Wednesday April 28th

Well so much for keeping up this blog on a daily basis! It has been over two weeks since the last post. Mary was very ill and has been on antibiotics and steroid tablets to get rid of a water and chest infection.

We had to cancel the holiday that we had planned to the Netherlands as she was just to bad to go. Thankfully she is getting over it now and I am going to rebook the holiday today. We have not lost a penny on the holiday thankfully and I will book with the same hotels as they were very good over the cancellation.

I still have not taken a single photo with my new camera. I am itching to get out and take something with it but due to Mary's illness and other things I have not managed to get out.

What I have been doing is reorganizing the house. All the rooms except one are now cleaned and sorted and the last one I will finish off this week. We both have a lot of clothes to get rid of that we no longer use and that has to be sorted. I am giving away a lot of stuff using 'Freecycle' and Mary prefers to take hers to the charity shops.

We have treated ourselves to a new wide screen TV and Blue-ray player. The TV is only 37" which is not massive these days but our room is quite small and it looks huge. It did not look so big in the shops, but the picture is excellent.

Monday April 12th

I have finally got the new camera that I have been trying to get for over a week. My wife has been and still is very poorly so we have not been out much. She was a bit better on Saturday so out we went to town to get the camera. Due to the extraordinary kindness of my old work mates I was given a voucher for £430 to spend in a camera shop.

I have always been a Nikon lover and the camera that I wanted and could afford was the D3000 SLR. I wanted a zoom lens as well so by paying just a small amount extra I got a Sigma 70-300mm zoom lens. What a combination! OK so it is not in the pro league but for me it is the best I will get unless I win the lottery! I am going to enjoy this one and want to get out as soon as I can to take some photos with it.

However my wife Mary is still very ill. We went out for a meal yesterday and she just not was not with it at all. When we came back home she went straight to bed and there she has stayed not moving. I will get a doctor today. I think she may have a severe water infection as the urine has just about stopped working. She had kidney failure two years ago and I hope that does not come up again.

Thursday 7th April

Yesterday we drove to Bristol to see ' Deal or no Deal'. If you have never seen the show click on the link. It was a lot of fun and we might go again to see it. The old guy who was there walked away with over £30,000 so he did alright. He went further than I would have though. I would have been happy with half of that.

Today with a bit of luck and if the wife is OK I will go into town to get a new camera. The incredible amount given to me by the staff of Cardiff Bus has been given in the form of a voucher from a camera shop. I want to get a Nikon D3000 SLR. I have been missing my SLR camera since it was stolen two years ago and although my Nikon P80 bridge camera is good it cannot compare to the SLR.

And this afternoon just for fun we are going to the hospital to see about Mary's foot. This is a long standing problem and she has to see the podiatrist about it today.

Another day

Well today is Tuesday 6th April. The night at the club was quite a night and of course I had to much to drink. I might as well have tried to stop the tide coming in! The drinks were on my table before I had chance to say stop! In the end I had to stop people buying me drinks as I just could not take any more.

There was a presentation and a lot of nice things were said, to much to put in here. Enough was given to buy a new camera, one that I had thought of getting in three years and that was very touching.

So today my retirement really starts in ernest as up to now I have been on lieu days and if I was working I would have been on days off anyway. But this is really it and no more work at all. I will have to pay a load of bills of soon when my money gets into the bank one day this week.

Today we are going to Bristol to see the TV show 'Deal or no Deal' being made. I have seen TV shows made before and it is fun seeing what goes on behind the scenes.