Bit of a squash

This year, I planted a few different squash and pumpkins, hopefully early enough to actually mature. Last year our one pumpkin of any size was still green at the end of the growing season.

I also built a teepee type thing for beans and to get the gourds to grow up. I’d been looking at a tiny little squash (I think a turban squash) for a little while, wondering if it was going to get any bigger, and then today found a couple of much larger ones hiding under leaves at ground level. We’ve also got round courgettes, but one has got big enough to be called a marrow. Help! Too much courgette.

The day Hannah had a heart attack

Yesterday morning, as I was about to leave for work, Hannah started to clean the kitchen bin with bleach spray. A couple of minutes later, she started to have what, from previous experience, felt like an asthma attack. She felt it was burning in her lungs and told me she must have inhaled chlorine. Her salbutamol inhaler didn’t make any real difference and she was in a bad way, so I called an ambulance.

The ambulance with with us in a matter of 2 or 3 minutes. The paramedics gave her a nebulizer, which seemed to help a bit, but not completely. Given her history (sinus node problems, amongst others) they did an ECG, which had a few anomalies, but they weren’t sure if they were normal for Hannah.

After a bit of discussion, they decided to take her in to the Royal Berks and I stayed home to get Oscar dressed and breakfasted, to follow later.

Once we were ready, I called the emergency ward to check on the status, and was told she was about to go for an angiogram to check everything was OK. I decided it was best to drop Oscar with Hannah’s mum, and headed in.

When I arrived at the cardiac care unit, I was told that she had gone for her angiogram about 25 minutes earlier and should be back soon. I went to the waiting area to await her return.

After some time, a doctor came to talk to me. “She’s had a little heart attack…”

Wait, what?

To tell the story from Hannah’s point of view, she had been in the ambulance and had suddenly felt a lot worse, and in a lot of pain. The paramedics did another ECG, and this time it set off an alarm with something like a “severe ischaemic attack” warning. On went the lights and sirens, and red lights no longer posed a delay.

Not entirely sure what happened next, but the angiogram still seemed to be just for checking purposes. I guess you don’t expect a 26-year-old woman to be in the middle of a heart attack. Once the consultant saw the results, however, things changed.

“I need more staff, where is everybody?” (roughly, from Hannah’s account)

They did emergency angioplasty, went in through the femoral artery and removed a clot (not clear if it was 3, or 1 in 3 pieces) from her coronary artery. I don’t know how long she had, but it’s safe to say that it would have been fatal if not dealt with so quickly.

I was completely unaware of what was going on the other side of the doors, and was a bit too stunned to really take it in.

We’re about 36 hours on, and I’m knackered, so more details to follow. She’s doing well so far, though. The road to recovery appears to be at least a few weeks.

Reading Borough Council waste collection calendar

Last year, Reading Borough Council provided printed calendars with the dates for collections of rubbish and recycling etc. This year, they don’t seem to have done so. It took a little while of chasing links around the reading.gov.uk site, but in the end I found an online version.

Go to Community and Living > Waste and Recycling – Reading Borough Council and enter your postcode, then click on your house number and you’ll get a summary of information tailored to your address.

Under Bin Day there should be a link to a pdf of the collection calendar from May 2010.

It might help somebody else…

What is this?

I’d be interested to know if somebody can identify this (it’s a little larger than a squash ball:

UPDATE: The prize goes to Carl:

It appears to be an air stone for fish tanks/ponds.

Since yesterday evening it found its way through our rear windscreen:

I’ve held back on the vitriol, but if I could get hold of the person responsible, I’d happily introduce their head to both the missile and the glass.

The grass is greener

Our “lawn” is looking decidedly unhappy, so I decided to give a bit of love to a section of it.

I used a garden fork to aerate it a bit, and tried to sweep sharp sand into the holes. Seemed to leave a lot still above ground, at the roots, but I left it. As I was packing up, I found some lawn feed in the garage, so I chucked a bit in a watering can and gave the bit I’d worked on a drink. I’d run out of sand, so I gave up at that point.

Yesterday, I noticed something…odd.

The dark green bit is the bit I worked on. I wasn’t expecting such a noticeable change!

The downside is that now I feel compelled to treat the rest the same way. More work.

Sport Relief Mile Pics

The event organiser took a few pictures of me running, and kindly sent me copies. Proof, for you :-)

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Images courtesy of Dave Renshaw

Fungus Identification

Dear Lazyweb,

Can anybody tell me what kind of fungus this is? There were several groups of them by the lake at The Vyne.

First Barefoot “race”

In a short while, I’m running the Sport Relief Mile in Caversham. I’m running 3 miles, barefoot.

We’ll see how that turns out :-)

If you’d like to sponsor me:

http://www.mysportrelief.com/joewrigley

First Barefoot Run

I have continued to run a few times in my wetsuit boots and felt, on the whole, pretty good about it. I have still kept it very short (400 to 800m) and worked on form. A couple of times doing two circuits of http://www.favoriterun.com/298785 and a couple of times while at my parents doing two repetitions of http://www.favoriterun.com/298786 in the dark with a headtorch and getting spooked by chickens.

Also, I got an unexpected gift of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It is no exaggeration to say that this book has had a profound effect on my outlook on running, and a number of subsidiary subjects. I am on my second reading, and I’ll try to review it properly at some point.

My biggest takeway has been that we are not designed to run how I have always run (with a heel strike), and the modern jogger’s running shoe does not aid injury-free running. It is the same information that I have read at http://runningbarefoot.org/, and in a number of forums/mailing lists that I have joined. Most recently, I found a book by Gordon Pirie which was freely available as a PDF until GeoCities went under. I have mirrored a copy here. I would highly recommend it.

My head is all a bit of a jumble about it at the moment, with information overload. I’ll try to write something coherent soon.

Since reading Born to Run I have continued to run, and have even incorporated some barefoot running in the snow. It sounds insane, but I have limited it to 100 or 200m at a time and it feels amazing. The feeling of running barefoot through the snow is incredibly liberating. Running on frozen hail was..interesting

BBC News – ‘Plumper lips and pout’ make women look younger

BBC News – ‘Plumper lips and pout’ make women look younger.

My goodness, a study of “over 250 women”? That must be incredibly significant. Especially since it can be measured so objectively.

Pah.