Oh, this is a much, much better year!

Why? Well where do I start?


Plans for Expedition Romania are well advanced now and after all the intense planning and 'forced marriage' of five very different personalities, I think that we will all have a fantastic time. We are still very much in need of donations, so no matter how small, please donate on the button to the right.


My PSA remains at zero, but to add to that, my bowel cancer screening came back negative. Not that I thought I had bowel cancer. When you are 60, it's an NHS treat for you and costs nothing. You get a package in the post, 6 little wooden sticks, a smear card and an envelope that looks like it's built to carry radio active material. The instructions are clear! You must catch a piece of poo before in dives into the u-bend, but it must be a mid section. It suggests that your partner might like to help, but mine declined!   :-) With this trophy neatly laid out on the window sill, you then select a tiny wooden stick and scrape a small piece from the outer part of the object. This is then smeared onto a little square in what looks like a scratch card with a small lid. Press the lid down and store this in a cool dry place, maybe not the fridge, because you need to repeat this for the next 3 days. After 3 days, you then put all 3 cards into the armoured envelope which has a self seal, no doubt to avoid accidents during licking! I don't know who receives thousands of these every day and has to open them, but I am full of admiration at their 'job' satisfaction. Still on the medical front, I have had a Hep A vaccination and currently in the middle of a 3 part Hep B and Rabies in the lead up to our expedition to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. 

Before that I have to complete a 2 week field trip to Cornwall, so it's all go over the next few months. In my 2nd year now at Uni and luckily Beverley is always very busy with her work because mine seems never ending. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving every minute of it, but I'm worried about what to do when this degree has finished. Next week I have to undergo 'bear training' as part of the health and safety for our expedition. It's nothing to do with training bears, more what to do when one walks out on the forest path in front of you! Silly me, I thought the answer was to run like hell, but apparently bears can go at over 40mph!

We've made 2 new friends, Karen and David. Well we've known them for some time but this year we have been to see them in Liverpool and they've come to see us. The best of the best of people, such fun and great to be with, can't wait to meet up again.

Wish I could talk a bit about my family, but the blog has such a large following now and they all want to keep their lives private. But I can say that over all, everyone is doing pretty well and there's lots of great news and nothing too bad going on just now. Another reason to be grateful for 2012.

Went to London to see 'War Horse' in February, it was a birthday present from Beverley. Wow it was amazing! I couldn't imagine this being done on stage with giant puppets but yes, it works!

What about my local hospital and NHS Trust? Well I've given that a rest for now. I tracked down the ex CEO, who refused to meet with me when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. New Zealand wasn't far away enough for her to hide, and I've had thousands of hits on this Blog from over there. A popular magazine in New Zealand will be running the story shortly. I have had dozens of e-mails from worried residents in Dunedin, thanking me for exposing the record of their new CEO, when she was looking after my hospital, here in Cumbria. Hopefully the information that I gave to them will help them to monitor her progress!


For anyone in the South of England who is short of water, I can happily send you some down from beautiful Cumbria, where we always seem to have too much!