Weds 24 Aug 2022 1343hrs BST

 

According to my son I am officially a 'foodie' (still looking for the holy grail of salt and pepper mills, dammit) owing to my two latest 'kitchen gadget' items. 

 

One - a worktop 'mini' oven. I used the ' ' for that word 'mini' because this so-called mini-oven is the same size as my current integrated oven but sits conveniently on the worktop (HUZZAH - no more aching back and potential dropped meals, I bloody hate having Essential Tremor!) and uses a third - YES, A THIRD! - of the electricity per kwh as my integrated one. Blimey, a triple win in my book. We chose the worktop oven after comparing the cost of replacing the integrated (and ancient) oven (including rewiring the kitchen and building a heat-proof cabinet to raise the new unit) to the cost of the worktop one that stands on the worktop and plugs into the mains without any other cost than the unit itself. 

Two - a twin crock slow-cooker unit - INVESTMENT COOKING AT A MUCH LOWER COST THAN USING THE OVEN OR HOBS, YES PLEASE!! Today I'm making two braised beef joints, a 1kg topside cut in half with each half in one of the twin crocks. One for the dinner table tonight (with leftovers being shredded for sandwiches tomorrow) and one for the freezer. Next up, twin crocks of chile con carne then Cajun red beans and sausage, spag bol sauce with mince, and then... I love investment cooking.The twin crock unit joins the other three slow-cookers in different sizes from 1.5L to 4L.

My DIL and friends on the US West Coast tell me the 'cost of living crisis' is hitting them as badly as it is hitting us here in the UK - we're all wracking our brains to find ways to cut costs on everything. 

 

I'd feel smug about my head-start on preparing for this nightmare as I've been anticipating this since 2015 and have been busily squirreling away all sorts from non-perishable home medical supplies to clothing and homewares. 

 

But I don't feel smug at all, and I don't love everyone else is looking at misery with me now.

 

I've always been a food squirrel but ratcheted that up in December 2019 when news began trickling out of China of a 'weird novel new pneumonia' killing people there and I realised my heart wobble in March of that year was quite likely this new pneumonia when the news of it being found in Spanish sewage as far back as February 2019...the dental hygienist who did my semi-annual cleaning early March 2019 spent the entire hour telling me all the details of her lovely weekend break to Spain and within ten days of that visit I was having the wobble of all wobbles.

 

Thought it was just a particularly bad acute flare (recurrent pericarditis) but when I finally went to the GP in late April, the blood draw indicated 'presence of unusual SARS-like antibodies' and by February 2020 we knew it was Covid and I joined a group of Britons having regular antibody checks. Ftr, I've had the Omicron variant now as well as the 'Wuhan' variant - and my antibodies are still 'robust'. Three years later I'm finally coming out of 'Long Covid'. 

 

So in December 2019 I just had a feeling things were about to go wonky in a big way. I anticipated quarantines, and supply chain disruptions owing to warehouse worker and lorry driver illness. I ordered a chest freezer and a tall bookcase to convert to a 'pantry of doom'.

Since then I've been in warp-drive, despite the physical limitations of what we now know was Long Covid, trying to keep the house stocked with enough stored food to get us through several months if supply chain failure-lockdowns-you name the damned disaster happen.

I don't feel smug at all, thanks to the cost of living nightmare we're all facing I have moments of gut-wrenching anxiety at the possibilities, actually. Every morning I wake up to spend hours looking for gaps in the preps and thanks to that absolute bastard Putin threatening using tactical nukes on us, one of my now-filled gaps is iodine tabs and kelp powder 'just in-case'. 

Blankets, cold weather clothing, off-grid heating and cooking, medical supplies (because getting in to see a medic is harder than pulling hens teeth), food, OH GOD WHAT HAVE I FORGOT??!!

Right, panic moment over, the biggie just now is the cost of living crisis that includes food and electricity and natural gas. We gave up the car a year ago (DAMMIT!!) so the eye-watering cost of petrol isn't a huge problem to us and we're still saving money despite the rise in delivery costs. But now we're looking at the cost of electricity and natural domestic gas supplies going unaffordably high on top of everything else.

 

So, no, I don't feel smug at being somewhat better prepared than most. What I feel is sick at heart over being right things were on the verge and that it wouldn't take much to start a cascade of catastrophe. I am happy about my cost-saving measures (slow-cookers, 'mini' ovens, filled pantry and freezers, more) but I'm utterly horrified to have been right. 

 

The cascade has begun.

Things are worse thanks to all the union strike actions, it does feel as though all these vital services worker strikes (rail, bus, post, binmen - all striking the now and credible rumours are nurses and doctors are about to strike) are deliberately striking now in a concerted effort to bring down not only the Government but society itself. 

Crime including extremely violent crime is on a horrific up-tick as a consequence of both budget cuts to force strength and the absurd focus on 'Internet hate crime' rather than, you know, actual crime. 

 

Our military strength is also at the lowest point it has been ever in living memory (but our navy is still in the Channel 'rescuing desperate migrants' who are in actuality criminals attempting to enter the UK illegally). 

 

Behind it all? BLM, Socialists, and fascist Klaus Schwab and his minions (GO TO HELL ROBERT DOWNEY JR AND NICOLE KIDMAN - I'LL STARVE BEFORE I EAT BUG PASTE, YOU NUTTERS!) who are gleefully rubbing their hands at the 'great reset' rubbish they're pushing with what looks like the full cooperation of most of our 'dear leaders'. 

 

Damn them all, I hope I live long enough to see their big fail. 

 

I hate to say this but things are as bad as I anticipated back in 2015. Perhaps worse.

 

 

 

 

Weds 3rd August 2022 1200+hrs BST

 

I had a friend named Eve. We met online at heart conditions support forum and soon realised we lived only a few physical miles from one another. Our heart health conditions meant f2f meet-ups were usually far too difficult to organise and we became primarily email pen pals. 

 

Over the too few years I knew her, her emails seemed to miraculously arrive to my inbox just when I needed a good giggle and natter and rail against the machine. To say I found her friendship priceless is an enormous understatement and I can only hope she was being more truthful than kind when she'd tell me she found my emails 'just the tonic'. 

We shared political gossip and rants, 'housekeeping for Lady Hearties' tips, heart and diabetes safe recipes, ghostie stories (oh my word Eve had some hair-raising personal experiences to share!), craft ideas, jokes, worries Russia is about to nuke Scotland (Trident) and the cost of living crisis brought on first by Sunak's insane overspends during Covid and his refusal to chase down the fraudsters, and the eye-watering price rises thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We talked about EVERYTHING including our religious beliefs, our families, our lives from childhood (hers was harrowing which made her even more admirable considering how she dealt with it and got her life sorted so well) and our mutual military and polis careers - I served in the USCG-R and later went on to work with the police as what is now known as a forensic psychologist consultant. 

 

I can't say what she did beyond saying she held highly responsible positions with the Army and the Met until she retired. Eve and I were frontline participants of the equal rights for women days and we had quite a lot to say about the current crop of 'Anything you can do, I can do better' lassies, not all of it nice and rightly so, them that are ungrateful little whingers.

Her emails were the highlight of my day ranking right up there with emails and snaps from my newest DIL and when a few days would pass without a word from her especially during the last six months of her life I'd know she was in hospital again. I'd send her a 'Write when you can' email and then check the inbox several times a day hoping to see a note from her.

 

Her health was much worse than my piddly little complaints, she'd been T2D for years and 20 or so years ago was discovered to have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). The diabetes, despite being meticulously managed, eventually led to a chronic liver condition. 

 

Frankly Eve was something of a medical miracle in that despite her multiple life-limiting and threatening conditions, she had managed to not only survive but avoid becoming a full-on invalid for so many years. It was only the last 18 months of her life she slowly went from being quite active and fully engaged in/with Life to semi-invalidism including periodic 'incarcerations' (her words) in hospital, a place she absolutely loathed especially after the penultimate hospitalisation during which she was accidentally (on purpose, she believed) put on a 'female' ward that included trans-women who'd retained their dangly bits and full mustaches and beards yet were determinedly addressed and referred to in the feminine. As a consequence of some of the behaviours these ward-mates displayed, Eve was determined to never go back to that hospital again.

 

Then in late June 2022 her health disintegration caused her to collapse and be taken to hospital intensive cardiac unit care. Only her husband was permitted to visit her.

She fought for weeks to once again beat the odds and stagger breathlessly back out into the world. Sadly, however, hospital acquired pneumonia stole her life 18 July 2022.

She was 78 years old, was 'vain but in a good way' (said by mourners through smiles and sobs during the wake yesterday) with a stunning wardrobe ranging from leopard and tiger print tops and leggings to the most elegant silks - my friend Eve had delightful taste and I loved seeing her latest outfits. She wouldn't leave the bedroom until she had applied make-up and a wafting of exquisite perfumes even when her diary included nothing more than a trip from bedroom to sofa in the sitting room.

 

She'd led an absolutely amazing life that included highly successful and hugely interesting careers in the British Army AND the Metropolitan Police (before it went all woke, long before - Eve had some very interesting stories about her military and police careers to share, always careful not to overshare and violate the Secrecy Act). 

 

She was married twice, once to an out and out rotter for a few years just long enough to fall pregnant and deliver three children, and then to a wonderfully 'perfect in his imperfections' gentleman who gave her just over forty years of married joy. He is understandably utterly devastated at the loss of the light of his life.

 

She raised two sons and a daughter who gave her a now grown granddaughter. Two of her children and her granddaughter survive her and it is my everlasting hope that when she opened her eyes 'on the other side', her deeply missed son was who welcomed her to Heaven. 

She gave me so much more than I fear I gave her, she was politically astute, generous, deeply intelligent, no-nonsense yet incredibly kind. I will miss her terribly for the rest of my life.