Wednesday 17 October 2012

Vertigo

Oh gosh I wish I knew what was wrong with my head. Yesterday every time I stood up, turned my head quickly or bent down I was overcome by a spinning feeling and nausea. Today I was able to open my eyes on waking without the room spinning but standing up still makes me dizzy. I had a few more shivering sessions last night but overall things are looking better so far. Having said that my appetite is non existent at the moment so maybe this light headedness is in part down to that. Yesterday I survived on about a gallon of tea, a small bowl of soup and a packet of crisps. So much for putting weight on, I hate to think how much I'm going to lose before I recover from this. One step forward, fifteen back!

Peter's parcel finally got delivered yesterday and the mystery as to why neither myself or my neighbour heard anything on the previous attempts became clear. Despite having a perfectly good and obvious doorbell and brass door knocker this chap chose to rap briefly on the door frame with his knuckles. The only reason we heard him this time is because we spotted the van pulling up outside. He then had the cheek to complain that he'd been trying to deliver the parcel for over a month, which was odd as we know for a fact it was only sent out last Tuesday.

I have decided to take up a suggestion put to me by several people over the last few months and am putting together a book of the most popular blogs from the last couple of years. As regular readers know I already have a book that is doing quite well but is only available on kindle, this will be entirely different. Someone once said to me, after a disastrous attempt at science fiction, that I should write about what I know. This is obviously complete nonsense otherwise all our best crime writers would be doing time for serial murder but I have decided to take this advice to heart and am now putting things together to see what happens. If nothing else it will give me something to do during the winter when, even with my trike, it is going to be difficult to go out. And, if successful, I hope it will raise a substantial amount of money to be put towards finding a cure for this terrible illness and prevent others from suffering as I have. I'll keep you posted.

At last a politician has had the courage to say 'no' to America.

This is the story of Gary McKinnon who has just been told that he will not be extradited to the US to face charges of computer hacking.

Gary has severe mental health issues and suffers from Asperger's Syndrome a condition that can make sufferers become obsessed with things or ideas. Approximately ten years ago Gary was obsessed with finding out all he could about 'little green men' and set about trawling the Internet for information. During his investigation he somehow managed to 'hack' into a computer at the Pentagon. Gary was not intent on doing any damage, he just wanted to know what they knew and there is some doubt that he even realised what he was doing was wrong. When the US found out they pursued him with the same sort of frightening determination as they did Abu Hamza and his cronies. 

The American's are said to be furious that they are to be denied their prey but so what. It is about time we started to put our foot down from time to time. Should the situation have been reversed would the American's have calmly handed over one of their citizens to be tried through British courts? I doubt it very much even though British prisons tend to be more humane than the US versions. Gary would never have survived an American jail and would probably have died before his case could even be brought to court. The American legal system is never in any hurry to say the least.

So, and I never thought I'd be saying this, well done Theresa May. And just one more small point shouldn't the American's be spending their time and energy trying to find out how a mentally ill man managed to get in to, what should be, the most secure computer in the world from a PC in his bedroom in a British suburban house?

As expected Dave Lee Travis has come out fighting after being accused of groping a female news reader at the BBC amid the growing scandal over Jimmy Saville. He says he would welcome a court trial as he wants the chance to prove that the woman's claims are a complete fabrication. These are the words of a man who is secure in his belief that he is completely innocent.  I hope the reason he is so sure of himself is because he is completely innocent.

I watched a man jump out of a small metal capsule twenty four miles above the earth on Sunday evening. Being scared of heights my stomach lurched when we got the view of him standing on the small platform before he jumped. As he jumped I said to Peter 'They will cut the feed won't they if anything goes wrong'? I was all too aware that I might just have seen someone leap to their death. As it happens he landed safe and well on his feet a few minutes later having broken the sound barrier. That is one in the eye of the Victorian scientists who believed man would suffer terrible damage to his internal organs if he travelled any faster than ten miles per hour.

Yesterday I read that there was indeed a twenty second delay on the live feed as if anything had gone wrong Felix Baumgartner's blood would have left his body via his eyes and he would have died. Not the sort of thing I wanted to read over my early morning cuppa. This is one of those occasions where if he'd failed he would have gone down in history as an idiot and probably appeared in one of Horrible Histories Stupid Deaths slots. As it is he is now a hero of his time and his place in history will be secure. Personally I think he is a nut, one hell of a brave nut but a nut nevertheless.

Well got to go, time for another dose of honey and lemon and a read of this mornings papers.


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