Monday 28 June 2010

It aint half hot.......

Well there is one thing that can be said about the British climate-we are never happy with it!

My office is at Gravesend where the temperature was a sizzling 30.9 degrees and that is hot! I was working at an inner London location today and with all the buildings, people and traffic it was insufferably hot. Still I suppose we can not complain, six months ago we were struggling through nearly a foot of snow and we moaned about that.

Typical Brits never satisfied with anything are we, and as for the World Cup-just don't mention it.

Hope you are managing to keep cool

Andy

Sunday 20 June 2010

Visual Counterpoint

For some time now I have been following a blog by Liz called which is called Visual Counterpoint and can be found at http:visualcounterpoint.blogspot.com/. She has written some very impressive words and posted some wonderful pictures which have left me in awe.

However today she has a particularly bad day and I would encourage you to drop by and offer her some support and read some of her entries.

Andy

Tuesday 15 June 2010

The Result

I am delighted to say that the CT scan showed no change to the state of the disease. I asked the consultant if they had licensed the drug Ofatumumab yet and the answer was no, I than asked if I needed any more treatment what than. His answer was they would get hold of some Ofatumumab in that case.

If the result of the next scan in September is the same it will be a year since I had any treatment, might just be cause for a small celebration!

Many thanks for your kind thoughts.

Andy

Thursday 10 June 2010

No news is good news???

About an hour before my appointment on Tuesday i had a phone call from the consultants secretary, no one had reported on my scan so could I postpone my visit for another week!!!! Why make the appointment if the hospital can not have the results!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On a personal basis it has been quite a sad couple of weeks for me. Apart from the sad news of Jane Thompson's passing I have attended two fatalaties in a work capacity and last night I received news that one of my old school friends has succombed to cancer.

Andy

Saturday 5 June 2010

Now where were we?

With such a lot going on recently I seem to have lost the thread of my rail memories!

After Sole Street I was appointed to the exalted position of Divisional Relief based at Swanley. As the job title implies you covered leave, sickness and vacancies. This meant that you never knew from one week to the next what or where you would be working. It did not do wonders for your social life as you can imagine as you could be working in London late one night and be on the coast the following morning. In fact it did cause the break up of my relationship at the time and in many ways I still bear the scars of her betrayal which hurt me very deeply at the time. The plus side of course was that there was always lots of overtime which added to scale expenses and a 15% allowance for not working regular shifts led to some rather pleasant pay days!

The other plus was that I met many people who 40 years on are not only fellow railwaymen but good friends as well. It must be remembered that the railway than was very different to that of today and after work it was not unusual for the last one in the pub to buy the beer!

During my time on relief one of my favourite stations to cover was Orpington and when the chance came up to apply for a job there I did and I was succesfull but that can wait until another time.

On a personal note I had my regular 3 monthly CT scan on Thursday and get the result on Tuesday. Although I am certain nothing has changed there is always that nagging worry..........

Andy