18th November

It’s been a while since my last blog.  I’ve been busy with nursing, assignments and motor bike lessons.  The motor bike lessons are going well.  I finally feel in control and I have more confidence when I’m riding a big bike now.  I’ve been up to Matlock twice recently during my lessons which was great.  Last Saturday, the instructor took me up and down some steep gradients and round hair pin bends with wet leaves on the ground.  I learnt a lot about controlling the bike from this experience.  I was pretty tired by the end of a full day’s concentration though and was in bed by 9.30 on a Saturday night! 

Ali has cancelled her bike test.  She was due to take it at the end of the month.  When I first heard the news about the cancellation, my heart sank.  I thought she might be backing out of the whole trip.  Learning to ride the big bikes has been harder for her because although we’re the same height, I seem to be longer in the leg and can comfortably reach the ground whilst she struggles with this.  Apparently, Ali lost her balance pulling away at traffic lights last week and fell off.  She was ok, just seriously spooked and she decided she needs a lower bike.  We both had a chat to the Motor Bike School who might just be able to save the day. They are hopeful they will be able to get hold of 2 lower bikes for vertically challenged people like us so all is not lost, just a little delayed!  It looks like I might be the one taking my test first after all.  I won’t be blogging the date for this one though – too much pressure!  I’ll just let you know when I’ve passed, (or failed).

I’ve been having some pain from my boob reconstruction – the muscle in my breast seemed to be tightening up last week and I strained the remaining back muscle trying to wipe the ice of a car windscreen.  I’ve been falling asleep in the afternoons too.  The drugs are giving me hot flushes so I wake up sweating at night, throw off the bed clothes, get cold, pull them back on and wake up sweating again.  I do the okey kokey with various body parts to cool down too.  I’m thinking of inventing an electric blanket that measures your body temperature throughout the night and adjusts itself to keep you at a constant 37.2 degrees C.  I think a glass of red wine or 2 seems to make it worse.  It’s ok, just frustrating – I started falling asleep at a patient’s house yesterday afternoon.  It was warm and cozy and I’d had a good lunch.  Funny how you can fall asleep when you’re really not supposed to.  Someone joked about me going through the change at work when I had to strip off during a hot flush.  It didn’t occur to them I might be menopausal.  But I am, my periods have stopped now.  Half of me is relieved but the other half is feeling robbed of something.

Charity wise, we are getting a lot of support for our bike adventure around Europe and I’m hopeful we’ll find a sponsor for the trip quite soon.  I’ve been watching ‘The Long Way Down’ with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman.  I think we should call our trip ‘The Long Hard Way Down’ after watching the two of them.  They turned up at the beginning and pulled wheelies whilst other people ran round organising the trip for them.  They have big bikes courtesy of BMW, back up vehicles and even their own team including a medic and camera man.  AND… their legs are long enough to reach the ground when they sit on the bikes!  BMW turned down our bike request recently with a polite email.  So far, between us, Ali and I have a second hand Triumph 125CC which would have trouble getting us to Derby let alone Swiebodzin in Poland and an offer from my aged parents to follow us part of the way in their clapped out car with a couple of spare tyres in the boot and a flask of tea.  Mum exclaimed indignantly, “Aged parents?!!” when she read that and asked me to change the sentence to ‘clapped out parents in an aged car”.

Ok I’m painting a very bleak picture here and it’s not entirely truthful.  We have a lot interest in what we are doing and offers of help.  Fundraising is hard work though! 

What’s in the pipeline?… We’re holding a porn star party quite soon to raise money for the trip.  We’re asking people to come dressed as a porn star and create a porn star name for themselves.  It should be good fun and we’re putting on some entertainment too.  I’ll be posting the pictures of that hopefully in January.

Now, I have to recount Saturday night for you because it made us all chuckle.  A group of us ladies went into town to celebrate a friend’s birthday.  We were just coming out of a bar when an orange lady with peroxide hair pushed my friend Jo off the pavement into the path of oncoming taxis.  Most dangerous!  But fortunately the taxis were moving slow enough to stop.  I think her reason for doing this to Jo was: “There she is!   She was after the man I wanted!”.  At some point in the past, flirty Jo had alledgedly chatted up the man that Orange Lady had ear marked for herself.  What a heinous crime! 

It was a bizarre situation because we are all clearly mature ladies as was Orange Lady.  We were pretty surprised by the attack and Jo protested a bit.  There was a lot of scuffling and a fight nearly broke out.  “Come here and I’ll knock you out!,” shouted Orange Lady, (obviously not wanting to move herself closer).  Her friends looked embarrassed.  I laid a hand gently on her arm, ready to give her some of the newfound wisdom my cancer has brought me, (the ‘hey, lady…life’s too short to fight over men’ speech), but before I could begin she looked down her nose at me and exclaimed, “AND WHO ARE YOU?!!”.  Quick as a flash, I remembered that in any hostile situation, (especially if you are ever kidnapped), it’s important to introduce yourself as a person by giving personal details about yourself.  So, I stuck out a hand and smiled. “Hi, I’m Lou”, I said.  It worked!! Orange lady broke into a smile, shook my hand warmly and introduced herself.  I decided to work on calming things down when stupidly Jo, decided to have a quick tug of Orange Lady’s hair extensions.  Not a smart move and we told Jo off.

Eventually we extricated ourselves and had a drink to get over the shock of it all, laughing at the stupidity of it and especially a woman who gets upset over some man.  It was just then that I felt a wave of very cold liquid washing over my shoulders and down my back into my butt crack.  Some drunken idiot had spilt his whole pint of lager and lime over me and was too cowardly to say sorry so I gave him a piece of my mind.  My other friend, Odette laughed and said I was destined to have a fight that evening.  I said I’d put my money on the other person winning due to my height disadvantage. 

The evening ended on an ironic note a little later when I was asked for my phone number by one of the guy’s we were dancing with in the club.  He actually followed me to the toilets to ask for it.  I’ve never been followed to the toilet before!  He told me I smelt nice – see! – don’t bother with perfume I tell you – men love the smell of beer.  I was pretty flattered by the attention and returned to my group of ladies with a big smile but I felt there was a touch of a frost in the air.  Apparently, my friend had ear marked the guy for herself. Men eh?! 

Odette and I went for a bag of chips afterwards, simple pleasures…