Blimey Frances! ‘Old lunatic out for a walk’ is how Frances headed this diary. Hear for yourself…….

I wanted to make a diary today, because yesterday I went to my first diarists meeting back online with Steve Milton and a crowd of lovely friends that I haven’t seen since we gave ourselves a summer break – nearly all of August. Anyway it was great to see everybody, but I had just been out for a walk before I joined the meeting and I was in a bit of a state because I had had a big fall. But what I did hear of the meeting was really interesting.

I am so impressed with all the people that I meet on that particular call because every one of them makes such an effort to do the best they can with their lives and not only that, they also help a lot of other people who are living with dementia. I just think it’s laudable.

Anyway, so I went for a walk with my little dog as usual, and I had been blackberrying and I had a nice lot; and I was well on my way home in fact, so that I could get back in time for the meeting. But, a great big lorry load of sort of aggregate or something came along my very, very, narrow lane. Completely lost he was, and I had to move over with my push-along rolator trolly dolly thing, which helps me keep my balance.  So I moved right over, but then I lost my balance. He had slowed down, but as I fell into the road across his path and spewed out across the entire lane, he drew to a stop and leapt out of his lorry to see if I was OK.

But to start with, I couldn’t get up.  And then he said to me “well, if you can’t get up, do you think I should call an ambulance?”  And I said to him: “No, I will get up because if you leave me here it will be nine hours before they take me off the road. You know what the ambulance service is like across the country at the moment”. So we agreed no ambulance. Anyway I found that with a bit of help I could get up. Meanwhile he took the dog who was constantly licking my face to make sure I was definitely, you know, going to be around for her next feed. So she was licking my face and he tied her to the front of the lorry. And then he said “right, I’ll help you up”, he said “In fact, I’ve got a crane on this jig” he said, “I can use that”. I said, “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t become necessary”, by which time we were actually both laughing.  Anyway, he got me up, and I toodled home but within no time at all of having been on the Zoom call, I suddenly realised I was sort of very achy, and I’d done some damage to my elbow, and –

Anyway.  I had a horrible day yesterday sleeping it all off, but I’m better today and I just thought it would make a quite a nice little diary.

So there it is! the tales of an old lunatic out on a walk.