Oooh Errr Matron

Life has been very sedate at Kaboodle Towers lately. On Valentine’s day the ever lovely Ian had his long awaited hip replacement and since then I’ve found myself assuming the role of a kind of Hattie Jacques matron,



to his Frankie Howerd patient,



(if you’ve never seen any of the ‘Carry On’ films that probably means absolutely nothing to you but take my word for it, it has great comedic potential) ever since. I confess, it was something I’d been dreading following my father’s death last October, but thankfully everything went well and Ian has since delighted in telling all and sundry about his experience which was carried out under an epidural with no prior sedation, rather than under a general anesthetic, as is the norm. Apparently the sound and sensation of having ones hip sawed in half then removed from one’s body is (thankfully) not as bad as it sounds, though I’m happy to take his word for it, rather than experience it for myself! Yesterday he was told he could ditch the rather fetching white elasticated stockings he needed to wear for several weeks post surgery, and is now allowed back behind the steering wheel of our car – something that I know he’s been looking forward to for a while now. It’s amazing how we take our independence so much for granted until it’s taken away from us, all be it in his case for a few weeks at a time. Now all he has to do is wait another month or so before being allowed back to work and our lives can hopefully go back to some semblance of normality. Last year everything seemed to be put on hold – we were supposed to have got married in the autumn but with both my dad and Ian being the way they were, it somehow got put on the back boiler, so this year, after 17 years of living together we’re looking to rectify all that, and perhaps manage to get out and about a little more than we’ve done of late. I think to be honest we’re both going a little stir crazy at the moment and can’t wait to make things start happening again in our lives. Hopefully I’ll be able to start taking a whole lot more photos of interesting places rather than grub around in my immediate locality for them as I seem to have been doing over the last year or so.

Has anybody in the UK been following the Danish series ‘The Killing’ which aired on the BBC over the last few weeks? It concluded last week and I ‘think’ is still available on IPlayer at the moment although you’ll need rather a lot of disc space if you want to save all 20 episodes. Anyway if you like gritty slow-boil police drama’s I’d highly recommend it, if only to witness the glory of my latest crush, Lars Mikkelsen,



brother of the slightly more famous Mads Mikkelsen,



who I was convinced was some secret love child of Jack Palance,



until fairly recently!

I’m actually getting a little bit worried that I’m having some kind of mid life crisis, because I confess Lars isn’t the usual type of person I admire from afar – the dark broody Mads is far more ‘my type’ - but no, in this instance Lars has the lucky (mis)fortune to be the object of my rather ridiculous idolatry. I wonder, if perhaps I really do need to get out a bit more!