We gonna come together, we gonna celebrate, we gonna gather 'round, like it's your birthday (Kings Of Leon)

 

Wie geht's?

Name the year!

Here are your clues:

1. The first penalty shoot-out ever in the F.A. Cup took place (Rotherham v Scunthorpe in case you were wondering and Rotherham won 7-6)
2. Sir Robert Muldoon resigns from parliament
3. Eurythmics Greatest Hits was the year's top selling album
4. Jade Michelle Purdy was born

Yes, that's right, it was 1991, 29 years ago, when, on November 28, Jade popped along to add more joy to our lives.

OMG - she still looks like that when she's asleep

Happy birthday DLG!

Love from JFP and me

Ooh, when it gets through to me, it's always new to me - my double vision gets the best of me (Foreigner)

Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Me? Well, last weekend was a write off.

The first sign I'm getting a migraine used to be tingling fingers, then my vision altering by jagged lines and then a blazing all consuming headache hitting and pounding away for 24 hours.

Saturday's one was different - started with the jagged lines and changed vision, but after I took Jacky's migraine medication and retreated to a dark room to wait it out, the headache didn't cripple me as before. Now it's just a dull ache above my affected eye (or eyes as was the case on Saturday because for the first time ever my vision was affected twice - first my right eye, then, two hours later, the other one).

The two days afterwards haven't changed though - two days of lingering aftermath that Jacky and I know as 'eggshells'. 

Fellow migraine sufferers know the drill.

My triggers have remained the same over the years - some dehydration, lack of sleep, and some stress. Mix those three together and hey presto.

Unfortunately that was the recipe for Thursday and Friday last week.

My father used to say that only intelligent people get migraines. Now that could have been a bald-faced lie given to lessen the blow to a teenage me but it always made me feel slightly better.

Love and peace - Wozza

How can I walk with this ball and chain? How can I land in this hurricane? Or is this part of man's evolution to be torn between truth and illusion? (The Band)

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

School stuff has been front and centre of Wozza's World these last two weeks (yes - it's Wozza's World - you just live in it).

"Why is that exactly?", I hear you ask politely.

Well the Education Review Office (ERO) has come a-calling to my two campuses during these last two weeks.

Being inspected can be a testing time for staff (students don't really give a monkeys).

During a visit, part of me wants to show off the great places where I work, highlight the excellent staff I have the privilege to work alongside, celebrate everything that makes our campuses great ones, but part of me is also a tad hesitant in case they don't quite get us, or else a tad worried they'll think we're big 'eads.

The use of different reviewers has meant that the ERO checklist of compliance issues wasn't directly used at Gisborne, but certainly has been at Hastings.

In both cases I have wondered whether I haven't said enough or else have said too much.

I'm great at second guessing myself as I pootle homeward in the Purdmobile; I shouldn't have said 'x', or, I wish I had said 'y'. I hear myself rewording things in a much better way - I know I'm not alone in experiencing this semi-tortured state.

The reviewers are probably not giving anything I've said a second thought. But then again, maybe they are.

Ah well. What are you gonna do? It's done and dusted. It's in the books.

As I said to someone today: don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff.

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. To answer Robbie Robertson's final question in the heading (from Forbidden Fruit on The Band's great Northern Lights-Southern Cross album)...yes.

This is the easiest task I've ever had to do. Reason had harnessed the tame, holding the sky in their arms, gravity pulls me down (REM)

Photo by Mayank Dhanawade on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

As your ace cub reporter indicated a few posts ago - a recent trip to the docs and subsequent horror at my weighing in at 84.7 kg resulted in me launching a weight loss regime to reach 80kg (no inbetween snacks, no fizzy or alcohol).

Three weeks later, and happily I can now report on job done as my weight is fluctuating between 79.95kg and 80.2kg.

And, even more happily my knees have been amazingly fine since I started losing the weight. It's brilliant - just 5 kg less and gravity is my friend suddenly!

The x-rays, btw, didn't reveal any knee issues that need further interventions.

So, I just need to stay away from the snacks et al and enjoy the benefit of pain free knee joints. Worth it as I can now climb ladders and stairs without winching!

Love and peace out - Wozza

I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it (Donald Trump)

Wie geht's?

Wow - that was a dramatic week that's just passed.

It began with Samantha celebrating her wedding anniversay and ended with Adam and Ashleigh celebrating theirs. Along the way Jade glammed up and went off to a medical ball, I battled a tummy bug while away in Gisborne and the American's took an age to declare a President-elect in the U.S. election.

It dawned on me what a different system the British parliamentary one is. Here and Australia and the UK, the party, ministers and the Prime Minister are elected at the same time. Makes sense, right.

In America the President is a stand alone election, and then, apart from a running mate, he or she creates the team around themselves after they win. Weird when you think about it. Blind faith is the order of the day.

Anyway, we (the world) survived four years of Trump and his swamp creatures (Rudy Guiliani is just the unhinged tip of the stinking iceberg). 

Now that he and his family have been fired, he can go and play golf, tweet to his hearts content, and badmouth everyone who doesn't toady to his every word. Oh wait - he does all of that now.

So, erm, maybe now he'll have to face up to all of the lawsuits from the women who have claimed improper conduct, front up to the banks over all those loans, pay taxes, and spend some time with Melania.

What's that sound? Apart from the chickens coming home to roost, that's the planet's giant sigh of relief.

Love and peace - WNP

Carry on till tomorrow there's no reason to look back (Badfinger)

Recent 2020 passport photo

Wie geht's?

Recently, very recently - last Sunday during our weekly family zoom in fact, Keegan wondered whether I was on a nostalgia trip. I believe he said (I'm paraphrasing obviously) something along the lines of - I don't care about 2007, I wanna know what you are doing now.

First up - no I'm not on a nostalgia trip per se. More that I don't have much going on really aside from the work/sleep/work/sleep treadmill, with a fleeting side interest in football, music, American politics, books. I'm pretty boring. Shock horror probe!

Plus I had fun taking a photo folder at random for the recent posts and seeing what it had to share.

But anyway - for Keegan and anyone else who cares - here's what I'm currently doing:

Losing weight (a week ago during a visit to the doc about my painful knees and she says to me, she says - have they hurt more since you put on weight? She says. Erm, as I squirmed - maaaybe, says I. I rushed home and weighed myself - 84.7kg. The heaviest I've ever been. So I determined to lose the excess 4.7kg. The plan: no to cakes, biscuits, snacks between and after meals, fizzy drinks and yes to fruit, water, three simple meals a day. The result? The loss of 2.5kg in a week. Nice. 2.2 to go before I celebrate with a donut from the Little Frimley Kitchen). Ha ha!

Reading (Mojo's October issue, My Life in Red and White - Arsène Wenger's autobiography, and James Sallis' Drive) - two of the three are up-to-date, of the moment texts - I'm counting Wenger's as such because it was just released.

Listening to music (high rotation awards go to The Beths latest album released this year, and Bruce Springsteen's latest)

Watching - we've just finished watching season 1 of The Queen's Gambit and we continue to enjoy Modern Family - both on Netflix.

Working wise - ERO are due a visit so that stokes up the paperwork.

Travelling - two trips to my Gisborne campus in the next two weeks - one is my regular visit (where I'm typing this right now!! at the Portside Motel), the other is for ERO. A week after that they visit my Hastings campus.

Miscellaneous - Walking, mowing lawns, some gardening, some Jade and Asher visits...that all makes up my now.

And you're up-to-date!

Love and peace - Abu Keegan