Tuesday 20th July

A day of bad news and good news but I’ll get to each one in turn. We decided not to do an open top bus tour mainly because my knee just isn’t up to walking around a lot and to do justice to the £12.50 fare (well £10.00 for Richard!) we would need to keep getting off and having a wander round. So we decided to carry on down river to Abingdon. Before we left Oxford I thought I would ring the hospital to make sure my operation was still scheduled for Friday and I was assured that everything was OK. However about 20 minutes later they phoned and said it would have to be cancelled – yet again. I was furious but was assured that there was nothing that could be done as a more urgent case needed my bed. They have promised that I will be done next Friday – but they said that four weeks ago. I sat down immediately and wrote an email to the hospital, my MP and the Secretary of State for Health! To cheer me up Richard took me to the Head of the River pub for lunch but we were very disappointed at the menu bearing in mind it is a very busy tourist pub. We then set off for Abingdon down which I thought coming up was a boring part of the river and it was still the same coming down!! We stopped for the night just below Abingdon Lock this time and I then had the good news – the two baby swans that I thought had disappeared last time we were in Abingdon were there. It just had to be them as they definitely looked about 10 days older than when I last saw them!! I went to bed a happy bunny and dreamt of fluffy cygnets!!