Sick Owner, slave gardens.

MT is still very unwell, her pain levels today have spiralled out of control, and she was crying out loudly in her sleep last night. There has been an improvement as the day has gone on today since she took what she ominously called "too many of the good drugs" which is good news at least. On Monday it is her routine check up at the hospital. I am invoking my slave responsibility to look after her and will be insisting on accompanying her for her appointment with the consultant. This will no doubt be met with resistance, I have acceded to her previous instructions to stay in the waiting room. This time, I will be going in whether she likes it or not, and I'm banking on the fact she will be too ill to put up much of a fight. He needs to know how much she has declined again, and hopefully hearing it from a second source will reinforce it. I am confident if they adjust her medications correctly they can give her a better quality of life. She says she is going to ask for steroids this time which she usually vigorously avoids, so she must be really bad. I hate seeing her in so much pain. Her efforts to downplay it are not as convincing as she hopes.

No work today, so as well as doing what I can for MT I decided to work for a bit on our garden. MT is garden obsessed and really loves to have nice gardens (even more so since she became ill) so it's something I can do for her. I have neglected it for ages though, I used to really enjoy doing it, but as I am gardening so often at work it is not so enjoyable as a hobby. It is quite a small garden but still takes quite a time to do. It is quite a new garden, just three years old and I am optimistic this year it will start to look how it was meant to when I planned it. It's full of MT's favourite plants and created so she has somewhere that makes her happy even when she can't get out as much as she likes to. There is a summer house she sets up camp in at these times and when she's well we use it for other things. It takes time for plants to become established, and they should look really nice this year, hopefully. Last winter we lost quite a few plants due to the extreme cold weather, this winter has not been quite so harsh, yet, but there is plenty of time left.

One of the things I really loved about China was the absolutely stunning gardens. With such densely populated cities one would imagine that there would be very little in the way of green spaces. But I could not have been more wrong, there is a massive emphasis on providing people with stunning public parks for rest and recreation. The UK could most definitely learn from China in this regard, also from the fact they try to give lots of facilities for the elderly. I spent three and a half weeks touring in China about 6 years ago. I have been very lucky to have the opportunity to travel extensively over the years, but China was a real surprise, one of the most enjoyable countries I have been to. The biggest downside was the language barrier, no-one seemed to speak English and my Chinese was limited to hello and goodbye, so ordering food, drinks and navigating around was very difficult. I got to visit the Great wall, Terracotta Army, Yangtze River, Three Gorges plus the major cities etc. I am not a city lover, and being in cities with populations of 22 million was overpowering but worthwhile, I finally learnt the meaning of the word busy.

I had hoped to feel quite tall in China, in the South I did, but in the North they tend to be quite tall, I never thought I would be dwarfed by 6 ft plus Chinamen, but I was. Another myth bit the dust, along with much of the anti China propaganda I had been spoon fed over the years. Certainly there are some things that are very controlled by the state, however, it is all transparent and above board and is often a matter of necessity. I often feel that here in the UK I am told I have freedom but the evidence suggests that I have less than I am told I have.

At least MT is an entirely honest and open dictator ;)