Preparedness for when

2tonsils

GreyQueen wrote: »

So that's why my grey eyed Dad went thru so quick. Wonder how fast khaki green eyes like mine "cook"?:rotfl:

2tonsils those links are worrying. You really feel for those poor souls in Athens, they need a flood on top of the econonic catastrophe like they need a kick to the head.

Out of sheer curiousity, how do you get a cypress tree off a road if it landed root down? They're huge trees. I think? I'd love to see a picture of that.

You watch out for yourselves on those mountain roads.

They scooped them up with a bulldozer, the trees were tied with ropes....will be taking my camera with me tomorrow and over the weekend, just hope the storm is not coming this way...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282815/Athens-floods-One-dead-thousands-stranded-Athens-battered-biggest-storm-50-YEARS.html

The photo of the lightning strike on Pireaus was taken at ten this morning...look how dark it is with the storm

maryb

LOL, I should have said three of us in our time slot! They are doing the ones who have to have general anaesthetics first as it's all day cases of course and the generals need longer in recovery. Then they batch the cataracts to be done under local. I have blue grey eyes so I regard it as a point of honour now to cook first in my batch.

GreyQueen

A pal who had cataract surgery said you get assigned a "hand-holder" nurse to usher you through to the treatment room and back out again. It's a bit like a production line, but in the nicest possible way.

I think it's such a blessing to live in a world where things like cataracts are treatable.

bluebag

2tonsils wrote: »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282815/Athens-floods-One-dead-thousands-stranded-Athens-battered-biggest-storm-50-YEARS.html

What an absolutely terrifying experience for the poor souls going through this. Heart rending. May it pass soon.

Take care of yourself out there.

maryb

GreyQueen wrote: »

A pal who had cataract surgery said you get assigned a "hand-holder" nurse to usher you through to the treatment room and back out again. It's a bit like a production line, but in the nicest possible way.

I think it's such a blessing to live in a world where things like cataracts are treatable.

I couldn't agree more. I often think people who yearn to go back to a simpler time should be careful what they wish for

GreyQueen

maryb wrote: »

I couldn't agree more. I often think people who yearn to go back to a simpler time should be careful what they wish for

Too right. My Nan is 90 this summer and not the least bit sentimental about the "good old days" in the pre-war years. Or even the 1950s and 1960s. She likes her automatic washer, her telly, her phone and the indoor lavvy with the soft t.p.

Me and Bro were born in a cottage built (and only slightly-improved upon by the time we rented it) in the early 1600s. Outside privvy, tin bath brought inside for bathnight, only one cold tap in the kitchen.

Great-gran on Dad's side (he was born in that house too, and the whole family took refuge there in WW2 when burned out of their own home) raised her 11 in a home with no bathroom and no potable water, over a mile from the village.

There was a pond which was just about good enough for household water (i.e. clothes washing) but every drop of drinking water was brought in by horse and cart by Great Grandad from wherever he was working that day, in jars, strained through several layers of muslin, then boiled. Funnily enough, those 11 kids all made old bones (late eighties-early nineties) bar one who died of a heart attack at 73.

My family being as tough as old boots, there were mutterings about someone dying as young as 73, as if he'd let the side down somehow..........:rotfl:

Dad recalls working on a farm in the 1950s which was very old fashioned. A lot of the old boys had been WW1 soldiers and were wiry little guys regularly lifting stuff which weighed nearly as much as they did. I often think of the old photos you see of people from 80-100 years ago and compare them with nowadays. Particualrly when I see the preening muscle-boys strolling in and out of the gym near here. I wouldn't like to see them do hard physical labour, think it'd be the death of them.

thriftwizard

Particualrly when I see the preening muscle-boys strolling in and out of the gym near here. I wouldn't like to see them do hard physical labour, think it'd be the death of them.

DS2 is qualified as a "personal trainer" and frequently insists that I shouldn't be lifting & carrying stuff that's "WAAAY beyond your capabilities - for heaven's sake, you're 54 and female, Mum!"
I just carry on when I've stopped laughing. How does he expect me to move my stock around & run my stall, or get chicken feed into the feed bin or sacks of spuds into the utility room - wait for a suitably musclebound passing male to do it for me? Those days are gone now!

And I don't win any points from him by refusing to join a gym - why pay good money & drive to somewhere to work the muscles I could have used by, say, cutting the hedge manually? Which I'd also have to pay someone else to do? And then I wouldn't know where the birds are nesting, or what fruit to expect from our "edible hedgerow" this year. As he points out, if we all thought like that he'd be out of a career. So I'm encouraging him to think further in that direction, in the light of the latest round of economic gloom...

My Mum also looks back on the "good old days" in horror. But I'm inclined to think that there were good things too, which have gone out with the bathwater, so to speak. Might be an interesting thing to think about, along with what we wouldn't wish to see pass this way again.

GreyQueen

My Dad's workmates were a bit puzzled by the adult son of one of their colleagues who was a serious bodybuilder. He was in his twenties and still lived with his parents. It seemed a strange hobby to them, but they remarked to his ageing Mum that it must be useful if you wanted something lifting?

She pointed out that they were ornamental muscles, he wouldn't actually deign to lift anything practical at home.

I was thinking back to my childhood the other day. Y'now, pre wheelie bins, when dustbins were those very heavy metal things. You bin man would take the lid off, heft the bin to his shoulder with a one-handed twist, walk to the lorry, empty it, return and repeat.

They must have been half-crippled after years of doing that. Bet they didn't go to the gym in their spare time.

ETA; Was watching one of the Ray Mear's Extreme Survival episodes set in jungle on the border with Vietnam. They hired some people from one of the mountain villages to porter their gear into the jungle for them, and these slender ladies were just casually dropping huge rucksacks into their burden baskets and waking up steep slopes in the jungle without seemingly breaking sweat. They asked one of these ladies how old she was and the answer was 74 and they ribbed the guy whose pack she was carrying so easily something rotten.

pineapple

maryb wrote: »

I couldn't agree more. I often think people who yearn to go back to a simpler time should be careful what they wish for

Along with the bad things from my own 'simpler time' were dental procedures under gas :eek: Anyone remember that? The horrible sensation as the noxious stench of gas permeated and paralysed your brain... Though I guess going further back in time one would have been grateful to have gas.....

Hardup_Hester

Oh yes I remember the gas, horrible smell, I was always sick afterwards, prolifically!
I was born in 1951 in a very rural part of Lincolnshire, we had a tin bath in the coal shed, an outside toilet, crispy toilet paper, no central heating, no hot water, no electric upstairs, damp bedding, 3 mile walk to school & back, liberty bodices, nightdresses that went up in flames, chickens at the bottom of the garden, bus once a week on market day, oh the joys!

A few years ago we had a caretaker at work, big daft lad in his early 20s, went weightlifting but wouldn't carry a box of paper for me, they weigh 15k, went jogging but wouldn't get off his arris unless forced, then moaned about the cost of his personal trainer!
Hester