I think I really should see Doc G. I’ve being feeling tired and off-colour for days, having to go to bed in the middle of the day to rest for an hour. And I’m fuzzy-headed and forgetting things – I forgot that our Lottery syndicate won £10 last week, and had to be reminded! And today my eyes keep going blurry, so that I can’t read properly, or work for long on the computer.
Time for a check-up – just have to forget that Doc G’s medical report helped to sink my claim for disability benefit….

Filled up my camera’s memory card with pictures today, just walking to the village. Captured some nice snowy woodland scenes. But I’ve forgotten to load them onto the computer….

What I woke up to this morning.

Didn’t have a good night last night. lay awake for hours quietly worrying over bills and stuff. Then, when I did drift off, I had all kinds of restless dreams.
The one I remember was set in Wigan. No, I don’t know why, either. I dream quite a lot about Wigan nowadays. A lot of my dreams used to be set in London; now it seems that Wigan has taken over as both the stage for my nocturnal adventures and the simulcra of my subconcious.
It was one of those long, tangled dreams – involving a wrecked house, sirens, a silly young woman nagging me to comment on her dress, a sky full of red-and-black roiling clouds, foreboding, somebody telling me I was pregnant, a dragging tiredness, an inability to speak…..
When I woke up, I had a banging headache and a noseful of green snot. So that probably explained a lot of my disturbed sleep. Though it still didn’t explain Wigan.

….I’m back to blogging after a long (for me) absence. I was just too flaming busy. I still am, but I’ve decided I could spend ten minutes updating my blog.
So, what’s been happening chez Dobson? We’re a lot nearer to getting the Volvo back on the road. Well, it’s drivable now, but not legal; after putting in new brake discs, we took it for its MOT on Teusday and it got failed on a steering mechanism fault. So that had to be fixed. Now we have to take it back to be retested, paying the full £44 test fee all over again. Sheesh – it cost less than £30, including parts, labour and VAT – to correct the steering fault, and that was the car’s only fault. But that’s the regulations now. Once we get the MOT certificate, we’ll sell or P/E it, and get something smaller and and a lot less fuel-guzzling.
There’s been a death here. Long expected, for sure – it was Graham’s Dad, who’s had more arguments with the Grim Reaper than I’ve had chocolate biscuits – but still very sad. It means Graham is going to be moving out, and new neighbours moving in.
The weather’s been kind; while most of the country was buried in snow, we’ve scarcely seen a flake of it. We’ve certainly had some freezing tempertures though.
I’m to be a granny again; Daughter no3 is expecting a baby – a girl – in July. And Daughter no2 has announced that she and BF are getting married – in 2008. Well, she’s a Virgo – she likes to plan well ahead! At least it will give me some time to find a decent outfit for the do; at D3’s wedding last year, I had to borrow a jacket to go over my all-purpose black dress and still managed to look like an escapee from a care home.

And that’s the news for now…..

Well, another birthday over with. For once, I got prezzies that I really wanted – Daughter no2 sent a wireless keyboard & mouse, Caroline sent a digi camera. The above is one of the first of many photos I shall be taking here (this one is the view from my front door this morning).
I’ll get round to adding a picture gallery to this blog soon. Now I’ve a camera, I’ll be using it.

John Pilger has written this interesting (if depressing) article, on why America (and the UK, probably)will go to war with Iran:

Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America’s military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China. That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran’s nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world’s fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world’s central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

(Spotted by International Rooksbyism)

Tesco are going to open in Castle Douglas next Monday. All the local opposition was ignored by the council, who nodded through planning permission in spite of procedural irregularities and strong suspicions of skulduggery. Castle Douglas is on its way to losing its character along with its small shops, and becoming a clone town.
TescoDeconstruct is by a local blogger and has ongoing commentary on this; Tescopoly gives the wider view.
Elsewhere, local people have been rather less supine, and are fighting back. At Shepton Mallet, for instance:

The protest camp to stop Tesco’s building another supermarket in Shepton Mallet has gone big time with tunnels and 90-foot tree platforms – and national media coverage. Tesco’s are claiming that the area is ‘brownfield’, but it has a mature woodland of 400 trees on it – as well as a war memorial which will also be destroyed.
Earlier this week the camp lost a High Court decision and an eviction team was assembling, but the trees would have to be felled before March 1st or else they’d be protected by bird nesting laws in the Wildlife and Countryside Act. But now it turns out Tesco’s don’t own part of this land until March 1st, so they’d have to bring in a new eviction process to claim the whole area.
Either way destroying these trees would be illegal, and Tesco’s are in no mood to see their steamroller of ‘progress’ halted, and could be sending in the heavies anytime.
The site includes the woodland, plus two warehouses and what was once the social rooms for those buildings – which has been squatted and is now providing heated accommodation and social
space to use for the protesters as temperatures dip below zero.
After the call out (and thanks to BBC and ITV coverage), the camp has grown with an influx of campaigners – some protest camp veterans, plus new faces, as well as professional climbers, all
arriving to help secure the treehouses, aerial walkways, tunnels, concrete lock-ons and more.
There is an urgent call out for people, people, climbing and building tat, tea, coffee, food etc, as eviction attempts are highly likely next week. There will be a party this Saturday night (25th) in the squatted social club on-site, with ‘tunnellers, teamakers and bards’ all particularly welcome.
The camp is in Shepton Mallet at the end of Station Rd, behind an industrial estate by the War Memorial. Site mobile: 07749 110689.

(from SchNEWS)

But its too late for Castle Douglas….

Yesterday, went to the Citizens Advice Bureau to ask them about my appeal for DLA. The nice lady there went through all the papers and medical reports and finally said that I didn’t really have much chance – the medical reports all said I wasn’t ill enough, and her experience of the local Appeal Board was that they were very tough.
Blimey. “And of course,” she added, “there is the political climate at the moment to consider…”
I could go to the appeal, she said, and argue my case. But it would mean spending an hour sitting in front of these highly sceptical people being grilled about my condition. Just sitting there, talking to this very sympathetic lady, was stressing me out and making my blood pressure rise; so I wouldn’t have much hope of surviving the Appeal hearing intact.
Blimey again. So I won’t be getting DLA. And thinking of the people I know who are getting DLA with health problems that are no worse than mine, is making me go all Daily Mailish.
Oh well, can’t be helped. So I’ll have to keep on working.
Merde.

We were given a lift into town and back by T. On the way back, he told us how he had had to take his elderly cat to the vets yesterday and watch him being put to sleep, and how he was going to have to throw out all the cat’s stuff when he got home. He started to cry about it.
Damm.

I’d gone out without breakfast – too tense to eat. And I hadn’t put on enough layers for the cold, biting wind. When I got back home, I felt extremely unwell, cold and tired. I curled up in front of the fire and tried doing a soduku puzzle and couldn’t make sense of it – a sure sign of not-wellness. And I still couldn’t get warm. So I went to bed, fully-dressed and with tons of blankets and duvets over me. After about an hour, I finally stopped feeling cold. After an afternnon in bed, I felt well enough to get up, but didn’t feel like doing anything for the rest of the evening. (Which is why I’m writing this entry now.)
Blaahhh.

….cos I got a reply from the Department of Wobble and Procrastination this morning, just one day after I mentioned wanting to hear from them.
They’re going to hear my appeal, and want to know if I still want to continue with it. No date given for the appeal. Please reply within 14 days.
My original application for DLA was sent in November. The mills of God may grind exceeding slow, but the DWP is giving God a run for His money….

Another whine about my health, so this isn’t going to be interesting. Think I’ll have to get back to good ol’ Doc G and ask him if my medication needs changing. I’m tired all the time, again, my headaches are coming back, I nearly collapsed when I was socked with a really bad palpitation attack the other day, and my knees won’t stop reminding me that they’re not happy. It’s not helping that it looks like we won’t get the car on the road again for at least another couple of weeks, that we’re waiting for money owed to us and that I’m still waiting for the blasted Dept of Wobbly Procrastinators to get their finger out and tell me if I’m sick enough to get a disability allowance or not.

Ach, I’ve been spending too much time chained to this blasted computer as well. All right, it’s all paid work, but the pay isn’t a lot for the hours I put in. But I hardly speak to another person these days, besides B and Son. I’m getting cabin fever – need sunshine and a break!