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<\/a>But so that you don’t feel deprived, here’s a photo taken with the camera in my mobile phone and it shows the snow that came a-falling down today.<\/p>\nAnd you’ve no idea how nice it is to be sitting inside here, by the stove, with a mug of hot coffee and a home-made banana muffin, and watching it fall. Unfortunately it didn’t stick around because we had a weird sort of weather day. heavy snowfall and then sunlight which melted the snow, and then snowfall again, and then sunlight, und so weiter<\/em>. <\/p>\n When I went out for a walk just now, 99% of the snow had gone, but there was a crystak-clear sky with tons of stars and a rapidly-plummeting temperature. It’ll be cold tonight, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n As for my walk, this was the best so far. I’ve progressed to a fair distance now – about 150 yards away, I reckon. And I’m moving easier and quicker without quite so much pain and with less of a breathing difficulty although I still have this egg in my lungs that I can feel when I’m getting out of breath. So apart from that, there might be hope for me yet if only I could overcome this blood-loss thing.<\/p>\n So what else did I do today? <\/p>\n Apart from laughing at Manure, I spent all of the day going through my medical receipts. Now that the Insurance Company has agreed my maladie grave<\/em> and given me a case number, I can send them all in. That meant putting them in date order, finding the prescriptions that went with them, printing out a dozen or so claim forms and filling them in, and then scanning the documents in order to keep copies. That lot took me from about 09:30 to about 16:00, with a couple of pauses for coffee and home-made banana muffins and a pause for lunch.<\/p>\n And how much do they owe me then? Well, to date, bearing in mind that there are quite a few bills that have yet to arrive, it’s about three months’ pension money. And that’s what I’ve spent out in about two and a half months of illness. So you can see why I’ve been struggling and in all kinds of difficulty.<\/p>\n So why haven’t I made a claim beforehand? <\/p>\n The answer to that is that without having had my claim for a maladie grave<\/em> approved, I would have had to submit my claim under the normal procedures and only had part of the expenses approved. And then, the relevant claim file for that period would have been closed and you know just as well as I do what it would have been like trying to persuade an Insurance Company to reopen a closed claim.<\/p>\n I also had a haircut today. Liz was busy scalping Terry and so I took my turn in the queue. It needed doing but it wasn’t ‘arf cold outside afterwards.<\/p>\n As for last night, though, I was on my travels yet again. <\/p>\n I was up on the moor somewhere round by Northumberland and the Scottish border with a party of soldiers, maybe 100 of us, but we weren’t troops and in British Army soldiers but more like a throwback to Roman times, that kind of thing. We were in search of a powerful band of orc-like creatures who had been devastating this area. We had travelled so far into the wilderness and it was late in the day so the leaders of the party called for a halt for the night. He sent out two parties for observation. One of these parties had some kind of flying machine – a primitive light aeroplane made with a tubular aluminium frame but with no covering and they would fly over they area to see what was happening and see if any trace could be found of these orc-like people, while the second party, of which I was a member, would go to a watch-tower, something like a Martello tower not too far away, to liaise with whoever was in the aeroplane and receive their signals. So there we were, inside this watchtower but there was no sign of this plane – we waited and waited. Just when we considered that it was time to go back to the main party, we heard the plane flying over so the leader of our party took the lamp, a big black affair with a solar panel for recharging the battery (you have to admit that the Romans were very advanced technologically) and went outside. He didn’t return, so someone else went out, and found the first guy with an orc spear right through his body, thrown with tremendous force to the extent that it had gone halfway through him. At that moment he too was speared by the orcs, and this is how it went on. There were just 5 of us left and then the other party that had been with the aeroplane, they came back (minus the aeroplane). Not being quite aware of what was going on, I went down to meet these four people, who had a girl of about 4 with them. But there were also four other people there, two men and two women, and they were in business attire and the people from our party were looking at them. Suddenly, the penny dropped and I shouted out “run, you fools! Can’t you see that they are orcs!”. This led to something of a struggle and two of our group of four were cut down and the other two made it inside. But the little girl was left cowering by the door. I fought off these orcs and in a short time they had gone. I picked up the girl and went inside but the place was deserted. All that I could see were muddy orc footprints all over the walls and the ceiling. They had somehow managed to enter the building and removed the rest of our two parties while I was outside fighting. This left just me and the little girl, and we had to rejoin our main party a mile or two away, and God knows where these orcs were. Had they gone off with their captives, or had they killed them and were lying in wait for us, or were they attacking our main party. So we just had to grit our teeth and make a run for it, hoping that we would get through. So now, having had my walk, I’m off for another early (but not quite so early) night. I have a blood test in the morning so I need to study.<\/p>\n
\nThat was another unpleasant situation to be in and I was glad that a call of nature had aroused me from certain death. And after the usual trip down the corridor I was back with a group of children and there was gambling, people injecting themselves with needles and all of that kind of thing, which (strangely enough – or maybe not, as it happens) relates to a discussion that we were all having here on Saturday afternoon. <\/p>\n