Out And About

We didn't have a summer holiday last year for one reason or another and consequently Mick hardly took any holiday from work. It now means that he's got a lot of annual leave left to take before the end of this month. He's carrying some days over into the new year's entitlement but he took last week off, he's off again tomorrow and he's got another full week off coming up next week, though he may cancel a couple of those days yet as he's got a lot on at work at the moment.

After all the storms and bad weather we've had just lately, it was a stroke of luck that the week off he chose coincided with some better weather. We hadn't planned to do much, it's nice just to have some down time, but we did manage to do something every day.

On Monday we headed up the A1 to Thirsk, a small market town in North Yorkshire which is known as the home of James Herriot, the vet and author. It was a bright, sunny day but still very cold with a bitter wind blowing. We had a mooch around the small market and shops.

It was rather dull on Tuesday and very cold. We took some flowers to the crematorium for my mum and sister. It started spitting with rain just as we got there but the rain managed to hold off.

Wednesday dawned bright and sunny and it was quite mild too so we made the most of the good weather, put Archie in the car, and headed off to Lotherton for A Stroll Through The Woods. I think Lotherton is Archie's favourite place, he loves it there and we live just a five or ten minute drive away so it's very convenient.

We didn't know what to do on Thursday but it was another sunny day so we got in the car and decided on the spur of the moment to visit The Seaside. We ended up in Scarborough where Archie had a lot of fun running about on the beach and making new doggy friends.

Unfortunately, when we returned home from Scarborough late Thursday afternoon, Mick called in to check on my dad and found that he wasn't very well. To cut a long story short, we ended up in A&E with him again where it was discovered he had yet another kidney infection and he was kept in. We arrived home in the early hours of Friday morning.

Friday was the best day of the week, beautiful sunshine and very mild, but most of it was spent visiting my dad in hospital. Over the course of the week, as well as our outings, we managed to get a few jobs done at home too, so barring my dad ending up in hospital, it was a good week overall.

That takes us to the weekend where, after further tests, it was discovered that my dad's one remaining working kidney is deteriorating and it was decided that he'd need a nephrostopy, a procedure to insert a tube into the kidney through an opening in the skin to drain urine. This will now be in place permanently and we're hoping that this works as we don't know what else they can do if it doesn't.

My dad's still in hospital at the moment so it looks as though we'll be continuing with our hospital visiting, or looking after him at home if he's discharged, over the weekend and into next week.