Elbow / ultrasound / Amazon

Three things to mention...

1. Lou and I were fortunate enough to get tickets to see Elbow's two concerts with the Halle orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. They were absolutely incredible - fantastically good on both nights - and when they sang "Switching Off" I cried buckets, as I always do. I really hope they release the shows on CD, or DVD, or ideally both.

2. Ailment update! On Saturday morning I went to Trafford General Hospital for an ultrasound examination on my liver, gall bladder, pancreas, kidneys, aorta, and abdomen. I've never had one of these before, and it mainly seemed to involve being covered in KY Jelly as I lay on a bed in a dimly lit room while a woman ran a hand-held plastic thing over my stomach, which was a curious experience. She said nothing as she was doing it, apart from giving me instructions to move this way and that, but once it was all finished she told me that she hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary, and that she'd be writing to my GP to say the scan was clear. Hurrah! I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow afternoon to find out what happens next, but at the moment I'm still getting grief from my stomach, and I'm sick of having to take Zantac and Rennie tablets in order to get on with my day, especially when in conjunction with the ones I have to take for my migraines this means between four and ten tablets a day, not including paracetamol for "normal" headaches and vitamins etc.

3. I've been writing reviews on Amazon for quite some time now and they keep a league table of reviewers, and how many "helpful" votes they receive, and I'm currently ranked (checks) 699th in the world, with 222 reviews to my name and 580 "helpful" votes. Anyway, this weekend I was looking on the site and I had a message from Amazon inviting me to join their "Amazon Vine" programme. This is an invitation-only scheme where Amazon send members a monthly email listing items you can have for free! You can pick up to two items from each email (or so it says for me so far), you receive two emails each month (the main one and a later "catch-up" one), and the only requirement is that you must review at least 75% of the items you receive. So far I've had two books from it, and I'm reading one of them at the moment. Sounds like a good scheme to me!