Scargill

As another decade draws to a close, I don’t do that many family updates in here so I figured as I was up early I’d put in a word for my granddaughter Holly and her new job at “Bar & Block” in Newcastle.

Having gotten used to inexpensive, cosy Spanish restaurants over the years I’m not that keen on UK city centre bars any more but this place in Newgate Street in Newcastle (Upon Tyne) wasn’t bad and service was good yesterday lunchtime. You might think they’d be chocker full around Christmas but early afternoon on Dec 29 things were nice and quiet.

Aside from the usual parking nightmare, a pleasant trip out and a nice break from the computer.

The weather since we came back to the UK has been pretty crappy generally but just for the record in case I forget, yesterday was LOVELY. I took this little number down by the riverside as Maureen and I were taking the two youngest grandkids for a walk along the waterfront.

And today, on the cards is a trip to the new B&M store in nearby Kingston Park. Well, it beats visiting garden centres…

You may have noticed a lack of entries in here over the summer. That’s because I do most of my writing over at the Bedrock site and on Facebook in summer. The weather over in Spain has been very hot and though we’re getting the odd thunder-storm now, it is generally 32-36c during the day even now in early September. I’ve done a lot of technical blogging on the days it has been TOO hot and we’ve done a little travelling, with more in sight for September.

Here we have Maureen at her best, in the sea. she loves it – talking of which that’s where we are off to tomorrow for the day.. one of several nice beaches in the general area around Mojacar (Southeast coast) – I picked a beach at random for our day trip with our friends Karin and Dave. Of course, it all depends on the forecast being accurate.

Good morning all…

Benefit from my mistakes?.. in modernising our house lighting both here in the UK and over in Spain, we have totally gone over to LED lighting of one kind or another. Having been used to compact fluorescents, I kind of expect a couple of years at least, before lights give up.

LED lighting is currently a choice, it won’t be for long as supplies of older alternatives dry up.

The first thing I learned when fitting LED lighting is that manufacturer specs are rubbish, blindly copied from the actual LED design specs by the lamp manufacturers/sales people. The specs refer to LEDs running at reasonable (warm) temperatures. Typically, household lighting gets HOT due to poor ventilation. LEDs don’t like to run HOT so forget your 13 year life claims but 2-5 years should be do-able..

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Lovely winter morning? Not lovely winter morning! The first of these pictures was sadly taken precisely 1,198.3 miles (1,928.5km) North of the second (hence the quality variation) mid-morning this morning. For anyone looking in while enjoying the sunshine in Southern Spain, please spare a thought for friends suffering the current god-forsaken weather in the Northeast of England.

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After a very pleasant trip to the USA to visit friends and relatives in and around Chicago, we’re back in the UK. Time to get on with our various winter jobs and to catch up with our friends over here. Meanwhile here are some pics from our trip to Chicago.

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It is hard to express the stress we’ve been under thanks to rubbish tenants who played the system and kept us in between homes for months not to mention pretty much destroying our home in Wark with their couldn’t give a toss lifestyle, however much of the repair work was done before our travels this month and now we’re taking a well earned break. I’m simultaneously recovering from a stroke and long overdue carpal tunnel surgery. The sun helps a lot as does spending time with friends over here in Spain!

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Despite the unbelievably poor state our ex-tenants left the place in (hard to believe that there are people with so little regard for where they live) the cottage is starting, slowly to take shape thanks to lots of hard work, help from friends and lots of money…. the man-cave should be largely functional within the week, the house itself will take somewhat longer. not the best of times to be recuperating from a stroke nor preparing for a carpal tunnel op but then no-one ever promised life would be fair.

To relieve the stress of waiting for tenants to move out of Wark, not to mention the mind-numbing after-effects of my (first and hopefully last) stroke, we recently took a short break in Spain and as well as stopping over in our place in Galera, we took a short detour down to Puerto De Mazarron. Just a 2-week stop-over but given that the weather was mixed over the 2 weeks I think it is fair to say that some of it was unusual weather. By now however I note they are hitting peaks of 26c in Galera.

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I am currently “recovering” from a life threatening illness, only shortly after “retiring”. I use quotes for a reason here. I hope this story is interesting.

On 15th of December 2017, I had, out of the blue (I guess it is always that way) an ischaemic stroke which affected my left side ((right brain?) initially quite badly. Though to this date (mid-2021) I have no recovered details of the actual stroke event, I was in my home office at the time working on the computer as usual and not unusual for late at night I must’ve dozed off, when all of a sudden I found myself on the floor, completely unable to get up. I don’t recall much more but it seems my wife and grand-daughter, discovering my state, rapidly got me to hospital where I had clot-busting medicine (thank science for 21st century medicine without which I wouldn’t be writing this in May 2018 with updates Sept 3021) within hours of having the stroke.