Shingles

Multiple outbreaks of shingles on one side of my face, over the years, have left me with wild tinnitis in one ear and permanent mild itching along my lower jaw line where the damned virus has damaged the nerve. On your face, shingles gets the medical profession worked up. Apparently there is risk of blindness and or facial paralysis.  No one mentioned potential damage to auditory nerves. This week's outbreak was preceded by intensified itching which I had done my best to ignore until a lesion developed....

Oh botheration, not again.  What is it 10? 11 times? I've been assured over and over that the anti-virals weaken it and it won't come back.

I wish.

Fortunately I seldom get the excruciating pain that others describe and when I do it is like a bad tempered gnome sitting on my shoulder whacking the back of my head with a shillelagh.

As a 5 year old, recently started school, I had attended school day on day, week on week as all around me were knocked down by chicken pox.  I apparently never caught it. Yeah right! Mum and my Nana eventually gave me an all over inspection and found the remnants of one spot in my hair.  That damned thing has come back, in the the last 30 years of my life, with an absolute vengeance.

Doctors advise it emerges when one's immune system is low. I guess it's my weathervane but in truth looking at all the times it has emerged, I can see no pattern and never suffer any other illness or effect you might expect from an allegedly weakened immune system.

I suffer from what is called 'rude health'. 😎😅 (for those unfamiliar with that strange English idiom, it means robust and healthy.)

We all need a bête noir I guess - shingles is mine.

Grizzle over.

Autumn has sidled in. Plums and apples are raining down in the orchard. I have been trying to get ahead of the windfalls and pick the rest before it too hits the ground. Looking around today I see the hazelnuts are starting to join the party on the ground.

Bro has a mighty pressure cooker.  I have autoclaved about 40 pounds of windfall apples, seived them and put the 'sauce' in the freezer. Now that I am caught up, the ones being picked from the trees are being sliced and dried.

Moving on to plums....

3 of these full and a few extra bucket and trugs full

Black Doris plums were so abundant this year that several branches of the tree broke under the weight of fruit. I have collected about 150 pounds: stewed and frozen, frozen from fresh, quartered and dried, made fruit leather mixed with apple pulp or banana pulp (about 4 dozen drier trays of it so far), given bags away when delivering bikes, and dropped about 20 pounds at the Community Pantry. There remains about same again to get off the tree.  I might spread some tarpaulins and shake the tree to get the rest.

Dog walking takes up a couple of hours each day. I will let Fergus report on that.

Life admin in the form of paperwork for international move of 'personal effects' has consumed what I regard as more than it's share of time.

School holidays are over.  I have been cycling in to town each morning to escort a kid, prone to truancy, to school (and back again in afternoon to ensure he goes straight home rather than hang out with pickpockets and thieves).  

Young and impressionable.

The weather has improved. February is reknowned as the best month of summer here. An English friend stopped by for two nights while on tour of the South Island. I took him walking to Mt Sunday - that's another post.

Our best news this week is that Nephew arrives from Canada on Sunday. His first visit home in 7 years.  His wife (and their son - Bro's only grandchild) follow in a couple of weeks. SiL is so excited and the house and garden have been turned over in a whirl of 'get ready for H's arrival' enthusiasm.

Blogging will continue to be intermittent while I try to get less tired. Living in a caravan suits me but i seem to be making active use of every lumin of daylight and then crashing with the sunset.  I need a Tigger to remind me to sit down earlier, do some handsewing, reading, writing, drawing..... or just being.