based on logic and experience. Today I guessed some figures and outcomes and was surprised (and pleased) that what I had concluded was about the same as the stats and final calcs came out at.

My brain is buzzing away at the moment about shares / equity / finance and how the business can grown in an international market. I can't stop it doing that, it is getting ready for tomorrow's meeting and running through the register of all the possible scenarios that meeting can take and all the avenues open to explore. I like the way I think sometimes but when it does this or goes into meltdown because it doesn't understand certain social situations that's when it gets silly and I'm up half the night whilst the computer between my ears does the maths!

Talk about angry

Met a guy tonight who just turned on me, all of a sudden, rattled on about how his wife may not make it through the night and Hospital talking about she was dead already.....

Bizarre moment - had him do this to me a few months back or possibly last year just go into Mr. Angry mode on me. Have to say I was taken aback but decided to give as good as but not deck him as my initial reaction was going to be. He gives me at least 20 years I guess so it wouldn't actually be fair to have thwacked him a stiff right hander. However, I do find this sort of behaviour a bit annoying and told him so. Glad my mate also gave him a "what for" as well. Perhaps I should have really opened up on him - I reckon I could reduce someone to tears if I went into the depths of the depravities of the treatment I've had. BUT - this is one lonely, smelly, guy and I kind of feel sorry for him but, offering him friendship and a bit of camaraderie you'd have thought that it would be comforting for him to know we were there but to launch a sh1t tirade at me, and I'm pretty inoffensive sort of person was a bit much. I was remarkably restrained for me, normally I'd have torn the guy a new ar*ehole but there you go.

I find it sad now, though I was pretty angry at the time. If none of my mates had been around I do think I would have just hit him quite hard for what he said to me. Lucky for him then that I managed to hold back the urge. If things are as he said and his wife isn't going to make it through the night why turn up at the bar at all???? Things don't add up sometimes do they?

So - there we are, I live to fight another day and luckily so does he.

An interesting day tomorrow as we go headlong into discussing the equity model of the business, it should make for an interesting debate if nothing else. If anything screws up a realtionship it is how much you think you bring or brought to the business. Our past collaborators had some high ideal that their effort (a few days in real terms against our years at it) was worth close to 25% of the business! It is an Elephant in the Room and at least we can address it tomorrow rather than let it fester. It is good as I wrote a positioning document to bring this out into the open about 5 weeks ago and added a caveat last week to it. The interesting thing is that only one person is concerned and that is fine but in reality I discussed this over a year ago in an open meeting and documented it but everyone's had a chance to think about it since they agreed it.

None of it matters in the long run. If we make money we all share, if we fail - as most start ups do - then it doesn't matter either. Having said all that - having the discussion now will resolve it before it gets any further so the strategy of publish and be damned has worked nicely.

I'm finding this new PC amazing, despite all my whining on the subject, at least it does what I want it to do, rather nicely and rather better than my old PC managed of late.

The underlying anger - a reprise

I find that listening to music tends to calm me down a bit especially stuff like this which you may or may not like. It is currently doing the rounds as the backing track to a rather stylish Ford advert (if that isn't an oxymoron).



So I am beginning to calm down internally but I still have this stuff rattling along in the back of my mind and its going through some quite strange stuff including how companies treat their customers - thinking back to my weekend experience and trying to cancel some insurance this morning, it's all about catching you out and making you pay for stuff you don't want - fraud would be my take. It is also pretty much the way of it that you can buy something today, stick it on your PC which some how breaks down, you try and reload it on new machine and they wont let you. Ownership in the modern world. Imagine Ford or Jaguar not letting you drive your car again after a breakdown!! Yea right....

Oh well, no time for writing this blog - off to change the world :-)

The underlying anger

I find it both useful and destructive this underlying anger that I have these days. I can't tell you what that is about as if you know me you probably realise that most of the time I'm pretty much a level headed sort of guy, old enough to have politics a little too far right for the comfort of my kids (hey that's what Dads are there for right?) and I'm a pretty funny guy, I have the most warped, off the wall, lateral, sarcastic, off beat sense of humour. I'm prone to being quite opinionated about things, I know that, it is my job to take things and drive them through as a champion so I'll argue my corner but if you have a good point to put, that's OK too. If you let me I'll take over the meeting.

I'm just as likely to be quiet and keep myself to myself and that is also the other side of me, so you wouldn't really expect this black anger as I rarely let loose on my friends and even with idiots from companies who think they can do the customer service nonsense on me, I'm normally firm but fair.

It's the seething anger that lies within me that is a little disturbing. I've only truly vented and exploded with my full Mr. Nasty 3 or 4 times in my whole life. I remember one of my friends saying to me afterwards he had never ever seen someone so angry before. I wasn't violent with it, it was just nasty, and I remember thinking afterwards, don't ever get me really nasty as I have no idea what I would be like if I lost control. Channelling the anger is one thing but the adrenalin fuelled ferocity of it was something to behold. I hardly remember what it was about but probably someone had been baiting me and I let loose and didn't repeat the same swear word twice and probably didn't draw breath for 3 minutes whilst delivering the benefit of my experience. As someone once remarked after hearing me drilling someone that they hoped I didn't kiss my children with those lips - probably because all of the bile that had been forced through them at my target.

Even these explosive moments are not a patch on the dark and brooding anger that wells up occasionally within me. I can't even tell you what it is all about, it's like the dark dog is trapped in there trying to get out and stick me back into depressive moods but not succeeding and then there is some sort of "Injustice" anger - no doubt doing the "why me" victim bit and there is something else in there about how no one "gets it" and how tangled up you are in your own survival and that no one else gave a stuff, other than cosmetically. There's the recrimination voices giving it the "if you hadn't done ........(stick in anything you like here) then you wouldn't be in this predicament" and all the voices and nags that you get are just all in there arguing together and occasionally there is this real wish to just let someone have the benefit of this broadside of anger for, at the end of it, no real reason. Someone might be acting a pratt and I'd just like to tell them they are but who am I to say it.

Funny old thing the mind - it gives me more grief than being ill ever did. It plays tricks and pokes me, it's owner like some school room bully. I find it fascinating and annoying all at the same time. It does affect me as it makes me question my actions and I give myself such a hard time over something I may have said or did, over things I have no control over even.

Tonight, I can't tell you why it is, I am just seething. It doesn't have too much to do with the hassle of the weekend and the trials and tribulations of getting this new laptop/pc working. No it wasn't that. It isn't the fact that this month is full on, it isn't even the fact that the business is about 1 month behind my plans, no it has nothing to do with any of those. So what is it? I wish I knew myself because then I could do something about it. By writing this down I have come down a huge series of notches and I think that what it boils down to is having someone to talk to about it. My "condition" has hardly if ever been discussed in the house apart from when it has been absolutely necessary, I very much doubt the "cancer" word has been spoken more than a dozen times in 4 years 4 months! Beyond the realms of feeling tired, hungry, sleepy and wide awake, I doubt it is discussed at any depth. That could be it I suppose? This blog is good for getting stuff off of your chest and out of your head. Whether its right or wrong it doesn't matter, the result at this end is always that it makes me feel better to have written and shared it than left it bottled inside.

In the course of writing this particular missive I have gone from seething anger to quiet and calm - that's the power of blogging when no one is listening.

Halloween

I don't get it - at any other time of year it would be extortion with menaces but apparently it is quite acceptable practice to get dressed up in a disguise (remember bank robbers do this so as not to be caught) and go around the town suggesting that if you don't give a treat you'll get a trick. When I wasn't particularly well a few years back that was eggs thrown at the house, without - I hasten to add - anyone actually turning up at the door.

We know who they were and justice appears to have been done somehow or the other.

So this pagan festival that we exported has been redelivered and repackaged for the 21st Century and we now have people roaming the streets dressed hideously begging at doors! It is a strange world indeed or maybe I'm a spoil sport. I can't quite see the attraction in sending your kids out begging dressed as zombies and witches? No wonder so many people are screwed up these days.

The weekend has been given over to sorting out this PC and many other technical problems that you have to deal with day to day if you have to work with computers and PCs. If ever a device could be called the spawn of the devil it must be the Personal Computer for there is nothing personal about it at all.

Back to work tomorrow and a month coming up that is full on. It starts tomorrow with my kid brother's birthday for which I must call him. It then ramps up considerably over the next few weeks as I have meetings and my trip to Scotland to look forward to. I become Chairman of the London Lunchtimers (if voted in on Thursday) www.lunchtimers.org and that will be rather fun. I'm not sure if I will be up there for the evening as well, I'll say maybe at the moment.

I am out Wednesday too and I now have to swot up on some words for a meeting in two weeks time. In between all of this I need to be working on the website, business plans and other stuff. It all adds to the pressure on me to get things delivered in the next week or two and by the end of this month I need to be in a strong position to go and start talking to potential financiers - interestingly the business cards will arrive this week and the letterheads are ready to go so just the web site and we can really get motoring.

There is a further meeting about the wiki I developed for the central charities and it looks as if I will have some work to do this month that will give the business some revenues in December. Talking of which - I need to invoice for the work I did last month too. Suddenly there are loads of things to do and it feels like not enough time to do them. That feels like that because of the inevitable set back changing technology has had this weekend - it feels like I've lost 3 days just fiddling around trying to get the technology to work for me.

Clear up and some rest

I realise that this past week has been hectic and full on for me. I managed to get to bed at around 2 am this morning after wrestling with the vagaries of re-building my PC which required multiple reboots and all sorts of attention grabbing actions, that only I could do to help it decide what to load, where to load it and whether or not I wanted a load of garbage-ware added to bloat out my system even more.

I am actually looking forward to being able to use it tomorrow in anger on work. It does work like a dream and is a fast as you like. It still has many of the silly issues that I hate about software and computers.

In other news my parents have sold their place, bought their new place 10 minutes walk from my brothers house (which is a relief to me) and are hoping to make the move just before Christmas as there aren't many people in the chain. They have to downsize considerably to do that of course which is causing some anguish. These days I'm pretty certain that there are lots of things I could do without and with modern technology I could get all my record and CD collection electronic, all my books digitised and wander around with a laptop and my Kindle and MP3 player - let's face it, the only space they take up would be tiny compared to what they take up now. I'm sort of going off possessions and things to own. Somehow they don't hold the importance they did for me these days. Some sentimental stuff for sure, a box of family bits but ornaments and the like - I'm not sure.

Mrs. F. and A are gradually getting better, they appear to have lost a fair amount of weight. Mrs F has lost 4 lbs which given that she is vertically challenged anyway is a lot of weight for her to lose. A has lost almost double that which she is secretly pleased about but it is still an alarming amount to lose in a week but they just haven't been eating properly and are only just getting back to normal food now. Hopefully they'll get stronger this week.

Oh Dear 26th October Missed

Yes, how dare I miss such an important date as last Tuesday? For important it was. I guess with Mrs. F and A being sick as you like and neither are that good even now 6 days on I missed the date altogether.

It is 4 years since I started the blog, four years in which I've probably gone through ever conceivable emotion, every possible scrape I can get into and fortunately I've managed to still be here. If I make it to next July - then I am going to plan a 5 year celebration along with my business colleague.

Today has been difficult as I have been awaiting the synchronisation of my old and new PCs. That took 24 - yes - 24 hours. I have just had a row with Microsoft as the old software from the PC that died cannot be used on this PC even though the old PC is completely trashed and after I paid a fair amount of money for it. Apparently as it is part of a Vista PC not a Window 7 one they wont allow it to be put onto this new machine. That's the problem with modern day highway robbery for you. You can't get a Vista machine (who'd want one anyway), if I did have then it would have been OK. The irony being that I've had to upgrade to windows 7 this time and pay out even more money to not be able to run my software on it. The answer is easy enough, there is plenty of other software out there and it will be my mission to avoid ever using Microsoft again in this way. If they'd have listened to what I was telling them instead of reading off a script then maybe they'd have understood the grievance I have about it. As it is, nigh on telling me to take a flying leap and then saying have a nice day at the end says volumes about their complete neglect of their customers. Toss pots!

Having said all of that - the new PC is rather splendid and I'm now enjoying it but still getting used to the odd way it does things.

Happy 4th Belated Birthday dear Blog.

Confused

I got that wrong, I thought I had been reading Julie when I had been reading Jeanette. That's what happens when you are concentrating on 10 things at once, like why it took 24 hours to synchronise my new and old laptops! Now happily done.

Well almost - there are as always lots of issues around drivers, software that wont load and all that guff. I like the way it refuses to load one of my expensive Microsoft software packages - it now wants me to do some other nonsense. I haven't finished yet - it is pants having to spend two days just loading and transferring stuff. There has to be a better way? But there is, if I get enough finance to make it so :-)

A big Raspberry to you Mr. Cancer

Why you shouldn't talk to your cancer.

Have a read about attitude to cancer (about 2/3rds way down)

HERE

Well said, the world's a poorer place without this lady.

I wasn't expecting this news

Another warrior has gone. I've followed this blog for years and this morning was totally shocked to hear the news that Julie had died. She had been given a year to live but didn't make it past a few months. She was just undergoing trial treatment and there isn't much news about what took place as the last thing I saw was the trip to get the treatment a few days ago.

It felt like someone had punched me in the chest. What a shock for her children - one of whom is in Japan studying and only really went as he knew he could get back by the time it was expected his mum would die.

If you ever get a chance to read through this blog, it has some great moments in it, some sad ones, of course and the episode with Citibank is pretty disgusting really, at least now they'll get their hands on the house - blood suckers! I hope the VP chokes on his bonus.

RIP Julie - I'm quite upset about this this morning - you become quite "attached" even though you never actually meet your cyber friends I am reminded of a quote I like to use at times like this:

"Don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened."

Slowly the household returns to normal

A isn't well still and has to go and have a blood test today to sort her out, she has been completely knocked sideways and remains lethargic and in bed or wandering around in PJs and jumpers. Mrs. F. is just exhausted and unable to go to work this morning. In fact she did 1 hour working in the house yesterday and that was that.

I'm working away and have finalised the logo and most of the artwork, letterheads, compliment slips and the web site icon. The Web site is being built now and so finally things are moving forward but perhaps 1 month later than I would have liked. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Today is new laptop - well desktop replacement - day. My Sony Vaio arrives later and will no doubt require setting up and messing around with for most of the weekend to get it to fit the home network etc. Having worked out the printing issues and the network issues I just need to start all over again. This thing is a bit of a beast as it has a whopping 18.4" wide screen on it! and a Tb of storage. It is an amazing piece of kit and I'm looking forward to that but also have a tinge of sadness as my trusty old laptop (well desktop replacement also) will be relegated to back up machine. For 7 years it has travelled around the country with me. It has been dropped, bumped and thumped and at one time it travelled all around London with me and my projector giving presentations. Amazing :-) It's just had the one new hard drive in all that time. Lately though it has been a real pain as it will not run modern software - shame. It may get a new lease of life if it is still around when our new service gets to market.

Taking Stock where are we

Well, A and Mrs. F. are getting better but they are still very weak. I spoke to my Nephew who met up with A and Mrs. F. on Saturday at the V&A in London, they all had different things to eat but it appears that the restaurant they went to may be the connection as he was also ill on Sunday night.

I've lost a fair amount of sleep, worry or attention perhaps? Anyway, today was a half decent day and we moved the business on a bit further meeting the web master. There are some frustrations of course as we still await some deliverables and these are now becoming critical.

Yesterday I went to the dentist and this was a less than pleasant experience only because of 4 years of tartar build up needed to be sand blasted off. That did hurt and made my gums bleed but now, of course, it is fine and feels great. The last fillings are over and now it is one root canal and one extraction and that should be me set up.

I have purchased a new laptop at last, this one is 7 years, almost 8 years old now. It has done well and now is beginning to show its age. I remember going for top of the range and it has paid off and happy with my Acer I went and looked at another, did my research and saw a stunning one that was expensive but worth it - I found another that was a better price but with a couple of bits of less specification. So I found that I wanted to get the one that was slightly less specification but had some superior features. After putting it in my basket and being made to register, I was then informed that it would be extra for delivery, OK I suppose but at that price (over £900) I would have thought it would have been included. Then they wanted a load more money for me to use my Credit Card. I await their phone call tomorrow with some interest :-) as I got fed up at that point and cancelled the order.

By luck I looked at a site I was looking at earlier had some end of line Laptops and I secured the last Sony Vaio with a whopping 18.4" screen - excellent and looking forward to getting that on Friday.

All these problems I have been having with my PC are apparently all down to its age and so this should sort things out on that front.

My parents have now sold their house and put an offer in on another not far from my brother so that will be good if they get it. It is much smaller and less work for them and so that also is a great relief as the other place was becoming a little too much to look after. Being near enough to my brother is also quite nice - perhaps 5 minutes drive if that.

I still feel a little pressurised to get things done and I need to work out all my commitments and make sure that there is time to cover everything off. I think that I just need to sit back and take a little stock of the situation and not be too worried by it. I'd like to think that this is just me doing some checking on my self :-)

A little quieter now

I've collected L from the station - she had been up in London seeing a show. Mrs F has stabilised - at one time I was almost certain it was ambulance time I have to say. A is showing signs of recovery as young people do. She has to go into University tomorrow but I will see how she is in the morning. I'm just taking stock, having now repaired the network adapter (but not sorted the overall network problems). At least we can all get on-line now but seeing th network and sharing files and printers may take a few more tries :-(

I am now under some serious pressure to get things sorted out. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that I've lost the best part of 10 hours work today. Tomorrow looks to be equally as bad and with a trip to see my dentist - the afternoon looks to be pretty much a lost cause if my mouth is as numb as it was two weeks ago :-)

In fact, I did say to my business partner that we are both putting a little too much pressure on ourselves and perhaps just need to take a break for a breath and some reflection and then go on from there. We forget how much we have produced and how far we have come. We got a stack of work out last week and are really in a good position to tackle the more interesting parts of the project now. With a bit of luck we may even get to a position to talk to financial backers before Christmas which would be good. However, we may need to temper our enthusiasm a little bit as the market does get a little quiet in December.

Well - I'd better finish off down here, drink my cup of tea and get off to bed or rather to my chair as I don't want to disturb Mrs. F now that she is resting at last...

What a day, what a day....

I don't like Mrs. F. being ill

She is pretty ill as is A today with some food poisoning, they both had some strange concoction of chili sausage and were both ill, A first overnight and Mrs. F from the early hours. she isn't good at all. A is slowly recovering but looks pretty awful, Mrs. F. is vomiting nothing at the moment. I've got some stuff from the Pharmacist and some of the rehydration stuff too but that eased for an hour or so before that reappeared. She doesn't want the Doctor and there isn't a lot you can do about food poisoning other than let it takes it course. L is out in London and due back late so I need to pick her up from the station gone 11 tonight I guess.

I don't cope with illness at all well these days, I used to be OK but I have a series of bad nightmares about being ill and it doesn't help that I can't do much other than bring water and clear up the mess. I doubt I'll sleep much tonight either as she is pretty restless, maybe I'll just sit up in my rocking chair in the bedroom and keep a bit of a vigil. When A came up and asked if mum was going to be all right I nearly lost it. I've at least satisfied myself that I have enough knowledge to keep her sorted out and have phone numbers handy in case she isn't OK.

What a horrible day, the poor girl has been terribly ill. I couldn't go out tonight and just had to leave everyone to it. I don't like letting them down but needs must. In addition I was going to blog about the talk on Saturday - I will have to do that when things calm down. In addition to all this - somehow all the PCs have gone wrong - which indicates to me that the Microsoft updates that arrived over the weekend have conspired to kill off my network printing services and I can no longer share files or anything else across the network I built. L's laptop doesn't want to connect at all - and whilst I have managed to get the others to connect they wont print or share files which means more hours of messing about courtesy of some technical wizard trying to make things easy for me!

I have the dentist tomorrow - I shall look like a Zombie by the time I see him in the afternoon. I also find that my trusty laptop will probably have to be replaced too now after 6 or 7 years of sterling service albeit with a new hard drive. More expense to explain away to Mrs. F. when when feels better. At least L passed her theory test for driving today which is great news. We could hardly share it when she got home as it looks, smells and sounds like a Hospital upstairs :-)

I had some great plans to get some work done today and they have been completely scuppered as have the need for me to get ready for an important meeting on Wednesday when I have the web designer coming around so we can resolve all the technicalities around that.

I could end up being quite stressed out by the end of this week if it continues apace like it is!

What a weekend and today

Just hasn't started in great fashion.

I'll do some more later in the week but it looks like an attack of the Norovirus here - or something similar. Mrs. F and A are being sick all over the place and luckily L who's theory driving test it is today seems to be all right. I am not feeling great but I now have to get her to and from the test centre - which effectively kills my morning off.

The Weekend was full on as I had a Lodge meeting Saturday morning followed by lunch and then an Ladies' Night with 5 course dinner to navigate. Especially as no one had worked out they needed an MC and Chaplain - which I ended up doing myself.

The house sounds pretty awful this morning as you can imagine. I've been up a fair bit of the night tending to the wounded and they don't appear to be an awful lot better. L and I so far appear OK. I certainly don't want anything like it.

I'll pull a post together about the talk we had on Saturday from an eminent research professor who is one of the world's leading experts on Prostate Cancer. Amazing things he mentioned and discussed with us. Suddenly, my regard or Ketchup has gone up and it appears that this is one of those "special" food stuffs - amazing yet true.

Stay tuned.

Feeling quite rough today

I had a very bad night - I slept OK but my head is just so muddled at the moment. I don't understand things happening around me and I can run multi million pound projects, run teams and do all these great things but ask me to tell you about relationships and I can't tell you anything. I don't get it because my brain is wired a different way to most other people I can't tell if someone is flirting or making a pass, I can't work out all these coded messages that are used and the trouble is I know I can't and then beat myself up about it.

Last night I met with all the folks from work and suddenly I realised that other factors were at play too, like we only meet every few months and that in itself means lots of attention and discussing the gossip and direct contact which to me is all well and good but I realised when I got home that all this attention and body language left me completely confused. Then I realised how isolated an existence I live at the moment, I am sat here at my desk working away, reading, writing, thinking etc and I'm not having the sort of day to day interaction and the ability to talk and interact.

I'm feeling rough because I'm ploughing a lonely furrow here - it is mainly cerebral work and cannot be done in groups except workshops etc. I think I shall also change my music selection - listening to Tracy Chapman can be a bit depressing sometimes - mind you I could always stick on some Leonard Cohen :-)

I don't remember being like this as many times before I got Bladder Cancer. Maybe it is that, maybe this is just one of those depression moments I have written about before, at the moment I can't tell - I can see what triggered it and I can see that the result is me feeling really down and rough. I have a feeling it is also that yesterday I did about 18 hours out of the house and the successes of the past few weeks and the "high" from them and the realisation that there is still more to do before we get near to our target may also be draining me too.

It is going to be a nice weekend with a meeting tomorrow followed by a Ladies' Night in the evening which will be nice. Korean Grand Prix on Sunday and I think an easy day for me, I need to recharge my batteries - talking of which my battery tester has arrived now so I can check out a drawer full of batteries (no one knows if they work or not!!!) only in my house could it happen that good and bad batteries all got mixed up. We have now started a recycling area for dead batteries.

I hope this little dark cloud over me gets out of the way and that this sneezing and runny nose aren't something from the train journey to and from London yesterday. Maybe that's it too.

All in all a not good day....

When silence isn't golden

Well I reckon I have totally hacked off my friend as I haven't heard from him since Monday when I dropped the bombshell about his new employer. I suppose it may be better me delivering the punch than someone else a few weeks down the line when it's all gone even further?

We made some more progress on the business today getting towards the holy grail of having our business logo, tag line and web site sorted - it is getting close and the goose bump moment came today when the tag line and logo were agreed and the artwork arrived - along with the invoice :-)

I was hoping to get this sorted by the end of October - that looks a tadd ambitious to me at the moment. Perhaps by mid November. The trouble is we are hurtling towards December and Christmas - we are about 1 month off target - not bad I suppose. We agreed that we carry on and not give up 3 feet from the Gold.

Off to town in the morning for a day of Festival Forum workshops and presentations. I am glad I am not organising this one having done much on the last 2...

End of a long day

I've had a long day and it's time to go to bed. I'm wondering quite what the rest of the week will bring - it's only Tuesday and I feel I've done a full week already.

I have an interesting day on Thursday, going back up to London to see the troops and run through the new web site I've developed for them. I've managed to stop them asking for me to change it (because they can) by then. I can't believe they are titivating about with it when it has been through close to 16 versions getting to here. The powers that be have a bee in their bonnet about changing one of the titles of the plan. The trouble is that by doing so they totally confuse it with other areas of the plan hence it was originally discussed and changed by committee 14 versions ago!!! Don't ask me, I just do what they want to do but it seems stupid to me. My problem is that change for changes sake isn't a good thing. By changing one section they totally change the whole tone of the piece. That's what they never get - it is the whole thing that is important and reading something in isolation will inevitably lead to a problem later.

Oh well - you can't tell them!

A Troubled Time

I looked up my friend's new business and started to get quite concerned about the turn of events. You know when you look at a web site and go ooohhhh what doesn't add up here? Well I did a bit of digging and found that I couldn't establish any of the bona fides for the testimonials. None of them were from established businesses and I only found one of the businesses operating out of a one room office in a serviced building. Then I did a search at Companies House and found that this business, whilst stating 15 years in business, was only incorporated in March of this year. There are no previous businesses.

I then looked at the site and they made more of recruiting salespeople than getting customers - a bit strange to have a site that does that I would have thought. They are below the 8,000,000 in the Alexa rankings for their trade. What do I say to him? I mean he's quit jobs with real money to chase this one which is commission only and my gut feel is - it isn't what it purports to be at all. It is something setup to be a sales vehicle. When putting their name into Google and similar all you get are job adverts for people to work all over the country for commission only, they advertise huge payouts. Surely a bit of due diligence would have rung some alarm bells on it.

Unfortunately, like many, the promise of a quick win and a quick get rich approach is too tempting. All too often these things turn out to be bad for him and it isn't the first time. The trouble is, I've told him so many times before that I am the harbinger of doom. I've made him aware of the recent incorporation of the business. He, having made hundreds and hundreds of calls and not even got an appointment yet may be able to draw his own conclusions.

I go back to my comments earlier this month about feeling bad that I can't help or feel so helpless and not able to make a difference. I can't do everything, I've felt that I should try and help everyone and spread the joy of my survival. I can't do it can I? I feel really bad I just bring this guy bad news.

It appears to me that in the headlong rush some make to get out of the rut they are in they find that they just dig themselves further into the rut they are in.

Powerless to help

My friend who drains me of energy turned up tonight and was once again in gloomy mood. He has finally worked out that he can't afford a number of things and this weekend's Ladies' Festival is one of them, his wife said enough is enough and so it is. I hadn't realised that he had given up the couple of jobs he was doing when the last one came along so he could concentrate on that which wasn't a good idea as it went pear shaped. This new job isn't doing a lot for him either and the steady income he did has is no longer available.

You can't make this stuff up and he is a troubled, tortured soul but what can I do? I can listen, I can advise (not that he has ever taken any of my advice in all the years I've known him). I could give him some money, pay for him to come along at the weekend but he wouldn't like that, he and I both know that - he is too proud - yet I've made him admit he would do it for me if he could!!!

I know I whinge on about how this guy saps my strength but I can only feel sorry for him in his present predicament, however brought about, these days it is so difficult to get out of the rut you are in and even thinking straight will not work as he isn't thinking straight. I feel utterly powerless to do anything. Whatever I do will be misconstrued and I am in my own battle to make ends meet - not as deep as he is of course - but I need to be mindful about it.

I remember the conversation around me paying off my mortgage and him saying that he had more debts than when he bought his house. I won't go into the details but it is a serious case of heart ruling head. I sometimes used to look at him taking his family away to the Maldives or Florida or some far off sunny locale and wonder how they could afford it. The difference is that we did foundation work and didn't spend what we didn't have.

I wonder if I would have preferred to have that sort of lifestyle then and be paying for it now (he is 5 - 6 years older than me) but have to work right up to and beyond retirement. I'm a little more circumspect and have been pretty much checked by the financially astute Mrs. F. over the years. We will push out the boat when necessary but everything has been centred on making a family home, making sure we had what was needed and we even made sure that things would be OK before embarking on having a family. Interestingly, the last of our long-term investments come out next year and the year after. We put things in place 25 or more years ago so that we knew that we would have something available at this point in time. The difference is striking but should I be feeling this bad because I put this stuff in place?

It is so difficult to maintain objectivity when it is a friend. As a friend he is pushing it to the very edge of the envelope but perhaps, now that the realisation is hitting home he will at last take a long hard look at his situation and will remember all the sage advice I've given him over the years.

Then again - maybe not. Life's like that sometimes.

Unplanned makes for good times

I got a call on Sunday and was invited to go to the pub. Well I don't need a second invite :-) I went up and spent about 4 hours there total as my friend and I had 2 hours together then a friend's son happened to be back from Uni so I called A and she came over to see him as they are the oldest of friends = they were born within hours of each other and that's how we all came to be friends. Nice!

I got back in time for a nice evening meal and then had a booze induced snooze :-) That's a nice Sunday but it stopped me working and so it should - glad I didn't do anything. However this morning I had to dash up to the Costa Coffee shop up the road to see a few guys about getting things straight for next week's meeting. I've then done the document I should have done on Sunday afternoon which increases the subs for our Lodge - I'm not going to be popular but it is something that should have been done some time ago really and no one get up the balls to do it at the time, now it HAS to be done and of course the pain is significant just when most people can't afford all these increases. It is a matter of biting the bullet and just doing it.

I've been invited on a bit of a bender weekend to Scotland in November. I'm keen in a way to go up there but these boys can drink! I need to find myself a cheap tie too as when they came down here earlier this year they relieved me of mine which at £15 was a bit of a blow! I won;t be wearing my nice silk one that is for sure :-) So I need to decide if I want to go. It will be a nice opportunity to see Scottish working and have a weekend's break. I'll see if Mrs. F. concurs and wants to get rid of me :-)

I still feel very well indeed and I am starting to notice it in subtle ways, just feeling fitter and my mind is almost back to working at its creative best, I am not getting anywhere near as tired as I used to get and a fair amount of my stamina is back. Once those sorts of things start to come back so your self esteem and confidence begin to build and everything starts to come back.

I'm feeling up to doing some work at the Lodge of Instruction tonight as I think after all this time, I might finally be able to remember all the words which I haven't been able to for at least 4 years. It says something that I probably haven't taken a big role since being ill. I've managed to unclog my brain on the accounts too so it is all beginning to come back to me now.

I'm not sure how all this stuff works exactly but at the moment, I can probably say that I am the best I have been since July 2006 or perhaps even before that. Long may that continue. I now need to build on my well-being and sensibly use all these extra strength, brain power etc to do something worthwhile.

We have started using the phrase to "engender positive social change" as part of what we are attempting to do in our new venture. Social philanthropy doesn't "cut it" with all investors but we hope we might get this message across that we can do real good with our view of the future. Here's hoping that we aren't barking mad :-)

Saturday - part work part play today

It was good to get my smart phone working this morning at breakfast. It does loads of things that are probably very interesting but for me the ability to make phone calls and receive emails is plenty together with it being online - especially when here as I can connect it to my wifi network which is just dandy. It does some smarts like working out photos of people on facebook and sticking their birthday and photo next to the phone number so that's convenient. Let's see how it gets on - it has a big battery which is what I need to make sure I'm not always charging it. I've almost worn it out today as I have been setting it up and doing all sorts of tests and merging data etc.

I've also managed to sort out one lot of accounts and I'm happy that I can probably put that lot to bed early next year after the financial year ends 31st December. I have a little more difficult job on Sunday as I have some accounts in not great state that I've just taken over and I have to make a call on increasing fees - a tough call the way the economy is but I can't see an easy fix for it at the moment.

I'm not sure that I feel any better about my lot than I did last night. I find the present times quite strange as I am working flat out and yet have hardly anything tangible to show for it at the moment. That's mainly not surprising as the business is pretty young. We need to do so much more work in this run up to Christmas. It isn't that really though, it is whether there are other fallouts coming through me doing it? It seems to be a cause for concern - not to me.

The more I think about meeting with the Lawyer on Wednesday the better I feel. I've met only one person who dismissed our ideas and it was because he was lazy and also that he had no social graces. This guy was - as you would expect - extremely clever in what he asked and how he asked it. His "line of questioning" was very good as it drew out what we were doing and re-enforced the homework that we had done, where we were and that there wasn't an area we couldn't answer with relative ease or that we had prepared for. There were a couple of interesting moments especially around the level of investment we had put in and would put in to match the investors. The surprise here is that we have thought that through and the answer is that there is no way we can match them in any way especially because the sort of investment we are going for is to build a large business, our paltry sums would be swallowed and be worthless. Our risks are in working on this now with no income. The business probably wont make any real money for 18 months even after we have finance and so the risk is that we could end up on basic money for 18 months and still get nowhere. Anyway, even on that point we had done some work. We are getting towards being more confident and soon we will have enough pieces in place to do a soft launch.

Until then, I'll have to continue to work at home all hours and just get on with it.

So Why Did I Survive?

Now here is an interesting problem that I get - not sure if everyone else does though so don't take this as a common occurrence it may be just a few of us...

You can look at this particular question a number of ways and you can rationalise it different ways too.

When I've done all the basic rationalisation I came to the conclusion that I did it for myself. Yes I did it for me. Why me? Well because frankly the way other people treat me now, there is no way I would have done it for them. By that I mean that I had a sort of idealogical, rose tinted view of survival and what it would be like. You see, it would be like starting all over again, with a clean sheet of paper. Things that weren't great beforehand would be better, I'd make the word a better place (OK I might still do that! :-)), I'd be treated with a bit of respect, that relationships would somehow magically mend and become closer as they had drifted apart.

I felt that adversity would indeed build a lasting bond and produce this much better life because I had survived and because I saw life as precious and it meant something. What I went through (and am still going through) must have mattered, it was character building stuff, it changed me a lot, it made me more sensitive, more caring, more tolerant (yes it did!!!) and it gave me a whole new outlook on life.

And yet, as I've said before, only I changed, it's still the same old, same old. OK - I've heard from a very drunken source just how frightened everyone was for me but no one has ever said that to me sober. No one has ever admitted, just a little, that they were worried about what was going to happen to me and its as if it never happened. That's what has surprised me the most. No one gives a flying **** about me really apart from me - sure my parents but that's different and my mum I know has taken it the hardest but we have always gotten along just great and I know that it wounded her more than just about anyone else.

I survived (accepting all the medical stuff of course and good fortune and early diagnosis etc) because I wanted to, more than anything I'd realised that it was important to fight this and those who don't inevitably lower their chances (that's what I believe anyway). It wasn't pleasant, it wasn't heroic, it wasn't some huge battle it was as it was, tough going, stoic stuff. I did it because I truly felt things would be different afterwards. Tonight I feel robbed of that - nothing has changed, things are still the same, attitudes linger and I get treated the way I always did and get taken for granted. That's life and what you deal with - I'm sure everyone deals with that sort of stuff day in and day out and that's fine, why should I be any different?

Well - I should be different because that's what I thought would happen and it hasn't (well it hasn't yet). I'm not particularly bitter about it, it just is what it is really, nothing has changed which in my opinion means that perhaps the only person who gets to learn from the whole experience was me. It seems a waste that no one else took away the messages and positives of the journey really. Just me then :-) As normal.

Banging Around in My Head All Afternoon

Portrait (He Knew) by Kansas

He had a thousand ideas, you might have heard his name
He lived alone with his vision
Not looking for fortune or fame
Never said too much to speak of
He was off on another plane
The words that he said were a mystery
Nobody's sure he was sane

But he knew, he knew more than me or you
No one could see his view, Oh where was he going to

He was in search of an answer
The nature of what we are
He was trying to do it a new way
He was bright as a star
But nobody understood him
"His numbers are not the way"
He's lost in the deepest enigma
Which no one's unravelled today

But he knew, he knew more than me or you
No one could see his view, Oh where was he going to
And he tried, but before he could tell us he died
When he left us the people cried,
Oh where was he going to?

He had a different idea
A glimpse of the master plan
He could see into the future
A true visionary man
But there's something he never told us
It died when he went away
If only he could have been with us
No telling what he might say

But he knew, he knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Oh, where was he going to
But he knew, you could tell by the picture he drew
It was totally something new,
Oh where was he going to?


They don't write them like that any more -good I hear you say :-)

I had forgotten how much I like Kansas - the trouble is that it is some 30 years ago....

Anyway - I just liked the lyrics on this one.