On the move

Ok, I am going to stop being indecisive and move to WordPress. I feel disloyal [to a blog! - Help, I really do have an over-developed sense of responsibility], but I can't have two blogs on the go at the same time, and WordPress won, despite some trouble with images, which I hope will sort itself out.

So, from now on I'll be posting under the guise of Bookmouse. Please come and visit me in my new home!

If you have a link to me, don't worry about changing it (unless you'd rather). Hopefully people can find their way from here to the new blog ok.

My latest post

Which concerns photos and dogs, can be viewed somewhere else. Sorry for flitting, I just happened to be there testing things out, so I thought I'd write something there.

Recipe: Pink Curry

Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast per person
• 1 red pepper
• Curry powder
• Chili and garlic sauce
• Garlic (fresh or sauce)
• Sliced courgette
• 1 small carton of coconut milk
• 75g of rice per person
• Cooking oil

Method

1. Measure out rice and put in saucepan
2. Boil enough water in a kettle to cover the rice. When boiled add to the rice in the saucepan.
3. Set the rice on the hob at the lowest heat and leave to cook. Keep checking it so that it doesn't stick to the pan - make sure there is plenty of water in the pan.
4. Heat oil in pan. Chop chicken into pieces and fry in oil.
5. Slice and add courgettes and pepper. Fry with chicken in pan.
6. Add curry powder to taste and stir in to chicken mix.
7. Add garlic sauce and chili sauce to taste. Stir, and simmer for a few minutes.
8. Add the carton of coconut milk and leave to cook on a low heat for about 10-15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.
9. Check rice to see if it is cooked.
10. When chicken and rice are ready, drain rice and serve with the curry.
11. Eat!

Meanwhile, in other electronic and unimportant lands

Meanwhile, in TV-land, Ruth has left Spooks. I was quite disappointed by this, in a not very important, it's only TV kind of way. She was my favourite spook, for several reasons - she's wasn't blond, she wasn't pretty (although she was beautiful), and she was a bit crazy. Harry made a good choice.

Meanwhile, in blog-land, I'm thinking of moving to WordPress. Many blogging acquaintances use this, so I thought I would investigate. I've set up a little test blog there and it seems more user-friendly than Blogger. Stuff that's only in beta here is standard there, plus it has stuff that isn't even in beta Blogger. Oops I hope Blogger don't wipe my blog now I've said bad things about it. I do still like you! Anyway, I'm staying here for now, as I can't transfer stuff from here to there until the beta becomes alpha, or whatever the techie term is. I guess I could just start a continuation blog...I might do that, but I don't like change. It's a bit like getting my hair cut. I like the thought of it, but I never quite get around to doing it, and I might just be going through a phase. I'll try it (WordPress, not hair cutting) out a bit more first and see...

Taking criticism

Taking inspiration from the Singing Librarian's post on taking a compliment, I have decided to write one about taking criticism. Like him I am also not particularly adept at taking compliments, but my ineptitude in this area pales into insignificance when compared to my complete inability to take criticism well.

I have several stock reactions to criticism:

1. Blame someone or something other than myself
2. Defensiveness
3. Self-pity (usually a bit later, when the critic has gone)
4. Over-reaction (I did this wrong, therefore I must do everything wrong)
5. More over-reaction (why is it always me who gets it wrong)
6. Comparison of self to others (why are they always right/perfect etc)

It's not a particularly life-enhancing list, is it?

An additional problem is that often, the person I see as being critical and thinking badly of me probably isn't doing so at all. In reality they were probably just giving me some advice, or reminding me of something. Even if they are telling me I've done something wrong, nine times out of ten they'll be nice about it, but I can still react badly.

Like the Singing Librarian and his reaction to compliments, my reaction to critcism can worsen the situation, especially if I am defensive and snappy towards the person who I see as criticising me. Then I will feel even worse, because I've added a nice little emotion called guilt into the equation, as well as potentially being offensive/hurtful towards another person.

So, what is my problem? Most people don't like being criticised, but some deal with it better than others. Some people can think, 'oh, ok, so I did that wrong, but that's ok, now I'll try to rectify the situation and it's good that I know what I did wrong, I am happy and at peace with the world and myself' (or something like that). I have been pondering (for a few years) on why I don't like criticism and can never seem to react very positively to it. The reason is quite similar to the reason I find it difficult to take compliments, and is the root of many of my social problems - the dreaded low self esteem/insecurity/lack of confidence thing.

Or maybe I'm just grumpy.

Blogging for history

I thought you (anyone who's reading this) might be interested in the 1 Day in History day on October 17th. The History Matters campaign want as many people as possible to record their experiences of the day, which was chosen as it's not a 'special' day, for a mass blog to be archived at the British Library. You can read the Daily Telegraph article about it if you like, or visit the History Matters website for more information.

Comments

I'm feeling a bit braver today, so I've enabled comments again.

A very bad poem about stock management, with apologies to real poets

Oh books, in cardboard boxes,
What hopes must you have had?
What dreams may you have dreamed
That now will never come to pass?

Of influencing minds of men
And changing history
Of scholarship and pleasure
That never now shall be

Your lonely lives have run their course
And no more will you live
No one will learn the secret things
That you were born to give

But, yet, yet, hope may shine for you
In the gloom of library land
For if you catch librarians’ eyes
You may yet withstand

The onslaught that is policy
Stock management for you and me
And books, which in their hundreds lay
Untouched on shelves until today,

Are now to be destroyed, alas
Are now to be destroyed.

The other side of The X-Factor

This might be a post, that, like the one about Elizabethtown, had more of a point when it was in my head that when it made it to the computer. Anyway...

I watched The X-Factor last night. It was round two, I believe, known as "Boot Camp" and people were getting thrown out quite regularly until each group was down to the final eight acts. This purging of contestants made me think a bit more about those who didn't make it to the next round. Unlike most of the contestants on "Maria", the people who enter The X-Factor competition aren't middle class graduates. A lot of the contestants, particularly those in the 25 (years old) and over category seemed to be people who had already had a hard time in life and wanted to win The X-Factor to make a better lives for themselves and their families.

One contestant particularly stood out for me. She wasn't the best singer, but it was what she said rather than how she sang that really made me think. She said that if she didn't get through [to the next round] she would become "just another statistic". She was in the competition with the aim of providing a better life for her children. She talked about the house they always looked at and dreamt about buying one day. Unfortunately, she didn't get through. It made me sad to think that she only saw herself as a statistic, and didn't seem to recognise her worth as a person, and an intelligent and articulate person at that. I hope that she can find some other way out of her situation, and that she will one day have a better life for herself and her children.

Other people in the 25 and over category included a Scottish lady who saw The X-Factor as her last chance to get out of the factory job she has been working in for about 20 years. She was quite emotional because she said that she didn't feel that she deserved to have got so far thought the competition. Happily, she got through to the final eight, and her reaction was great! I hope she has the confidence in herself to perform well enough to go on through the next rounds.

I do realise that the footage is edited, and that the producers can make people appear any way they want them to, if they want to draw people into watching the show. Even so, it made me think a bit more deeply than I expected to, which can only be a good thing, in my opinion (even if on 'paper' my thoughts haven't come out quite as clearly as I would have liked).

Elizabethtown

The story is quite simple: guy who thinks he's made a mess of his life finds some hope and love and learns to love life and realise what's important.

It didn't do very well when it was released and may not even have reached your local cinema. Many people said it wasn't very good, but I really like it. I can see why people might not have embraced it wholeheartedly - it's quite slow and a bit cheesey at times, and Kirsten Dunst can be a bit annoying. You might not like it if you are of a particularly cynical disposition. Having said that, I have been accused of cynicism many times, and it may be one of my favourite films. For me it achieves what I think is it's goal - it's a life affirming film that leaves you feeling better at the end of the film than you did when you sat down to watch it. Great soundtrack as well.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility if you watch the film after reading this post and hate it!

The students return

A colleague said to me yesterday, "You've been looking more and more stressed all week", which wasn't very reassuring, but didn't really surprise me. Nothing particuarly stressful happened this week, I think it was just a lot busier than previous weeks. It was one of those weeks where I had a list of things to do, and did some of them, but the last few things never got done because either something beyond my control stopped me from completing the task or something (or many things) cropped up and I never got round to finishing the thing I started doing. [Whoops that was a bit of a long sentence!] I realise this doesn't say much for my time management skills, which are something I should work on.

We were without a printer in our office for half the week, due to me thinking we had a spare cartridge ready and waiting, but this turned out to be an old cartridge wrapped up in a box. Oops. Totally my fault and very annoying, because we then had to walk halfway round the library (well, nearly) to collect our printing. Still, at least we could print to somewhere.

I had some appraiser training yesterday, which was helpful, but domintated by an academic member of staff who kept bringing round the discussion to suit his agenda. On the one hand, this was an interesting insight into the working practices and attitudes of academics, but on the other it was a waste of time when we were already trying to fit in six hours of training into a two hour session, and I was really anxious to learn what to do, as I've never appraised anyone before.

I have my own appraisal sometime next week (?), with our line manager who doesn't like doing appraisals and apparantly doesn't follow the proper procedure - despite being quite pedantic about following proper procedure to the point of annoyance at most other times. So, I'm not sure how much use my appraisal will be, but I'll fill the forms in and take them to him anyway, whether or not he wants to use them.

On a more enjoyable note, the office was alive with the sound of music this week - even more so than usual, I thought. We also had some ad hoc 'entertainment' from the garden outside, when a few students were gathered for an impromptu guitar/singing session. This varied in terms of levels of annoyance depending on what type of music was being played. I was quite irritated at first, but then mellowed when he changed from rock to folk and stopped yelling so much. My librarian tendencies were urging me to go outside and tell him to shut up, but I resisted.

Writing of unwelcome musical accompaniment (the student, not my colleagues), the most maddening thing about travelling on the train at the moment (even more so than the overcrowding, which is increasingly bad and getting to dangerous levels) is people who play their mp3 players/mobile phone out loud, so that we are all subjected to their taste in (mostly awful) 'music'. I don't know how can people be so inconsiderate. I have asked some lads to turn their music off before, and they asked, "Why?". Maybe that says it all.

I do feel like dancing (maybe): What's playing today at Lilian's house

I'm totally addicted to the Scissor Sisters' single "I don't feel like dancing". It's the catchiest thing I've heard in a long time and I've been playing it on repeat all afternoon, much to Mr C's annoyance, I suspect. One of my favourite things about it is that it has the words "old Joanna" (as in piano, I assume) in it. That doesn't happen very often in a pop song. It also has little laser beam shooty synthesiser sounds in it, which are quite endearing. If someone played it at a party I might even consider getting up and dancing, which, if you know me, should indicate to you how catchy and dance-making it is. Anyway, you've probably heard it for yourselves, so I'll stop wittering on. [I know the picture isn't of the right album, but I like this artwork better].

Alas, my music player has gone kaputt, and is going to be replaced, so I have been music-less on the train for the past few days. I have no idea what happened to it, but it just suddenly stopped working for no reason that I could fathom, and none of the suggested trouble shooting methods worked. Actually it's so kaputt that it wouldn't even restore the settings. I suspect it is built in obsolesence, which is rather annoying, because I've had it less than a year. At least they are going to replace it, but the point is that it shouldn't need to be replaced yet! Never mind.

Also playing chez Lilian this afternoon is Seth Lakeman, who, in total contrast to the Scissor Sisters, is a folk man from Devon. I don't know much about him, apart from the fact that he was in the same class as at school as someone I know, and he sings folk/folk rock/acoustic rock (is this an oxymoron?) songs. I like folk, and he seems like a decent sort of chap, so I bought his album. I'm quite glad I did, as it's an enjoyable delve into English folk music. It's not too 'folky' though, so it would be a good introduction to folk music for someone who isn't sure whether folk is quite their thing.

I always find folk music strangely comforting. I think it's because of the traditional nature of the songs and the fact that some of them have been sung for hundreds of years without much change. I'm quite glad about the folk music revival of recent years, because I think it's really important that we in the UK don't lose touch with our musical roots. English people in particular have a hard time finding something firm to cling on to traditions/language/music/roots-wise (in my opinion, maybe I'm wrong), but there is a whole load of traditional music out there for the listening. I know it's not to everyone's taste, but it is interesting, and I think it's important that people realise what a rich heritage we have, music wise.

Here endeth the lesson.

Next up we have hits from Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, which are from Swing! The Ultimate Big Band Album, which is one of those compilations where you get about 40 tracks for £5.00. Big band music is the reason I learnt to play the bass guitar. In reality, I never made it to playing in a big band, but I did manage a concert orchestra, where we did occasionally play big band numbers (as well as endless film soundtrack music), so all was not lost, and it made me seem less geeky. Ok, maybe I just hoped it did. Anyway, I had some fun times with my bass, (as well as some not so fun ones involving lugging a large bass amplifier up and down stairs)despite possibly being the world's worst bass player. Anyway, Tommy Dorsey was a trombone player and band leader, and did a lot of collaborations with Frank Sinatra, that's about all I know about him, apart from the fact that he had a brother called Jimmy, who was also a band leader. The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra still exists to this day, but is now conducted by Buddy Morrow.

I'm not quite sure what the point of this post was, but it took me rather a long time to write, for some reason, so I'll keep it for your reading pleasure.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

Well, it was finally the final of How do you solve a problem like Maria? last night. In case you didn't know, Connie won, and deservedly so, I think. As she said herself, she was consistent all the way through the competition. She really drew me in to her performances, and made me feel the most emotional, especially last night, when she sang As long as he needs me, a song she doesn't like, apparently! She seems to have the stamina and professionalism to play the role. Also, I think she wanted it the most out of all the would-be Marias. She had been auditioning for West End shows for a long time, and always coming second, so it was nice to think that she will now achieve her dream and not have to go back to tele-sales!

I thought Helena was great as well, though. Her performance of Do-Re-Mi was brilliant. Siobhan has a lovely sweet voice and she is very beautiful, but I think the panel were right in saying that maybe she wasn't yet ready for such a big role.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching all the 'episodes' that I watched, although I did take issue with some of the things they made the girls do. They seemed to have to sing a lot of non-musical theatre songs, which seemed a bit silly given that they were in competition for a role in a musical theatre production and not auditioning for Pop Idol. They also had to do an assault course one week, which I thought was particularly stupid. It was ostensibly to test their stamina, but completing an assault course in the fastest time doesn't mean that you're going to be able to perform in a musical eight times a week, as that involves a different kind of stamina. I was also a bit worried that the public wouldn't make the right choice. I think ALW took a massive risk when he decided to find 'Maria' using this method, but he certainly got his show a lot of publicity, and I think and hope that Connie will be able to pull off the role.

For those who may be interested

Thank you to those of you who have posted or emailed supportive, helpful and friendly things following the posting of the horrible comment. I thought some of you might like to know what happened next in the saga of going to the doctor, so here is a summary:

I went to the doctor's again and showed her the letter I'd written. She said she didn't know what to advise because I have so many abnormalities, which wasn't very encouraging! I'm going to contact my cardiologist and also follow some leads of my own to try and find out more information. At the moment though, Mr C and I are erring on the side of caution and thinking that the best plan might be to take the safest and most sensible option and not try to have children naturally. If we did decide we wanted to start a family later we would adopt, assuming we would be considered suitable adoptive parents.

Why are [some] people so horrible?

Following a particularly unpleasant comment posted on here last night/earlier today I have decided not to allow any more comments on this blog. I apologise to the nice people who have left comments in the past, but I don't want anything remotely resembling a repeat of what was posted here last night. I did consider deleting the blog, but have decided to continue for the time being, although I don't really feel like writing anything (except this short explanation) at the moment.

I may be being oversensitive, but these things get to me.

Recipe: Pork (or Chicken) with marmalade and stuff

This is one of Mr C's recipes. Again, I'm not sure how healthy this one is, but it tastes nice.

Ingredients:

• 1 pork steak or one chicken breast per person (fresh or frozen)
• 1 large onion
• Some marmalade
• Enough cheese to put on top of the pork/chicken
• Vegetable oil

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees
2. Put a small amount of vegetable oil in the bottom of a baking dish, so that the bottom of the dish is covered
3. Place the chicken/pork in the dish
4. Chop the onion and scatter over the pork/chicken
5. Put about half a tablespoon full of marmalade on each piece of meat
6. Put a thin slice of cheese on each piece of meat
7. Bake in the oven according to the instructions for cooking found on the meat packets
8. Check meat is cooked before serving
9. Serve with potatoes and/or fresh vegetable

Recipe: Fish Finger Korma

This is a recipe I made up in my student days. It has since become famous, appearing in the Choir Cookbook, and other people have even cooked it!

Ingredients:

• As much rice as you want per person
• 2 fish fingers per person
• 1 carton of coconut milk*
• Korma powder*
• 1 medium onion*
• 1 green pepper*
• Other veg of your choice*
• A bit of margarine or cooking oil

* All of these ingredients can be replaced by a jar of korma sauce, if you're feeling lazy.

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (or whatever it says on the fish fingers packet)
2. When oven is ready put in fish fingers, as per instructions
3. Boil water for rice in kettle
4. Put rice in saucepan and add boiling water
5. When rice has boiled turn right down to the lowest heat and leave to cook
6. When fish fingers are ready take them out of oven and turn oven off
7. Fry onion in oil/marge until transparent
8. Chop the fish fingers into four pieces and add to pan. Stir
9. Add vegetables to pan and stir
10. Add korma powder to taste. Stir
11. Add coconut milk and stir
12. Leave to simmer until rice is cooked or for a minumum of 10 minutes, stirring occassionally
13. When sauce and rice are cooked serve and eat

Steps 7-11 can be replaced with the adding of the jar of korma sauce.

The fish fingers can be replaced with tinned tuna, which should be drained of liquid before it is added.

Recipe: Pretend Pizza(s)

I just invented this recipe this afternoon, and I thought I would share it with you.

Ingredients:

• As many rounds/slices (depending on what you call them) of bread as you feel hungry enough to eat
• Tomato or brown sauce
• Cooked chicken or ham (if you are a carnivore)
• Vegetables of your choice (excluding carrots, which don't work well oven baked)
• Fruit of your choice
• 1 spring onion, or one quarter of one medium onion
• Cheese
• Garlic (if you like it)
• Worcestershire sauce (if you happen to have any)

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (sorry I don't know the equivalent gas mark)
2. Spread bread with tomato/brown sauce as thick as you like
3. If you are eating meat, tear up the chicken or ham and place on the bread
4. Chop onion, garlic (if you're using this) and veg and place on the bread
5. Slice cheese and place slices on top of the bread
6. Add a dash of Worcestershire sauce, if you have it
7. Place pretend pizzas in oven for 10 minutes, or until you smell burning
8. Take pretend pizzas out of oven
9. Turn off oven
10. Eat pretend pizzas

It's a nice easy thing to make if you're not in a cooking/making much effort mood. I'm not sure how healthy it is, but if you use plenty of veg and brown bread it might not be too bad.

A post that, despite its length, doesn't say much

Today, I was supposed to go into the city in which I work, and do several things, such as return library books, get my bag mended and take some unwanted books to the Oxfam (or similar) shop. However, I have not gone. There are a few reasons for this, shown here in no particular order:

• It's raining
• I go there every day to work
• It's a 45 minute train journey
• I am too lazy
• I know that if I go I'll do what I have to do and then mooch about aimlessly and possibly buy an item of clothing that I'll never wear

I will do the things I have to do in my lunch hour one day this week. Actually, in reality, I probably won't. The bag that needs to be mended has been loitering in the office for weeks, waiting for me to take it to the repair place. The books (or at least one of them) have been languishing in my desk drawer, also at work, waiting to be returned to the library.

I have just finished, and hence want to return to the library, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It took a while to get into, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of its 900 or so pages, but it was worth the effort, and I enjoyed it.

Mr C has gone to London to see a friend and go to a wargames shop, which might be detrimental to his bank account.

I keep dreaming about the Library of Doom: even in my sleep I cannot escape. I wasn't feeling too bad about work this week, mainly because I wasn't there very much, had more important things to think about, plus Enemy Number One was away this week. Actually her absence wasn't entirely a good thing, as something has gone wrong with the Inter-Library Loan reports and, due to the distribution of power (or lack of it) in the Library of Doom, she is the only person who can potentially sort this out. I felt very sorry for the Singing Librarian this week, as, due to the ILL problem, he spent two days re-doing work he had already done.

Anyway, as I said, I wasn't feeling too bad about work, that was until Friday night, on the train home would you believe, when I was talking to two colleagues, and of course, we 'had' to talk about work, and the dreaded permissions came up in the conversation. I am having an ongoing 'guilt' phase regarding my part in the reduction of permissions on the issue desk computers. I won't go into the whys and wherefores of why the permissions have been reduced because they're boring. In fact, this whole paragraph is boring, but I will plough on until I get to the point...

Which is that this issue is a good example of me being weak and also not thinking things through. Both of these failings are common in my life, in fact they probably occur on a daily basis. Every [working] day I do something that makes me think that I'm rubbish at my job. It doesn't have to be anything very big or very wrong, just something.

Then I think, 'why do I worry so much about my job?'. It's not life and death, I work in a library, for goodness' sake! But it's my job, and I want to do it well, and I especially don't want my failings to make everyone else's lives difficult. It does make me a bit cross, though, that it makes me feel bad. This morning I woke up thinking about work, and, as I said, I even dreamt about it last night. This is not on! I don't want to waste my time away from work thinking and worrying about it. Surely my brain could find something better to do?

I have been thinking recently about my future career, and about what I really want to do. Starting the chartership process has helped me a bit with this, as I'm supposed to be setting goals and then planning how I'm going to achieve them. Of course, the problem is that I'm not really sure what I want. I'm not particularly enjoying work at the moment, and term hasn't even started yet! But I think this is due to too much worrying. I don't know whether I want to work as a Reader Services person forever - the complaining students/staff get very irritating/depressing after a [short] while. I said to Mr C last night that if I didn't like the people I work with so much I would probably not want to do my current job. Hopefully I will feel better soon.

So, maybe I could be an academic librarian/faculty liason librarian. This was my original plan after my trainee year, and it's still something I would still like to try. It does involve budgets, which involve numbers, but hopefully I could get some training in this. Well, I will see. Sometimes I think I might like to be something other than I librarian, but I'm not sure what that is, apart from bestelling author, academic, jazz singing sensation, teacher, prime minister, ballerina, doctor, or songwriter. Only one (maybe two) of these is actually achievable within the realms of reality, however.

Reality = I will stay where I am until it becomes financially unviable/I get sacked/Michael Buble (sorry I can't do the accent on the e) asks me to be his singing partner.

I just visited the Lipstick Librarian (I was searching for other blogging librarians) and it seems I cannot be a Lipstick Librarian, as I am currently wearing an item of clothing with a duck on it. Two ducks, in fact. Perhaps I wouldn't want to be one anyway.

I apologise for the length and whingy nature of this post.

M.O.T.

Today I went for what is affectionately known as my MOT, otherwise known as my annual visit to the heart outpatients clinic. I don't think that's the real name of the clinic but never mind. It is held at Harefield Hospital, in Middlesex, and I've been going there for more years than I can remember (literally).

Getting there is a bit of an epic journey, involving a train into London, going all the way across London and out the other side to the far end of the Metropolitan line on the Underground, and then a bus from Uxbridge station to the hospital. One of my favourite parts of the day is the lovely view from the bus on the way to the hospital, across some lovely green fields and a very nice looking lake/reservoir.

For once, we got there really early, so we had some food in the canteen bit, and saw the same ladies we see every year serving the food. The canteen at Harefield was built in 1974, and I have visited every year since about 1980. It's remained the same all that time. I think even the ladies are the same ones. They are what I call 'WI' ladies, and are very lovely and make excellent sandwiches and tea. Bizarre fact: you can buy a postcard of the canteen from the canteen. I have done this.

I had my ECG (electrocardiogram) and Echo (ultrasound). For anyone who wants to know and doesn't (if there is anyone), the ECG is the one where they stick lots of wires to your chest, ankles and wrists using sticky pads and then get a reading of your heart rate, beats per minute, 'pattern' and other things I'm not quite sure of. If you know please tell me - I meant to ask but forgot. This is the thing, after 20+ years of having these same tests I still don't know exactly what they do!

The Echo is basically an ultrasound similar to the ones you might have seen pregnant ladies having. The technician can see 'inside' the heart - the way the valves are moving and the blood is flowing through the heart. When you're having it done you can see your heart on screen, which is quite interesting, although obviously I wasn't sure which bit was which, but the opening and closing of the valves is quite easy to make out. I had a trainee technician for this at first, but as I'm an awkward customer and my heart isn't easy to see, she had to call in another lady, who is another person I've seen for years and knows what a problem patient I am. She recognised me, which was nice. It's quite comforting to see familiar faces each time I go.

Today was my first meeting with my new doctor, after having the same one for 25 years. Happily my new doctor seems very good, and friendly and approachable as well, which is always a bonus. She was more thorough than my old doctor, maybe partly because it was my first appointment with her and she needed to find out the status quo. She tried to take my pulse, but couldn't find it (noone else can either), and measured my oxygen levels by putting one of those things on my finger. I was interested to find out that this is what those things are for (sorry if you have no idea what I mean - they have them in Holby City (yes, apologies, I do watch this)). Apparently I have oxygen levels of 98%, which is good. She asked me quite a lot of questions about how I was feeling (ok), whether I was feeling more tired now than previously (a bit) and what exercise I do (not much). She also asked if I had any questions, which I appreciated, as not all doctors take the trouble to do this.

I asked her about timescales of having the valve replaced/repaired if we decide not to/can't have children. Basically it depends on whether I feel like I'm 'deteriorating', health wise - whether I'm becoming increasingly tired or unable to do as much as I used to, etc. This is something I'll have to monitor and let her know, even if it's only a slight change. It's quite hard to measure this though. Recently I've noticed that I feel tired/out of breath more easily, but I don't know whether this is (a) because I'm older and more aware of things (b) because I'm older (!) (c) because I'm just more unfit generally than I used to be or (d) an effect of the leaky valve.

The main factor though is still the 'children issue'. If we can physically have children we would then need to decide when (or if) we want to have them*, and then the valve would have to be repaired, and then we would start trying to have them. As you can tell, the timescale for all this could be rather long, and, cliche though it may be, I'm not getting any younger.

*You could argue that we should have discussed and know this already. However, we've found this difficult to do because we don't know whether we can have any. I hope that makes sense.

I also asked the doctor about the wire(s) (see a previous post). She said that they could remove them but obviously this would involve surgery, which it's better to avoid if possible. Although they're quite uncomfortable at times I don't really fancy any more surgery than is absolutely necessary, so I suppose I'll just have to put up with them.

I apologise if some bits of this post contain too much information! I know I find my medical history interesting, but I do appreciate that not everyone else will feel the same.