Month: February 2018

More snow overnight, and this time it’s a serious quantity – about 4 inches of the white stuff is cloaking my car.  My wife is insistent that she is going to drive to Hevingham to go to work, so I go outside and scrape the snow and ice from her car’s windows.   My car is looking quite vulnerable outside our house – the roads here haven’t been gritted so they are extremely slippery, it wouldn’t take much for someone turning into our street to slide straight into my car.  I scrape my car’s windows as well, and move my car to the safety of the village hall car park.

I take the dog (who is very excited about the snow) for her morning walk, collecting our neighbour’s dog along the way – our neighbour had a shoulder operation yesterday and really needs to take it easy for a few days.

I catch up on the news by reading The Metro online whilst I drink my tea and nutriblast, and then get a few logs in from the back garden and light the fire (I’m feeling the cold – it’s -5 degrees Celsius today, and us Brits aren’t used to it!).

I vacuum downstairs and then take our dog (and our neighbour’s dog) for another walk.  My wife arrives home early (for a change) because the weather is worsening and it its snowing heavily again.  I prepare dinner (for a change) while she busies herself with some pending admin tasks for her soft furnishings business.

My tremor remains at a tolerable level, my voice is stronger and more distinct.  The muscular pain in my right arm, which has been with me for long enough now to be considered a Parkinson’s symptom rather than a strained muscle (which is what I hoped it was, initially), is quite debilitating, and I have to concentrate hard when picking up things (especially food or drink) so that I don’t drop them.

Another fall of snow overnight has blanketed Southrepps.  Very pretty, but also very cold.  I’m glad that I managed to stack almost all of yesterday‘s log delivery (before it got dark) and get it covered.  What I didn’t stack yesterday is still in the wheelbarrow with a sack over it to keep it dry.  I bring a basketful into the house for this evening’s fire, when I get back from the morning dog walk.

I post off some more documents concerning my mother’s estate, and then start work on putting my neighbour’s safari holiday video onto a DVD for him – copying the completed video files from my network storage drive to my MacBook, and then scouring YouTube for a decent tutorial video to show me how to use the iDVD software that I have.   I don’t make a huge amount of progress, but at least I have made a start on the task.

I pop into my neighbour’s house for a cup of tea and a chinwag after I have taken the dog for her afternoon walk, and then light the fire as darkness falls (because the temperature is also falling).

My aching jaw is almost completely better now, only giving me discomfort when I’m eating, so that’s a major improvement.  Left leg tremor is very variable at the moment – varying from being almost totally under control, to being a flipping nuisance!  Voice is still weak and husky and strangling my sentences.

I feel as if I have achieved a great deal today. I walked the dog (after I drank my tea and nutriblast) and then went over to Stalham to see my younger brother.  I collected the necessary documents to enable me to progress with administering our mother’s estate, emailed identification documents to a solicitor who has been waiting for them for quite some time, sent forms to my mother’s Building Society so that they will release her savings, arranged for some shares to be transferred so that they can be administered as part of her estate, paid my Calor Gas bill and water bill online, cleaned out the woodburner, vacuumed downstairs, took the dog for her afternoon walk, received a delivery of logs (which I wheelbarrowed from the road into our rear garden, stacked against the rear wall and covered over with a tarpaulin), lit the fire and prepared dinner.  And now I’m knackered!

I had a call from the speech therapist that my Parkinson’s nurse referred me to – I think she wanted to assess the urgency of the referral, given that I got my Parkinson’s nurse to request it as a matter of urgency rather than as “routine”.  The therapist asked me few questions, agreed that I urgently require some help, and promised to call me back with an appointment within the next week.  Result!

My wife is off to work again this morning, so I text my brother to see if he is back home yet (I need to complete some paperwork with him concerning our mother’s estate).  He’s still away, so I guess I’ll try to get over to see him tomorrow morning instead.

It’s freezing cold outside, so I don’t hang around for long when I take the dog for her morning walk.  As soon as I finish my mugs of tea and my nutriblast I sit myself down at the dining table with my MacBook and get on with editing my neighbour’s safari holiday video.  I seem to have been editing the damned thing forever, so I’m really pleased that I have finished it today!  Now all I need to do is create a DVD with the edited videos, and that’s the job done – one day next week, perhaps.

I take the dog for her afternoon walk and then light the fire just before my wife returns from work.  Snow is falling as we make our way to bed tonight, so no doubt the county will be at a standstill tomorrow – we’re not used to snow in these parts!

My wife has decided to go to work today because she has got a lot of work on at the moment, so I plan to go over to Stalham to see my younger brother and fill out some forms concerning our mother’s estate.

I have couple of mugs of tea, drink my nutriblast and walk the dog before texting my brother to check that he is at home.  He isn’t, and won’t be there at all today, so that puts an end to my plans!

I get the last of the logs in from the back garden – we are babysitting in Hevingham this evening so we won’t bother to have a fire tonight, and there’s just enough firewood to enable us to have a fire on Sunday night.  We are due to have a delivery of logs on Monday afternoon and  we are forecast to have an even colder few days next week, so fingers crossed that they are delivered as promised.

I read The Metro online to catch up on the news, post some links to my latest vlog on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and then watch a documentary online about cannabis and the endocannabinoid system.

Left leg tremor has increased again, and my voice is weak and husky. If I increase the voltage on my neurostimulator to calm my tremor, then I stand a good chance of making my voice even worse, so I don’t make any changes and hope that things will improve tomorrow.

My wife arrives home from work, we have a very quick dinner (soup and soggy croutons, because my mouth is still sore) and then go over to Hevingham to look after our eldest granddaughter for the evening.

It’s the Patients At Parliament protest outside the House of Commons today, in support of Paul Flynn‘s Elizabeth Brice bill for legal access to medicinal cannabis, so that is what this week’s vlog is all about.  I would really like to be there with all of the other protesters, but my wife can’t afford to take the time off work (she’s incredibly busy at the moment) and we really can’t afford to spend almost £100 on train tickets to enable us to travel to Westminster from Norfolk.

I have almost finished editing the video, when I hear that the bill wasn’t given a second reading due to filibustering by a Labour MP.  I feel very disappointed, but I’m sure that disappointment is felt much more keenly by everybody attending the protest, let alone Labour MP Paul Flynn, who expressed his disgust at the time-wasting tactics of a member of his own party.   I really cannot understand why MPs are so afraid of cannabis.  Alcohol and tobacco are far more dangerous than cannabis will ever be.

I publish my vlog with a heavy heart.  The next attempt to have a second reading of the Elizabeth Brice bill is now July – fingers crossed that it doesn’t fall victim to similar tactics then!

My wife’s accountant pays me a visit this afternoon, to provided me with a formal statement of identification that I require to administer my mother’s estate.  I should gave arranged this months ago, but I have been dragging my feet.  Hopefully I can get together with my brother tomorrow and we can fill out the necessary paperwork and get it posted off.

I’ve been agonising over the subject of this week’s vlog.  I have three subjects in mind, but they are all quite complex and I don’t think I’ll be able to do them justice in a 5 or 6 minute video.  I have spent most of the day researching them online and still haven’t made a decision.

I have to go to Aldborough surgery again this afternoon.  When I saw the doctor on Tuesday he took my blood pressure, which was a little on the high side, so he wanted me to see the nurse today to have it taken again to see if it was just a one-off.  Although it wasn’t as high as it was on Tuesday, it was higher than they would like – they are going to provide me with a machine to take home with me so that I can take my own blood pressure at home (twice daily, for a week) to see if it is more normal when I’m in my own home.

I try to make some more progress with my neighbour’s safari holiday video, but my heart isn’t in it and I just end up feeling irritated by it – so I give it up for the moment.

Tremor is still in my left leg, but it’s not as bad as it was yesterday so I won’t make any DBS adjustments just now.  The ache in my jaw is also less painful than yesterday, which is good!

I spend much of today sitting on my backside surfing the ‘net, educating myself as much as possible about the clinical trials for exenatide, the type 2 diabetes drug that showed promise in arresting the progression of Parkinson’s Disease symptoms.  I want to know all of the pros and cons before I talk to my consultant about it and, hopefully, persuade her to tell my doctor that it could be “worth a try” (my doctor told me yesterday that he would be happy to prescribe it to me if my consultant were to write those words to him).

Of course the usual time was taken to take the dog for her two walks,  I caught up with the news by reading The Metro online while I drank my morning cuppas, and the world stops for PopMaster at 10.30am…  I also made time to split a few logs, fill the log basket and light the fire before my wife arrived home from work.

We go over to my wife’s parents house in Worstead this evening – it’s my wife’s mother’s birthday today, so we take her her card and present.

My jaw is still aching away, but today (for no particular reason that I can think of) the tremor in my left leg has been competing for attention.  Hopefully it will calm down again by tomorrow, otherwise I’ll be considering an adjustment to my neurostimulator.

I need to find a supplier of logs fairly urgently – we are going to run out of firewood by the weekend, sooner if the weather gets any colder.  We won’t freeze, of course, because we have central heating, but somehow having a fire lit makes you feel warmer just by looking at it.  I find an advert on Gumtree, send the bloke a message, and we will have a delivery of logs next Monday, which I’m very relieved about.  I split a few logs and bring them into the house for this evening’s blaze.

I have an appointment with my new doctor this afternoon.  I finally got around to filling out the application form to transfer from Mundesley surgery to Aldborough surgery, and todays appointment is just an opportunity for my doctor and I to introduce ourselves.  He seems genuinely interested in hearing about my experiences with Parkinson’s and deep brain stimulation, and doesn’t bat an eyelid when I tell him that the only medication I take for Parkinson’s is cannabis.  I also talk to him about the exenatide drug trial carried out recently, and asked him about prescribing it for me in light of my current rapid symptom progression.  He said that if I could get a letter from my consultant stating that “it might be worth a try” then he would be happy to prescribe it for me “off label“, which sounds a lot more promising than I had dared to hope for.  My next step, therefore, will be to approach my neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery to see if she would be willing to write to my doctor…

I have an appointment with the Parkinson’s nurse at 9am this morning, so we are up, tea/coffee drunk and out of the house by 8.40am.  We arrive at North Walsham Hospital bang on time, and have a reasonably productive meeting with the nurse.  My wife and I convince her that my referral to speech and language therapists is more urgent than its current priority of “routine”, and she emails the department while we are there.  She also chases up the physiotherapy department (because she also referred me to them, and they haven’t been in touch yet).  We have yet another discussion about medicinal cannabis, and she does (to be fair) want to know more about it, in spite of spouting a bit of nonsense about how addictive it is.  I provide her with some comparisons with the legal recreational drugs that are available (alcohol and tobacco) and promise to email her some links to more information about medicinal cannabis.

We return to Southrepps.  My wife departs for work and I begin preparing an email or two to send to the Parkinson’s nurse, listing many of my vlogs and informational videos well as a couple of well known documentaries on YouTube.

I split a couple of logs for tonight’s fire, and try to order some more logs online.  I say “try”, because everyone seems to be ruining out of supplies of nice dry, seasoned wood.   My usual suppliers have no more wood, so I’ll have to locate another supplier or, failing that, start burning coal (which I really don’t want to do).

My jaw pain is still distracting me from my Parkinson’s symptoms, but the pain has receded to a dull ache now (rather like toothache).   I’m thinking about taking some painkillers, but I’ve managed without them so far, so it seems a bit silly to do so when it appears to be healing.  Beer and cannabis instead?  Absolutely!

We have a bit of a lie-in this morning (it is supposed to be a day of rest, after all) and don’t get up until almost 10am.

We take a trip into North Walsham to get a few bits and pieces (soup, vegetable seeds, beer, bread) and then spend a couple of hours down at the allotment, weeding the vegetable beds and getting them ready for growing some produce this year.  I manage about an hour’s worth of weeding, and then I’m pretty much exhausted.  I return home for a sit down while my wife plants out some broad bean seeds.

When I have recovered a little, I clean the windows in the wood burner, fill the log basket, light the fire and vacuum downstairs.

My wife is working today, so it’s just me and the dog again.  I take the dog for her morning walk and then sit on the sofa in the lounge with a nice hot mug of tea and my nutriblast to read The Metro online and catch up with the week’s news.

I manage to get off my backside this afternoon and give the bathroom a good clean, wash the quarry tiles in the hall, clean the hearth, split a few logs and fill the log basket, vacuum downstairs and (finally) light the fire.

My mouth is still sore from my tooth extraction and is still taking my mind off my Parkinson’s symptoms – I am eating on the other side of my mouth at the moment, and managing to catch the inside of my lower lip with my teeth on a very regular basis, so I’m not enjoying eating my food at all at the moment, in fact I may well stick to having soup for the next few days…

My wife has our eldest granddaughter for the day, so she is up early and out of the house before I have even woken up properly.

I am supposed to be going to see her accountant this morning – he has agreed to provide me with a formal letter of identification so that I can legally deal with certain aspects of my mother’s estate – but he is unavailable when I phone to confirm our appointment, so it’ll have to wait until another day.

I drive to the Gunton Arms at 12pm to meet up with my wife’s parents, her younger brother, my wife and our granddaughter – we are treating them to some of the quirky (and delicious) bar snacks on offer there, as a gesture of thanks for looking after our dog while we were away on holiday recently.  Also my wife is hoping that she can show our granddaughter some of the wild deer that roam the Gunton estate, in which the pub is situated.  We spend a pleasant hour and a half eating, drinking and chatting, and then take a stroll around the estate where we finally spot the elusive deer (I’m not sure who was most excited – my wife or our granddaughter).

I return to Southrepps to walk the dog (again), and then publish my weekly vlog and post links to it from my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

I prepare another basket of kindling, split a basketful of logs and get the fire lit – it’s chilly, even though it’s a beautiful sunny day!

My sore jaw (from Tuesday’s extraction) continues to overshadow my Parkinson’s symptoms, so I’m evidently feeling pretty good at the moment!

It is going to be a busy day tomorrow – looking after our eldest granddaughter and also taking my wife’s parents and her brother out for a pub lunch to thank them for looking after our dog while we were away on holiday.  This will interfere greatly with my weekly vlog schedule, so I make the decision to do my vlog today instead.

I walk the dog, and then spend the rest of the morning researching and writing a script about psychosis in Parkinson’s Disease.

The afternoon is spent filming (with a large number of re-takes due to my voice, which is sounding a little indistinct today) and editing the video.  I upload it to my YouTube channel just before my wife returns from work, and I’m all set to publish it tomorrow.

My jaw is a little on the sore side following my molar extraction on Tuesday, and I think that this didn’t assist with clarity of speech when filming.  My Parkinson’s symptoms are fairly well under control at the moment – bubbling away beneath the surface, but everything is tolerable.

It’s Valentine’s Day, so my wife and I exchange cards (I gave her her flowers when she got home yesterday evening) and gifts.

I spend the day buying another holiday.  Ever since I met my wife I have gone on and on about how wonderful the Sugar Cane Club in Barbados is, and when we were in Egypt the other week I rashly promised to take her there this year.  So, I have been in touch with number of travel companies this week, trying to get the best possible deal.  When we were discussing getting each other a gift for Valentine’s Day, we agreed that our gift to each other would be a holiday to Barbados for our fifth wedding anniversary this October, so that’s what I have booked.  Not quite sure where the money is going to come from, but I have a few months to find it.  I justify the expense by telling myself that I have to do these things while I still can – nobody knows how quickly (or slowly) my Parkinson’s will progress, or which symptom will be next to emerge.  In any case, my wife deserves to be taken somewhere special – she’s a very special lady.

My mouth is still pretty sore following my molar extraction yesterday, so our romantic Valentine’s day meal this evening will be broccoli and stilton soup with soggy croutons – yum!

I’m having a broken tooth extracted at the dental department of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital this afternoon.  I don’t expect to be feeling too sharp afterwards, so I need to get a few things done before leaving the house for my appointment.

First and foremost, the dog needs to be walked, so I wrap up well (it’s still chilly out there) and take her for a leisurely stroll around the field by the village hall.

Next on the agenda is a basketful of logs for the fire this evening.  This is an easy win – I have a stack of logs that I split the other day, just waiting to be carried indoors.

It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, so I drive to North Walsham to get some flowers and a card for my wonderful wife – I definitely won’t have an opportunity to get anything later on.

I have a shave, brush my teeth and change my shirt (a red t-shirt in case the dental surgeon gets blood on it) before my wife arrives home to take me to hospital.

The operation goes smoothly and quickly and is relatively painless.  I wasn’t nervous about having the tooth extracted, but I guess the adrenaline must have been flowing – my tremor went through the roof when the surgeon was injecting me with local anaesthetic, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.  I even had tremor in my right side (especially my right arm) which is very unusual these days.  By the time the anaesthetic has taken effect, though, things have settled down a little, and I’m no longer conscious of shaking.

I’m back home in Southrepps less than 3 hours after my operation, drinking lukewarm carrot and coriander soup with soggy toast croutons – delicious!

My wife takes the dog for a walk while I light the fire – our day is done, apart from an episode of Suits on Netflix.

I’m determined to get my neighbour’s safari holiday video edited and out of the way, so today is spent moving all of the completed videos (there’s one for each day of their holiday) onto a network drive so that I can free up some space on my MacBook.  Eventually, I manage to free up over 25gb of disk space, which should make a big difference to the performance of my laptop.

It’s still very cold here, even though it is a bright and sunny morning, so I warm up by splitting a few logs (even though I didn’t need to – I split a couple of days worth yesterday), fill the log basket and light the fire.  By the time I’ve vacuumed downstairs I have to take off my fleece and sweater because I’m too hot!

I prepare dinner (for a change) to save my wife from having to do so – she’s had a long day, and doesn’t get home until almost 8pm.

Nothing much going on here today – it’s freezing cold outside, so I’m trying to stay in the warm.  My wife takes the dog for her morning walk and I sit and drink my morning cuppas.

I decide to continue with editing my neighbour’s safari holiday video – the sooner I have that finished, the happier I will be.

We go over to have dinner with my wife’s youngest son, his wife and our youngest granddaughter this evening, so I don’t bother with bringing any logs in to the house today, since we won’t bother lighting the fire – I do spend half an hour splitting a few logs, though, because I feel that I’m being a tad lazy and they’ll come in handy later in the week.

We get back to Southrepps in time to watch an episode of Suits on Netflix.   I’m suffering with restless legs at the moment, so I take a little cannabis to calm it, which it does.  It also helps me get off to sleep (and stay asleep).

My wife is going to work today, so I am left to my own devices – no big deal, it’s just like a normal weekday!

I take the dog for her morning walk, and discover how flipping cold it is outside – I’m ready to light the fire already, and its only 9.30am.  I warm myself up by splitting a few logs in the back garden and filling the log basket.  Resisting the temptation to light the fire immediately, I drink a couple of mugs of tea whilst reading The Metro online and posting links to my weekly vlog on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

I relent, and light the fire at 11am – I’m still feeling the cold, in spite of my log splitting exertions.

I have a number of videos that I need to edit, so I try to make some progress with my neighbour’s safari holiday video – I have now completed 10 days worth of editing, so I’m hoping that I have broken the back of it!

The pain in my side is getting fainter and fainter now, although it still makes itself known if I lie on my right side in bed – very strange that it should take this long to heal.  I am still on group “A” settings from yesterday – tremor doesn’t appear to be to much worse than when I am on group “B” settings, but I do think that my voice is generally a little better, so I’ll stick with it until the tremor becomes too annoying.

An evening in front of the fire watching Suits on Netflix follows.

Back from holiday, and back into the routine, so the day is spent scripting, filming and editing my weekly vlog.  My wife suggested a subject (special assistance available at airports for those of us that require a little help), so that’s what it’s all about.

The only symptom that is impeding my progress is my voice, which is (to my ears) slurred and indistinct.  I change the settings on my neurostimulator to group “A” (because those settings appear to have slightly less of an effect on my voice) but I still have many retakes before I’m anything approaching satisfied with its clarity – if I listen to myself and can’t be certain of the words that are coming out of my mouth, then how can I expect anyone else to understand me?  At least the subtitles, that I routinely put on all of my videos, help a little in that respect.

It’s another very cold day here in Southrepps, so I split a few logs, fill the log basket and light the fire quite early in the day.

The dog eats something that she found whilst out for our afternoon stroll (Labradors do this!), and promptly throws up over the rug in the lounge when we get home – so half an hour of precious vlogging time is spent on cleaning up after her.  It’s an achievement, therefore, to have finished the video, uploaded it to my YouTube channel and published it by the time my wife arrives home from work.

We are awake at 7.30am, which is a bit on the early side considering we didn’t get to bed until after 3am, but once we’re awake we get up and start sorting stuff out.

My wife empties the suitcases and sorts out the dirty laundry.  I clean out the woodburner, bring in a few logs from the back garden and get the fire going (because we are feeling the cold).

The pain in my side has almost disappeared now, which is a major relief.  Left leg tremor is still present, but no better or worse than it has been over the last week or so.  Voice is a touch weak at the moment, and I am still having to make a conscious effort to enunciate clearly to make myself understood.

We go to North Walsham this evening to visit Lidl to get some groceries, and also drop in on my wife’s parents in Worstead to collect our dog – home just isn’t home until the dog is back in residence!

It’s the last day of our holiday today, so we pack our suitcases as soon as we get up, take them to the hotel reception for safe storage, and head for the beach to make the most of our last few hours of sunshine and warmth.  Our taxi arrives at just before 4pm to take us to the airport for our flight back to Gatwick.

Everything goes to schedule and we are back in the UK by 10.30pm – it feels a bit chilly as we load the cases into my car, and the computer confirms that it’s -2 degrees Celsius.   We drive back to Norfolk (with a quick stop at McDonald’s in Clacket Lane services), arriving home (-4.5 degrees Celsius!!) just after 3am.  We bring the suitcases into the house (leaving them in the lounge to be dealt with later) and collapse, exhausted, into bed.

It’s a slightly cooler day in Marsa Alam today – still just a gentle breeze, but sunshine is a little hazy.  We venture out along the pier from the beach this morning to do some deep water snorkelling, but find that there are a large number of jellyfish (of the stinging variety) in the water, so our swim is cut short. Today is a beach day, which is fine by me, especially as the sun isn’t too strong.

The pain in my right side is less intrusive today, which is nice!  Tremor remains the same – annoying, but bearable.  My voice is definitely weaker and strangling my sentences.  Overall?  Can’t complain!

The weather forecast was correct, and there was just a gentle breeze in Marsa Alam today, so deep water snorkelling was very much on the agenda.  We got to see a couple of fish that were have never seen before (a spotted reef stingray and a conger eel) as well as the usual array of colourful marine life that makes swimming in the Red Sea akin to swimming in a well stocked aquarium.

Tremor remains prominent in my left leg, but it’s not bothering me unduly.  My voice is a little weaker than it was yesterday, and I feel that I’m slurring my words (and it’s got nothing to do with the number of all-inclusive cocktails that I’m enjoying).  The pain in my right side is still there, but no worse than it was yesterday – I’ll go to see my doctor about it if it hasn’t disappeared by the time we get home.

Up until now we have been snorkelling in a shallow lagoon close to the beach, because the strong breeze made it more difficult to enter the water at the end of the pier.  The pier stretches out from the end of the beach, across the shallow lagoon to the edge of the coral reef where the depth of the water is more than 10 metres.  The sea has been very rough at this point, breaking into surf as it reaches the edge of the reef.  Today there is a much more gentle breeze, and there are scarcely any waves breaking over the reef, so my wife and I have been enjoying snorkelling in deeper waters.  Tomorrow is also forecast to be less windy, so we will make the most of it while it lasts.

I am still extremely uncomfortable with the pain in my side, but it isn’t stopping me from enjoying my holiday – I just wish it would go away!  My tremor is much the same.  My voice has definitely improved in strength, although I feel it is bordering on indistinct because of the number of times that I have to repeat myself to be understood.

Predictably, the sun is shining this morning, it’s another beautiful day (if a tad breezy) in Marsa Alam.  My wife and I spend another day lounging on the beach with frequent snorkelling excursions.  The colorful marine life is absolutely amazing, and we spend hours marveling at it.

The hotel that we are staying at has its own beach with a fine stretch of coral reef that attracts a huge variety of marine life, so there’s no need to go anywhere else (unless, of course, it doesn’t interest you).

My tremor (left leg) remains pretty much the same, the pain in my right side (which was a lot better yesterday) is really uncomfortable today, and I can’t think what I can have done to aggravate it.  Hoping it goes away…

Another day in paradise dawns – 24 degrees Celsius is forecast, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.  I think the pain in my right side has eased a little since last night, and I’m very relieved about that – it’s still uncomfortable, but the pain is not as sharp. Tremor in my left leg is still there, but it’s manageable.

We both overdid the sunbathing yesterday (very deceptive with the cool breeze that is blowing here), so we smother ourselves in high factor sunscreen and I make sure I cover up well.

More beach, snorkelling, eating and drinking today – as you do when on holiday.

I’m awake quite early, around 7.30am which is 5.30am in the UK, but we don’t actually get out of bed until 9am (well, we are on holiday!).

It’s a sunny 22 degrees Celsius in Marsa Alam today, and there isn’t a single cloud in the sky.  After we have had some breakfast, we get our swimming cossies on, and head for the beach.  Marsa Alam is known for being quite a windy resort, and that certainly proves the case.  The sea is quite choppy, but that doesn’t prevent us from snorkelling and seeing some wonderful colourful marine life, which is exactly what we came here for.  The constant breeze also has the effect of making you less aware of the strength of the sun, so I cover up around lunchtime so that I don’t get sunburnt.

The pain in my side is still giving me grief – I probably didn’t help it any by lugging heavy suitcases around yesterday (even though my wife tried to stop me), and my tremor is being a nuisance in my left leg (probably because I’m tired from yesterday’s travelling).  Hopefully both will improve as the holiday progresses!

An early start this morning. We are up, cases loaded into the car, and on or way to the airport just a few minutes after 3am.  We have a good uneventful journey without the drama and expense of last week’s blowout, and we are parked up and in the terminal in plenty of time.

For the first time, I have booked airport assistance because I know how long it takes to get from the departure lounge to the boarding gate, and I have to say that the experience (which I had been worried about) was very positive. Once the gate for our flight had been announced, we were transported directly to the aircraft steps – no standing around in long queues, which made a hell of a difference. Once we were airborne, tiredness caught up with me and, although I had real difficulty in falling asleep, I spent most of the journey with my eyes closed.

Assistance at Marsa Alam airport was a somewhat different experience, but they did their best and we were safely delivered to the arrivals hall to queue for our visas and to get through passport control.

We had booked a private taxi firm to take us to our hotel, so we avoided the usual hassle of being transferred by coach and visiting every other hotel in the area before reaching ours.

We had some dinner and a drink or two, and then retired to our room to have an early night.