However, I have been extremely busy – up until the last few weeks during which I suffered from descent into a slough of lethargy, lolling around doing nothing but reading trashy novels and watching old movies. I was rescued by a request to deliver a weeks training to a company here in London and the effort required to prepare the content seems to have put me back in circulation, as it were, as far as the lethargy attack is concerned, anyway.
So, if anyone might be interested, what have I been up to? Since I returned from Kazakhstan at Christmas time, I have been working on a book which will be published towards the end of the year – not that you’re going to see it in WH Smith’s, or on Amazon, because it is a manual for business security managers and will be marketed through specialist channels. Working on the book kept me pretty busy through the day and by the time knocking-off time came around, I was pretty much ‘computered-out.’ I did fit in a couple of short trips to Bucharest and Cairo, and I’m off to Kiev at the end of the month, all to deliver training courses of one kind or another.
I’ve also been into hospital a couple of times, once to get the arteries reamed out, again, and once to fix a bleeder in one of my eyes – the laser surgery in the eye was fascinating, but a most unpleasant experience as I found it very difficult to keep my eye open while someone was shining an incredibly bright light into it so she could see what she was doing. (As an aside, I found the perfect GP for me – the lady served 12 years in the RAMC so it was very easy to strike up a relationship…I call her Ma’am and she calls me Mr Judge, just like old times 🙂
I learned that I was entitled to a wrinklies pass – though the official name is a ‘Freedom’ pass, which is a very useful thing to have as it gives me free travel throughout the town and well out into the suburbs – getting to Twickenham for rugby matches, for example, is covered. It is a substantial benefit, but I have to say that I do think it is one of the benefits – like Child Allowance, that should be means tested and properly targetted. I shall not complain too loudly, however.
My son is recovering well from the depression from which he was suffering, with a new job and a new ‘significant other,’ who has just moved down here from Sheffield. She is a chef, and was delighted to receive a ‘phone call from the Ivy restaurant a couple of days after she arrived. She is now working there and loving it.
So, the Bravo crew is well settled in East Acton, which is not a particularly salubrious part of town, but is also not particularly insalubrious, either. Lots of non-Wasp neighbours, but, fortunately, no overwhelming concentration of any particular ethnicity, so fairly civilised, except for the BNP hangout just across the road which receives regular attention from HM constabulary, though I did watch the Boks – England match there on Saturday. Whenever I go out to the shops, I speak to people in Russian, Romanian or Chinese, depending on which shop I’m going to, and there is an interesting fmaily who run the local hardware store, South-Asian extraction but apart form the patriarch, who has a quite difficult accent, all of them speaking super-strength Jockinese.
On the downside, I lost my owner. She went one to one with a fox and came a very poor second. I’m a bit surprised at how much I miss the little bugger.
So, I’m back, with a bit of catching up to do, I see 🙂
Boadicea's Chariot 
Great to see you here, Bravo.
You have been busy, but it doesn’t sound as though it’s all been fun.
I hope you are recovered, and I’m sorry to hear about your troubles, and the cat.
A book, though, sounds pretty impressive!
Good to see you back, Bravo, but sorry to hear about your owner.
What a time you have had, Bravo! I’m pleased you survived the unpleasant medical procedures and I’m very sorry about your cat.
Welcome back. 🙂
Thanks ladies.
Great to see you back! Sorry about your cat.
I can’t even manage to keep my eyes open to put eye-drops in – I wouldn’t have coped with laser treatment… just reading about made me shut both eyes very tightly 🙂
Wondered where you had got to.
Surprised you are in Acton not Cyprus.
Grim about losing your owner, very upsetting.
Very impressed with the Ivy touting for the chef, must be good!
Very good to hear from you again.
It wasn’t so much the laser as the instruments they used looking inside the eye; very unpleasant.
She was quite pleased, too, Christina – and it’s not bad haveing a good chef in the house, either 🙂
Nice to see you back.
I’ll be at next week’s game (23rd) Here’s hoping for a clean sweep. I’m enjoying the midweek games, nice to have a proper tour for a change!
‘Here’s hoping for a clean sweep.’ Nah, can’t do it – we lost the first one, remember 😀
Hi Bravo,
Good to see the site’s globetrotter back online. I hope that now your eyes are fixed, if indeed the surgery was a success, you can see rugby with clearer vision and notice it’s not worth watching. 😉 🙂
(Double smiley things. Welcome back)
It’s good to see you here again, Bravo! I was beginning to wonder if I would have to go on holiday in North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan in order to make up for the lack of exotic holiday stories. My sympathy for the loss of your master and owner.
Great to see you back! 😀
Welcome back onboard, Bravo! 🙂
Thanks again everybody. On the Bravo travels, contracts are a bit thin on the ground at the moment. The last enquiry I received, (apart from the usual Iraq/Afghanistan jobs which go straight into File 13,) was for a role in the Congo, which, obviously after due and careful consideration*, I decided was better not pursued.
*The Congo? You gotta be ****ting me!
Bravo, Bravo.
Cat loss miserable, very sorry about that.
Maybe a nice bit of lovely English Summer will cheer your spirits? September or October then…? That’s when we had some good English Summer weather last year.
Welcome back Bravo and thanks for the update. Charioteers are an eclectic lot and you have to be the most eclectic of us all. Having recently lost ein fürball to hunters’ poison I sympathise with the loss of your owner.
OZ
Thanks Pseu, she went for ‘brave’ when she should have selected ‘smart.’ Still miss the little bugger, though.
And thanks OZ, they have that poison problem in Cyprus, too.
It’s an odd thing here Bravo, a crime to poison a dog but not a cat, yet the uncontrolled use of poison is in itself illegal. Anyway, I have lodged a formal complaint (queixa) with the local plod and left posters in the village which have been the subject of much supportive comment from the Portuguese.
I am tickled by the idea of you having to speak Russian, Romanian or Chinese in London’s corner shops. Get out again while you still can. Better a stranger in a strange land etc,…
OZ
Not so much a case of having to, except in the Russian convenience store where the staff don’t seem to speak much English at all.
Hello Bravo. East Acton. I am just round the corner in Turnham Green. I wonder if the weather is any better where you are.
Not a lot, I imagine 🙂 Not too far at all – we should have a beer?
That sounds like a sound plan. However, I am about to head down to Hampshire and will be away all week. Maybe next week? My email is sipu56@hotmail.com.
Sipu, any chance of you being in Bratislava this summer? We’re heading off there at the beginning of July and I remember that last year you mentioned you might visit Slovakia.