Post 249:Take the smooth, sod the rough

So, I have just got back from a lovely Sunday roast with a couple of my great college mates Mel and Becky and Mel's charming new Canadian boyfriend Lucas sadly forgetting to take my camera. Like all Canadians, he is revelling in the fact that people instantly like him because he's not American!This has come at a good time because I am feeling particularly friendless at the moment and I feel I am plumbing the depths of attracting new friends and keeping existing ones largely because of a message I got from someone who's never met me. This is an occupational hazard of being a lapsed internet dater. My profile is still up on some of these sites despite not having visited them for months. Obviously, in my profile I talk about the fact I've had a stroke and most messages I therefore get are pretty kind if they're not from time wasters. If they've got the right combination of lexicographical correctness, geographical proximity, shared interests and the right look I almost always write back usually with a link to this to show people I can string a sentence together and that since my stroke I'm not a waste of space, that was until I received a reply to one of my replies containing the words 'cut the crap about your stroke, why should I read your blog? Just from the title it sounds pitiful and depressing. I know I should just ignore this as the comment of one lousy person but it's hard these days.
My physical rehab program is so difficult. At least I've introduced timing of my garden walks so we can all see if I'm getting quicker. There's nothing quite like cold, hard numbers to focus the mind. The score is I do 10 ups and downs of the garden with a crutch and Ian balancing me/shouting at me, 20 lengths in a session where 2 lengths = 1lap, and of the 10 laps, I do 5 at smooth walking pace and the other 5 as fast as I can, and when I started this new torture regime on the 12th October, my slow lap took 5.28 and my fast lap took 2.46, yesterday, my slow lap took me 3.12 and my fast lap took 1.53. Apparently this is progress! Perhaps I should focus on this and being taken to lunch rather than the opinion of one bunny boiler and the fact I couldn't go to the one gig I had tickets for this week, the Charlatans, another band from my schooldays will have to wait because both people I'd asked were unavoidably detained. Maybe I should focus on the fact that I took 5 of my friends to the Soho Theatre last Saturday to see Aussie comedian Adam Hills, by virtue of being in a wheelchair the theatre had reserved the entire front row for my friends. Now Adam is a nice comedian, he isn't the type to rip the piss or victimise people, well, at least until my mate Nick when asked said he was a 'hedge fund manager' he then went on to reveal that his wife, Sally was at home looking after their two kids. The audience tasted blood, so the next thing we know is Adam is ringing up Sally on his iphone – she answers, Adam says 'Hi Sally, this is Adam Hills, the comedian your husband has come to see tonight'. Sally simply says 'Oh dear' and hangs up and then wisely turns off her phone. She wasn't to know that Hills is a thoroughly nice man who wouldn't have stitched her up like a kipper, and I'm not just saying this because I won £30 off him, that's another story. This photo was actually taken by him and lifted off his blog.