Jiminy Rickets

"They are calling me Granny on campus because I've got myself a walking stick"

"A what? You've got a what?"

"Well yeah, because my legs are always sore and I feel really tired. I'm struggling to get up the stairs to my room. So I've cut out red meat from my diet. I think that will help"

"You what? So removing protein is necessary? Is that what does the doc said?"

"The doc? Well no, I've not asked him"

And so it was that GT (Girl Teenager) decided to seek a professional opinion as to why she was finding it really tough to climb the two storeys of stairs to her room in Porterhouse Mews. I add that as the building is rather grand and hundreds of years old, its not like climbing the stairs at home. The ceiling heights are so great, on the way up it's not uncommon to pass roped together Sherpas returning from a summit attempt.

Gawd bless the NHS and those that remain on-board, but the doc saw GT very quickly and packed her off for a blood-test as her symptoms were "a bit unusual". Bit like their host. Come the hour, come the woman, and this particular woman was a jabbering bag of nerves on the morning of her blood test. I’m not saying she was employing delaying tactics on the way to the medical centre, but I've never known a teenager to be so interested in a second-hand wall tile sitting in the window of a charity shop.

"Oooh look, it's got an ancient Greek theme. Let me stop and stare at it for 15 minutes"

"You gonna buy it?"

"No"

No one likes blood tests. Actually that's probably not true. There are some weird and womderful people out there. Let me try again. Most of us don't like blood tests, As a regular user of the service over the years, I know I'm not one for looking at the needle as it’s extracting the life-source. GT, it seems, has inherited this trait on steroids. But fair play, she walked into the clinic, babbled incessantly at the nurse, and ended up laying head down, sugary sweets being applied to stop the nearly-fainting post-blood-removal event that was taking place.

No mention of the tile was made as we passed the shop on our way back to the car.

Several weeks passed with GT back at Uni, when her results came in with a message to "Make a Dr's appointment in the next week". Crikey. And so she did.

In what can only be described as some sort of nightmare Rees-Moggian, Victorian vision of Britain, the Quack broke the news to the poor urchin that she had Adult Ricketts. Ricketts! I mean I thought that had been banished with smog and young boys being sent up chimneys. Turns out that living your life as some sort of Gothic Nosferatu (vampire) and rarely seeing daylight, isn’t terribly conducive to receiving vitamin D. Who knew? Also turns out that getting a regular dose of sunlight is Really Important.

GT was prescribed block-buster vitamin D pills and instruction to “get out into the sunshine”, and the long journey (18 months) to recovery began. Naturally this new State of Affairs required recognition, and GT is now known as “Jiminy Ricketts” in the family. Which she loves. Almost as much as the regular impressions of someone who is walking like they have a severe case of piles.

Whilst Jiminy has been dealing with her walking challenges, I’ve returned to work at a Big Insurance company, which we shall call Avolvo. After 3 years of my brain having to do nothing much more challenging than identifying Mrs Pornphan’s (a real customer name, which implied something very different from the reality of meeting her) frozen delivery items, thinking about Complicated Things came as a bit of a shock. The biggest challenge though turned out to be the sheer number of acronyms in use. Never known anything like it. I mean I’m not afraid to ask questions, no matter how seemingly daft (that’s me job), but there’s a limit as to how many times in one conversation you can say “You what?”

”The PCW PNCD data from CMT doesn’t make its way to the MPD platform, particularly where there’s been an MTA. There appears to be a problem with PY, meaning we can’t correctly calculate the COR”. Believe it or not, this sentence actually Makes Sense. Well, it does now, 8 weeks later.

The utter flood of acronyms aside, I like the place and the people, so hoping that I live up to their wildly high expectations (because I had several Big Jobs in risk management in the past, they think I’m some sort of risk messiah, whereas we all know I’m just A Very Naughty Boy). And we can now (just about) afford the mortgage, which is a plus.

BT (Boy Teenager) has been through an odd time. On the one hand, he has periodically been disappearing off to That London to “go for a walk”. Coming out of Avolvo’s head office one evening, I noticed that BT was about half a mile south of me. I guessed he was going home, so decided to catch him up. Try as I might, each time I reached the location that “Find my phone“ suggested, he wasn’t there. I doubled my efforts as he seemed to be stationery at Monument Tube. I arrived …. he had gone. Disappeared. It was almost as if he knew I was getting near and had dropped into the Underground, out of phone signal range. Later I asked him if he had any idea that I was chasing him down. “No”, he said “I was too busy talking with Natalya“. Strangely his walk-abouts always seem to involve rather attractive young ladies (usually of Eastern European extraction) that his Mum and Dad know nothing about. Truthfully, we are delighted that he has the confidence these days to do this.

On the Other Hand is the not good news that the Apprenticeship that my old Boss was trying to create for him died on the altar of administrative difficulties, and after months of waiting and hoping, it’s not happening. We were all pretty disappointed, but also thankful to my ex-Boss for the considerable effort in trying to sort it. Never one to give up, she is now trying to sort him a permanent job, so the hope isn‘t entirely extinguished. But then we aren’t done with “on the other hands” yet.

Because I’ve known my new boss at Avolvo for years, I felt comfortable early on to ask if there would be any chance of some work experience for BT. And because she is every bit as fabulous as my old boss, she said “yes”. As I type, BT has been invited to join as a paid Intern; he is awaiting the details, but it seems that it will last 3 months and there may be a possibility of a permanent job at the end. Honestly I have to pinch myself at the generosity that has been shown to BT, and the help he is getting. Aren’t people bloody lovely?

One can't write a blog without mentioning Her Ginesty, whose gin habit is going from strength-to-strength. With our mortgage rising faster than Gin's drinking arm on a Friday night, we've had to have serious conversations about what we are going to cut down on. Her suggestion: food. My suggestion: gin. Agreed solution: only buy wine in sales and don't go out for dinner. That's phase 1. If the mortgage rate goes up again, we may have to cut back on dependents. Or force some of them to earn a few bob sweeping chimneys.

Hold on, there's Granny Nails as well. She's only gone an had her other hip replaced. So familiar was she with the process, having been awake through the previous operation last October, she dispensed with the surgeon and got on with the job herself. They breed them tough in Scotland.

And that's that for now. Here's hoping that by the next instalment, Jiminy will be galloping up the stairs, throwing sherpas to the side as she races by, and BT will be doing some insurancey stuff in town. Or sweeping chimneys.

Love and elbow-grease (hired in nowadays)

Mr H

xx