My disability scooter got two new batteries this week & I got a heated gilet. I will be mobile again & be kept warm when Im on my scooter in the colder weather.

Week 50 of 2022.

Monday, 12th December.

Today I woke early & got to work on my website at about 7:30 am. I had decided not to risk using my mobility scooter again until I get the batteries replaced. I asked a few companies for quotes for two new batteries & then downloaded the Moovit app onto my mobile phone. The app shows bus & train information for your local area.

At around 11:45 I walked the short distance to my local bus stop. The Moovit app was saying the bus would be there at 12:06 pm so I had gone a few minutes early. There were two bus timetables at the stop, & neither corresponded to what the app said. One sign said I had to wait 30 minutes, the second sign said I had to wait for 75 minutes. Luckily for me, the app was correct & the bus arrived at 12:06 pm. I jumped on the bus & paid my €1 fare & took a seat. Ten minutes later I was at the office with my boss Martin Purdom.

We managed to get quite a bit of work done before Martin left & I headed home. I had decided to try & walk as I knew I could stop off at several bars on the way if my leg began to hurt too much. I walked to La Zona bar & stopped off to rest for an hour before continuing towards home. I got as far as Rocco´s bar on Rio Nalon before my leg forced me to stop again. I spent a few hours there talking to lots of people I haven't seen for a while. Once my leg pain dulled enough, I walked home, where I spent the rest of the evening with my feet up on the sofa before going to bed.

Tuesday, 13th December.

I woke at about 8:30 this morning, my left leg ached quite a bit & it was cold so I decided to have a quiet day watching Christmas films & resting my leg.

None of the films was very good & I ended up replying to messages about new batteries for my disability scooter & messaging a couple of new companies that I found on the Internet. Some of them responded quite quickly, some didn't respond at all & others responded as if they hadn't read my email at all. I had been very specific about the new batteries I required & two companies ignored all the information I had given them, two more ignored half the information & two more responded with the correct batteries. I will wait for the final company to respond & then choose which company to order from.

This evening I watched the Argentina v Croatia football match, in which Argentina won 3 - 0 to get to the World Cup Final.

Wednesday, 14th December.

I woke up at 7 am & got a coffee before starting to work on my website. Whilst working I get a message from the final disability scooter company that I contacted yesterday. Their quote is around what I expected but includes 24-hour delivery & insurance so I order the battery through them. I can pay through the bank, which is good as I can stop the payment if there is a problem.

I get myself a sausage, mushroom, cheese & spinach omelette for lunch then finish cleaning up my kitchen before settling down for a nap at about 3 pm. I am looking forward to tonight's football match & don't want to fall asleep whilst it's on.

I have had very bad tinnitus today & because of this, I could not get to sleep this afternoon before the football. I watched France v Morocco but I was very distracted because of the tinnitus. In the first half of the game, France was the better team & was leading 1 - 0 when the half finished. In the second half of the game, Morocco played very well & concentrating on the match seemed to help the tinnitus fade away. Morocco was doing everything it could to win but eventually, France scored a second goal to take a 2 - 0 lead. Morocco finished the better of the two teams but could not find a way through France's resolute defence & hung on to win by two goals to set up a great final between themselves & Argentina.

I went to bed at about 10:30 pm.

Thursday, 15th December.

I woke around 3:30 am & got up to use the bathroom but I could not get back to sleep because of my tinnitus. Most nights I manage to get to sleep quickly if I have to get up in the night I can drop off to sleep again. It was not the case this time & around 4 am I gave up trying to sleep. I got up & made myself a pot of green, jasmine peach tea.

I sat at my computer & scoured the Internet for music or pitched sounds that will help relieve the tinnitus. It never goes away completely but it hasn't been this bad for a long time. I eventually find some therapy on Youtube which seems to work, it consists of several different pitch sounds which I can only describe as an R2D2 droid talking to a grasshopper, strange but it did seem to help.

In the afternoon the two disability scooter batteries that I ordered yesterday arrived. This was probably the highlight of today as it means I will soon be able to get back out on my scooter even if it is just for a ride along the beach to get some fresh air.

Friday, 16th December. 

I woke around 8 am & felt much better than I did yesterday, a good night's sleep is a wonderful thing. At about 9:30 am my friend Bob popped around & changed the batteries on my disability scooter for me. In the short time I am outside with Bob my lower back & shoulders start to ache because of the cold. Getting older is no fun, I decided to get myself a heated gilet so that when I do go out I can stay warm & hopefully this will stop a lot of the aches I get. I then went back to my apartment to carry on working on my website whilst I wait for two deliveries, one from Asda for some pyjamas & one from Amazon for some recycling bags.

At about 2:30 pm the first of my deliveries arrived, the pyjamas from Asda. I am pleased with them, they fit well & will keep me warm during the colder weather. The second delivery arrived at about 4 pm, it was the recycling bags. I had to laugh when I unpacked them. The A4 envelope they were sent in was almost as big as the bags, by the time I put a plastic bottle in the plastic recycling bag it would have been a tight fit to put a second bottle in. All the bags were very small & immediately I set the return process in motion. I went back to the advert for them & the photo on the advert shows bags about 3 times the size of the ones they sent me, but the description hidden away at the bottom of the page did give the correct sizes. The lesson learnt here is, don´t judge a bag by its cover picture; look for its hidden depths.

Whilst working on my website this afternoon one of the extensions causes the website to crash & I have to contact the server hosting company to get some help. In the end, the only help they can give me is to suggest I restore the website database to the condition it was for the overnight backup. I am quite annoyed as I know what is wrong but can´t access the problem, they can access it & won't fix it. I restore the database, but all the work I did this morning has been lost.

After restoring it I find a different method of achieving what I wanted to do before I continue to work on my website. I manage to redo some of the work but I will have to do more of it again tomorrow.

Saturday, 17th December.

I slept well again last night & woke around 8 am this morning. I get myself a coffee & then put my washing in the washing machine, before sitting down at the computer to redo more of the work I lost yesterday. 

I work on the website trying to sort through which pages have to be redone & then doing them. It is a long job I had forgotten how quickly I work on my website & how much work I do in a few hours when I get going. By mid-afternoon, a lot of it is working again but there is still one thing not working that I can't trace, most people looking at the website wouldn't notice it but it bugs me that it isn't working quite right. I decide to take a break from work as sometimes you can't see the woods for the trees.

This afternoon my final delivery this week arrived, my heated gilet. It all looks very good & fits well. Even with the relatively low charge in the battery, it seems to work. It has 3 different levels I can use to keep the cold from my back, shoulders, stomach & neck & I will charge the batteries fully & test it out tomorrow when I go shopping.

This evening I watch a film which I thought I had seen previously but hadn't.   The Transporter - Refuelled, was a good action film with lots of great-looking women in, what wouldn't I like?

Sunday, 18th December.

This morning I woke up at 7 am, I got myself a coffee & sat down at my computer. As usual, when I have a problem with my work on the computer, the answer came to me during the night. I logged onto my website this morning & was able to fix the bug that had been bothering me last night. A good night's sleep had helped fell the trees around the problem & I woke up this morning able to see the woods again.

It was very chilly when I first got up & I decided to try out my new heated gilet. I plugged in the battery that I had charged overnight & put it on over my pyjamas. It soon warmed up my back & strangely I began to feel the blood returning to my fingers again & I was able to type quicker. The first test of it had passed with flying colours, I will go out later & test it outside.

To give my mobility scooter batteries a test I take a ride to Lidl & buy some rolls. I then ride back through Los Alcázares, down to the beach & back home along the promenade. So far the batteries are working well & their power level doesn't seem to have dropped much. I go back inside & get myself a couple of bacon, egg & mushroom rolls to eat.

This afternoon I took a walk to La Playa bar, I thought I would spend an hour there then walk home & watch the World Cup Final from the comfort of my sofa. It didn't work out quite that way though, I ended up watching the game in the pub with some friends before going home just after the game finished.

I really enjoyed the game, I wanted France to win as a team, but I wanted Lionel Messi to win a World Cup as well. Argentina went into a 2 - 0 lead in the first half but I didn't see much of it because my friend Alison had been talking throughout it. France didn't have a shot on goal according to the halftime stats. The second half was great & France scored two goals to send the game into extra time. The excitement in extra time as both teams scored another goal & both came close to scoring a winning goal was brilliant but at the end of the extra time it was 3 - 3 & it went to penalties. Lionel Messi scored Argentina's first penalty & guided them to a 4 -2 penalty win.

It was a great game & the best final I remember seeing. After the game, I walked straight home & got myself something to eat. I went to bed early tonight. Unfortunately the tinnitus I suffer from was playing havoc with my sleeping & I didn't get to sleep until around 4:30 am. I hope I don't wake up too early tomorrow.