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Thursday 14 March 2019

YOUR JOURNEY BY FIONA CUMMINGS


Well we are back from the pub quiz and boy we are gutted. Not because we came last again. Because we didn’t come last, tonight….

OK, we came second last.

But when we arrived in our local cosy pub with its coal fire burning, one of the lovely old fellas’ who talks to us turned to our friend and asked her if she had read the paper on the wall?

Turns out we may be losing our local pub unless someone jumps in last minute and buys it. The guys who run the pub are going to France to run a caravan park. It’s just come out of the blue, so next week is our last week. With the local pub comes the local people. It’s a community. Our friend is so sad about it. Bless him. My girlfriend is like, so Fi, where will we go now? haha. Me, I’m sad that the people we talk to every week may be no more. Let’s see what happens next week, may be someone will have bought it!

 

It’s fast approaching the pumpkin hour and our Son is doing his washing… Hub has to be up early tomorrow as he’s going a long way from home again working.

 

Tonight, I can go to bed with a very happy feeling. Something so sweet happened today and it has put a huge smile upon my face.

 

Oh, gross, guess what was outside of our back-door step today? Thank goodness my Son saw it. A dead mouse. Oh, he was so upset by it. I was like, oh no, that thing I thought was a leaf or something, could it have been the mouse? But my Son said it was intact, so if it had been Fifi’d, it would have not represented a mouse… hahaha. More like a pancake.

 

Storm Hannah is to come to us at the weekend. Is it correct that storms are named a girl’s name and then boys then girl then boy?

I wonder who thinks of the names? I guess it’s in alphabetic order as last one was Gareth, this one Hannah? So next one a boy’s name starting with I? let’s see if I’m right, I could look it up but I’m tired my brain is weak with the quiz, and it wasn’t too healthy before I started.

 

Our friends were saying that they had a rat in their garden and its stairs at them until they get really close. Oh, I really am cringing now. they live four doors from us. But they feed the birds and I know rats love that. I hate rats. I’m an animal lover and a vegetarian, but rats? Well, I couldn’t hurt one but I wouldn’t object to someone doing it for me as long as I didn’t hear anything.

 

On our lake the other day was the most amazing thing that would have made a great picture/photograph. A seagull was chasing a duck with a fish in the duck’s mouth. Bless the duck, it was swimming like mad to get away from the flying rat. Hahah. Now, seagulls, I don’t have anything against I don’t like them but I wouldn’t like people to hurt them. But rats?

 

I read today that Manuka honey is killing every bacteria, scientists throw at it.

Just thought I would put that out there.

 

I have two meetings on Monday, one I’m totally dreading. They are long too and one follows the other so I hope to get one finished before the other one starts.

 

As for the weekend, not sure what I am doing yet. I would like to go for a walk, this week I have done two big walks that’s good for me. Have I lost weight? Have I heckers like!

 

I’m ready for the spring now sick of the winter though it hasn’t been bad I shouldn’t complain.

 

Hub and I were talking the other day again and saying that it will be our last chance to have the freedom of our guide dogs as when they retire, that will be it sadly for us. I’m devastated. Gutted. Not sure what we will do to be honest. Both of us blind and neither of us will qualify for a guide dog under the new rules here. That makes me so sad as I used to take my Son to school and bring him back. Take him to school meetings with teachers etc and if he was sick at school, I could go and collect him. But that walk was about 12 minutes each way. So, say less than 25 there and back. Under the new rules, that wouldn’t be enough to qualify. We have to do forty-minute walks three different ones per week and do them every day. Well, firstly, those of you who are sighted, how many of you walk forty minutes every single day, doing three different routes?  So many people take their children to school and some people visit their parents with their guide dogs. Without the dogs we wouldn’t be able to do the routes. For example, schools are not easy enough to do with a white cane. I did it for a year and it was hell. Schools are all different shapes the buildings. There are parked cars. Children running all over. Plant pots, grass verges trees posts and more sticking out. A guide dog will avoid all of those. A white cane won’t.

 

As I have written about before, a little elderly lady who may just go out once a day to get a loaf but when she is out, she will talk to people, she will feel alive even for half an hour. Well no more. Sadly, she would be refused too. And then there is my Husband, he works in an office. But at weekends we go to our town, do our banking and other little shops specialised shops, but not during the week. So, if he needs to go to the doctors or dentist, then he will need his guide dog, but in general, just to have for work, he won’t be doing forty minutes. Even if he took a taxi then a train, that isn’t walking for forty minutes. I pray that by the time our dogs retire, the rules will have changed again. Most people with guide dogs, move to an area where they are close to things. Just to make life easier. I think they will find they have loads of guide dogs and no one to give them to if they keep this rule in place.

 

Right, grump over. On that note, I shall say some words before I go.

All you need is a plan, a road map and the courage to travel to a place where you want to go to. Get there, be happy knowing that only you have created that possibility of a new journey.

 

Fiona Cummings

 

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