13. Another sad but good day!

It's amazing how compressed time can get, just when I thought I had plenty of time to get things done it turns out I wont have much time after all. I will explain take today for instance I had a doctors appointment this morning to change one of my pills  by the time I had seen the doctor waited in line at Boots picked up my prescription and got home and walked the dog it was gone lunchtime I had lost the whole morning, Then Lorni had to nip out to get her contact lenses and while she was out she decided to pick up a few things in the supermarket so I lost the afternoon as well LOL. So now I have changed one of my pills i can arrange to have my gums sorted which will be another day lost but has to be done. And I now have two funerals to go to, John and Damon's one on the 1st Nov and the other on the 5th, another two days lost, not that I'm complaining about having to pay my respects to two great people I'm just making a point on how quick we can lose time.

Talking about time! I have owned my incredible old Harley for 11 years now we have been through a lot together since Lorni bought her for me all that long ago, she awoke in me the feeling of freedom that I had forgotten about and of course this ended with me having a little "Spill" on my Yamaha, but it is time to let her go now I need the money to be able to move us all over to our place in Spain so the day before yesterday she was sold.

I have done a lot of work on her myself over the last few weeks, found and sorted out the oil leaks, serviced her, fitted new brakes and then cleaned and polished her as best I could before taking her for a little run to make sure everything was working ok. when I got back I took a few photo's ready for the dreaded E-by insert.

I picked "Harriet" up 11 years ago from a guy whose wife was pregnant she only had just under 2500 miles on the clock she now has over 25000 on the clock which I know isn't a lot for 11 years but I have always had other bikes as well, She took myself and Elaine around France over the Pyrenees and into Spain and back home via the Millau viaduct 5 years ago pulling a trailer that was so overloaded and overweight with no problem at all and the two years before that she took myself and Emily to the Loire Valley in France camping during the world cup.

How she looked 11 years ago when I picker up

With Emily in France

On our way round France and Spain

As you can see over the years I have added a wind screen a bigger backrest, tow bar highway pegs and I had the pipes and carburettor changed and added a hyper charger. Like any old friend I will miss her greatly but it's time to move forward and when I get to Spain I will look at another bike, one that is more practical for my needs and hopefully cheaper to run.

12, Can't get any worse to be honest!

Well there I was thinking that we had exchanged contracts and we hadn't, this time it was our solicitors that had slowed the process down, we found this out yesterday, Lorni phoned the solicitors to find out what the hold up was at 20 mins to five she received an e-mail, not a pone call, to ask for details about the charges on the house, which they already have as we are using the same solicitors that we had for the problems with "Her" by the time Lorni had hunted down the now packed documents and got back on the phone to them at five minutes to five she got the answer phone grrrrr. So now of course we can't get anything done till Monday which will set the completion date back tot he middle of November, not blood happy!!!

And if that wasn't bad enough I received some terrible news on Thursday, John Woods passed away just shy of his 90th birthday he had been gravely ill for a few days but was actually on the up and was going to be able to return home the following day. This man was my Father-in-Law when I was married to my first wife Helen he was a great man who over the years has helped out most of my family, I am very proud of my children who all got together and went down to see him a before he died. He was a great Husband, Father, Grandfather and Great Grandfather and will be sorely missed, he had served for 47 years in Her Majesty's Air Force which I reckon must be a record for active service.

RIP John Woods 1928 -2018

It would seem that sad news doesn't travel on its own, a good friend of mine from back in my school days, Damon Rowley, is very sick I went to see him a while back in Gravesend I knew he had been ill but I had no idea it was terminal, over the yeas we had kept in touch via social media,it was Damon who took me to my first concert in the now defunct Queensway Hall  in Dunstable to see a little known group called Stackridge. He has been in and out of Hospital and a post on Facebook yesterday confirmed my fears, his wife posted a quick message to say they were now waiting for a bed at the local Hospice, so say I am gutted is an understatement.

Damon used to live just round the corner from me in Sundon Park Luton he had other brothers but he was the tallest by far and probably the tallest kid in the school at 6 foot 8 inches, his Father had been a fighter pilot in the war and co-owned a couple of light aircraft that I was lucky enough to fly in, Damon got married to his long term partner Julia a few weeks back now I understand why he did it after saying never again. I do believe in miracles even though I am not religious so keep fighting mate you never know.

I have a few things to do today and one of them is to take the dog out before he bites me than I have to get into the garage and sort the Harley out, I have put it off long enough, I suppose it's because I don't really want to sell her I love that machine and would love the opportunity to strip her down and rebuild her to a near concourse standard but I don't have the time and we need the money, so best get on with it.

11. Good day bad day!!

Not that long ago there was a TV advert, for yoghurt I think, that played on the "Pleasure V's Pain" theme and that is what yesterday was like for myself and my family. I will go through the day in reverse order, the day before yesterday, Friday, I was contacted by my very tearful Daughter KT who informed me that my ex wife's (Helen) father  (exish Father in Law) John was in Hospital with a suspected heart attack and was very poorly. The following day, Saturday, was a busy day for me I had a lot to do but on top of that we had conformation of exchange of contracts on our house so Lorni and I were going to celebrate that when I got home but! later in the day we found out that John had in fact had a big heart attack and after tests it was found that he only had 35% function of his heart left and his left ventricle was totally screwed and he was suffering from quiet bad fluid retention and because of his age weight and general health the doctors will not operate on him.

John is an amazing man he joined the Air Force at 15 he was told to walk around the block and then tell the authorities his age again, you had to be at least 16 to join the RAF then. I may have got this wrong but I believe he was on active duty for about 43 years, this man is a colossus he has always helped out his family whenever he could and as KT said "he has always been there can't imagine a life where he is not there, we thought he was indestructible", John is one of the few men that have been in my life that I have ever had any respect for. 

My abiding memory of John is of him sitting in his dining room surrounded by radio gear some of it home made some of it high tech and new, Yesterday he was told how bad his condition is and having considered what he was told he signed a DNR form ( do not resuscitate) I can't imagine in any way what it must feel like to sign your own death warrant to know that you are at the "end of life" scenario. He is 90 in a few weeks and I was told that he had said "so I wont reach my 90th then" We all hope and pray he will recover but in reality it doesn't look good at all, I know all my kids are in an emotional state at the moment, it is times like this that makes us come to terms with our own mortality and that our time on this planet is finite and we never know when our time clock will get punched, so as I tell everyone including my own children, do whatever makes you happy, don't just sit there go and live your life and make it brilliant. 

So yesterday I was up at silly O'clock I had to take the truck to the caravan storage depot where Steve, Phil and I were going to take the engine out of the dragster, usually we have Dave with us but he has been suffering with the flu and still was under the weather so we met up with him at our usual meeting place, the BP garage on the A6 just before Bedford where not only did we get the trailer keys from Dave but he wanted one of my old remote planes, he intended to hang it in his flat so in front of a Police car we swapped the plane form my car to his it did fit eventually LOL

It is rather large so good luck with that Dave that's one less thing I have to sell or pack now. Anyway Yesterday was a miserable day weather wise as well and rain was forecast for the whole day not the best days for removing an engine out in the open so before we went too far Steve did a compression test on the engine and all 8 cylinders were showing 241 psi so it would seem that there is no serious damage at all and the small puffs of smoke we get at the hit are probably due to valve stem seals so nothing to worry about so we didn't have to take the motor out just yet so tidy up and go home, first we had to take a torque converter up to the Pod for our friends the Brown twins then drive home with Steve who then took my truck away for the last time...yes I did shed a small tear I love that Dodge and of course I also said goodbye to my Dragster, dam we had some fun I may get to race her again at next years Dragstalgia but that would defiantly be the last time.

All Steve's problem now, sob sob, I got home yesterday evening to find out that Chris is on his way home even though he ended up getting off at the wrong train station, Beth is still here at the moment but going home soon we had exchanged contracts on the house I had relinquished responsibility for the racing team shifted on of my planes all of which was good news but balanced by what was happening to John I didn't feel like celebrating then I saw on Facebook that Montserrat Caballe had passed away at 85 she was the opera singer who sang "Barcelona" with Freddy Mercury.

It has been a real up and own day today I hope for everyone's sake that today gets better and better, for me I am having the day off, I'm also not as young as I would like to be and I need a rest these days after any amount of hard work or a long day. On Friday just gone I also had two eye tests one for glasses and one was my annual Diabetic eye check, good news on both fronts my eyes haven't changed in three years, oh well little victories, Next week is going to be very busy again, more runs to the tip a run to Essex to off-load more planes and time to sort out pensions and some paperwork and sort the garage and Harley out, time is running out!!

10. Family???

The word Family seems to have new meanings in this day and age, what with the seemingly continuous onset of poofy types and their rights being stuffed down our throats, and the fact that being married now is deemed old fashioned, it is getting harder and harder to specify who is Family and who is not.  But! there is one thing I will always stand by and that is my "Family" so when I see someone having a go at one of my family members I will take umbridge if it is one of my children then look out, now I don't care if you are one of my kids "partners" don't you dare ever slag them off on a public forum like Face-book. This morning I read a message on Face-Book from my sons other half and i was not nice and it was not the first time so I phoned Phil and told him what had been put on the net and I said " I think it's about time you told her to stop doing that as I will answer her next time and it wont be nice" OK so no more than a few minutes later I get it as well. big mistake so rather than lowering myself to her level I simply deleted her from my friends list, I really don't want to read the frantic attention seeking drivel of a person that is so obviously Bi-Polar. I've probably inadvertently started World War 3. I then get a txt from my daughter who also read Face-Book who is now as outraged as myself and has also deleted this person..oh dear..Sorry Phil but enough is enough!

With the reasonably warm days we seem to be getting at the moment we are also getting some amazing sun-sets and sun-rises, yesterday evening I noticed a particularly good one so I ran upstairs with my camera and clicked off a few and when I looked through them this is what I got.

I have to say I am pretty impressed, although I am dam sure that I will be able to snap some even more impressive sun-sets in Spain very soon. I say very soon as the purchaser has been is touch to say he will be ready in two weeks time..wow that might be a wee bit early for us we need around 28 days to get everything sorted so it's now all hands to the wheel and away we go. Also something else that has been worrying me lately is Harry he has not been right he has had the runs and a temperature bless him.

He seems a little better today but not much if this continues I will have to take him tot he vet I am just worried that they will find something "bad" and at the moment I really couldn't deal with that, harry and I have an amazing bond I swear he can read my mind, I just can't imagine life without him and at the moment life is very stressful and it is Harry that is keeping me sane. Today I have made two trips tot he tip to dump one two seater settee and a load of junk spent an hour on the phone cancelling all my motorbike web sites and moved some boxes around walked Harry twice and now I am looking at what I can shift up to the tip tomorrow. It never ends LOL.