NA minus 3

I knew the clocks were changing on Saturday night.  I knew because 1. people told me, 2. I had a reminder on my desktop and 3. they said so on the news.  Did I remember? No. I was supposed to be swimming in a competition in Glos on Sunday but decided to be sensible and to stay at home in order to finalise some holiday stuff.  I needed to feel a bit more on top of things.  As a result, I decided I would go to the club training session on Sunday morning.  So at 6.10 I dragged my sorry butt out of bed, dressed myself in a way that would best be described as 'morning head grunge bunny', packed my holdall and, still mostly asleep, stuffed myself with that perennial swimmers snack, jelly babies, in an effort to instill some level of energy into my still pretty comatose body.  When I arrived at the pool, a little more alert given the sugar rush had kicked in, I saw faces that I didn't recognise and I saw CHILDREN.  You must understand that only a very.... unusual.... kind of person swims regularly on Sunday morning at 06.30.  Very sad people with no excitment in their lives (I include myself in that category) and.... very sad people with no excitement in their lives.  What I am attempting to illustrate is that on a Sunday morning at 06.30 there are very few people at the poolside and those faces rarely change. Except this morning the carpark was busy, there were STRANGERS parked in my space, there were children and, there, were, DOGS.  Strange dogs with quiffed hair and no fur on their butts with even stranger people (mainly men) carrying them around in expensive looking boxes.   At this point, I considered the possibility that I may not in actual fact have woken up at all and this was all one big wierd and horrible dream.  Until the guys from the swim club pointed at the clock that is and laughed before they swam off to do the LAST few lengths of the session.  My alternative universe was working 60 minutes behind everyone elses.  But being stalwart (and boy, you need to be stalwart to get any lane space in a public session) I gamely hit the water and trained until I got chucked out 30 minutes later when the swimming lessons started.  So, I got up at the crack of dawn, abused my body with large amounts of refined sugar in an attempt to get it kickstarted and then only got a 30 minute training session. Oh, and I had cancelled Gloucester for this.  Not a good start to the day.

Back at base, having washed away grunge bunny and the smell of chlorine (as a swimmer that's a bit of a turn-on for me, but I fully understand it might not be the case for everybody) I emerged sweetsmelling and glossy with a definite (ok, the lights were low, the mirror a long way away) look about me of Cher.  Well, then again, maybe not. But a gals gotta dream, so I slipped into my black leather trousers and made like a rock chick (new sunglasses and everything) while I surveyed was has become my trip operations room. Otherwise known as 'spare room bombsite'.  Hmmm. I'd off-loaded all my shopping from Saturday in a fairly haphazard manner in my hurry to get in the shower and have at least a little time to decide what to wear before I met R for dinner.  Now, the results of that hasty decision (off loading the bags that is, not the dinner date) were before me and as I glanced at my pile of packing, at my suitcase, and back again I only hoped that between now and going on Wednesday I discover a whole new field of physics that involves finding a 5th dimension.  Three into one will go, and all that.  I started to mentally list what I really had to take - my CRITICAL LIST.  That included my hair dryer, kitten heels and industrial size drum of lipgloss.  Only joking.  It did include things like my huge box of latex examination gloves, medications (see blog post 1 to get an idea of what that means), gifts for the children I will treat in the clinic and the large (albeit vac packed) bag of childrens clothes my sister had kindly given me to take.   Next there was my 'quite critical' list (outdoory stuff for working in the animal sanctuary, 'appropriate' clothing for the medical clinic (also see earlier post)) and finally my 'nice to have'.  This included things like sandals with sparkly bits, beachware and my most favourite sundresses for lounging on the veranda sipping cocktails at sundown while herds of game wandered across the plain.  Oh bugger,  wrong holiday.  I'm just gonna have to dump the sparkly bits.  And so, there ensued half an hour of deliberation while I moved piles of stuff around, made new piles, added to some, subtracted from others and by the end of it.... the bed looked just like it had before.  It was at that point I realised I had no choice.  I was gonna have to get tough.  

NA minus 4

I drove over to Peterborough on Saturday to get some final bits and pieces for the trip.  As I crossed the Welland Valley on the south side a fine drizzle came in from the north and with it a rainbow, the end of which firmly ended in the field next to me.  I stopped the car and got out to look at it.  It is a rare event - being at the point where a rainbow ends - and has happened to me only once before but it seemed as if it was almost close enough to touch.  I considered for a moment going to see if I could find the crock of gold but as I stood there in the light rain looking at the rods of sunlight breaking through the clouds I decided that my life was good enough without it.  And anyway, perhaps if you found the crock of gold that would mean no more rainbows.  I didn't want to take that chance.

When you fly, you get very hung up on the weather.  I'd got up early to check the TAFs and METAR ahead of my flying lesson at Sibson (www.sibsonflying.co.uk) and decided at 9 that I would cancel it.  Interpreting the meteological information from the aerodrome takes a few minutes when you are still learning and so I decided to use an age old and guaranteed method of checking.  I looked out of the window.  To call upon a technical term used widely amongst us aviation types the weather could precisely be described as..... 'pants'.  It looked like God had picked up his tin of weather conditions and decided, for a joke, to empty the lot of them out at the same time - wind, rain, sun, low cloud, hailstones.  You name it, we had it.   But within a few minutes of cancelling my lesson, the sun came out and the rain stopped.  Would you believe it.  I was in a quandry.  Do I call them back up and reinstate it and then take the risk that the weather decides to boogy round abit again and so then have to ring up and cancel it a second time? No, I decided I would stick with my decision and as a consequence got a crick in my neck from peering out of the car window checking the weather and being unusually indecisive all the way to Peterborough.  At Wansford it started to rain.  Hurrah I thought (I know, it's weird.  Usually I want it to STOP raining) but it meant I  could safely wind my neck back in and continue on my way with a fairly smug look on my face.  Right decision.  For once.

NA minus 5

My final Hep B jab, administered this afternoon by the nurse, hurt like hell.  I felt myself squirming on the chair in her office and caught her out of the corner of my eye with an expression on her face that clearly said 'baby'.  I tried to turn my grimace into a smile but the way I was sitting only succeeded in making me look like I'd just had a stroke.  A slight but distinct shake of her head told me that in her mind she was giving me a week in the Bushman clinic. Max.  When I got home I read through all the instruction leaflets from the many medications and scared myself further with all the side effects.  There are so many possible side effects they could cancel themselves out.  So I won't know if I am having side effects or not.  "You should have gone to Skegness" the nurse had said.  She's probably right. 

One of the girls at the Yoga group tells me she flew Air Namibia to Cape Town earlier this year and lived to tell the tale.  This is a relief as I have heard mixed reports about African airlines. Air Angola, Air Zimbabwe and Chad Airways are all banned from flying in European airspace due to their safety records - or lack of safety records actually.  Air Namibia is at least allowed to fly into Gatwick.  But not into Heathrow I note.  Does this then make them only 'fairly' safe. And how far from fairly safe is moderately safe and how far from moderately safe is only slightly safe. I decide to take sleeping tablets on the flight with me and pack my own parachute.  If it doesn't get used in the aeroplane then at least it can double as a mosquito net.  Good plan I decide.         

NA (Namibia Adventure) minus 6

Today I have bunked off work to go down to London for a photoshoot.  These things can sometimes be quite boring but I had a great photographer (Pete Bartlett, I can recommend. Find him at petebartlett.com) and the two hours or so passed quickly and with much laughter, discussion and at times reflection on where we were in our lives.  However, after the sun comes the rain and there were jobs to be done while I was down in the Big Smoke (sorry, country girl coming out there for a moment).

One of the requirements as a volunteer at the Bushman Clinic is to wear 'appropriate clothing'. Ok, can someone tell me what that means?  I have to wear something sufficiently clinic-like, but not so like a uniform that I get taken for a doctor (no chance of that I don't think given the glazed and terrified look I expect to have on my face.  At least in the first few days).  But seriously, how do you look sensible and competent but at the same time not so sensible and competent that patients start to ask you difficult questions.  Like, "is my leg supposed to be that funny colour" or "the bottle said take one every 4 hours but I didn't have time to be ill so I took the lot".  See what I mean?  So, after some consideration and 1) not being a big shopper 2) a lack of patience with other customers 3) musak and 4) too much choice, SO much choice, I opted for two, what I hope will be mildly smart, faintly medical (stripped) shorts.  Sorry I mean shirts. I don't expect striped shorts will do down at all well.  With the purchase of my new camera (Canon EOS 450D - any camera enthusiasts out there? Good choice? Bad choice?), I shall take some shots, post them and wait for comments.  Yikes, did I really say that?  Be gentle, be kind.  Sod it, just be truthful.  Love hurts and all that.

First thoughts

And so opens the first sentence of the first page of my first blog.....

A week tomorrow (1 April 2009) I leave for a five week trip to Namibia to work as a medical volunteer with Gap Year for Grownups. It's all coming around very quickly and as I sit at my desk and scan my 'to do' list I feel a slight sense of panic that those 7 days ahead of me will be gone in a flash.

Yesterday evening I checked through my paperwork for the trip. It's quite a bundle now, information about flights;accommodation;training and of course my medical records to show the (many) innoculations, vaccinations and tablets that (hopefully) will stop me getting a variety of rather nasty illnesses and diseases. I'm safe from Hep A, Hep B,Rabies, Typhoid, Malaria etc etc etc. I feel rather like a human pincushion just now and I'm far more familiar with the inside of my doctors surgery than I ever hoped to be. But rather safe than sorry, though I am rather sorry about the corresponding hole in my bank account. No one told me quite how expensive non-prescription medicines can be.