The ROL cruise draws ever closer.

 

The ROL cruise draws ever closer. 189 days to go

Today our clinic confirmed that it can give us 3 months' supply of all the repeat prescriptions for Albina and me, provided we give them at least a week's notice. However, they would not be able to give us the necesary inoculations, but recommended four local pharmacies that could do it.

I have learned that CIBT can arrange our visas for Egypt, India, Vietnam, China and USA but suggested we approach them with our passports no earlier than October. Hope this will not clash with a possible visit by Albina to a health spa in Poland. 

ROL have just reminded us that we need to pay another £2124 of our deposit by the end of this month. I have just arranged the payment. The full payment balance will have to be made in late September.

And yet life here goes on. 

On Saturday morning I attended another Council meeting of POSK in Hammersmith. We spent the first 3 hours correcting the minutes of the last three Council meetings from January, March and July. The new Chairman Marek Laskiewicz is floundering. He kept putting off a proper correction of the minutes until it was agreed we have a special meeting last month to finalize them. At the last minute he cancelled the meeting and suggested on Saturday that we leave the alternative versions of the minutes as additional documents attached to the full reports, a sort of minority report. The Council, pressured by Joanna Mludzinska and Andrzej Zakrzewski, the former Chair and Secretary of POSK, had this preposterous suggestion outvoted by the Council members, and we then went through the amendment report line by line for each of the three past meetings. After 3 hours, even though we were still dealing with the July minutes, I left the meeting as I had agreed to meet Albina and prepare for my friend Stefan's birthday. I honestly don't know what happened afterwards, but suffice it to say the meeting was highly distasteful and frustrating. I was even offered the chance, before I left, to sign nomination papers for an alternative Chairman to Laskiewicz. It was for former Treasurer Robert Wisniowski. Not sure though whether he would have the courage to stand. Laskiewicz is an honest but badly advised Chairman, with a very poor knowledge of the Polish language, although politically he is a Polish nationalist. He must go, as he has such poor judgement and he is surrounded with very inadequate Directors, while his best advisers have been prevented from being made Directors, as the Council blocked their nominations to the Council. Only Council members can formally serve as Directors.

Then off to Ognisko Club in Kensingtom with Albina to enjoy Stefan Przedrzymirski's 75th birthday. A wonderful meal on the terrace under a marquee with airflow towers protecing us from the heat outside. We each had two starters and a main course as well as a sweet (a Pavlova, of course), and we had plenty to drink as well. By the time we got home by taxi I was only able to lie flat on my bed like a beached whale and fall asleep. I did not even notice that I had an opened a bottle of water in my hand as I fell asleep and the water spilt over the bed. Albina had to find a towel to lay over the wet bedding, while I was just fast asleep.

Sunday was another hot day. I was supposed to drive to Cambridge to visit Sandro and seek his help to clear up anomalies on my laptop so that I can have it working properly on my voyage next year. But the combination of heat and a considerable alcohol intake left over from the previous day made me feel uncomfortable about driving. I had no hangover, but all the same I called off the visit. 

Instead, I took a long 3 mile walk along the canal path in the hot sun. I was dressed just in shorts and took my shirt off for most of the walk. However, I tripped at one point, skinned my knees and left arm and stubbed my toe. I bought the Sunday papers in a shop in Hanwell, hobbled into Lidl to get a large crate of strawberries, a fruit juice and some bread and then took the bus home. Albina was pleased with the strawberries but she gave me an earful over getting the wrong kind of bread and for getting her a Mail on Sunday without the colour supplement. Woe betide if something besmirches her sense of perfection. So much for my heroic efforts to keep her happy.

Monday and Tuesday at work, but I still found time to finish the press release on the confusing statistics on Polish-speaking children in schools throughout the UK since Brexit. Are there less, as one would expect? Or are there more as the Education Departments of all four nations of the United Kingdom were saying?

Then on Wenesday I went to Ealing Hospital for a decision on whether I should have my left eye operated on. It was supposed to be a matter of removing a cataract, but now they plan to give me an artificial lens so that my eyesight will improve considerably for distance. They did the same earlier this year for my right eye, but they made it near sighted, so I can now read a computer screen or a book with the naked eye. That is the first time I could do that since childhood. If I have one eye near sighted and one long sighted, will my poor old brain be ready to cope? I was also aware that this will be under local anaesthetic again. Can you imagine the horror of having a surgeon poking around in your eye for half an hour? I went through it once, and now will go through it again. It scares the hell out of me,  but what can you do now, once you have committed yourself and have a medical team hovering over you geared up to carry it out. I listened to all the things that could go wrong (blindness, pain, scarring), shrugged my shoulders and signed the consent form. At least I will be able to see better when I am on board the Borealis.