Cruising along

Well this is new - not only is this being written on a ship on the Danube I am also writing this blog on my phone instead of my laptop so it may be a little shorter than usual. 

A proper benefit of being immunosupressed is that I get an extra Covid injection. It was supposed to be during the holiday but I was able to get it moved to the Saturday before and I even got a cup of coffee. Moving it forward may have been a mistake as, never having had a reaction before my arm started hurting - and did so for ten days.

Just breaking off to do my soundcheck with Fairport Convention. 

Right, back now.

To catch the ship we spent four days travelling by bus. On the whole the journey was fine with exceeded company but I did find it a little difficult to get on and off the bus at times. Sitting wasn't bad but, as my knees were still painful walking around was more challenging as I would have liked. I needed some breaks so it was an excellent opportunity to check out some of the local hostelries!

We are now on the ship which, unfortunately, has more stairs than the last river cruises we have been on. On the whole though I have managed pretty well although I did have one day of seriously painful hands which made holding on to rails agony.

The cruise has been excellent with amazing sets from Fairport Convention, Anthony John Clarke and Julia Porter, and annA rydeR. The food has also been brilliant and I have probably put on a heap of weight.

This is really the first part our summer of music with some festivals already lined up. Hopefully we will be able to park the van reasonably close to the main stages.

It has been wonderful catching up with the friends that we have made over the years of Costa Cruises and Festivals. 

The usual thanks to our wonderful NHS.

Please comment on this and take care of yourselves and others.

All the best.

Rob.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's been a while - sorry.

I only just realised that I haven't posted anything for over a month. Apologies but it's been down to the "living" part of arthritis. During the time we have been at a Costa Festival in Hayling Island. Loads of excellent bands but my highlights were The Albion Christmas Band, Banter, Bryony Griffith and Alice Jones, and Phil Beer. Among the artists new to me were The Often Herd, and Keith Donnelly (just never say "bear with me" to me!) If you have never experienced a Costa Festival you are really missing out. They are held indoors and accommodation and, breakfast and evening meals are included. The artists, both established and unknown are usually brilliant and there have been very few that I have not enjoyed. What really makes these festivals though are the people that we have met. We have made a bunch of brilliant friends at them and can't wait for the next one in Ibiza - although we are meeting up with quite a few Scottish Costa goers in Edinburgh at ...
Read more

Hot weather and all that.

One of the questions that I get asked a lot is - "Does hot weather affect your arthritis?" Well, having spent most of a week in Portugal I can now conclusively reveal my answer which is - "I really have no idea!" While it is true that I had a couple of almost pain free days while in Portugal, I also had one of my worst nights followed by a terrible morning. To be honest I hope that it is the  Sulfasalazine that is kicking in which is lessening the pain. At least then I have hope that things will be better all year round rather than just for a few weeks of the year. I seem to have one side effect of taking  Sulfasalazine though. I have a sort of metallic taste in my mouth pretty much all of the time. Mints do help so I suppose that it is better that most of the other side effects that I could have had. One thing that I have found in the past couple of weeks is that there are real benefits to using a stick when flying. Without me asking it has allowed myself and Maria...
Read more

Standing too long hurts!

I went to Hampden on Saturday to watch The Dons play Celtic in the league cup semi final and the least said about the result the better. Another real downside was that if I wanted to see anything I had to stand. I didn't realise that standing for so long was going to be so painful. It also took forever to walk back to the car - thankfully I wasn't driving. The worst was yet to come though! I stayed overnight in Glasgow and, as usual, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. Getting out of bed was a struggle but walking was incredibly painful and difficult. If there is a next time I must remember to take painkillers before I go to bed. At the moment the worst thing about my arthritis is the stiffness and pain in my hands. They have been worse though. During my worst time my hands were totally immovable and I found it difficult to hold things. They are not as bad as that at the moment, although a couple of weeks ago, after the Steve Knightly gig, both hands were ...
Read more