On Monday and Tuesday I had my last two bathing and massage sessions in the baths and now have to grin and bear my arthritis pain until about March or April when I hope to get another referral, assuming they haven't abolished it by then. I got the telephone number of a couple of masseurs, so if I get too desperate I can have private treatment, but that's a) expensive and b) will not provide the medicinal powers of the thermal waters that are only available in the baths. On the very last morning I managed to have a really good chat with a group of oldies, who meet at one particular corner of one of the basins and whom I have tried to get friendly with all year. Still, now hopefully they will remember me when I return (if I return) in the spring.
Wednesday was the day of the midweek score event I organised and ran with the help of Nemeshazi Laci, my good friend and Roy. Andor was supposed to have come too, but cried off at the last minute quoting work commitments as well as health issues. He did sound a bit rough on the phone, so I let him off. The weather was bitterly cold and the thick cloud cover produced a twilight-like gloom over the city, but still about 45 people turned up, several going out to run more than once. The course (which is unique in these parts, as they don't know the score system at all) was very well received (see piccies!)in spite of the fact that the shape of the island does not make it ideal terrain for a score event. The only hiccup was that the thermal printer gave up the ghost in the bitter cold, I suppose the battery being about 6 or 7 years old didn't help either. Consequently I had to visit the federation offices to get help to extract the results from the download box. While there, my good friend Marci managed to update the software in the download box and promised to update the rest of the boxes sometime in the future when we both have time to deal with them. Yesterday, almost the entire day was spent with typing up the results, as I didn't have the SI score software, so had to use cards and punches for the controls with SI used only for Start and Finish.
Today we were supposed to go to the first winter training event, but in the morning I thought better of it. I had sneezes, coughs and a slight headache and the thermometer barely went above zero, so we stayed indoors in the warm. Tomorrow we will go back down to the village and hopefully spend at least a week or possibly more there. This unexpected extra time today was spent by e-mailing our annual Christmas Message out to our friends, although probably quite a few have already seen it on Facebook. All I have to do now is to put it up on this blog as well and that would have saved me having to write hundreds of Xmas cards!!
There was another interesting interlude today, which I thought I might share with you all. Roy had a colleague many moons ago who had retired when she married her long time boyfriend and moved out of Brighton. We kept in touch for years, but for some reason we have not heard from them for the last 3 or 4 years. On the other hand, none of our e-mails have been returned, so we assumed they are still around. So, today Roy put her name into Google and up came an interesting bit of information about her running a music appreciation group in her house with the telephone number. Yippeeee, I thought and I rang her. Apparently we have not been sent to Coverntry, just over the years with one thing and another, plus the possibility of e-mails going astray we lost touch. I had a lovely half an hour chat with her and now all is well. How nice!!
Finally, we had a chat with the Canadian half of the family, but without the little monster, who was in no mood to chat to Grandma. He was watching a video and generally making a nuisance of himself, as usual. This explains the lack of snapshots, but at least I had a chance to talk to Alex and Meaghan.
Now I am off back to my book, which is the first volume of Stephen Fry's autobiography. I love that bloke, he is funny, sincere, very human in all his frailty, but first of all he has a way with the English language which gives me tremendous pleasure and entertainment.
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