2012

Another year and it’s already the 6th January, where is this year going!

Christmas decorations came down on the 2nd January as Daniel was starting work on the 3rd so he took the boys, Lennon and Dhylan, out for the day with Julia. They were gone all day until about 16:30 so Marlane and I had plenty of time to dismantle it all, pack it into the correct boxes and back into the attic until next December.

Looking a bit bare now as it always does when the decorations come down. It’s nice to get back to normal though no matter how much we really enjoyed the holiday period.

6 January – Went with Daughter Johanna and her boyfriend Ed to look at cars. He has a small motorcycle but is finding it hard in the cold weather travelling to work and back. We found a couple of nice cars and he has plumped for a V registered Vauxhall Corsa. I’m not a great fan of Vauxhall but this appears to be a very good model and in very good condition. Hope he has a few years of good motoring out of it. He rang the garage this afternoon and booked it. Should get it around mid next week after it has been MOT’d. He gets a 3 month mechanical warranty so that should cover any initial hiccups but I have a good feeling about it. He’s going to sell his motorbike, I’d have it off him if it was bigger but it is only 125cc.

I’ve now got to work on getting rid of the extra kilos put on over Christmas. Currently at 85 kg, which is overweight for my 5′ 10″, so I’ll chart my progress.

10 January 2012

My Mothers birthday, she would have been 84 today.

Had a lot of activity on my RAF Masirah website just lately, partly due to the RAF Masirah and Salalah Assocation starting up. Had a contact just today from an ex Snowdrop who was there over the same period as myself.

Also, the RAF Luqa Remembered website has had some input from an ex member of 1151 MCU (Marine Craft unit), which is very welcome as I have very little information on the unit on the website.

Tomorrow, 11 January, I have a Jet Age Museum committee meeting and then on the 12 there’s a Vulcan to the Sky lecture in Cheltenham, plus a dentist check up on the 12th. On Friday 13th I’m giving blood which always makes me feel like I’m doing something useful. So all in all quite a busy week for this retired old bloke! Now it is 2012 it means I only have 1 year 10 months before I get my state pension, that should make quite a difference to our income and enable us to do some of that travelling that I’ve been promising myself.

As it is I do intend to try my trip in the MX-5 to Malta this year. Planning to begin soon although I have been thinking of some of the practical problems such as laundry, where to stop off for a night or two, camping or B&B? Lots of things to find out, ferry timetables etc.

22 February

All change on the plan to travel to Malta front.  Now planning on flying there for the Malta International Air Show, worked out the costs for driving, fuel, ferries etc. and it worked out at around £2,500 !

I’ll fly out 26 September and return 03 October. While there I am going to attend the Malta International Air Show. The organiser is a member of the RAF Luqa Forum that I run and has said he will get me a VIP ticket so that’s got to be worth the trip in itself.

Staying at the Milan Due hotel and hope to meet up with some ex-RAF blokes while there, including some that I served with in 72-73 in Malta.

I may still do a trip down through Italy during the summer but stop short of getting the ferry to Malta.

Some catching up to do with the Jet Age Museum as well. Another Joint Event in April on Easter Monday. This is with the Vulcan to the Sky Club and will be held at the Flying Shack, Gloucestershire, Staverton, Airport.

Building work will begin in May on the new museum premises so that is quite exciting. Museum should be open to the public in September.

04 March 2012

Well, what an expensive few months for cars! Rover has had Cam Belt & Water Pump, over £300. Air conditioner rad and pipes, can’t remember off hand but it was close to £200. Service and MOT wasn’t too bad but still £200! Yesterday it was the main radiator and that was another £202. The MX-5 had a service and MOT booked for £270 (Major service) and that turned into £420 when they found a broken drop link on the suspension. Plus both Insurances which came to nearly £500 and then Road Tax end of Feb and that was nearly £400.

As you can imagine, the savings have had to take a hammering for this lot but it also makes us think about going down to one car!

Did a lot of hedge trimming last weekend so that it didn’t hang over the drive as much as it did, which made it awkward getting in and out of whichever car was parked next to it. Had to push the bike and that wasn’t easy with the brakes seized on after condensation had set in underneath the coverings that I’d put over it. Not sure if it’d the pads stuck or the cables.

Good thing was that Daniel tidied the garage at the same time so I did manage to get it into the garage to minimise any damage already done.

The bike now fits into the slot on the right hand side since Daniel tidied the stuff to the left of that and in the left hand garage also.

You can see why there has been no work done on the bike in the past year!

Now got the rear wheel off. Got some garage lifting things but not when I took this photo.

05 April 2012

Had a cheque this morning addressed to me and ‘O.M.Rose Dcd’. It was £49.00 from NS&I for my mothers premium bonds. It’s very nearly a year since she died, it seems a lot longer so much has happened in the past year. Still miss her at times and her photograph is on the side in the dining room so she’s with us a lot. One of her favourite things was eating so she’s quite happy in the dining room.

Trip to Italy postponed until next year as I’ve been asked to do a couple of days at the IET (Institution of Engineering & Technology) stand in Cheltenham when they are attending the Science Festival in June. They would like a ‘Vulcan’ prescence to give an engineering interest to classes of schoolchildren. I was panning to do the Italy trip during June but I’d like to do the festival, and the rest of the year I’ll be busy with airshows.

Had a front and rear garage stand delivered for the bike so when the weather picks up again I’ll try it out and get the bike out of the garage. Waiting for Jason to get in touch about the welding.

06 April 2012

Quiet day today, after walking the dogs we finished off painting the stairs and hallway, did the landing area yesterday. Had a TESCO shopping delivery, loads of stuff to ensure we are well stocked for Easter.

I’m using an old Sony Vaio laptop as I have broken the keyboard on my Dell. This one has an Ubuntu operating system, Linux. It’s getting better and better as I get used to it, wouldn’t want to go back to Windows unless something drastic happened to this one. It’s much smaller, lighter and will be great for traveling. It only had 512MB of RAM but I’ve got a couple of 512MB memory cards from Julia’s old, smashed, laptop and put one of those in the spare slot. It works so now got 1GB of RAM, makes a huge difference.

The other Roses were out all day from about 0900 and are now nearly back home and it’s 1845. They’ve had a great day by all accounts. Started off at West Midland Safari Park and we’ll find out soon what else they did.

07 April 2012

Julia came home today and brought her boyfriend, Chris, with her. We’d met him before and he’s a really nice bloke, RAF Copper like Julia but he is posted to another UK camp. Hope they keep it up, she deserves a nice man for a change. Had a good day today as well with a bit of lazing around, lots of preparing vegetables for tomorrow, eating and Indian take-away but we’d made our own rice, dal, Bombay potatoes. Best thing is the frozen Parata’s we get from Asda, closest thing to the parata’s I used to get in Singapore in 1970.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and we have 11 for dinner! Big leg of lamb and big beef joint to cook.

08 April 2012 – Easter Sunday.

Although I’m not religious nowadays, consider myself a ‘Humanist’ rather than anything else, Easter was a huge part of my childhood and was a bigger celebration than Christmas in many ways. Always centred around Church activities. The physical Church has gone the way of my belief, demolished in the 80′s!

My mother believed, I’m sure of that, although she was not a church goer in her later life. It was Easter Sunday last year (but the 24th April) that she died but it will always be Easter Sunday that reminds me of it and I will always think of her and miss her.

When I was a child Easter was the time that I would get a new outfit, shorts, shirts, socks, shoes, kitted out head to toe. There would be a huge parade in South Shields of all the organisations such as Scouts, Guides, Sea Scouts, Salvation Army, Mothers Unions, Bands etc. It was a great time and, of course, a very religious time with many hours spent at Church, St Francis of Assisi in Taylor Street, leading up to the Ascension.

11 April 2012

Had a great day on Monday when I attended the second joint event with Jet Age Museum, Vulcan to the Sky Club and the Flying Shack.

Gloster Javelin                                  Hawker Hurricane                            Gloster Meteor

It was a very wet, windy and cold day but we still had a good turnout despite the weather.

15 April 2012

Friday and Saturday were mostly taken up with updating and amending my bundle for the Employment Tribunal on 11 May. Monday I’ll check it over, make any corrections, copy and bind 4 copies of it. Might take me into Tuesday/Wednesday to do it though.

After 2 weeks off doggy school, plus a third week because of Easter Monday, Jonty and Foxy will be back to obedience classes again tomorrow evening.

Marlane bought a bike for Dhylan off ebay. Went to pick it up this evening, it was only a few miles away at Slimbridge. Looks good and during the week I’ll give it some spit and polish before he sees it. Hopefully the weather will be good next weekend and he will be able to ride it around. He has no idea we were getting it.

24 April 2012

Anniversary of my Mum dying, RIP Mum we still miss you and talk about you.

Picking up my Mother in Law today who has spent a fortnight with her friend in Newcastle on Tyne. At the weekend, Saturday 28th, attending a V-Bomber Force reunion at Newark Air Museum.  Hopefully get a good shot of XH558 on it’s first flight of 2012.

Took the dogs to Agility last Thursday, they both loved it so looking to take them regularly but not sure whether to continue going to the same place or to go on a 6 week course (couple of hours a week, not an intensive 6 weeks!) at nearby Eastington. I’ll have a word with the chap that runs it and then decide.

02 May 2012

Booked a one to one session with the Eastington bloke to assess which of the two dogs would be best to take to agility – Bichon or Chihuahua.

Also, Display season is kicking off with a number of air shows coming up. First one for me is the Cold War Jets day at Bruntingthorpe, near Leicester. I’ll be in the Vulcan to the Sky Club tent helping out with selling merchandise, making coffee etc…..

Also, on the 1st May went to Gloucester park for a local newspaper photo shoot to promote the 12 May ‘Paws on Patrol’. This is a crime prevention initiative to get dog owners to keep their eyes open for suspicious stuff and report it on 101, the national non urgent police contact number.

06 May 2012

What an amazing day at Bruntingthorpe Aviation Cold War Jets Day. Lots of photos and videos on my skydrive at

SKYDRIVE FOR BRUNTINGTHORPE

1989 Suzuki GSX750FK Rebuild

After being made redundant on 30 March 2009 I have not found much time to fit anything in but it’s all Gardening, Jobs around the House, nipping here and there to do some shopping or things for my dear Mother-in-Law.

I felt a need to do something, after working in Telecommunications for 45 years (see blog ‘RAF and Beyond’) I wanted something different.

I’ve always liked motorbikes, although not a continuous biker I do enjoy them. First bike I had was a Honda CB175 in 1974 (That’s it in the picture). This was my ‘Learner’ bike and I passed my test about a month after getting the bike from Nettletons Motorcycles, Gloucester. Nettletons don’t exist any longer but they were a great family bike shop on London Road. I used

that bike for almost a year until earlyish 1975 when I needed to sell it to get a car (Triumph Herald) due to impending marriage.

Next bike was around 1995 after my Honda Accord was stolen (actually, it was broken into and pushed into the river Thames at the wharf on Ray Mead Road, Maidenhead). I used this Honda CB250 Superdream for about 2 years to commute between Maidenhead and Gloucester, all year round, but sold it when I got a company car in 1997.

So, with this in mind I thought a motorbike would be a good idea but due to not getting any redundancy, notice, consultation period etc. I needed to do it on the cheap. Decided to get a wreck of a bike and rebuild it.

If nothing else, my attempts at this project should give experience bikers a laugh!

I advertised in the local Gloucester press and was amazed by the number of res

ponses. I finished up with dilapidated, and much abused, Suzuki GSX750F. It’s a 1989, ‘F’ registration, and has had the rear subframe cut off to make a ‘Street Fighter’ bike.

Many bits are held on with electrical tape and cable ties. All these have been cut off and restoration to replace bolts etc. has started.

I obtained the bike on 25 May 2009 and, with much assistance from Brother-in-Law Andy and his van, I got it back home from the previous owner who lives in Cheltenham. More photographs are on my Windows Live Skydrive

Over the next 3 weeks I spent some time, on and off, removing items such as the seat, petrol tank, air box. This photograph shows the sawn off rear subframe where an attempt has been made to make it into a ‘Street Fighter’ bike.

The Petrol tank is rusted through on the bottom See other photos with rust holes ringed) and I’ve removed the tap and gauge float assemblies as well as the tank filler cap assembly. I’ve order a new tank from e-bay, plus other items such as rear subframe. I had bought some round and square tubing to insert into the sawn off pieces and get them

welded but I though

t a complete subframe assembly would be a better bet. Just hope I can fit it when it arrives!

10 June 2009 – I’ve now received a clock cluster, mounting bracket (but I think I need the front fairing to use it), and the rear subframe. Not sure the subframe is the right part

I was looking for but got it for a good price so it’s not really a problem.

This photograph show the top of the engine with the petrol tank removed.

Still not got petrol into the carbs to try the engine but that is my next step before I spend any more money.

Been too busy on a garden project over the past week

end and this week so have not been able to spend any time on the bike.

15 June 2009:

I’m pretty

sure the rear subframe is not correct so, when I can verify the engine fires up ok, I will use the tubing I’ve bought and get the original rear frame welded back on. It all seems to be there, some lights etc are missing but e-bay should be able to sort that out.

Had intended to try the engine earlier, with the ‘Drip Feed’ method (see photo on the left, courtesy of a guy from TMF) for the petrol, but not really had time over the past week or so. I always did think this

would take me a while and I also need to spend time just poking around and looking at the Haynes manual to get familiar with what I’m looking at. E.G. Not too sure which are the breather tubes and which are the fuel feed tubes to the carbs, not going to get very far firing the engine up if I don’t know that! Incidentally, whoever had sprayed the frame black also sprayed everything else in sight so I had to clean off the paint from the window where the oil level can be checked!

Hoping the fuel tank will arrive tomorrow so I’ll see what I can get done this week.

16 June 09 – Tank did arrive as expected, appears to be in good condition but no key to unlock the filler cap. I will use the cap lock of the old tank, luckily I removed all the bits earlier before throwing away the tank body. Although the old cap and the tap look ok the float for the fuel gauge is rusted to hell and useless but it all aids the learning experience of what these are and

what they look like inside. I had no idea what the inside of a bike fuel tank looked like or contained. The tank I’ve got from ‘Daley’s Dirtbikes’ (ebay) has good condition tap, cap and looks like the float mechanism is good as well.

18 June 09 – Problem encountered with the replacement tank in that the filler cap is locked, no key! I contacted Simon, at Daley’s Dirtbikes, and also posted for suggestions on the TBMF (The MotorBike Forum). Simon came back very quickly, as did Frankie on TBMF. I followed two of the suggestions jointly because the one that said to use a large

screwdriver and molegrips as a key did not initially work. After getting the biggest drill bit that I had in my box and drilling down through

the lock I tried the screwdriver trick again. It worked and I now have the old cap on the replacement tank.

Still had a little problem in that the old cap caught on the hole that it fits into when trying to close the cap to lock it. I put it in my vice, jammed the key open, so the bolt was drawn back, and filed a

bit off the bottom of the opening where the bolt is located. Fits fine now although does not look straight in the photograph as I have not put the allen bolts in to secure it because I have some more work to do on it.

I’ve also sanded the top with Wet & Dry fine paper to take off the old black and red paint.

28 July 2009:

Here I am now at the end of July and not been able to touch the Bike since the last post

regarding the tank. Not had any time to set up fuel try starting the engine. Got some pointers though from an old friend in BT about checking that the crank actually turns before trying to put

fuel through it.

Reason for stopping work on it has been the building of an en-suite for the guest bedroom, grandchildren visiting and general decorating work that has been neglected due to work (job of!). Now that I’m not working I don’t seem to have a minute to myself. This project was supposed to give me something to do.

05 June 2010:

I thought that 2010 was going to a good year to work on the Bike but it has not proved to be the case with a marriage, moving furniture from one place to another, and just when I thought the garage was going to be empty my elder daughter called off the August wedding and moved out from where she was living, with her furniture which is now in the garage again as you can see in the photos!

I haven’t been totally idle, I managed to get a practically new seat from ebay (seller Pitstop) and It’s in excellent condition. Hoping garage will be emptied, somewhat, during July!

26 July 2010 – A lot of that stuff has now gone, and a good deal more in mid August when my RAF daughter gets back from the Middle East. Still busy painting and putting stuff on walls at my other daughters new flat but that should be finishing soon, Inshallah!

Another thing I noticed is the VIN plate is missing, gets more suspicious by the month this bike. Anyway, I’ve got a replacement reg document and Suzuki UK have advised me to start the VIN process through the local main dealer in Gloucester.

29 July 2010

In a mad half hour I found some time to start looking at the bike. Loosened the allen bolts on the nearside cover to have a look at this nut I can turn to make sure the pistons are free and moving.

All bolts out but the cover would not move. I took a rubber mallet to it, gently, and it started to loosen, at which point oil started to leak out.

After a frantic dash to the cupboard where I keep my oil change stuff I got a bowl underneath before too much went on the floor. I have plastic underneath the bike so wouldn’t have been a nightmare anyway.

Decided to speed up the process by removing the sump bolt, which resulted in a whole bowlful of oil. Need to check how much should be in there because it looks like an awful lot. I’ve got an empty oil can so I can measure how much I’ve got in the bowl.

30 July 2010

Applied the principle of RTFM and realised I’d loosened the wrong plate. Above the one I had loosened is a smaller cover which, when removed, reveals the elusive magic bolt that can be used to turn the engine.

All seems to be ok with this procedure but there was a lot of sandy, gritty, material in the top

part of the cover where some cables disappear into the inner reaches of the engine (need to find out what they are, again will RTFM to find out).

I cleaned out this sandy material with a small paintbrush, I presumed it shouldn’t be there.

This evening I also removed the spark plugs, filling the gaps with kitchen roll to prevent any dirt from falling down into the holes.

They are not the easiest plugs to remove, they are very deep and the wiring looms over the top of the engine makes it difficult to reach the middle two plugs.

Thanks to my old Dad (RIP) I have his tools. He always did his own mechanics and had an extensive tool kit which includes a deep reaching plug spanner which I can fit a ratchet onto the top of otherwise I’d never have gotten them out.

01 August 2010

Early morning I was up with the dogs (no, not the lark, we’ve got two dogs) and had another go at the oil filter which I could not shift yesterday. It’s a new filter but in trying to get it off I’ve buckled and bent it so ordered a new one plus a sump plug.

Today I thought that I needed more leverage and got out my old dad’s socket set which has a longer handled ratchet. That did the job and it came off with just a little oil that had not drained out when I drained the sump a couple of days ago.

Put the plugs back in, after cleaning the contacts up with a bit of wet & dry, and even managed to get the air filter box back on which has defeated me for months! Amazing what can be achieved with gentle tapping with a rubber mallet.

If the engine works it will all be stripped and new plugs, air filter etc. but I hope to strip down to

the frame for painting etc….

03 August 2010

Hmmm, some doubt about the seat I got off ebay. I’ve joined a couple of forums which are proving to be invaluable. Here’s the links to the threads I’ve got on each.

The Motorbike Forum

Suzuki OldSkool first thread

Wrong Seat Thread

Member Project Thread

I’ve messaged the supplier that I got it from on ebay but that was back in May. Just want to confirm if the seat is the correct model as I think the locking mechanism may have been moved by the bloke that was cutting the rear off to make it a streefighter bike.

Note 6 Aug – Supplier asked me to return the seat and they will give a refund, minus P&P of course. If I’d been wiser, can’t get much older, I’d have kept the original seat and recovered it. Didn’t know you could get covers for them!

04 August 2010

Got the plastic bottle top mastick’ed up with two tubes ready for some petrol to go into the carbs and try starting the engine. I’ll leave it until everyone’s at work during the day because it may be a little noisy, there’s no exhausts on the bike!

I’ve received and fitted the new oil filter and sump plug/washer, topped up the oil (3.8 litres as it has a new filter), previously cleaned the plugs etc.

If this works I’ll renew all the rubber tubing for the tank, new plugs and whatever else that can

be replaced.

05 August 2010

Nope, didn’t work. However, after the advice I’ve been given I don’t suppose I really expected it to. I didn’t cleant out the carb pots and the jets must be bunged up with ‘Carb Varnish’ from the residue lying there over the past 4 years. The bike was last taxed in 2006 so I’m presuming the engine has not been started for 4 years but even less would cause carb problems.

Busy with daughters flat jobs and lawn turfing the next few days so probably not get around to stripping the carbs until next week.

10 August 2010

Managed to get the carburetters off without too much trouble at all. They are looking fairly grungey but I haven’t

yet had the time to remove the bottom pots to see just how bad it is.

This view is my thumb holding open the vent between the carb and the air filter. It looks dirty in there, with the brown stuff being the carb varnish, but not sure how thick it is. Hoping I can get rid of it with soaking using a can of solvent but only been able to find sprays so far. A forum entry pointed me to a website that says boiling them for 1.5 hours will do it. Not sure about this

but it might be worth a try if I can’t get a can of solvent to soak them in.

I think I will have to get a new set of ‘o’ rings as well. This one looks a bit oval to be an ‘o’ ring!

21 August 2010

I don’t know if they were ok to start with (doubt it) or if it was the daily squirting that did it. 

Before I dismantled them I turned the whole assembly to look for the bowl screws and a load of liquid came pouring out. I think this was a mixture of petrol (from trying to start it over a week ago) and the carb cleaner. I could not see any

evidence of varnish so I think it was the cleaner that did it. 

Just got to refit and see if there is any firing when I try again. If not I guess it’s new plugs and probably HT leads.

23 August 2010

Refitted carb assembly but no go with regard to starting. Battery recharged and will start to work my way back starting with plugs and leads. Could be a number of things but need to check I’m getting a spark first.

26 August 2010

Well, I’ve got a spark but still not starting.

However, the seat and tank look great!!

8 September 2010

At last the big furniture has gone and starting to make some room in the garage and getting it organised.

 

November 2010 to January 2011 – I just give up, daughter has moved out of her RAF married quarter and her furniture is now back in the garage, what a waste of time. I just need to organise it and see if I can get a bit of space around it to do something at least!

09 May 2011 – And now my Son, daughter in law and two grandsons are living with us in Gloucester after deciding they really don’t like living in Birmingham. At least he’s got a job offer to start at a new school in September.

As a consequence their house will be going on the market but it also means that, on top of our daughters stuff, all of their furniture is going to be coming down here.

I GIVE UP, and severely peed off about it as I felt I could have a go at it but it’s been over two years now and you can see from the above blog that I’ve spent money but not been able to work on it with any conviction due to the coming and going of garage contents!

I’m asking a friend if anyone in his motorbike group (Stroud/Stonehouse area) might be interested in it.

So far what I’ve obtained and spent is as follows:

Reg is F627JRR and I’ve currently got it SORN but I’ve got a replacement registration document, which cost me about £25.00!

Original Bike – £150

Fuel Tank – £80 (including p&p) Original was rusted right through.

Clock Cluster – £30

Clock mount bracket – £15

Rear Subframe – £30 (I think this was a waste of money though but will include in box of bits if anyone wants the bike. Box will also include other bits like mudguard, a light that I was going to use etc).

New oil filter & sump plug – £10

‘T Pot’ seat – £50

Tubing for rear end – £11

Total £376

Any offers?

———————————————————————————

06 June 2011.

Well, after some encouragement from a couple of people I’ve been given new heart and started again. Still got the problem with space, to get worse when the Birmingham house sells of course, but while I can get to it a bit I rolled it out onto the drive today to have a go at the rear part of the frame.

About a week ago I put the rear frame, which had been hacksawed off in three bits, back onto the bike.

I used round and square tubing into the frame bits to give strength. The round tubing was an excellent fit (20mm) and was nice and tight when I fitted it all together. The square tubing was not so good but it seems to have a good stabiliser with the rest of the round bits fitted.

This is what it looked like when I got the bike!

This is what it looks like now. 06 June 2011

You can see where the bits have been put back as it was directly behind the seat locking arch. The whole of the rear end was removed including the bottom so there were no pillion foot rests.

 

There was still the problem at the bottom of the right hand side where the square frame meets the bottom near the foot rest.

It had been badly hacked away, no idea why it was so bad but it was pointless using the square tubing that I had. So, I cut 2.5 inches of the tube diagonally, corner to corner to make two right angle sections. The hacksaw decided to have a mind of it’s own and went off at an angle making it a little more difficult than I had intended. However, when I put the bits on the bike I just had to cut off a bit to tidy it to make it match up with the other bit.

This is after I trimmed the bits, they don’t look like they are together but they are just placed there for now until I mix the Steel Weld resin.

I made sure there was plenty of scratches and scrapes to ensure good adhesion and slapped plenty of resin on.

I made sure they were aligned and down over the damaged bit as much as possible and cabled tied it all together. I’ll leave that for a few days, take off the cable ties and tidy it all up with a small file. It looks a mess at the moment but I’m hoping it will be strong enough as I’m not sure I will be able to drill and bolt through but I’ll take a look at this when it’s all tidied up.

So now it looks like this   ————-

I’ve a friend at the dog training club I go to and he assures me he could get the engine firing in half an hour. I’m probably going to see him tonight so I’ll try to make a date for him to come and give me a hand.

WATCH THIS SPACE !

16 June – Well, what a commotion I caused on the OldSkool Suzuki forum! They obviously don’t think ‘glueing’ the frame together is a good idea. To be honest I don’t either which is why I used the steel tubing and bolts. I am still trying to get the engine to fire and have also started to prepare the frame for welding. I’m going to ask the bloke across the way if he can help me with that as he is a great car mechanic and also does a bit of welding.

I’ve filed around the joins and cut into them to make them a bit countersunk to enable welding. 

Julian, my friend from the dog club, came along Wednesday this week and had a go but even he could not get it to fire. However, found a few things. The HT leads were not fitted correctly so I’ve done that, not sure what  all the tubes do and he’s founding out about that and will let me know. I’ve also had some advice off the OldSkool forum, there are some very helpful people on there.

I used the new fuel tank and found it was leaking but today I checked that out and found it was just the bolts on the tap assembly were not tight. 

Julian used Easy Start and it sounded like it was going to go but no joy. After getting some advice from the forum I’ve rearranged the tubes on the tank/carbs and will try again tomorrow. I can’t do it now because if it did start up the noise would be horrendous (no exhaust system on the bike) and the grandchildren are in bed!

19 June 2011

I did try again but no good but I did have some ‘success’ in that there definitely is a spark. Remember I don’t have an exhaust system on the bike, not even front end pipes – After putting petrol through the tubes, and using a can of Easy Start that I got from Halfords I had fire coming out of the exhaust outlets! The carbs were popping away with vapour being shot out of the carbs toward the back of the bike.

So, if I’ve got a spark, I’ve got fuel, why is it not starting?

Julian mentioned this when he came on Wednesday and it is probably the carbs needing an overhaul and also probably the timing. We don’t know what stroke the firing is taking place on.

I’ve got the carb assembly off the bike and will take it to RoadRunner bikes, in Stroud, this coming week. They reckon it might be about £50.00 for the overhaul.

23 June 2011 – DECIDED TO SELL AS AN ONGOING PROJECT

Posted on the OldSkool Suzuki forum site:

Selling an incomplete project which has had a lot of work done on it but still a good amount to go.
Bike is a 1989 Suzuki GSX750FK. Has a current SORN in place and I obtained a replacement registration document from DVLA.

((Note below added 06 July 2011. Not selling now so take the following as a summary!))
When picked it up (May 2009) the back end had been hacksawed off and I’ve replaced it, with steel tubing and bolted, but needs welding at the bottom of the frame, and probably the top as well to be extra safe (and legal?). It has been suggested that a second hand frame would be a better solution.
Carbs have been deemed ‘very worn’ by RoadRunner Motorcycles of Stroud (Gloucestershire) so an overhaul kit would be needed including the needles and sleeves etc. unless a second hand set of carbs might be cheaper.
I suspect it’s the carbs that have prevented me getting the engine running. The engine is not seized, you can turn it over with a spanner and I’ve had firing but not running.
Cables will need replacing (Choke, etc.).

Chain, Tyres and wheels look good although need taking off and cleaning/lubricating. Not sure of the condition of the brakes/pads but they do operate and fluid is still in the system, been there for 3 years at least so fluid would need replacing. The top part of the rear brake is missing (rubber shield cap).

Electrics seem to be ok, There is a large chrome headlamp included which does work but needs brackets to attach to the forks. Most of the wiring is cut off though and I have new push connectors that can be used for redoing the connections. In the photographs I’ve attached the headlight to the forks with one side of the bracket, no idea what happened to the other side!
I envisaged using the bike without fairing and with the large chrome headlamp.

Brand new battery, oil filter/oil/sump plug. The Air filter looks ok so not replaced.

Good second hand tank (no rust or leaks) and teapot seat in excellent condition, both off eb*y.,

Some odd bits are also available including 2 x rear fairing (goes alongside the T-Pot seat), Instrument cluster (not original, got off eb*y), ‘underneath the engine’ fairing canopy, part of a rear subframe assembly, steel tubing, registration rear plate, Tax disk holder (last reg disk is 07 2008).
No exhaust sections at all and no other fairing available.

See Photographs at my Photobucket site  

as well as the Old Skool Suzuki Forum

Spend on the project so far is well in excess of £450.00 so any offers over £400.00 would be considered, highest offer would obviously get it but I would not renage on an agreed offer if a higher one came in afterwards.

I am unable to deliver so pick up would need to be arranged.

Please contact me at my email address djrose007@live.co.uk, or PM through the forum.
Thanks very much
Dave Rose
Gloucester.
___________________________________________________________________

06 July 2011:

FORGET THE ABOVE. I haven’t had any takers, although I’ve only asked on the Suzuki forum, so I’m going to carry on. I’m a bit glad really !

Still got problems with the carbs, just can’t figure out where pipes go for overflows, vacuum, pretty sure I know the fabric covered pipes are fuel but it’s all very confusing!

New photos on photobucket at http://s572.photobucket.com/albums/ss162/djrose007/Suzuki%20GSX750F%20Rebuild/CARBS/

31 July 2011

I’d put the bike all together, as much as I can as it is, ready for sale but as there are no takes from the Suzuki Old Skool forum I’ve decided to carry on with it.

Stripped off all the bits again ready for welding of the frame which I’ve asked my neighbour about. He’s going to ask the chap at work when he can come to look at it, or hopefully do it.

I’m missing a couple of bolts for the hangers and I’ve got a bloke on ebay, who was selling front footrests and hangers. I missed the hangers but he’s going to send me the bolts in the mail for a tenner

I’ll update again when I get the welding done.

13 August 2011

Well, I haven’t had the welding done yet but I’ve received the bolts for the hangers/footrests, the same guy sent me more bolts for the exhaust flanges and also for the ring around the petrol tank cap. 

I’ve also bought, off ebay,  both sides of the exhaust system (complete), headlamp and clock cluster, Fairing panels (front sides, seat sides and bit that goes across the back over the lights. All for £180.00 but I have to drive to Stamford to pick it all up so that will probably be around £40.00 for petrol.  Driving up there on Thursday 18th August.

18 August – Well, when I got there I met Adam’s wife and she was really lovely and told me that Adam had said to give me some other bits as well as those that I had bought. These included hand grab for pillion, rear subframe, rear light assembly, bit of plastic trim for the rear light, Front and Rear mudguards. I was really surprised but very pleased and was very appreciative of his generosity.  Thank goodness I took my wife’s Rover 25 car instead of my MX-5, partly because of the size of the stuff but also because it rained most of the way back and I wouldn’t have been able to close the roof!!!

22 February – Still can’t get the bike into the garage but all of the bits I got in August 2011 are safely stored away in there waiting for the garages to clear. Meanwhile I’m afraid she is stuck outside albeit well covered in plastic sheeting and a tarpaulin.

27 March 2012 – Well, there’s some bad news but also some good news.

Some tidying up in the garage resulted in enough space being made available to get the bike into a corner so at least it’s not out slowly corroding away with the condensation. I found a fair bit of condensation damage as I’d covered it in plastic and a tarpaulin. This meant that what moisture got underneath, evaporated and condensed and then couldn’t dry off, causing the corrosion. Think I’ve stopped it with a liberal spraying of WD40 and rubbing around the vulnerable bits.

In preparation for frame welding I’ve removed the rear wheel and the rear of the brake pipe. Didn’t bother with a brake pipe clamp as, at least, the fluid will all need renewing anyway.

I’ve got to let the neighbour know that it’s ready. The bloke that is going to do the welding has looked at it and reckons he can do it ok, even the bottom part where there is the gap, says he can fill that and should get

a good solid weld by the time he’s finished it. The rest of it is going to quite easy he said.

Got some of those front and rear garage lifting things since I took this. Only tried the rear so far as there’s not enough room at the front to try the other.

2011

19 February 2011

After a tumultuous end to 2010 the new year started very well with a terrific family Christmas and New Year celebration. Daniel, Joanne and the two grandchildren, Dhylan and Lennon, stayed over for both and it was lovely.

During January I attended the funeral of an old work colleague, Jenny Sparks, and met up with a number of ex-colleagues from Nortel Networks (now working for Avaya) and BT.

Also, 23 January, attended a Hangar Tour of Vulcan XH558 while it’s winter service was being carried out at RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire. This was a great day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m hoping to be involved in some of the activities of this icon of the cold war days during it’s display season. Also attending a couple of events in it’s support at the Jet Age museum in Brockworth and a ‘Black Buck’ lecture which was the name given to the operation against Stanley Airfield, Falkland Islands, during the war in 1982, the only time the V bombers were used in action.

My mother continues to live with us after spending 11 weeks in hospital. She did not come out of hospital until 13 January and is now confined to bed. Due to her Alzheimer’s she is too frightened to try getting out of bed, she has a permanent catheter and carers come in 4 times a day to see to her hygiene needs. We feed her and give her drinks, neither of which she can do herself. All interest in reading or colouring in have gone, she is incapable of doing anything at all even on the days when she appears to be quite coherent, as far as she can be. You do get odd words that make sense, or she will say our names, but it’s not very often.

Julia is doing well in the RAF and is playing basketball again. She is already in the RAF team and is off to Germany in April and New Zealand in June to play matches.

28 February 2011
Further developments in the family – Due to terrible vitriol from Daniel’s mother-in-law (mil) our daughter-in-law is frightened to stay in their home in Birmingham as her mother only lives around the corner.  mil also runs the pre and post school clubs at the school where Dhylan and Lennon attend so it is impossible to avoid her at times.
It all came about during the time that Lennon was in hospital with his Guillion Barre Syndrome and we had that bad weather. mil, sister and father of Joanne spent very little time visiting and when they did they just sat around talking. Nothing was ever done to assist in the 3 week hospital ordeal apart from one time fil took Joanne home when Daniel arrived at the hospital. Daniel was really upset by their seeming total lack of care for their daughter or their grandson and told them what he thought. Despite apologising the next day, after he had calmed and thought about it, it has resulted in a torrent of abuse from both her mother and sister and this has even been extended to others in the family that may have expressed a view, or not in the case of Joanne’s uncle who never said a word and is now cut off from his brother! She’s an evil witch of a woman who, even if she apologised in tears would not get the time of day from me.
So the result is that our Son, Joanne and their two children have come to Gloucester to live with us. Marlane is in the process of helping them sort out doctor registration, which you need to get them into a school, and all the other paraphernalia involved in moving your life from one city to another.
It’s going to be hard, particularly when anyone else comes to stay such as Julia when she’s on vacation from the RAF, but we’ll manage.

My mother continues to be with us but, despite brief cheerful moments, seems to be slipping. Don’t know how long you can go on like this but I hope, for her sake more than ours, it isn’t too long. Sometime in 2011 would be good I think.

03 April 2011 (Mothering Sunday)

Things have moved on, my mother is still bed-ridden but appears to be more cheerful after a course of antibiotics and now on a daily low dose antibiotic. She smiles and greets people who go in to see her. Dhylan and Lennon are warming to her now that she is more amenable and they even try to help me feed her. After the last episode of the catheter being blocked I’ve told the district nurses not to put it back in and we’ll see how she gets on without it. Been over a week now and it has not been a problem. Found she likes Muller Rice, it’s tasty, nutritious and so she has at least one a day. It’s difficult to feed her solid food.

The Birmingham Roses have settled in really well. Dhylan has started school at a local faith CofE school and it’s wonderful. He’s quickly made friends and so has Joanne. She is amazed at how friendly people are down here compared to Birmingham. Lennon goes to a Mother and Toddler group on Thursdays at the church hall and he also enjoys it. They appear to be very happy and make us laugh a lot with they singing and chatter.

Hoping Daniel will be able to find a teaching post in, or near, Gloucester. Eventually they will sell their home in Birmingham and have a place of their own down here.

May 2011 – Catching up

Things have moved on since the April comment. Easter Sunday was 24 April and that is the day my Mother died.  She hadn’t been well for over a week, not wanting to eat and difficult to get her to drink. The last three days were awful, she lay with her mouth and eyes open, breath rasping and nearly choking when you tried to drip some drink into her mouth. She looked as though she was dead for those final days and looked exactly the same when I went in to check on her at 0420 Easter Sunday morning and found she had died.

I called the doctors surgery and an on-call doctor came out and confirmed she had gone. The funeral director came about 0700, bearing in mind this was Easter Sunday, and we had a talk about funeral arrangements etc. Funeral director company is John Hall but it was his son, Charlie, that came out. He later told us that his father, John Hall, had passed away that same evening after a long illness with cancer.

The funeral was not as emotional as my Fathers but I think that was a combination of her death not being so unexpected, the music being hymns rather than very emotive bagpipe music, although I have to say I was very sad all the same. Lovely photograph of her that Marlane printed and framed so when you looked at the coffin you saw her pleasant face as she was just a few years ago. She was a lovely mother, grandmother and even, at the end, a nice great grandmother. The boys got to know her much better during those final weeks and used to spend time in her bedroom watching the TV and listening to her chuntering on and laughing.

01 June 2011.

Daniel has got a job at a primary school only 10 minutes walk up the road from our house so that is excellent. He starts in September but the Brum house is going on the market this coming week.

08 August 2011

Into the summer holidays, Joanne has started night shift working at McDonalds, Daniel is spending some quality time with the boys while she is asleep during the day and also getting himself organised for a new school in September.

Lennon also starts school in September, got a place at Barnwood with Dhylan so he’ll be in reception and Dhylan will go up to year 3.

I’ve been busy, reflecting on the past 2.5 years since my redundancy. I’ve rediscovered my love of aircraft and the Royal Air Force. You know about my websites: http://raf-luqa.weebly.com http://raf-masirah.weebly.com plus the dog club site and a couple of miscellaneous ones. I’ve also got involved with the Jet Age Museum http://jetagemuseum.org but in a big way with the Vulcan to the Sky http://www.vulcantothesky.org (VTTS). This is the trust that is keeping the last Avro Vulcan B2 flying, XH558.

I joined the VTTS Club during 2010 and contacted people to let them know I would be happy to get more involved.

You can imagine that there is no lack of volunteers to support them at air shows and other events so it was no surprise when I did not get a response.

It wasn’t until I attended the RAF Waddington air show, courtesy of free ticket from my RAF Police daughter, Julia, that I introduced myself to people in the Vulcan Village tent and made myself known.

I was then contacted to see if I wanted to help out at the RIAT Fairford (Royal International Air Tattoo) being held in July. I immediately said yes as it is only 35 minutes drive away so I did not have to stay overnight anywhere. What a fantastic weekend that was, hard work but so rewarding and great fun.

Next one is Oxford ‘Fly to the Past’ show 21 August, and then Dunsfold the weekend after. This is a three day job 27/28/29 August and has caused a bit of friction with Marlane as it is near Guildford. Petrol cost will probably be around £50.00 and that is not reimbursable. Waiting to find out what happens about accommodation but when I suggested I could use the old blue tent and camp at the air show campsite I was told I’m too old and ‘infirm’ to be sleeping in a tent! I’m obviously not too infirm to be going up and down into the attic to get heavy things out and put them back again, or to do heavy gardening such as cutting branches off the eucalyptus tree, lifting the lawn mower into the car to do my Mother-in-Law’s garden, etc……… I was quite offended at that, particularly after having such a great time at RIAT and being asked ‘Where on earth do you get your energy from’. I was tired after RIAT but it was a good tiredness, it was long days and hard work but so great to be doing something. I’m hoping to be doing Kemble, Battle of Britain airshow, in September.

Only dark part of August is that Julia will be flying to Afghanistan for a 2 month tour towards the end of the month, just before her birthday.

11 August 2011

Julia arrived home unexpectedly last night, weren’t expecting her until this afternoon so it was lovely to wake up and find her home.

Took the Rover 25 into the garage this morning. Making a strange ticking noise, like when you stick a lolly stick into the spokes of a bicycle. They reckon it might be an injector but they will check it out and let me know.

It’s been a great car, never let us down in eight years and been a great workhorse. Recently I went to Birmingham, with Daniel, to pick up a double bed. Could only get one half of the base in the back so rest was up on top!

11 August 2011 – Afternoon

Daughter Johanna came around and told us that she was having a problem drying her rugs in her flat so we went to pick them up to put out in our garden to dry, after being cleaned. On the way I mentioned camping and what her Mum had said about me being infirm, and she said that she’s got a tent I could borrow. Great, I thought, until we got it back to our house and put it up in the garden to see what it was like.

 I don’t think a Pink Tent is really me ducky!

15 August 2011

Had a BBQ for Julia’s birthday yesterday, 14 August. Her birthday is later in the month but she’ll be in Afghanistan by then.

Good party with lots of family, tons of food left over as usual of course which is par for the course for a BBQ.

My friend Ian was there as well with his family. He’s been getting progressively more ill with Kidney disease, couldn’t tell it to look at him but his tests are showing a transplant is becoming more urgent. Family is being tested for compatibility but it’s really down to his son, they won’t let females donate if they have not had children already.

So, if his son is not acceptable for any reason then I’m up for the tests. I’ve offered Ian a kidney as I have two, no history of any problems in that area with myself or my family so I can manage with what time I’ve got left with one. He is obviously getting more worried about it.

Tonight is Dog Training Club, I think Julia is going to come with me to handle Jonty while I do Foxy.

20 August 2011

Quite a lazy day today, delivered a bouncy castle that we’d borrowed back to our neice, took elder daughter, Johanna, her rugs back after we cleaned them for her, found Mother in Law’s keys that she’s been frantically looking for since her return from Chicago (They were on the key rack under our stairs all the time!), fix her TV which needed retuning for the digital channels, got her microwave working which needed the clock setting and called in at the garage to cancel and appointment for Tuesday.

Had a problem with the Rover 25 when I was coming back from Stamford, Northamptonshire, last Thursday. It was overheating and seemed to be getting worse even on a short journey around Gloucester. Booked it in to be looked at but then thought I’d put some water in the radiator and that’s what the problem was! I check all of the car fluid levels weekly but due to the coolant fluid staining the inside of the plastic water container I thought the level was fine.

Tomorrow, 21 Aug, off to Oxford ‘Fly to the Past’ airshow to man the Vulcan to the Sky Club tent selling merchandise and getting people to sign up to club membership. I’ll write about that after the event.

11 October 2011

Well, where did that last 2 months go? After the Oxford airshow I spent 3 days at Dunsfold ‘Wings and Wheels’. 1 day to set up the village and 2 days fundraising and selling merchandise. It was a great show, not only for the airshow but the ‘Wheels’ bit of it was very special as well.

Have to admit though that I loved the Oxford ‘Fly to the Past’ show. It included a lot of gently flying aircraft including the Antonov AN-02, flying so slowly that the commentator said ‘This is the only aircraft with a bird strike reported from behind’! There were some jet aircraft as well of course, the Sea Vixen was a particular crowd thriller.

Since then I’ve also done a couple of days work up in Deeside with a company setting up DECT on a Nortel Meridian system in the laboratory. They contacted me to see if I could help them out as I know about DECT systems from my Nortel Networks days.

Also, some potential good news in the past few days. Ernst & Young, the administrators for Nortel Networks, have lifted the stay on the Employment Tribunal hearings to handle our claims for the redundancy and compensation that we say we are owed. More to come on that of course as it will be a few weeks before the hearings themselves.

January 2012 – Well, I do apologise for being very lax in updating my blog. No excuses really, I do have the time just lazy and get tired a lot with the grandchildren living with us.

One tumultuous event was the safe return of Julia from Afghanistan. We went to Brize Norton to pick her up on 11 November and she came out of the arrivals door about 2 minutes after the silence for 11/11, very poignant and moving. Jonty went absolutely berserk as you can see in the photograph. I couldn’t get a decent photo as he just would not keep still.

Since the November entry I have had my 63rd birthday, which means I now have less than 2 years before I get my state pension so I should be able to cope very well. Managing ok now really but have to keep an eye on bank balances and this Christmas has meant eating into the savings a little, but not as much as I had expected!

The Employment Tribunal had a CMD (Case Management Discussion) in Reading, which I attended. This was presided over by the ET judge and it was decided that hearings would start, with 7 represented cases, in April with the rest being heard in groups during May and June. We hope that we will have the final result of all of this by around November / December 2012 and any payouts would be a few months after that. In all that means it will be around 4 years since redundancy to payout. However, we are expecting the payout to be quite small in comparison to what we are really owed.

We all had a fantastic Christmas, and my mother was watching over us all from the dining room cabinet where we have a large photograph of her.

We had a practice run for Christmas dinner on the 18 December, 13  people as we had our daughter in law’s relatives from Monmouth.

On Christmas day we also had 13 because we found out that our friends, Ian, Kim and Nathan Wright, were going to on their own so we invited them over. We were very lucky that we had all of our children there, my mother in law, daughter in law and two grandsons, plus the Wrights. What a great day it was. The reason we tried it out on the 18th as well was that we had seen a Jamie Oliver recipe for ‘Turkey Wellington’ on the the TV and decided we would try it and it was a resounding success both times.

I will try to keep more regular updates during 2012 and will start a new ‘page’ per year.

Thanks and best wishes for 2012.

2010

JANUARY

Here we are in 2010 already, can’t believe how the time is flying by and it’s almost a year since being made redundant.

Julia is getting married in March (writing this 06 February) so Marlane has been very busy arranging things for the big day. She’s also been moving bedrooms around, with my help for the lifting and carrying of course, as we are preparing for my Mother-in-Law moving in with us this year. Yes, my mother is still alive and still living with us. I’m thinking of making a sign ‘Rose Residential Home for the Elderly’.

Julia will be getting a married quarter at RAF Leeming soon so hoping to be able to get the garage organised again so I can start looking at the motorbike project during the summer.

The Stonehouse Dog Training Club website is now officially published after being reviewed by the committee. The link is on the previous blog page (RAF and Beyond) but here it is again.

FEBRUARY 2010
10 February

I’ve always said I wouldn’t like to have my mother go into respite care but after 5 years we just feel we need to avoid the stress of having to see to her all day during Julia’s wedding. I would not be able to relax for a minute and we also would not be able to stay with Julia and family during the evening, it would be an awful day.

Social Services are going to advise where a place can be found for the few days of the wedding period, hope it will be in Gloucester but it’s not certain.

Her behaviour is becoming more irritating, the constant noise of chatter about nothing, the hitting the TV screen with a pencil to admonish bad behaviour or to try to attract someone’s attention, talking to people on the TV and offering them sweets, it’s very distracting when you are trying to do something else – and it is CONSTANT !

When you try to talk to her you really do not get any sense whatsoever but I’m sure there are times she knows what she wants to say but just has no idea what the words are so she says a jumble of words to make up for it, and does that awful ‘blah blah blah blah blah’ sticking her tongue out at you.

When I gave her a goodnight cuddle the other day and she licked my face when I went to kiss her I’m afraid I just did not think it was funny, I had to say ‘Goodnight Mum’ and leave her in case I said something in annoyance that she probably would have no idea where it had come from.

13 February
My Mother has been doing some strange things over the past few days. She has been calling us by our names whereas she often referred to me as ‘Dad’ but I’m not sure if this was in a joke because I’m looking after her in the morning’s and putting her to bed at night. She’s been having conversations with herself, better than she can with any real person in her prescence. She talks to her Mum and Dad, Jack (her brother), and chats away even getting annoyed at times at something they say back to her!

What she has also been doing is trying to get herself ready for bed or for ‘going to work’ as she put it yesterday.
On Friday evening she was wearing her nightie, bedjacket and bedsocks. I went in and she’d taken off her nightie but put back on her bedjacket so she was sitting in her knickers, bedjacket and bedsocks. When I asked if she knew why she’d taken off her nightie she said she was getting dressed for work. Today, Saturday, she took off her cardigan and blouse and put her cardigan back on again, all buttoned up. This time she said because she was getting ready for bed and she’d got her nightie on, which she hadn’t of course.

What with my Father and Mother, paternal Grandmother and 2 other paternal Aunties plus older generations in the family having dementia, or alzheimer’s, it doesn’t bode well for me. With this worry in mind I did, during 2009, undergo phycological tests and came out with a report of  ‘Above average memory’ and no sign of oncoming dementia. I am going to visit once a year to monitor any progress, or rather any deteriation.

18 March 2010
2 days until Julia & Marc’s wedding. My mother has been in respite care since 4 March and coming home on 24 March. We wanted a few days at the beginning of March and another few over the wedding period but the SS suggested it would be more beneficial alround if she went for a longer period straight off.
I have to say that it has been wonderfully stress free and I will be doing this respite in the future, it’s like having your own life back and not being tied down to the house at certain times of day, having to clean bathrooms/toilet every single morning, the smell has left the house because we stripped the bathroom, lino up, mopped and scrubbed, repainted the floor, sealed all around the toilet and floor edges. We’ve had the carpet professionally cleaned twice but it’s not worth getting new carpet until my Mother is no longer with us.

Anyway, the wedding preparations are going along great thanks to Marlane’s organisation. We had a hiccup today when Moss Bross got the order wrong and gave us (Me, Pete Trotman and Daniel) crevats instead of ties. They are going to DHL them to us for Saturday morning and we are just hoping they get to us in time, otherwise we’ll have to wear the crevats!
Weather has been beautful in Gloucester until this afternoon when it has started to rain. The forecast is a bit iffy for Saturday but we are just hoping that the rain will come early and pass or hold off until later in the afternoon.
I’m sure that whatever happens with the weather we are going to have a terrific day.

20 March 2010 – What a fantastic day the wedding was. Julia looked incredibly beautiful, Marc was resplendent in his RMP No.1 Uniform, as were some of his guests, and we had the most amazing day of our lives. The Hatton Court Hotel went out of their way to make sure everything ran like clockwork, and it did. The Ardeton String Quartet gave an air of sophistication to the ceremony and wedding breakfast. I managed to get through my speech without too much emotion, which is amazing for me! Marlane looked so lovely and the great day was really mainly down to her. No wonder I love her so much.

During the week of 8 March Marlane and I went to Leeming to help Julia and Marc sort out their married Quarter. It was an expensive but very relaxing time. Julia took the dogs to the RAF Police flight and they were a big hit, everyone loves them of course.

Week of 13 April -
Julia flew off to Al-Udeid, Qatar, for a 4 month detachment last Thursday and Marc flew out to Afghanistan on Sunday night. It’s a sad time after the euphoria of the wedding.
Julia is ok in Qatar and making friends, pops up on Skype occasionally. Marc has difficulty with internet access and cannot get hold of Julia to speak to her which is depressing them both. He did not manage to get a phone call through to her until the end of April.
When Julia was leaving, Marc drove her to Brize Norton to get her flight, she realised she had left her laptop at Leeming. On the Tuesday I drove to Leeming, picked up the laptop from the police flight, drove to Brize and dropped it off with her friend who took it to Movements to get on a flight to Al-Udeid. Then drove home, 450 miles in all but it was a sunny day and I managed the whole journey with the top down!

29 April 2010 -
Still not managed to make a start on my motorbike rebuild, and I’ve still got Betty’s (Mother-in-Law) bike needs cleaning up and getting into shape with new tyres and tubes etc. Just so much to do and so little time!

What I have been doing for the past few weeks, on and off, is clearing the side of the house of roots left from the bushes we cut down. This is to give us a vegetable garden and we just finished it off today with laying of gravel. Worse than clearing the roots was clearing the huge amount of Brambles that had overgrown all of the bushes. The gashes all over both of my arms are almost healed up now but it looked like I’d been fighting with a wild cat!
Three photo’s attached.

We have even got runner beans, raspberry canes planted plus plants and seeds in the cold frame.

We’ve had a lovely April with regard to the weather, now it’s the 29th it’s started raining so hoping we don’t have a repeat of the past 3 years where April has been great and the rest of the year dreadful! In 2007 we had the floods in Gloucestershire which knocked out the water pumping station in Tewkesbury resulting in 3 weeks of no water at all and a further 2 weeks of contaminated water that could only be used for washing clothes, showering and flushing toilets.

03 May 2010
Garage is now full of furniture and belongings again as Johanna has called off the wedding that was expected to take place in August 2010. Pete is still a great bloke but Jo just felt that, as she sat at Julia’s wedding listening the vows being made, she could not make that commitment herself. She seems to be ok with it and is now looking for her own flat to live with Charlie (her cat) and I’m sure she is quite happy.

15 May 2010 – What an awful day 13 May was. Just set off to pick up Jonty from the groomer and did not even get out of the Close before my next door neighbour came around the corner and hit my MX-5!. Photograph shows the drivers (offside) door with a ripple caused by her tyre pushing the door panel. She also got my wheel arch and bumper but it’s scraped paint. Garage already looked and made and an assessment of damage and work required. 3-4 days in the garage including respraying the whole O.S. panels, replacement of bolts under the wheel arch, alignment of panels, geometry check on wheel alignment and balance.

17 May 2010
35th wedding anniversary today and what a lovely day. We went to the Alveston Manor Hotel for dinner, superb meal and glad to say it’s still a beautiful, tranquil, hotel. staff were wonderful and friendly and made us feel very welcome.
Drove up in the MX-5, roof up because of hair-do, but top down on the way back. Betty (mother-in-law) was at our house for my mother coming back from day care and Johanna went there from work to relieve Betty. It was a terrific, stress free, day.

06 Septemeber 2010
What a jump, it’s now September and I don’t know where the time has gone.
Julia returned from Al-Udeid mid August and is now back at RAF Leeming. We, Marlane and I, went up there to stay with her for few days to relax so we – cut back bushes, erected a 3 foot fence to keep the dogs in the garden, mowed the lawn with a new Flymo that we bought, put up some curtains and mirrors, took a car load of cardboard to a recycling bin, charged up Marc’s battery on his car and got that going again, patched his exhaust with some metal tape that a friendly MT neighbour gave me, and found somewhere in Leeming village to replace a tyre on Marlane’s Rover 25 after I got a puncture.
So all in all a nice relaxing few days!

My mum is back us after her fortnights respite care. She’s ok but obviously picked up a UTI infection while in the home. Called the doctor and he’s prescribing some antibiotics.
In the meantime, I went for an Endoscopy this morning and they found some acid burn damage at the bottom of my oesophagus. Nothing serious and a couple of months of some medicine or other will heal it up.

We are both very tired, not sure what it is but my blood test did reveal I’m a little low on iron so I’ll probably get some iron tablets to take as well.

19 November 2010
It’s my Birthday (62) tomorrow and it’s 05:00. Woke up at 03:00 with Foxy wanting to go out and just can’t get back to sleep since.
Been a while since I wrote anything but things have been happening of course.

Marc returned from Afghanistan early as he and Julia had not been having a good time apart and he came back early on compassionate grounds. To cut a long story short it did not do any good and they have split up. Not sure what is going to happen now but doesn’t look like there will be any reconciliation. He seems to have become a lot more argumentative and aggressive. They say a tour of Afghanistan affects people in different ways, does not seem to have gone well for him. We know he had some pretty awful experiences out there but aggression to someone you are supposed to love has no excuse.

On 03 November Marlane and I were going to travel to Leeming and stay at the ‘Lodge at Leeming Bar’ hotel to attend Marc’s medal ceremony. Kathleen was going to come down to look after my Mother. Just hopeless trying to plan anything because what happened this time (third attempt) was a week ago Kathleen fell and broke her arm so cannot travel, carry a suitcase, drive etc… Cancelled the hotel as there was no way we could get respite for my Mother at such short notice.
Circumstances changed again because on the 03 November she also fell, at the Manor day care centre, and dislocated her shoulder and broke her leg, it cracked alongside the pin that is inside her leg from the hip replacement she had years ago.
So now she is in hospital for 6 weeks bed rest and then a period of rehabilitation and physiotherapy. Don’t know how much this will affect her mobility but she’s 84 in January and what with falling and her Alzheimer’s I’m just hoping she won’t last too much longer. She has no quality of life, no idea what is going on 99% of the time and now doesn’t recognise family members from photographs.
At least this 6 weeks is giving us some rest, although you wouldn’t think so with me typing this at 5 in the morning! Plus she is in a district hospital in Moreton in Marsh which is 30 miles away and takes about 50 minutes to get there.

20 November 2010 – It’s my 62nd birthday today

Note sent to friends and old colleauges on 20 December 2010:

I’m still enjoying retirement and I don’t know how I would have coped over the past few weeks if I had been working, it would certainly have made life difficult for others.

Feel free to pass this on to others that may still remember me from my distant past when I worked for a living.

After a euphoric start to the year, with our youngest daughters wedding in March, the year trundled on and on with a great summer apart from my Mothers’ deterioration in her dementia problems, incontinence (but less said the better about that bit) and the general day to day care of her.

On 3 November she fell at the day centre she attends dislocating her shoulder and breaking her leg where the pin of her old hip replacement is located in the top of the femur. She was in Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and prescribed 6 weeks bed rest. This wasn’t too bad as visiting only meant a 5 minute bus ride and 10 minute walk to the hospital. As they apparently do not have facilities to handle this sort of care anywhere in Gloucester city she was moved, after a few days only, to Moreton in Marsh district hospital which is 30 miles and an hours drive away through the Cotswolds (Andoversford – Bourton on the Water – Stow on the Wold), a nice drive once in a while but not every day!

We kept asking when she can be moved closer to Gloucester and, after 3 weeks, I got fed up and contacted PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Services) and she was moved the same day, some coincidence I thought!.

So now she is in Stroud, which is only 10 miles away. On the 21 December, tomorrow, they will try to get her out of bed after an x-ray to check on the broken femur. We’ll see what the care assessment is but she is not going into a ‘nursing home’. We’ve seen a couple of residential care homes and there is no certainly no ‘care’ in care homes

When I am with her on some days I’m sure she has no idea who I am, and I’m not even sure she knows I am there. Other days she’s been quite bright, unintelligible but a bit more aware of her surroundings.

Needless to say we are not looking forward to 2011!

In the meantime, a few weeks ago in Birmingham, our Grandson (3 year old Lennon) had a cold and when he seemed to be getting over it he went back to nursery school. He caught another virus at school and both of the virus’s joined forces. It was too much for his immune system to handle. He started to laze around, which he never did normally, but when he started to fall over he was taken to the doctor who sent him straight to Good Hope hospital in Sutton Coldfield. The viruses attacked his nervous and immune systems, the muscles all over his body swelled so he looked like a swollen sausage and it was painful for him to try to stand at all or even to be picked up.

They are pretty sure it is Guillain-Barre syndrome the link gives information about what it is and what it does. So he was in both Good Hope and Birmingham Childrens Hospital for 3 weeks since the end of November and we’ve been travelling every day apart from 3 days when we had things we had to be at home for.  Marlane stays with Lennon while I have been taking Joanne, our Daughter in Law, home so she can have a shower, change, pick up Dhylan, our other grandson, from school and have 2 or 3 hours break and then Daniel brought her back to the hospital when he finished work. Marlane even spent 2 nights at the hospital with Lennon to give them a chance to be together with Dhylan for a couple of nights. I then pick her up at lunchtime the next day. This is a 3 hour round trip plus the 2-4 hours spent there so it takes the whole day. He had MRI scans, Heart Scans, Daily blood tests apart from the normal observations hourly night and day. When he was sedated for his MRI scan his heart rate dropped and he stopped breathing. He was rushed to emergency and resuscitated and he did have his MRI scan later in the day.

While we were there last Tuesday I went to Burton on Trent to pick up a childs wheelchair that Marlane had found on ebay Monday night. It’s great and is one of the main items that allowed him to be discharged. It will probably be at least 3 months before he is walking again (fingers crossed that he does) but at least he is improving. Another consequence of his illness is that his voice has changed a lot, it is higher and sounds mostly like he is talking underwater. I think it is because of the affect the virus had on his muscles, including his throat.

He has 4 x daily physiotherapy exercises to do, plus swimming, and still has to visit the hospital for heart and blood tests and will be on medication for some time yet as he has to come off the steroids slowly.

After he was discharged last Tuesday and we got back from Birmingham around 1900 after getting up at 0500 for an early start so that Joanne could go to Dhylans nativity play. I was literally falling asleep when I was driving back home but we did make it safely! We went very early morning because neither her mother or sister (who live around the corner from the school and 15 minutes from the hospital) would go to the hospital for her because they wanted to see the nativity play themselves, can’t believe they would put themselves above his mother for seeing him in his play!

We are both exhausted and although it has been great to see so much of Lennon it is good that he was allowed home after 3 weeks in hospital. One consequence of my Mum being in hospital is that it has enabled us to have the time to do all of this otherwise we’d have had to be at home for my Mum.

Daniel is a school teacher so now has a few days off for Christmas and they are all coming down today to visit and have dinner with us so we are looking forward to that.

Hope your families are all well and that you have a lovely Christmas with them. Hope all goes well in 2011 but I’ve stopped doing that ‘Happy New Year’ stuff because we have no control at all on what is going to happen so I’ll just send my best wishes that nothing catastrophic happens!

Photos’s are:
Shortly after being admitted.

After being discharged and visiting Nursery School in the wheelchair that Granny bought for him.

My life after 1965

Just to let you know what happened to me after we left training in 1966.

When we were preparing to leave RAF Cosford I applied for North of England, South of Scotland, RAF Boulmer and Acklington as postings. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I was posted to RAF High Wycombe, HQBC, in Buckinghamshire. It turned out to be a great posting as it was Swinging Sixties and entering the Flower Power era. I had a great time but started to get a bit fed up toward the end of a two year Key Personnel Screening stint.
I did not go abroad until July 1968 when I went to RAF Masirah. I was in Masirah for the customary 13 month tour with a month at home in the middle. I got to thinking about where to go next and Singapore was preparing to close down. I thought it would be my last chance to get to the Far East so I applied to extend my tour to Hong Kong or Singapore.

was accepted and I arrived at RAF Seletar in October 1969 (The numbers don’t add up for the time I spent in Masirah but that is another story!).

After Masirah, Seletar was like being transported to another planet and I loved it. The place is full of fantastic times, smells, food, beer and mates. Anyone heard of John ‘Wink’ Allington? John and I were great friends and sailed and drank together for the two years I was there.

While in Singapore three of us took the train to Butterworth, in Malaysia, and caught the ferry across to Penang for a couple of weeks vacation. Many stories to tell of the train journey and times in Georgetown but I would like to keep them for a reunion. Suffice to say the train journey involves lots of Merrydown Cider after starting the day with a brewery trip to Anchor and the New Wah Seng ‘hotel’ figures in the Penang stories.

Left Singapore, after moving accommodation blocks a couple of time to let the Singapore Armed Forces take over the camp and closing down Seletar Commcen. This was in February 1971 and I was on my way to RAF Boddington, with the domestic site at RAF Innsworth in Gloucester. I was there until I got posted to RAF Luqa in September 1972. I was there at the same time as Gerry Linstead, the WebMaster for the 303rd, but while he was working on the Canberra’s while I was guarding them, in the rain, after El Fatah threats!

The relay centre was temporarily in the terminal commcen with re-perfs on trestle tables.We just could not cope at times and whole bunches of tapes of Routine messages would go into the bin!

It was quite a relief when the refurbished relay centre opened at Siggiewi. The reason for this was, of course, I arrived in Malta as we were returning after being kicked out first time.

Had a fantastic time in Malta during which I did a lot of sailing and even more drinking. Favourite haunt was the ‘Fog Lamp’ in Burzibugga but I had a flat in Marsascala at the end of the bay. Local bar in Marsascala was the ‘Coxswains Cabin’, at that time run by an Englishman and his ex Television Toppers wife.

During my time in Malta I went out with ‘Louise’, a beautiful Maltese girl who I am sure was my soulmate. I believe we were very much in love, we never argued in the 6 months we dated but I never met her family in all of that time. I don’t know why I was so frightened to propose but I didn’t and I regretted it after we broke up. I will never know how different my life might have been but I do know we would have been very happy. On the other hand I have no regrets about the direction my life took after this but it is something that has stayed with me. You only have one life and you need to try to make the right decisions as you go through it as you don’t get a second chance.

I found myself back in Boddington again early 1974 on promotion to Corporal. This time I met my wife, Marlane, in December 1974 and got married in May 1975. Anyone know Sgt Ziggy Zegveld? Well, he is my father-in-law, sadly he died 14 February 2004. He was a great bloke to have as a father-in-law and a great friend.

Two weeks after getting married I was in Gan and did more sailing and drinking and even had a trip to Sri Lanka to sail against the British High Commission. There was also a sailing trip to Cyprus for the NEAF championships. I never did a tour of Cyprus but it looked great for the four days I was there. 1976 and, after closing down the Termite Commcen in Gan, I was posted to RAF Rudloe Manor and Marlane and I fell in love with the village of Colerne and Bath itself. That was really when our married life began and it was nice to be away from everyone to get to know each other. We have not done too badly, 34 years later (writing in 2009) we are still going strong.

While at Rudloe Manor we discussed where we should think about settling down because I was due out in November 1978. I applied for last tour of duty to Boddington and we now live in Gloucester.

In November 1977 my son, Daniel was born. He is a fine man who is a schoolteacher in Birmingham after getting a BA Hons in Art and Design and Combined Studies and then, after working for an Internet Hosting company in Gloucester, a postgraduate degree in education.

All my life I have been around Uncles who have been lorry drivers and it is something I always wanted to do so, just before I met Marlane I had taken three weeks vacation and spent it on an HGV driving course. It was fantastic and at the end of my 12 years I did my resettlement working for a metal forming company in Cheltenham shunting trailers into the loading bay, sheeting them up and taking them out to the yard for the drivers to take out to customer sites for delivery. I got really great at reversing 40-foot trailers! I did a year and a half with ‘Roadline’ night trunk driving forty footers between Gloucester – Reading, Manchester, Northampton and a couple of trips to Muswell Hill. My main route was to Reading and back; little did I know that I would do this route a great deal more in the future when I worked in Maidenhead and lived in Gloucester! After 18 months I realised that I was never going to get anywhere lorry driving, not much in the way of promotion, like the RAF really!

Matters were taken out of my hands with redundancy. As I had been there less than 2 years I got no redundancy package at all but I was lucky enough to walk out of Roadline on the Friday and into Rank Xerox computer department on the Monday. I was really lucky as this got me back into a computer environment, which is what communications is all about now anyway.

My three-month temporary contract with Ranks, in Mitcheldean Forest of Dean, stretched to six months. I had already been for an interview, and been accepted, for a job with Lockheed Aircraft in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to teach the Saudi Air Force on the ADX6400 message switching system, same as the one at Boddington.

I spent two years on a bachelor contract but Lockheed would not entertain accompanied status. Three months from the end of my Lockheed contract I was offered a position with a company called Haji Abdullah Alireza who had a communications company called GENTEC. They had a contract to install and maintain the worldwide comms for the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I accepted and spent 7 weeks in San Francisco with ROLM Corporation to learn installation and maintenance of the ROLM CBX PABX systems, 1 week at Chloride in Eastleigh for the power systems and 4 weeks at Marconi in Chelmsford to learn the ins and outs of their message switching system. The seven weeks in San Francisco were unforgettable and it has to be my favourite city in the world.

I spent a bit longer in Chelmsford to carry out factory testing as I was the one in the company with the message switching experience. July 1984 saw me back in Saudi but Jeddah this time. I looked after the Ministry, with Philippino engineers, until the new Ministry was opened in Riyadh. My wife and Daniel joined me in September 1984. We had a great time in Jeddah and made some great friends of the Americans on the compound where we lived. We would go to Rabigh at the weekend to a deserted beach with fantastic seabed and coral.Daniel was 7 at this time and was at the Continental School in Jeddah when Marlane became pregnant. Johanna (pronounced with a Y as it is from the Dutch) was born in October 1985. A month later Marlane was pregnant again, God knows how but the Saudi’s I worked with were very impressed! During this pregnancy the Project Manager in Riyadh left the company to retire and the Ministry asked for me to go to Riyadh to run the maintenance project and ensure the Message Switch kept going……. We moved to a magnificent house (Photo left of the swimming pool) in Riyadh and Julia was born in August 1986. So there is 2 months in the year when my daughters are the same age. Picture on the left is an aerial photograph of the Ministry.

Daniel sat the common entrance exam in Riyadh and got a place at a Grammar school in Gloucester so we thought it was time to go home. With Daniel at his grandparents to start school in September I tendered my resignation and we left in November 1989 to return to the UK.

No job to come home to so it was a bit of a gamble. We had not saved any money but had a great six years of family life in Saudi.Marlane spotted an advertisement in the Daily Mail and I applied for a job as a Technical Instructor with Nortel Networks. I was lucky enough to be offered the job and started in January 1990.

I spent the next 8 years with training and travelled to do on site training at our distribution channels in Cairo (3 times, photo on the left), Damascus, Beirut, Dubai, Abu Dhabi (twice), Stockholm, Munich, Paris, Moscow, Comsomolsk (Ukraine), other various locations around Europe and attended a weeks training myself in Dallas.I moved to a new position in December 1998 and really enjoyed it until January 2008 when a new director and manager changed the role, none of use of really knew what we were supposed to be doing for just over a year when we were made redundant!

At various time I had looked after Turkey (photo on the left), Saudi Arabia, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Jersey, BT, and a few other companies in the UK. I had built up a great relationship with the people in these companies and often travelled to Istanbul, Athens, Nicosia etc. to discuss business. Like all Telecommunications companies Nortel had been through a bad patch with a reduction in the workforce from 100,000 to 35,000 worldwide, and then further reductions until the redundancies and eventually being sold off to Avaya. I had worked at home for about 9 years until March 2009 so that was another huge benefit of the job.

We, the family, all Travelled to Tasmania in January 2002 for our nieces wedding. Long trip but it was great to fly into Singapore again after 30 years even if it was only for a couple of hours.

What Next? -
Hoping to be able to manage some travel. Rawalpindi to find the grave of my half uncle who died while serving in Peshawar in 1932. I want to drive to Malta, might get the ferry from Sicily or the car will get wet and general trips, including the UK-Copet journey described in ‘Goldfinger’ plus going around the continent in my MX-5 (photo left) and maybe other travel depending on finances!

In the meantime (while my mother lives with us and restricts travel plans!) I’ve got a little project on the go but that has been a bit slow in taking off due to garage keeps getting filled in with childrens stuff – no, not toys, as they are grown up now it’s furniture!
http://www.themotorbikeforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21732
and
http://s572.photobucket.com/albums/ss162/djrose007/Suzuki%20GSX750F%20Rebuild/

July 2009 -
Don’t know what it is about older men but machinery seems to creep into our lives as the hair on the head starts to disappear and the hair nose grows longer.
Apart from hankering after doing up the motorbike I really fancied a motor mower. I managed to get one off ‘Freecycle’, yes it’s absolutely free, just got to pick things up. Guy said it’s in a bit of a state but should work.
It did need a lot of cleaning up, grass was about 2 inches thick inside the drum where the blades go around. Cleaned it up, removed the blades and sharpened them, topped up with some petrol, checked the oil and pulled the cord – chug Chug CHug CHUg CHUG VROOOOMMMM – it burst into life with a pall of smoke from the muffler (Exhaust really but it’s an American make!). Doesn’t smoke now that it’s been run a couple of times and cuts the lawn a treat. Doesn’t have a grass box but it does mulch the grass so just need to brush the paths down afterwards. Chuffed to bits, and it was free !!!!!!
If you are interested in Freecycle here’s the link for the UK groups. If you just search for ‘Freecycle’ be careful not to sign up for the one in Tucson, which is what I did at first!
Here’s the link to find your local one.
http://www.uk.freecycle.org/

April I sent my biography off to a publishers to see what they thought and if they would consider publishing it.
I had word in early July that it has gone to a second reader so not sure if that means it’s so bad they need to confirm it’s so bad, or it’s not bad and the second reader is just to get more opinion and what to do with it. It did say that it could take about 9 months for anything to happen so I’ll just have to be patient and see what they come back to me with. I’ve opted for a shared publication to keep the costs down, but I’ve still no idea how much this can cost.

January 2010 put this in here, out of chronological order but relevant to the book subject. I was contacted by the publisher and they asked if I could make it more specific to the RAF, rather than a biography, and cut it down from 157,000 words to 60-100,000 words. Working on that on and off and will retitle it to ‘Travels of an RAF Sand Dancer’.

August 2009 -
Not touched the motorbike project since that post in May 09! No time to turn around, there always seems to be something to do. Goodness knows how I ever found time to work, although in the last year of my employment I did seem to do a lot of dog walking, mowing of lawns etc. Just totally lost interest as it was obvious the company, or at least the organisation I worked in, was being run down.

Mum is still with us, seems a bit more frail at times and then appears to have a burst of energy and is almost her old self again! We have managed to get more help from the SS (Social Services, I know what you were thinking). Someone comes in to give her a bath 3 evenings a week and another lady comes and sits on a Monday evening so we can go to Dog Training school together. It’s not a lot but it means a great deal just to be able to get out for a couple of hours one evening a week.

No hope of fulfilling any travel dreams yet but I have been asked if I want to stand as a councillor for the Liberal Democrats in Gloucester (Hucclecote ward). Not sure that I want to commit myself to the time required to be a councillor although I would like to think I could contribute a lot to the work.

Got the Stonehouse Dog Training Club obedience championship show on 31 August (Bank Holiday) where I will again be car park steward. Will take Jonty along this year (see left), and a jacket as it was quite chilly in 2008 when I did it.

0630 start so Mother-in-Law (Betty) will stay overnight to look after my Mother during the Bank Holiday as we won’t be back until about 19:00.

25 August – Julia’s birthday. First time she’s spent it away from home and is a bit miserable. Cheered up in the evening when she managed to get onto Facebook and saw all the happy birthday messages people had left her.
She is buying herself a new car, Ford Fiesta Zetec in pinky / purpley colour. She’s over the moon and picks it up on Thursday 27th.

02 September
After being at the Stonehouse Dog Training Club (SDTC), near Stroud, for the past 2 years I thought it might be nice to build a website for them. Only problem with this is that I don’t know how to do it!
So, I’ve signed up for a 6 week evening course at Gloucestershire University to learn the basics. It’s only one evening a week so I’m not going to be an expert at the end but should know where to start. Course is end of October to beginning of December, what’s the betting that I’ll be the oldest in the class! I’ll let you know when it starts.

I found Weebly.com and have gone mad on the website building -http://stonehouse-dtc.weebly.com/ http://raf-luqa.weebly.com/http://saudi-ex-pats.weebly.com/ http://scruffys-dog-grooming.weebly.com/
20 October 2009

Life has been trundling along but a huge event last week was Julia’s passing out parade from the Defence Police College Southwick Park. Friday 16 October saw me up at 0515 to get things ready to leave at 0700 to travel to Southwick Park with Marlane and Betty (Mother-in-Law).

Julia had been ill for a few days and was unable to take part in the parade. She sat at the side of the reviewing officers podium and was called up to receive her Police hat and warrant card after the rest of the parade had received theirs. She was still quite wobbly on her feet but Cpl Duffy and the reveiwing officer steadied her and were very kind.

Photographs are HERE

Note sent to Friends 20 December 2010:

I’m still enjoying retirement and I don’t know how I would have coped over the past few weeks if I had been working, it would certainly have made life difficult for others.

Feel free to pass this on to others that may still remember me from my distant past when I worked for a living.

After a euphoric start to the year, with our youngest daughters wedding in March, the year trundled on and on with a great summer apart from my Mothers’ deterioration in her dementia problems, incontinence (but less said the better about that bit) and the general day to day care of her.

On 3 November she fell at the day centre she attends dislocating her shoulder and breaking her leg where the pin of her old hip replacement is located in the top of the femur. She was in Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and prescribed 6 weeks bed rest. This wasn’t too bad as visiting only meant a 5 minute bus ride and 10 minute walk to the hospital. As they apparently do not have facilities to handle this sort of care anywhere in Gloucester city she was moved, after a few days only, to Moreton in Marsh district hospital which is 30 miles and an hours drive away through the Cotswolds (Andoversford – Bourton on the Water – Stow on the Wold), a nice drive once in a while but not every day!

We kept asking when she can be moved closer to Gloucester and, after 3 weeks, I got fed up and contacted PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Services) and she was moved the same day, some coincidence I thought!.

So now she is in Stroud, which is only 10 miles away. On the 21 December, tomorrow, they will try to get her out of bed after an x-ray to check on the broken femur. We’ll see what the care assessment is but she is not going into a ‘nursing home’. We’ve seen a couple of residential care homes and there is no certainly no ‘care’ in care homes

When I am with her on some days I’m sure she has no idea who I am, and I’m not even sure she knows I am there. Other days she’s been quite bright, unintelligible but a bit more aware of her surroundings.

Needless to say we are not looking forward to 2011!

In the meantime, a few weeks ago in Birmingham, our Grandson (3 year old Lennon) had a cold and when he seemed to be getting over it he went back to nursery school. He caught another virus at school and both of the virus’s joined forces. It was too much for his immune system to handle. He started to laze around, which he never did normally, but when he started to fall over he was taken to the doctor who sent him straight to Good Hope hospital in Sutton Coldfield. The viruses attacked his nervous and immune systems, the muscles all over his body swelled so he looked like a swollen sausage and it was painful for him to try to stand at all or even to be picked up.

They are pretty sure it is Guillain-Barre syndrome the link gives information about what it is and what it does. So he was in both Good Hope and Birmingham Childrens Hospital for 3 weeks since the end of November and we’ve been travelling every day apart from 3 days when we had things we had to be at home for.  Marlane stays with Lennon while I have been taking Joanne, our Daughter in Law, home so she can have a shower, change, pick up Dhylan, our other grandson, from school and have 2 or 3 hours break and then Daniel brought her back to the hospital when he finished work. Marlane even spent 2 nights at the hospital with Lennon to give them a chance to be together with Dhylan for a couple of nights. I then pick her up at lunchtime the next day. This is a 3 hour round trip plus the 2-4 hours spent there so it takes the whole day. He had MRI scans, Heart Scans, Daily blood tests apart from the normal observations hourly night and day. When he was sedated for his MRI scan his heart rate dropped and he stopped breathing. He was rushed to emergency and resuscitated and he did have his MRI scan later in the day.

While we were there last Tuesday I went to Burton on Trent to pick up a childs wheelchair that Marlane had found on ebay Monday night. It’s great and is one of the main items that allowed him to be discharged. It will probably be at least 3 months before he is walking again (fingers crossed that he does) but at least he is improving. Another consequence of his illness is that his voice has changed a lot, it is higher and sounds mostly like he is talking underwater. I think it is because of the affect the virus had on his muscles, including his throat.

He has 4 x daily physiotherapy exercises to do, plus swimming, and still has to visit the hospital for heart and blood tests and will be on medication for some time yet as he has to come off the steroids slowly.

After he was discharged last Tuesday and we got back from Birmingham around 1900 after getting up at 0500 for an early start so that Joanne could go to Dhylans nativity play. I was literally falling asleep when I was driving back home but we did make it safely! We went very early morning because neither her mother or sister (who live around the corner from the school and 15 minutes from the hospital) would go to the hospital for her because they wanted to see the nativity play themselves, can’t believe they would put themselves above his mother for seeing him in his play!

We are both exhausted and although it has been great to see so much of Lennon it is good that he was allowed home after 3 weeks in hospital. One consequence of my Mum being in hospital is that it has enabled us to have the time to do all of this otherwise we’d have had to be at home for my Mum.

Daniel is a school teacher so now has a few days off for Christmas and they are all coming down today to visit and have dinner with us so we are looking forward to that.

Hope your families are all well and that you have a lovely Christmas with them. Hope all goes well in 2011 but I’ve stopped doing that ‘Happy New Year’ stuff because we have no control at all on what is going to happen so I’ll just send my best wishes that nothing catastrophic happens!