Vodaphone and sticky keys

Mrs Furlong (me) has a Vodaphone SIM card for my tiny tiny smart phone that I take on walks, in case, in my dotage, I fall down a bank, get assaulted, or experience any other incident needing contact with helpful people other than screaming.

The tiny phone is useful for taking photos of nice things.

Sometimes the SIM needs a top up.

I have great difficulty logging in to Vodaphone on my computer to do that.

It’s because of Vodaphones’ password situation.

They display the password as a series of dots. There is no way to view them, except as dots.

But there are some keys on my computer that stick. So I have no idea whether I have typed the correct digit or not. I now have a million passwords ‘saved’ in my saved passwords and all of them are wrong!

I haven’t a clue what my password is for Vodaphone.

I wish Vodaphone would allow us to see what we are doing.

Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot is not helpful and Vodaphone must find it very expensive retaining staff there to assist millions of users who can’t log in.

At least eight digits, uppercase, lowercase, numbers and integers, all shown to me as Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot on sticky keys has done my head in.

I am now completely unhinged.

And I still haven’t logged in to Vodaphone.

East Wind

This is the third day that this wreched East wind is blowing.

The Furlongs have had enough.

The back of our building faces North East and the wind coming from the East is a problem for us.

The dog doesn’t like it either. It blows the dog flap in and out and the constant clattering is unnerving. Our extractor fans are blowing inwards and seeing it’s also cold, that’s a pest.

We wish the East wind would change direction, or better still just go away.

Yesterday I skipped my walk because it’s beastly cold and today I might do the same. Yesterday I lost a kg and my blood sugars fell. Perhaps the same will happen today?

Who says exercise is good for you?

Walking is still painful and the worst is in the first 50 yards. After that I’m reasonably comfortable and some amount of pleasure comes to me. That is extraordinary in itself as I really hate exercise.

But exercising in the East wind today is not going to happen. I’ll shuffle around the house instead. My pedometer will tell me how far I walked.

About Veganism

Thanks for your email mentioning veganism. It’s being promoted big time. It’s highly profitable  And bad for the planet. My personal experience of being vegan for six months was my hair falling out, my nails breaking and my whole skin becoming dry and cracked. I found out it was B12 deficiency. I had to stop. To my mind the vegan way to ‘health’ showed itself to me as being unhealthy. There are thousands of people unwittingly subjecting themselves to this eating regime thinking they are benefiting the planet.

This is an illusion. Yet it even has infused the clothing and fashion industry. I have vegan shoes newly purchased. They are genuine plastic!

On a societal level promoting veganism is harmful. Humans evolved as meat eaters.  Animal husbandry is an amazing thing and doing away with it is an outrageous idea as most farmers actually care for their animals. Animals are mainly happy. Over millions of years humans have learned that every part of an animal can be used. There is no waste. Muscle, meat, organs, bones, skin provide benefit to humans, the land and plants.

It’s factory farming that should be outlawed.

Plant farmers that Vegans perceive as the future would resort to the killing of trillions of small animals and insects feeding off the new plant fields, and if we could ‘make ‘ meat artificially, it could not sustain the poor imo as the profit motive embedded in it would make it costly. 

Veganism would hugely profit the chemical industries. Our plants can be genetically engineered or poisoned. Already plants produce toxins on reaping as their defence against being eaten. Added to the spraying and soil fertilisation, huge swathes of agricultural territories would have soil depletion. The world might not be covered with lovely organic farms covered with rainbows and peace loving farmers.

Veganism would upset the fine balance of interspecies co-operation as many understand it.

On a vast scale, spiritually, we inhabited this planet in group cooperation. The planet would host evolution and development out of its ‘body’ so to speak. A sacrificial role. The plants would feed other creatures and heal them. A sacrificial role. Animals would eat and feed each other. A sacrificial role. The profits for that cooperation acrue to the survivors. The sacrifices acrue to the continuation of evolving consciousness in the never ending cycle of life and death of every form from atoms to humans.

Eating plants is as much an act of cruelty to my understanding than eating an animal.

The soil, rocks, mountains, the wind, rain, plants, animals, the air, water,  elements, light, sound, cosmos, consciousness, everything totally works together. It is a fantastic dance of creation even though to our human eyes it appears ruthless.

Humans are very strange creatures. I know, because I am one! I see how commercial greed, personal greed, reputational greed and the cardinal sins of gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth, sadness, vainglory, and pride steer us.

It’s a shame that our human nature makes us buy into it all.

Keep eating meat!

With love,

L

New glasses

I presume everyone who wears glasses goes annually for an eye check.

Well the Furlongs’ do.

Interesting things happen when we go for eyechecks.

In 2019 I met two old people who adopted retired Greyhounds sitting there in comfy chairs with their newest dog. We had a memorable dog chat.

My old lenses were fine, so I didn’t get new glasses.

2020 there were no eyechecks because of Covid.

My old glasses were fine, so I didn’t need new ones.

2021 we were the very first customers after the Christmas hols. The place was utterly freezing. You could hear everyone’s teeth chattering. Covid was raging; the comfy chairs had been changed to hard white plastic.

My old lenses were fine, so I didn’t get new glasses.

2022 Mr Furlong said ,”Don’t fall down the stairs”. The entrance has a step down, a most dreadfully heavy fire door and then another step down. And this time I had a stick in one hand and my old glasses in my left hand. I almost fell down the stairs.

My old glasses were fine evidently, so I didn’t get new ones.

I’ve had my glasses frames since about 2004. They were extra special, my first. They are absolutely unique made by an artist in Germany and made of the then ‘new,’ titanium. They have been trampled on in a mud puddle during a fireworks show, sat apon, dropped down the loo, gnawed on by the dog, the grandkids and had many other adventures.

Occasionally they have had new lenses.

In a year or so they will be twenty years old..

But Mr Furlong is getting new frames. They look exactly the same as his old ones, except they are made of titanium.

That ought to do for the next twenty years!

Carnivore diet revisited

Three years ago, I experimented with myself by going on a Carnivore Diet. I did it for a month. But I stopped because I felt it was ‘unnatural’ to eat only animals even though in my aim to reduce my blood sugar levels, it was super successful.

My proof post.

Since then, I have read much about the Carnivore Diet but not tried it, and despite being a small eater and avoiding sugar and starch on the whole, my blood sugar levels have crept up and my last Hba1c puts me in the diabetic category.

This time, I am doing Carnivore for my pain. I am told that we CAN do something for cartiledge and arthritic bones by upping our intake of real bones and cartilage and collagen. It can take a long time, but people have done it. So this time, Carnivore is long term for me. Also, it is super dramatic for inflammatory conditions.

After a month, I notice small things. My hearing aids are too loud. My glasses are all wrong. Some ‘lady conditions’ have disappeared. My blood sugar is down. I feel good, energetic and sharp of mind.

On the Furlongs’ stove is a pot of bone broth. Every bone goes into it and nothing else. It’s delicious! Cream of bone broth consists of bone broth with added double cream to the cup.

On Carnivore, if it comes from a creature, you can eat it. I reckon a mushroom is neither plant nor animal, so I add some mushrooms now and again.

Eat fat. Lots.

Shun commercial food.

On Carnivore ( and Keto) fat is the fuel, not sugar which comes from carbohydrates in fruit and vegetables, or flour.

The trigger for shoving me on the Carnivore path was the curious thing I noticed about my pain. Daily I was drinking a healthy ‘green’ drink of blitzed celery, spinach or leafy greens, garlic, peppers, carrot and cucumber. Now and again I would forget. The following day was always a good day.

So I tested it out. I stopped my green juice. And did it in reverse. The day after a green juice day, was always a bad day! The vegetable blitz was making my pain worse.

So where am I now?

My pain is reduced, but still there. I walk everyday to excercise. Yesterday, instead of hobbling up and down the little road at the back with my stick, I walked right around the block carrying my stick most of the way instead of using it.

April Fools

I remember when the press played April fools jokes on the population.

Where we once lived in Africa the press reported that a UFO had landed outside the town. They could not divulge the location for security reasons. April 1st that year was very exciting as folk streamed out into the country to find it.

There must still be some children, now grown, who believe that spaghetti grows on bushes on spaghetti farms after the BBC showed a very believable film on harvesting spaghetti in Italy.

Grownups and children played April Fools pranks on each other. I played them on my classes at school and they played them on me.

It was fun.

It was annoying.

Nowadays it seems that everyday is April fools day. It’s hard to believe that anything is really true anymore.

That makes today, April Fools Day, not very special at all.