Sorry folks, I forgot - it crept up on me.
Hope you find us.
Doodle feel free to delete this and start anew.
All welcome to join us for general chat and friendliness.
Jeeves will welcome you with Prosecco and Pringles.
Grammaretto - what a lot of family worries. It's SO long getting appointments these days. Could they maybe do something at short notice?
I know that there's often a list of people who can do this - suggest they call the consultant's secretary and ask to please be put on a "cancellation" list.
Your other grandchild is obviously too diligent for their own good. I think schools seem to imply that GCSEs etc are "one shot or you're out". It's a pity children have no time to grow and develop these days as everything seems to be tested.
Oh Grammaretto I am so very sorry to read that things are not easy right now. It's true that we hurt more for our children and grandchildren than we do for ourselves. I hope some gliimer of hope comes soon.
I am hoping my dgs will be stayong for some part of next week. If so, he'll be able to come with me to the hospital and be my eyes through the vast sprawl. My taxi voucher will cover 2 passengers as easily as one, thank goodness.
I also hope he will be with me for our Kaumatua group as many of them know him and ask how he is.
I doubt they'll recognise him as the little boy who shared afternoon tea with them last time he was with me.
He's now 6ft - but still has that amazing smile, guaranteed to charm, especially elderly ladies. 
The clocks go forward here on Sunday. It won't make much difference because its the Tui who wake me.
I'm listening to an Anthony Trollope book.
I've come late to this author and am finding his portraits of life in the Victorian era interesting.
He didn't have an easy life, even as a little boy but yet managed to inject his semi-autobiographical stories with humour.
During his time working for the Post Office, he instituted the ubiquitous red pillar boxes and the wall-based ones, still carrying the VR logo during my childhood.
Grammaretto I agree with Doodle, being comfortable with your home is vital.
When Mum and I were househunting, she had very set ideas of what & where she wanted - often opposite to what the agents showed her 
.
When she walked into the last house, she was hardly through the door before she said, 'This is the one.' 
It was larger than she wanted, not in the position she'd insisted and yet they just fell in love.
NotS talking of fig trees, it's about now (in NZ) I used to drape very fine mesh netting on my fig tree so I might get a few ripe fruits in summer before the birds got them.
Now I don't even dare try to negotiate the lawn lest I fall again. But I don't begrudge the birds the full crop as they sing for their supper all day and give me much pleasure.
Do squirrels sing?
It never put me off the figs, which I LOVE, to know that inside each one is a dead and deliquesent wasp.
These mix ups with appointments don't foster much assurance there'll be efficiency when you are finally under the knife, do they? 
I should be seeing the grandchildren this Sunday and was looking forward to it but a text from DiL says probably not.
And you had mysterious messages from the NHS too NotSpaghetti!
There must be mischievous elves running the admin departments.
Love the fungal photo. I took one yesterday too. It's a shaggy spiny cap. I don't think it's edible.
I'm off to view a sensible bungalow for sale this afternoon. It's not quite in the right place but it is smaller and all on one floor.
Thought I'd share this photo with you.
Definitely autumnal! This popped up in a pot in the garden!
Poor you Doodle having to run the gauntlet of the hospital and with noone knowing why you were there!
I hope the xray was clear.
I'm not opening the pottery again until Saturday.
I took Helper to buy paint to finish the kitchen and then to some local beauty spots. She took me out for tea and a scone in a nice hotel.
We'd already packed the kiln and taken a car load of "rubbish " to the recycle centre.
I had come across a few treasures in the attic including this broken sign which I shall keep for one of my DC.
Goodnight Lobstars.
When my son was 12, ixion - NEVER boring and told he couldn't join the local gym until he was 14 "but we prefer you at leas 16 as you are still growing" - he was already over 6ft, so he rigged up his own system.
We get our milk in 2 litre plastic bottles with handles, so he fastened 2, now full of water to ropes which ran over the bar in his wardrobe.
He could either pull them down by hand, or with a towel-padded loop, use his feet.
Bottles were added until he was pulling 5 or 6 in each hand (more by leg) with ease. Then he went to heavier sand.
This sufficed until he was 16 when he could join a real gym - where the personal trainer advised him to begin with a 1 kilo weight
I sympathise entirely with you Doodle as even booking the taxi to get me to hospital on Monday has been a bit of a hurdle.
Is it that the left hand doesn't know (or care) what the right is doing or are they all now so woefully overworked they can't think straight?
I'm so glad your DS was with you.
I'm not looking forward to negotiating the vast, strange complex which is Auckland City Hospital alone but one thing I never lack is the ability to open my mouth and ask.
Even strangers are not safe I'll accost whomesoever I need to.
I've always been a very keen photographer and in my salad days had a (quite small-time) exhibition. I liked black and white because it made me think more about texture, shadow and composition, which taught me a lot.
ixion writes, "Did I know which was your trip to Auckland?🤔
Was it the end of the month one to your new GP practice you waxed lyrical about?
Yes to the first bit, no to the 2nd 
My appointment on 30th is at Auckland Hospital (a city in itself), a round trip of almost 50miles.
There’s a shuttle serving 3 major hospitals, so at the beginning of the month, I tried to book it.
It was then I encountered a person for whom artificial intelligence was invented because clearly she is devoid of the natural kind.
After 3 weeks of her moronic daily babbling, I gave up, told my new and local GP, who is part of Waipareira’s wellbeing system and it was she who arranged the taxi voucher.
Grammaretto If clergy came to commission your pottery, would you be taking holy orders? Yes, moronic babbling from me too.
One of the things extreme emotion (grief included) seems to do is prevent the brain from concentrating and settling easily into anything.
You don’t want to sit, you don’t want to walk, you can’t focus to read or knit or do anything at all to mitigate what’s suddenly central and persistently in your mind.
It really is as if the easy business of doing normal things, has been suspended.
There’s no remedy – at least not this side of drugs or the bottle. Only time… and that takes its own not-so-sweet time.
The only thing I miss when it's gone is money.
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