Dogs, Chickens and Vintage China

I know you don't want to hear this but I'm afraid I'm going to tell you anyway. I haven't had a poo since Sunday night. This is not a normal situation for me I'm a two times a day man. To be fair this is perfectly normal when I go into hospital. My pristine arse cheeks have not sullied the sides of a bed pan in all the visits to hospital I've had over the last going on forty years. I wait, as any red blooded male should, until I can access a proper toilet, preferably my own proper toilet. However events have taken a certain turn for the worse today. I've managed to put my back out whilst washing my bollocks, this was unexpected, not to say a little fucking inconvenient.  I know most of you will find this difficult to believe but I can hardly sit up let alone shuffle arse first to the loo. And now I am assailed by the second existential dilemma in two days. I really want to take some codeine to relieve my unbelievably painful back. Just as an asid...

The universe hates me! So, I've been using a pee bottle for three days now and remediation of the under carriage was desperately needed. I called my professional nurses (Ocean & Helen) and Operation Dingleberry swung into action. Ocean supplied the towels and fresh underwear and Helen bought in a bowl of hot water. I commanded them to leave the room as I had no intention of 'doing a Noah' it might have scarred Ocean for life. I got down to the, frankly, unpleasant job of ensuring the old meat and two veg were sparkling clean. I even surprised myself by washing my face first.😁 I was all done and even though I say so myself I'd done an absolutely marvelous job. I picked up the bowl to move it to one side and put my back out. I'm not joking here, I cannot fucking move for the pain, luckily I have plenty of painkillers and on the up side a freshly laundered gentleman's sausage. I shall just lay here and wait for the house to burn down as a finale.

I'm struggling with one of the great existential dilemmas of our age. Three in the morning is a proper Sartraian... thats not a word is it... time. Come on keep up, John Paul ...Parisian cafe society... no, oh well never mind. Now back to my stream of what I like to call 'consciousness'. Existential dilemma... that's the badger... I'm having one of those. It's both existential and a dilemma I like to feel. Existential, cos it's happening to me right now and def'nitly a dilemma 'cos I can't make my mind up. And the dilemma proposes itself thusly, 'to duvet or not to duvet'. Now your common or garden duvet has one very persuasive property, it's warm, specially in a room that is now down in the low teens and causing hypothermia in the dog. However, and this is the nub, it's also heavy and when unnameable persons have done this to your ankle it's fucking uncomfortable. So I'll leave it with you suddenly slightly queasy rea...

Do these things happen to other people in hospital? I've had the operation and come round in the recovery ward. While the general anaesthetic wears off I spend most of the time asleep. I've got those little oxygen prongs in my nose, the problem with these is you get a really dry throat and drink loads. During the night I'm in ridiculous amounts of pain and spent quite a lot of my time on morphine, on morphine and drinking copious quantities of water. The result of this is that you piss, like a horse and I fill up two bottles with a fine vintage,  I wake up when the nurse comes in to do the obs and give me more morphine, I tell her the last bottle is full and she says that she'll get someone to come in and empty it. So I'm lying there tripping off my tits on morphine and the urge to pee comes over me, it's alright the nurse will be here in a minute with another bottle but she doesn't arrive and I'm now getting a bit desperate. Right,  I can use the pa...

I have shamelessly nicked this from Davina McCall, however it was advertised as sugar free which even though it has very little it still had too much for me due to the raging diabetes I have removed the sugar So I removed the maple syrup from the original recipe and replaced it with a date mashed up in boiling water. Makes quite a lot 1kg porridge oats 100g desiccated or flaked coconut 300g nuts, lightly crushed into pieces (any kind are good, but almonds add sweetness) Four pinches of salt 6 tbsp coconut oil (or another type of oil, but coconut oil is best) so far I've used rapeseed and olive oil due to a singular lack of coconut oil 4 tbsp boiling water 2 large or 4 small dates 3 egg whites Optional: Handful of raisins Preheat the oven to 150°C/130°C Fan/Gas 2. Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper. Put the oats, coconut, nuts and salt in a large bowl. If your coconut oil has set, warm it gently in a pan until just melted. Chop the dates and add to the b...

My daughter Ocean is at Uni and was complaining to us that she wanted to do curry but never had the right spices and moreover didn't have anything to keep them in since the kitchen was the size a fairly small rabbit hutch.  So for Christmas I paid a visit to Kin Yip Hon and bought all the spices that I use and Helen went to Ikea and got a little wooden storage unit that fitted twenty spice jars. Since Christmas Ocean appears to have been cooking non stop and the other day asked me for my favourite recipe.  This is my go to recipe, the one that I do when I’m in a hurry or the one that I modify the most with other ingredients. With many thanks to  Veg Recipes of India  who have some of the best recipes. This recipe borrows from many of theirs.  Dry frying spices 4 or 5 Cloves – I just grab some and chuck them in, sometimes more sometimes less (laung) ¼ tsp of fennel seeds (saunf) 4 or 5 green cardamom – see cloves (hari elaichi) 1 black cardamom - spl...

Recipe from the forum on diabetes.co.uk  I know that this sounds too good to be true :lol: yes, low fat, sugar and dairy free :shock: but EVERYONE who has tried this  always  asks me for the recipe as it really is delicious. If you use the optional brandy it really makes it really special. The original recipe is from my favourite vegetarian writer Rose Elliot and is from her new book Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian. The cake also freezes well (as with it being sugar free does not keep quite as well as a traditional cake). You can also make this cake with gluten free flour for coeliacs. A really good, dark rich cake particularly if you use prunes in it and a very credible substitute for a more diabetic friendly Christmas Cake. 225 g Chopped (sugar free) dates 275 ml Water 450 g Mixed Dried Fruit (I use a combination of Sultanas, Raisins, Currants, Prunes, Apricots, Unsweetened Cherries etc what ever are your favourites - chop up any big pieces of fruit) 175 g Whole...