This evening Joe and I drove over to Writtle and had a net. Joe wanted to bowl so he had 30 balls which I faced. I did okay - he got me Three times - one a very full Yorker and another a nick outside of off driving at the ball, the 3rd one a knuckle ball which I played through because it was so slow that hit middle. His Yorkers were good, very accurate and bowled at will and that's without any recent practice. He said though that he was knackered.
I had a bowl and got him loads of times, although wholly reliant on other people catching the ball e.g a keeper. I got him out of his crease at least 3 times and he'd have miss-hit balls to mid-off, cover and square-leg. This miss-hits were off of the straight balls for the most part, so they look like a promising aspect of my bowling.
Nice to get in the nets given the recent high-blood pressure situation - felt okay and over the weekend the readings have been reasonable.
Sunday 26 November 2017
Friday 24 November 2017
Plotting
Doctors today... The hospital hadn't forwarded the results of my tests, so my Doctor couldn't say much. Another test for blood pressure and as a result the dose to be doubled. I handed over a urine sample and the Doctor said he'd contact me next Wednesday.
He called me later in the day and said that I should go into the Dr's as frequently as possible and measure my blood pressure levels. I mentioned that I had one of the machines at home as my mate had given me his one. The Doc said to measure twice a day having rested for 15 mins and plot the results and let him know them on a regular basis.
The readings fluctuate quite a lot and there's no real rise or fall, but this is just a week in. I wont be going to nets again this weekend, not sure what the protocols are with regards sports and high blood pressure and besides I don't feel like it - feel rough... as though I'm coming out of having flu.
Wednesday 22 November 2017
Previous diary posts
18/11/17
As the Ashes approaches and the Women's Ashes, which I've loved watching despite the fact that we've now lost, I've been trying to figure out how to watch some of it albeit a day or so late. Searching around Youtube I found the whole of the Women's games on a BT website. Having found and watched those, I started getting recommended (as happens on Youtube) other full length games and in-depth coverage of previous Ashes series and I've now just found this on the ECB website - Most of 2013 series in England session by session amazing! Link here
_______________________________________
I don't know about anyone else, but I reckon it's a travesty that there's no cricket on terrestrial television here in the UK. England women have played a couple of days now against the Aussie's and there's been virtually nothing - other than a few seconds on the news. I've got BT, so could quite easily get the cricket I guess via BT Sport, but I hate BT as a company generally and now they're restricting access to the viewing of my favorite sport, that's really getting my goat up. One of our main sports in this country and it seems you're expected to pay for it? Moreover, there's an on-going push in this country to get people fit and getting involved in sports. Surely if it's not there to be seen - how the hell are people going to be engaged?
Completely bored with no cricket to watch tonight, I turned to Youtube and watched the Channel 4 documentary on the 2005 Ashes. What struck me about this was how enthused the country was by cricket and how lay-people got involved and found themselves watching it. I spoke to someone today about the fact that I'm currently not able to watch it and they laughed at the idea of wanting to watch it. I conceded that I too had the same view for much of my life until one evening I settled down to watch the high-lights on Channel 4 (Free to air) because I had nothing else to watch. It was the mid-nineties and it was a test match. I watched it for a while and there was nothing new happening - same old story England losing (I knew that from the news) and some bloke walking from the stumps right back to the boundary and then running in and bowling... Nothing happening, same old same. Then a fat bloke turned up with a stupid hair cut, but then he did something odd, he didn't go for a long boring walk, he turned round just a few yards back from the stumps and then turned round - walked in and bowled!!! But, more than that - I thought... this is a result, the England boys are going to smack this bloke out of the park. So I took notice, but then as I watched, what I expected to happen - didn't happen, the England boys were useless! This fat bloke was bowling stupidly slow and they weren't doing anything and I found myself shouting at the television "Hit the f*****g ball you goons - the blokes bowling it so slow I could f*****g hit it"! I watched, as ball after was left, miss-hit or simply missed. I couldn't believe it. The fast bloke came on again and took 15 mins to bowl his over and then Fatso was back on and gone again within a couple of seconds and again totally bamboozling the English batsman. I wanted Fatso back - preferably at both ends, so I could figure out what was going on. I couldn't though, it was a highlights package and the editors seemed to be obsessed with showing you either the ball being hit over the boundary or the fast bowler missing everything. I wanted more of the fat bloke who was spinning the ball. Over the following nights I switched on again looking for the fat bloke, learning that his name was Shane Warne and I was mesmerised by what this bloke was doing - I'd never seen it before, it was engaging and exciting and a type or cricket that was faster paced - none of that time-wasting, tedious walking and running back and forth.
That was it, I'd gone from being a cricket dismissive to someone that wanted more of it and within several more years at the age of 46 I formed a club and started playing it - playing as a wrist-spinner. But that only happened because I'd been able to watch it on the television - free to air. At the moment I can't find anything that indicates that any of the cricket will be on the traditional TV channels here in the UK and that is shocking. Especially shocking given the success of the England Women's team and the potential to ride the wave of success like England cricket did in 2005 - primarily driven by the fact that the 2005 series was all over terrestrial TV as far as I can remember.
Thankfully, tonight digging around, I've found what appears to be a full match on Youtube which seems to have been uploaded by BT. Click on the image to watch.
It's great that it is on Youtube, but I'd rather see it on the TV too.
__________________________________
7th Nov 2017
Just watched the end of the series in India between NZ and India, with India winning the T20 decider in a rain affected game which involved 8 overs each. With so little time India batting first going after the ball and hitting Ish Sohdi for 23 off of 2 overs and conceding two wickets. India ended up on 67 for 5. It looked as though New Zealand were in with a chance for taking the series, with good bowling performances from Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav along with the seam bowlers NZ were thwarted. But what impressed me was Chahal's bowling and the way he went about it. Knowing that NZ needed to go big - fours and sixes, he bowled back of a length outside of the off-stump, loading the off-side field with plenty of cover and it worked perfectly. These things seem pretty obvious when you have them pointed out to you and it's something I've been gradually noticing, especially with regards the observations and analysis of the batsmen that I faced last summer (See here) in each game I found that I was coming to the same conclusion - bowl on or around the off-stump. Chahal in the interview at the end of the game confirmed that bowling wide of the off-stump, back of a length was the plan as they knew the batsmen were going to be after him.
Click on the image for the video.
Another bowler I've noticed who has a good degree of success bowling back of a length is our own Adil Rashid in the shorter formats of the game where the batsmen have to be pro-active in getting runs. I've always been surprised at the level of success he gets with this length and I don't reckon it's the way to go in longer formats, which is kind of evidenced by the lesser success. It's almost certainly important to have the potential for a good couple of variations... If you watch the video, many of the wickets are from nothing balls - balls that come out of the front of the hand with no spin put on them.
So of the two approaches, the one that would probably work best for me in the situations which I most often find myself in it's the Chahal approach which is potentially the most useful. At my level I find that I beat the bat most frequently on the off-side, suggesting that batsmen are not so adept at playing Leg-Breaks on the off-side, it kind of feels a little defensive in a way, but a loaded off-side with your better fielders makes it more attacking. It made me ponder Peter Philpotts advice and I searched my other blogs and found one of my diagrams based on a Philpott field that would support this off-side approach...
Philpotts says to bowl middle and off, which makes complete sense if you have a straight ball option or are able to bowl with less turn off the wicket. But if you simply bowl leg-breaks, the key is to try and get the ball up and around this area, but most importantly nowhere near the legs. If you don't know the batsman you still need to do the Shane Warne thing where initially you bowl from different points on the crease at different speeds and on differing lines. See here . It may be that they're useless on the leg-side in which case you'll have more options, but as I've noticed this isn't usually the situation you'll find yourself in.
The key is - if you can get your line right - middle and off, that's great but if that's too tight - go wider, especially if they're looking to be aggressive - take a leaf out of Chahal's book? Ultimately it's a case of understanding the situation and sussing out the wicket - whether it offers any turn, or bounces and how the batsman plays. Watch the players before you bowl, watch and see where their strengths and weaknesses are and then bowl accordingly.
_____________________________________
29th Oct 2017 Line and length
Surely this was the last practice this year? The clocks went back today, so this afternoon just after 2.30pm the shadows over the paddock were cast long across the grass, it was breezy so the grass was dry and I took the camera over to the paddock and video'd my bowling, which was a bit of a disaster... It seems whenever I video myself I bowl total rubbish and this was the case today. Initially I was hoping to bowl top-spinners combined with straight 'Nothing balls'. I've never video'd these 'Nothing balls' before so it might be interesting to look at what they're like. They're not Flippers or back-spinners and I don't grip the ball like a seam ball, in fact if anything I grip it in a similar way to a finger-spinner and kind of put off-spin on it by rolling my fingers down the side of the ball... cutting it rather than flicking it as a finger spinner might. This lack of action on the ball means that much of the time it goes on straight, so there's a good element of natural variation, which is potentially useful.
In the video (Click on the image)
if I'm honest I'm trying to hit the mat from the outset and almost every ball from the start is outside the leg-stump, in a game against a half decent batsman that's almost certainly going to be four every time it's out there. After about 21 balls where I was trying to bowl with more over-spin, I gave up and tried bowling stock balls, but that wasn't happening either and in the end you'll see I reverted to Flippers and towards the very end the 'Nothing balls' which are as described above. I wasn't overly concerned with how bad it went as there's no cricket now till late April 2018, so there's plenty of time to get back into the groove in the months leading up to the new season. Who knows there might be more good weather yet before the winter sets in?
_______________________________________
28th Oct 2017
A few years back because of problems on the bigcricket forum I set up my own forum and it was active for several months, with many of the BC members coming over to join me. I very rarely look at it these days but noticed that Shivam from BC had recently joined and had sent me messages about linking via Facebook. Shivam if you're reading this - ask me questions on here and you'll probably get a quicker answer, I did try and find you on FB but there's a lot of blokes on there called Shivam!
Anyway, mooching around on the forum I realised that being the Admin I could send an email out to everyone that had ever signed up telling them about this new blog. So that's what I did, so with a bit of luck it'll work and I'll get loads of views? As it is it's not doing too bad, with it only being up and running for a few days it's already had 450 views with the batsman analysis being the most popular. So at the minute things are looking promising and I've already had confirmation that the comments work, so it's all looking good.
Just got to get the adverts up and running and at the moment I can't figure that out, but that may be something to do with how many views the blog gets before Google decide it's viable?
_____________________________________________________________________
27th Oct 2017
The weather continues to be summer like, warm and sunny, virtually no wind went for a walk in the woods local to me Thorndon Park...
Once back, realising this may be the last chance to either bowl or have a bat in the Paddock, I went over and had 20 minutes of bowling, it's not easy to see, but a couple of days ago we actually cut the grass in the bowling area as we were batting as well. You can just see it in the shadow. We've already been cutting back the bushes as the council no longer seem to do this and the impression we've got is that they're leaving to grow over and become completely unusable.
I'd imagine the next time we'll be over here will be early March when we roll it and try and get it flat for the summer. I may come over with some grass seed and earth and do some repairs and scrape all the leaves off if it gets bad. In the 20 minutes or so that I was there the main thing I worked on was the top-spinner. I haven't got a brilliant top-spinner, it's more like a normal leg-break but with a lot more over-spin (Top-spin) and so it tends to dip. The other promising aspect to it is that it bounces a lot more and its a bit faster than my stock delivery. If I really focus on it I can get it to go down with the seam dead straight in which case it does what a top-spinner is supposed to do! But, usually if I focus on it to that extent I tend to get some other aspect wrong... line or length, so I'm quite happy for it to come as it does most of the time a small leg-break with a lot more over-spin. Have a look at this article here by Menno Gazendum where he talks about back-spinning deliveries, I think what he's generally talking about is the Orthodox back-spinner but he calls it all sorts of confusing names. That aside the article is interesting in that he advocates not getting too hung up on the fact that position of the seam isn't pure back-spin...
This is something I've come to realise over the years especially when it comes to your variations and in particular if you ever get to the point where you bowl Flippers (of which there are many) don't get hung up on the fact that it's not doing what you want it to do absolutely perfectly, all that really matters is that it gives you the option of a variation, the important thing and probably the most difficult thing is being able to bowl it at will amongst your stock ball leg-breaks and that's the difficult bit. Hence whenever I get the opportunity to bowl I go outside somewhere and practice and try and do so as Peter Philpott says with purpose.
___________________________________________________________________________
26th Oct 2017
Still no rest from cricket, yeah we've obviously eased off a bit as the season has finished now, but with the weather here in the UK being fine and dry, the paddock is still in a half decent condition and most important - dry. So throughout Sept and October we've been over there, hung up the nets and had a bat and a bowl. Yesterday it was 22 centigrade - light breeze and sunny - unbelievable!
The legend that is Tim Brown joined us for a session in September which was a good laugh and we all had a good bat and bowl. Tim incidentally won 4th XI player of the year this year for his contribution to the team (See the link).
Nothing too serious, but potentially worthwhile as my focus in these situations is batting and I have to face Joe who makes it nigh-on impossible because he bowls all sorts of stuff all mixed up - off-breaks, leg-breaks, straight balls and his usual fast stuff - off-cutters, slow balls - you name it he does it. Because the paddock is such a small area with no fencing we have to play the ball late and hit it along the ground.
Today as I write the weather is predicted to take a turn for the worse and already the temp has dropped to a more normal day time temp of 14 degrees and it's been raining. In the short term the practice will continue and we'll probably start to go to Writtle over November into December and practice in the nets. Usually Christmas sees a complete stop and then nothing till winter nets in March which I think is rumored to be happening at Writtle this year.
As the Ashes approaches and the Women's Ashes, which I've loved watching despite the fact that we've now lost, I've been trying to figure out how to watch some of it albeit a day or so late. Searching around Youtube I found the whole of the Women's games on a BT website. Having found and watched those, I started getting recommended (as happens on Youtube) other full length games and in-depth coverage of previous Ashes series and I've now just found this on the ECB website - Most of 2013 series in England session by session amazing! Link here
_______________________________________
I don't know about anyone else, but I reckon it's a travesty that there's no cricket on terrestrial television here in the UK. England women have played a couple of days now against the Aussie's and there's been virtually nothing - other than a few seconds on the news. I've got BT, so could quite easily get the cricket I guess via BT Sport, but I hate BT as a company generally and now they're restricting access to the viewing of my favorite sport, that's really getting my goat up. One of our main sports in this country and it seems you're expected to pay for it? Moreover, there's an on-going push in this country to get people fit and getting involved in sports. Surely if it's not there to be seen - how the hell are people going to be engaged?
Completely bored with no cricket to watch tonight, I turned to Youtube and watched the Channel 4 documentary on the 2005 Ashes. What struck me about this was how enthused the country was by cricket and how lay-people got involved and found themselves watching it. I spoke to someone today about the fact that I'm currently not able to watch it and they laughed at the idea of wanting to watch it. I conceded that I too had the same view for much of my life until one evening I settled down to watch the high-lights on Channel 4 (Free to air) because I had nothing else to watch. It was the mid-nineties and it was a test match. I watched it for a while and there was nothing new happening - same old story England losing (I knew that from the news) and some bloke walking from the stumps right back to the boundary and then running in and bowling... Nothing happening, same old same. Then a fat bloke turned up with a stupid hair cut, but then he did something odd, he didn't go for a long boring walk, he turned round just a few yards back from the stumps and then turned round - walked in and bowled!!! But, more than that - I thought... this is a result, the England boys are going to smack this bloke out of the park. So I took notice, but then as I watched, what I expected to happen - didn't happen, the England boys were useless! This fat bloke was bowling stupidly slow and they weren't doing anything and I found myself shouting at the television "Hit the f*****g ball you goons - the blokes bowling it so slow I could f*****g hit it"! I watched, as ball after was left, miss-hit or simply missed. I couldn't believe it. The fast bloke came on again and took 15 mins to bowl his over and then Fatso was back on and gone again within a couple of seconds and again totally bamboozling the English batsman. I wanted Fatso back - preferably at both ends, so I could figure out what was going on. I couldn't though, it was a highlights package and the editors seemed to be obsessed with showing you either the ball being hit over the boundary or the fast bowler missing everything. I wanted more of the fat bloke who was spinning the ball. Over the following nights I switched on again looking for the fat bloke, learning that his name was Shane Warne and I was mesmerised by what this bloke was doing - I'd never seen it before, it was engaging and exciting and a type or cricket that was faster paced - none of that time-wasting, tedious walking and running back and forth.
That was it, I'd gone from being a cricket dismissive to someone that wanted more of it and within several more years at the age of 46 I formed a club and started playing it - playing as a wrist-spinner. But that only happened because I'd been able to watch it on the television - free to air. At the moment I can't find anything that indicates that any of the cricket will be on the traditional TV channels here in the UK and that is shocking. Especially shocking given the success of the England Women's team and the potential to ride the wave of success like England cricket did in 2005 - primarily driven by the fact that the 2005 series was all over terrestrial TV as far as I can remember.
Thankfully, tonight digging around, I've found what appears to be a full match on Youtube which seems to have been uploaded by BT. Click on the image to watch.
__________________________________
7th Nov 2017
Just watched the end of the series in India between NZ and India, with India winning the T20 decider in a rain affected game which involved 8 overs each. With so little time India batting first going after the ball and hitting Ish Sohdi for 23 off of 2 overs and conceding two wickets. India ended up on 67 for 5. It looked as though New Zealand were in with a chance for taking the series, with good bowling performances from Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav along with the seam bowlers NZ were thwarted. But what impressed me was Chahal's bowling and the way he went about it. Knowing that NZ needed to go big - fours and sixes, he bowled back of a length outside of the off-stump, loading the off-side field with plenty of cover and it worked perfectly. These things seem pretty obvious when you have them pointed out to you and it's something I've been gradually noticing, especially with regards the observations and analysis of the batsmen that I faced last summer (See here) in each game I found that I was coming to the same conclusion - bowl on or around the off-stump. Chahal in the interview at the end of the game confirmed that bowling wide of the off-stump, back of a length was the plan as they knew the batsmen were going to be after him.
Click on the image for the video.
Another bowler I've noticed who has a good degree of success bowling back of a length is our own Adil Rashid in the shorter formats of the game where the batsmen have to be pro-active in getting runs. I've always been surprised at the level of success he gets with this length and I don't reckon it's the way to go in longer formats, which is kind of evidenced by the lesser success. It's almost certainly important to have the potential for a good couple of variations... If you watch the video, many of the wickets are from nothing balls - balls that come out of the front of the hand with no spin put on them.
So of the two approaches, the one that would probably work best for me in the situations which I most often find myself in it's the Chahal approach which is potentially the most useful. At my level I find that I beat the bat most frequently on the off-side, suggesting that batsmen are not so adept at playing Leg-Breaks on the off-side, it kind of feels a little defensive in a way, but a loaded off-side with your better fielders makes it more attacking. It made me ponder Peter Philpotts advice and I searched my other blogs and found one of my diagrams based on a Philpott field that would support this off-side approach...
Philpotts says to bowl middle and off, which makes complete sense if you have a straight ball option or are able to bowl with less turn off the wicket. But if you simply bowl leg-breaks, the key is to try and get the ball up and around this area, but most importantly nowhere near the legs. If you don't know the batsman you still need to do the Shane Warne thing where initially you bowl from different points on the crease at different speeds and on differing lines. See here . It may be that they're useless on the leg-side in which case you'll have more options, but as I've noticed this isn't usually the situation you'll find yourself in.The key is - if you can get your line right - middle and off, that's great but if that's too tight - go wider, especially if they're looking to be aggressive - take a leaf out of Chahal's book? Ultimately it's a case of understanding the situation and sussing out the wicket - whether it offers any turn, or bounces and how the batsman plays. Watch the players before you bowl, watch and see where their strengths and weaknesses are and then bowl accordingly.
_____________________________________
29th Oct 2017 Line and length
Surely this was the last practice this year? The clocks went back today, so this afternoon just after 2.30pm the shadows over the paddock were cast long across the grass, it was breezy so the grass was dry and I took the camera over to the paddock and video'd my bowling, which was a bit of a disaster... It seems whenever I video myself I bowl total rubbish and this was the case today. Initially I was hoping to bowl top-spinners combined with straight 'Nothing balls'. I've never video'd these 'Nothing balls' before so it might be interesting to look at what they're like. They're not Flippers or back-spinners and I don't grip the ball like a seam ball, in fact if anything I grip it in a similar way to a finger-spinner and kind of put off-spin on it by rolling my fingers down the side of the ball... cutting it rather than flicking it as a finger spinner might. This lack of action on the ball means that much of the time it goes on straight, so there's a good element of natural variation, which is potentially useful.
In the video (Click on the image)
if I'm honest I'm trying to hit the mat from the outset and almost every ball from the start is outside the leg-stump, in a game against a half decent batsman that's almost certainly going to be four every time it's out there. After about 21 balls where I was trying to bowl with more over-spin, I gave up and tried bowling stock balls, but that wasn't happening either and in the end you'll see I reverted to Flippers and towards the very end the 'Nothing balls' which are as described above. I wasn't overly concerned with how bad it went as there's no cricket now till late April 2018, so there's plenty of time to get back into the groove in the months leading up to the new season. Who knows there might be more good weather yet before the winter sets in?
_______________________________________
28th Oct 2017
A few years back because of problems on the bigcricket forum I set up my own forum and it was active for several months, with many of the BC members coming over to join me. I very rarely look at it these days but noticed that Shivam from BC had recently joined and had sent me messages about linking via Facebook. Shivam if you're reading this - ask me questions on here and you'll probably get a quicker answer, I did try and find you on FB but there's a lot of blokes on there called Shivam!
Anyway, mooching around on the forum I realised that being the Admin I could send an email out to everyone that had ever signed up telling them about this new blog. So that's what I did, so with a bit of luck it'll work and I'll get loads of views? As it is it's not doing too bad, with it only being up and running for a few days it's already had 450 views with the batsman analysis being the most popular. So at the minute things are looking promising and I've already had confirmation that the comments work, so it's all looking good.
Just got to get the adverts up and running and at the moment I can't figure that out, but that may be something to do with how many views the blog gets before Google decide it's viable?
_____________________________________________________________________
27th Oct 2017
The weather continues to be summer like, warm and sunny, virtually no wind went for a walk in the woods local to me Thorndon Park...
Once back, realising this may be the last chance to either bowl or have a bat in the Paddock, I went over and had 20 minutes of bowling, it's not easy to see, but a couple of days ago we actually cut the grass in the bowling area as we were batting as well. You can just see it in the shadow. We've already been cutting back the bushes as the council no longer seem to do this and the impression we've got is that they're leaving to grow over and become completely unusable.
"As long as most of the ball is in the right position it will work. A few degrees angle here and there will not matter at all".
This is something I've come to realise over the years especially when it comes to your variations and in particular if you ever get to the point where you bowl Flippers (of which there are many) don't get hung up on the fact that it's not doing what you want it to do absolutely perfectly, all that really matters is that it gives you the option of a variation, the important thing and probably the most difficult thing is being able to bowl it at will amongst your stock ball leg-breaks and that's the difficult bit. Hence whenever I get the opportunity to bowl I go outside somewhere and practice and try and do so as Peter Philpott says with purpose.
___________________________________________________________________________
26th Oct 2017
Still no rest from cricket, yeah we've obviously eased off a bit as the season has finished now, but with the weather here in the UK being fine and dry, the paddock is still in a half decent condition and most important - dry. So throughout Sept and October we've been over there, hung up the nets and had a bat and a bowl. Yesterday it was 22 centigrade - light breeze and sunny - unbelievable!
The legend that is Tim Brown joined us for a session in September which was a good laugh and we all had a good bat and bowl. Tim incidentally won 4th XI player of the year this year for his contribution to the team (See the link).
Nothing too serious, but potentially worthwhile as my focus in these situations is batting and I have to face Joe who makes it nigh-on impossible because he bowls all sorts of stuff all mixed up - off-breaks, leg-breaks, straight balls and his usual fast stuff - off-cutters, slow balls - you name it he does it. Because the paddock is such a small area with no fencing we have to play the ball late and hit it along the ground.
Today as I write the weather is predicted to take a turn for the worse and already the temp has dropped to a more normal day time temp of 14 degrees and it's been raining. In the short term the practice will continue and we'll probably start to go to Writtle over November into December and practice in the nets. Usually Christmas sees a complete stop and then nothing till winter nets in March which I think is rumored to be happening at Writtle this year.
Beginning of the end?
Please note The owner of the blog is in no way responsible for you getting carted around the park for 4's and sixes. Seek professional guidance if in doubt.
One of the things that influenced the name (URL) was the fact that last Thursday I had a bit of an incident that brought home the fact that I am getting old. Just after going to bed I suffered a series of chest pains that went through my body to my back and down my arms. I've suffered similar before and the last time 5 - 6 years ago it was far more severe. This time it wasn't that bad and it passed within about 4 or 5 minutes and I fell asleep shortly afterwards. I woke up and didn't feel any noticeable effect, whereas the previous time left me feeling drained and ill.
I went to work (I'm a college lecturer) and mentioned it to a few people and later in the day in a meeting mentioned it again and was promptly told to go home and go to hospital, they in fact tried to drive me to hospital. An hour or so later I found myself in hospital going through the usual procedure - sign in - triage... ECG, blood test and a load of questions. They then said I had to have an Xray.
Waiting for the Xray I was pondering the plight of many of my many male family members. Granddad- cancer and heart attack; My favourite Uncle - heart attack and dead at 40 leaving two small boys, stress, smoking and diet related; My Dad heart attacks before 60, cancer of the colon and dead by 65. Then the women - my sister aged about 52 - 3 massive heart attacks and carried on without going to hospital - felt unwell next day and ended up having triple heart bypass. My Mum 65 - died of Thrombosis. The combined average age is about my age.
By the time I'd had the Xray and was called in for a blood pressure test with all this on my mind I wasn't probably in a good place to have a blood pressure test.
The nurse took the first reading and saw the results and said "Hmmm". She's got all the info...
Patient 57, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't do drugs, not on any medication, healthy and fit to look at.
She does the 2nd one... "Oh..." She looks surprised. She waits and does the 3rd one. She may have well said F*****g hell! on seeing the results - she didn't, she sort stopped short of Strewth!!! But I definitely got the sense that she was surprised.
The doctor comes in a little later...
"Mr Thompson" He pauses... "Your blood pressure is high" He pauses again, looking at the paperwork. "Surprisingly high given that you don't smoke or drink... Not immediately dangerous, but, high enough for you to have medication. We'll put you on Amlodipine and you'll have to go and see your doctor on a regular basis to have the situation monitored. Make sure you take them as indicated, because the reading was high. It may be that over time the situation will improve and your Doctor may reduce the dosage, but in the short term stick to the dosage and make sure you take them".
I was shocked and I followed him to a waiting area and sat down with some ill people. He came back and I asked...
"Is there anything that I can do to help the situation"?
"No, normally I'd be saying to you... you need to lose weight, or stop drinking or smoking, but you don't have those issues, thing is my job is, I look at you, ascertain what's wrong and then give you the appropriate drugs. It may be that when you visit your doctor your blood pressure will drop and he'll reduce the dose. What I can tell you (he pulls out the Xray) you haven't got anything wrong with you that is obvious, nothing else showed up, it's just that you're getting older and your veins and blood vessels are becoming worn and old... clogged up. The medication wont fix it, but it'll improve the situation and your blood pressure".
He paused.
"You look shocked - you okay"?
"Yeah I am, I never go to the doctors, I'm never ill, so this is a bit of a shock yeah".
"You'll be fine - just make sure you take the drugs and see your Doctor".
A day or so later having rested I went onto the internet and started reading articles and watching videos on the subject. What I'd sensed was that the Doctor wasn't going to suggest any holistic approaches as that's not his profession, but without actually saying it he kind of very subtly inferred that I might look into it by virtue of the sentence about appropriate drugs.
I eat a freight of chocolate, for years I've been saying to myself I've got to cut back on chocolate as I'm aware that of all the things that I do - this is the one thing that is going to kill me. So I started with food and looked at exercise and whether there were things that I could do that might at the very least make me feel like I'm proactive in staying healthy and alive. Thankfully there was. Despite the fact that overall I'm doing a lot of things right, I am doing some stupid things that may well be exacerbating the situation...
So, from the weekend I've made some decisions to make root and branch changes to what I eat and drink to see if it makes any significant difference? One of the things I've learned is that I don't drink near enough water as I should do. I've been walking around very dehydrated.
My concern though is the situation might worsen, I'm slightly optimistic to be honest and that when I see my doctor on Friday the blood pressure reading will be better and there might be a chat that involves talk of reducing the dosage in the longer term. What I'm dreading is anything that goes along the lines of "You need to take it easy - you're an old bloke"...
So, from the weekend I've made some decisions to make root and branch changes to what I eat and drink to see if it makes any significant difference? One of the things I've learned is that I don't drink near enough water as I should do. I've been walking around very dehydrated.
My concern though is the situation might worsen, I'm slightly optimistic to be honest and that when I see my doctor on Friday the blood pressure reading will be better and there might be a chat that involves talk of reducing the dosage in the longer term. What I'm dreading is anything that goes along the lines of "You need to take it easy - you're an old bloke"...
Home Page
Another blog! Yep, another one, the other recent one (see it here ) is fine for some things but other things e.g. daily waffle, rants and similar stuff I felt it wasn't working. In a way a website would be much better, but as I don't sell anything I can't justify the cost of running a website.
So from now on the day to day stuff will be here and the static pages with the wrist-spin content will be accessible via the link above or the one in the side-bar on the right here. So who am I again? Some bloke who bowls wrist-spin at 4th XI club level here in England. Why am I all over the internet? Only because I write a lot about it and have opinions and views that I'm willing to share - none of it supported by qualifications or professional practice, so make sure you take notice of the caveat at the end here.
Please note The owner of the blog is in no way responsible for you getting carted around the park for 4's and sixes. Seek professional guidance if in doubt.
So from now on the day to day stuff will be here and the static pages with the wrist-spin content will be accessible via the link above or the one in the side-bar on the right here. So who am I again? Some bloke who bowls wrist-spin at 4th XI club level here in England. Why am I all over the internet? Only because I write a lot about it and have opinions and views that I'm willing to share - none of it supported by qualifications or professional practice, so make sure you take notice of the caveat at the end here.
Dave Thompson - the author 2017
All the ideas, views and opinions on here have nothing to do with the club I play for and are subject to change, as I'm learning all the time despite the fact that an old bloke!
Please note The owner of the blog is in no way responsible for you getting carted around the park for 4's and sixes. Seek professional guidance if in doubt.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)