Aaarrrgh, I’ve just knocked a glass jar of mustard off the shelf and smashed it on the tiled floor. I suppose it’s good that the gooey mustard contained the glass and stopped it from spreading everywhere. And I was wearing sandals so my feet were not endangered. Smells quite nice, too. It was truffle mustard, but I’m damned if I could ever taste any truffles.

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I can hardly believe it but I’ve got the TV on and switched to the AFL Grand Final at Perth Stadium. That’s Australian Football League football, for those who don’t know.

I’m not usually a footy fan or watcher and since these are two Melbourne teams playing, I don’t really care either. But this is historic – the first time an AFL Grand Final has ever been played in Perth, so I thought I should at least have a glance as the game progresses. The teams are Melbourne (I think they’re nicknamed the Demons?) versus the Western Bulldogs (nickname? The Dogs, I think.) Both have red and blue colours, just different shades and patterns.

I don’t care which team wins. I have a slight preference for the team with Western in their name, but …

Ho hum. Perfect day for it, cloudless blue sky, no wind, 23deg.

PS: Melbourne won, and by a big margin. They doubled the Western Bulldogs score. That qualifies as a thrashing. Ho hum, do I care? No.

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Peripheral neuropathy, i.e. nerve pain in the extremities. Mine’s due to diabetes, but I gather it has other causes.

Nonetheless, mine is bloody bad, and has got worse in the last year or so. Head jerking, eye watering, cry-out-loud ice-pick jabs for 10 secs or so, every few minutes, often much more frequent. Constant stinging, burning, aching pain.

The treatment is duloxetine, an anti-depressant, and it works for me, but it also causes me insomnia so I can’t tolerate it. Tramadol, same. Ordinary paracetemol, not strong enough.

My latest med is Panadeine Forte, paracetemol + codeine. It works very effectively, but again, insomnia! What’s wrong with me that all these things interfere with my sleep? I took it on a day last week at about 0830 and within half an hour, I could feel it working, the pain subsiding. But I tried to have an afternoon nap and it was hopeless, I just lay there. It took about 12 hours for the “hyped” feeling to fade away.

I would definitely qualify for CBD oil, cannabidiol, which is available here now, but the cost is very high – about $200 for a month’s supply, I believe. I guess I’d better try it once to see if it’s effective enough.

Btw, I found a sufferer’s group on Facebook and joined up, but it turns out to be US based and is full of bullshit. People on there are linking it to COVID vaccination. I haven’t found anything useful so far and I’ll be bailing out.

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I mentioned that I’ve been watching a bit of commercial TV lately, such as this Grand Final coverage on Seven and the Aussie Salvage Crew, Outback Truckers, SAS Australia and so on. But good grief! The commercial breaks are so long as to be utterly intrusive. Many times I think the breaks are longer than the program segments.

When I used to do the program switching, breaks were simple, just four commercials and back to the program. Only four were allowed, and a maximum of two minutes per break, eight minutes per hour in prime time, 11 mins per hour outside prime time.

But the TV stations applied massive pressure, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board was abolished and morphed into ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the powers were limited and commercial stations became “self-regulated”. The result is that ACMA is toothless and there is almost no regulation.

Therefore we have a promo going into a break, then at least five commercials, many times six or seven, then another promo, and another, then a “teaser” showing a sponsor’s name going back into the program. Many breaks are five minutes or more.

It’s bad enough that I don’t watch live. I record anything I want to watch on my digital HDD recorder, then replay it later to watch, pressing the >> button when the break starts. This is not FF, it’s a button that finds the next “chapter break”. This means I skip directly from the end of one segment to the start of the next. Aaaahhh.

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