Dum, Ba, dum, dum, dum..............

I had trouble with him my dum dums last night

But after a bit of struggle ( and some shameless copying of the lead Bass) I got there in the end.

Choir practice is not easy, but I'm getting there.

There is no music to follow, no elderly matron playing the piano in the corner, there is just the slightly manic choir master who sings your bit briefly showing you the note with his flat hand, and off you go. 

My favourite song we performed was Soul Wind an African American song from the Deep South. 

I loved it....here is another amateur choir singing it ( a video I've been practicing to this morning) and I must say that  our version wasn't too far from this performance, but perhaps that was down to the acoustics of the village hall.

You forget everything when you're singing.
You're not yourself either....as you are one of many
And even if you are dum dumming at the back
You're a vital part of the group!
And that's nice.

What was the last song you sang?

And to end......

Thank you all for sponsoring me and Ann for our zip Wire Challenge which is booked for the 26th
I have finally reached my goal of raising over £4000.00 for Rhyl Samaritans, which is a phenomenal amount of money, especially given the fact that my original goal was just £300.00
I am very proud and humbled by the support given 

Growing Up

There are moments in life when lightening strikes and you suddenly grow up into being and more importantly understanding what it is to be a real adult.
I remember one such moment today
I was a young 27 year old nurse, who worked hard and played hard
I had just started my career on the spinal Injury unit and found myself working on the readmission Ward which catered mainly for patients who suffered from the complications of long term paralysis, namely skin problems , urological dysfunctions and carer issues.
There I became friends with a big gentle bear of a chap called Noel.
Injured in a car accident two decades earlier , Noel lived with his family in a small rural Norfolk community . He was paralysed from the neck down and required full time care even though he could drive a car and had attended a local university.
He was a strangely sanguine man, with a calm good natured dignity to him.
I liked him immediately ,
On reflection I fell for him immediately.
Noel was on bedrest due to skin problems but his enforced captivity never seemed to get him down , indeed rather conspiratorially he suggested that I lay down next to him one morning when I was suffering from a dreadful Leadmill nightclub induced hangover.
We became firm friends.
A year later, after Noel's skin issues had healed and long after he had returned home ,I caught up with him for tea, when I was on a flying visit to see another friend who lived in Cambridge
Noel was his usual gentle natured self.
His health wasn't good , but he blossomed with the care his sister and her family gave him, and when we sipped our tea, she and his grown up niece disappeared off to do some shopping.
" She's not my real sister " , Noel eventually told me as we chatted  and caught up "they are not my real family.....my family abandoned me after my accident"
He then told me the whole painful story of a dysfunctional family who had turned their back on a newly disabled boy of twenty who had been confined to a wheelchair .
Almost from nowhere a local family with two small children offered to give Noel a home and when Noel was 25 they officially adopted him into their family without any fanfare or ceremony.

" They saved my life" I remember Noel saying in his usual calm and reasonable way
"They didn't have do it ........I wonder to this day why they did!"
And As I watched him struggle a little with his emotions , I realised just why they had done it
This gentle sweet man had given them as much happiness as they had given him
I held his hand briefly even though I knew he couldn't feel it.

And as we drank our tea outside a tearoom in Bury St Edmunds, I grew a little older......and wiser

Shitting Myself

my friend Jane  doing the wire

There was a small collection of cards waiting for me in our Samaritan centre last night
All but one had foreign post marks....
More cheques and money sent directly to us from blog readers
So a big big thank you to S Vercoe, Alma, The Pattersons , jenny O and Jerry

I cannot underline enough just how frightened I am of heights
It's an inherited fear, passed down to me by my mother who was famous for negiotiating any hillside walk on her hands and knees, and for years it has crippled me from doing many things which is strange given the fact my favourite movie of all time is The Towering Inferno.
When my sister and I were eight were went on our first ( and indeed last) foreign holiday with my mother and Auntue Greta. Loret del Mar in the 1970s was a place full of high rise cheap hotels that seemed full of beige furnishing ants and straw donkeys. Our hotel rooms were on the tenth floor and it was easy for an eight year old to lock himself and his mother out of their room.
The maid suggested to my mother that I was small enough to climb from my aunts adjoining room to ours across the balcony in order to unlock the door and the bloody woman ( probably fired up by the local gin) totally agreed!
AGREED!!!
Thank god I was an assertive little sod even then... though my impassioned arguement that an appropriate adult negiotiated the 150 foot drop rather than a knock kneed geeky child with a big head did fall on unimpressed ears....common sense prevailed

Heights continued to terrify me.
I've blogged before about being led off the observation deck of Seattle's space needle by an elderly Japanese tourist during a thunderstorm ( my knuckles were totally white and totally cramped)

I was 40 then
And on a trip up St Paul's I farted so nervously on the dome staircase an American  woman had to gasp a " Dear God in heaven " comment behind me.

When painting the back of the cottage ( 9 feet above the ground) I got so nervous I had to ring my brother for help.....he and my neighbour Sailor John thought I was a pussy.

So I hope I have illustrated just how hard the Zip Wire Challenge shall be for me
Ann and I do it on the 26th and would love a bit more sponsorship to seal the deal
So I hope you don't mind that I repeat that my donate page can be found at

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/johngray1

You can also donate directly at PayPal ( jgsheffield@hotmail.com)

Or by cheque to the Rhyl & SE Wales Samaritans,
23 Bedford Street , Rhyl, Denbighshire North Wales LL18 1SY

Thank you soooo much my friends ..we are up to ( with gift aid etc) 3,700£+.let's reach 4,000£

Good Mornin'

I'm boring the tits off myself with negative posts , so god knows what you lot feel...
A friend said this today
"If there is a lesson to be learnt here, it is that most feelings of hopeless melancholy serve no useful purpose other than to ruin your evening"

He's right so Have a bit of Gene and Donald and the fabulous Debbie
Enjoy

Cake Tin

This flamingo was a recent gift from Florida.
It reminds me of our lurid pink flamingo Christmas lights carefully packed away in a box in the bookshelf.
I wonder if those will stay with me or go with The Prof when their time comes.
Another thing yet to sort.
It's the small things that pain.
The objects that transport you to another time, another place and another country when you look, feel and experience them.
Conduits of memory.
A few weeks ago I collected all of the special Christmas decorations the Prof has amassed over the years, from London and Sydney and New York and SanFrancisco and placed them in a cake tin labelling it unsurprisingly Xmas decs. 
Ready to go.

Hattie

I felt I was in one of those nice , middle class wartime films this morning. I was sat at a table of the Trelawnyd Community Assiciation's Book swap Coffee morning with Heulwen and Hattie..
Now Hattie is the new girl in the village.
She's in her twenties, is painfully pretty and has a bubbly charm of Lily James' Character in The Guernsey Literary and potato pie Society .
She also wants to meet her fellow villagers, with a eagerness which is as sweet as it is genuine .
After a slow start the Saturday coffee mornings seem to have taken off well.
There is no pressure on people to attend at a fixed time , so people pop in when they want have a mooch through the large array of books, grab a coffee and a cake, read the paper or chat to their neighbours .
All the tables were in use when William and I went in.
I pointed out the characters to Hattie as they came in .Hubert the old village baker, Boffin Cameron's mum and dad, velvet voiced Linda, sailor John, Daphne and Meirion from the flower Show committee ..Mrs Trellis
Hattie darted off to introduce herself to Margaret Walker and Heulwen and I smiled at each other like extras from that wartime film
" she's a nice girl" we said together

Clearing The Decks, The Escape

The Dogs, Albert, The Ponies and Irene spent the afternoon watching me build the field bonfire out of destroyed hen houses

Albert was behind me

Tonight I went to see a piss boring movie The Escape with Gemma Arterton.....I walked out after an hour.
Tomorrow .....what exciting things are afoot ?
Morning coffee morning and book and veg swap at the village Hall......then lunch with a friend and a joint walk with Mary then a takeaway at my sister's and Strictly !

I'm a mad f*#+ing bitch!!!

Playing To An Audience

I shared some nursing stories from over 36 years with a friend yesterday..the funny ones made them laugh...it was nice to giggle along

• I've been assaulted several times over the years ranging from slaps and bites, one black eyed punch, one wet turd flung at the back of my head, being hit with a bag of urine which burst on impact and I've had at least 6 pairs of specs broken.
• I've crashed a drunken paraplegic into a ditch in his wheelchair during a panicked push back to the rehab unit from the pub during a snow storm
• Ive employed a buxom nurses breasts as a diversion to a male patient who had a particular painful dressing
• As part of a course I was on I managed to organise a work experience placement at a series of Pittsburgh hospitals 
• I've seen 5 babies born including one that was christened Harley Davison
• I was taught to dance the veleta in 1983 in order to partner long term psychiatric patients at their Christmas do
• I have witnessed open heart cardiac massage twice, held 4 severed fingers in a vomit bowl and witnessed someone bleed to death in a few seconds from ruptured oesophageal varices.
• I was reported by a patient in the community for saying I was working for the gas board 
• I have dated one patient after I had nursed him
• I've dated 5 nurses ( 4 women 1 man)
• I 've shagged one doctor 
• I've played myself on a tv medical documentary ( you only saw my arse)
• I have helped at least 6 couples conceive babies
• I have sat with dying patients too numerous to mention , laying them out with well practiced dignity afterwards
• I have attended perhaps a dozen funerals in and without uniform
• I have put a visitor with learning difficulties to bed ! After undressing him and putting him into pyjamas
• I have helped scores of Spinally injured men achieve an erection
• I ( and my ward) have won two quality prizes for our work
• I have sat a course for looking after the newborn baby and got told off for cleaning a baby's arse under a mixer tap
• I have dropped a psychiatric patient down a fire escape
• I have cried a hundred times in a sluice, in a clinical side room or at home over a bad day
• I once kissed a policeman when I was on night duty ( 1988)
• I once shared a bed briefly with a quadraplegic when I was hungover
• I have danced on the roof of a main hospital in sheffield
• I have mentored scores of junior nurses and still keep in touch with many of them
• I created a whole balcony garden , complete with trees in massive planters for my bedrest patients 
• I once got my arse stuck in the window of the changing room at lodge moor hospital 
• I have never fainted at work but I did vomit once after a patient threw up in my mouth during CPR ( in the old days) 
• I have loved many many many special people and been loved by a few back
• A previous wirkmate has just added" Miss you John Gray you did forget to mention your amazing neck massages and ability to hug me and/ or scape me off the ceiling xxxoh and fit arse!" ..thank you Shelly

With one of my awards

Obviously not for the best well dressed nurse 

Nice

Autumn is here and Bake off is back with another twelve eclectic characters who have, I suspect been auditioned within an inch of their lives in order to reach the short list.
The line up could be the cast of a 1970's disaster movie.
The sassy Gran, the diffident scientist, the bubbly mom......cardboard characters at first that are suddenly fleshed out with lifestyle clips that could have been pulled directly from Facebook, Bake Off  offers us a glimpse into peoples' lives that seem normal and cozy and nice.
The gay dad who never has enough time to bake because of demand of his kids, the quirky mental health worker who looks every inch a mental Heath worker and a dippy Anglo Asian, Amy Winehouse with a smart mouth, there is much to choose from where favourites are concerned, and the audience, Who understands that they are being manipulated, just goes along for the nice ride

Bironey cried a lot and laughed at herself, then cried again. Mannon cried too and was immediately comforted by the geek looking PhD Rahul who couldn't look more uncomfortable on a 1:1 than any 14 year old schoolboy sporting his first erection.

Bake off is off to a great start...
Watching nice people, doing nice things being nice........is addictive

Divas HATE being told off!

Finally..... a bit of levity.
I guess it was my fault, but I left the meagre detritus of my egg breakfast on the kitchen table just after 9pm.
At eleven I walked back in to see what only can be described as a bulldog disaster
Winnie sat guiltily on top of the table , all 30 kg of her balanced precariously on one delicate corner.
The chair which she had hauled herself up on was lying on the floor and everything, table chair and floor was covered in water, from an upturned flower vase....
William's and George's paw prints peppered my newly scrubbed kitchen floor.
To add insult to injury all of my paperwork , bills and correspondence had been knocked onto the soaked Lino, like sad confetti .
I hauled Winnie off the table with an over-the-top- cry of " you fat bastard!!!" And smartly smacked her bottom, something you just don't do with bulldogs, for moments later she had flounced into the living room with all of the umbrage of Bette Davis in All About Eve where she jammed her grim face into the darkness between an arm chair and the wall.
And there she stayed sulking for well over an hour and a half

You gotta laugh

The Waiting Room

Do you remember Tom Hank's character in The Green Mile? 
He was the one plagued by recurrent urine infections that were eventually cured by the saintly John Coffey 
My John Coffee is a box of trimethoprim antibiotics.
And after a second dose my abdominal pain and nausea has started to subside.
I can't tell you just how ill these infections leave a a person.

Yesterday I could only walk Mary for twenty minutes or so before a toilet visit was in a order, so bumping into Jenny the old post mistress proved to be a bit of trial of cross leggedness so to speak.
She was anxiously waiting outside the house of her daughter in law waiting to hear if her grandchild had been born.
" The birthing pool has been delivered " she said excitedly
I haven't been quite well enough today to check on what happened ....a baby born in the village....how wonderful is that ?

I missed choir practise last night which was a real shame,, but I knew I needed antibiotics so a visit to the GP out of hours had to be organised.
Now in our neck of the woods you talk to a nurse on the phone who completes her algorithm of information you provide. If she thinks it necessary, then you are given an appointment with a doctor based at the local hospital's ER department . You sit with all of the other people waiting their long turn in casualty but you are seen at the time of your appointment .
It's a good system.

I almost passed out sat in the waiting room. I was hot and it was hot and I'd just peed ground glass in the the loo. I must have looked rough because the receptionist mouthed " are you ok?" From inside her booth....
I mouthed back " I'm ok" and crossed my legs.

I only had to wait a further few minutes before I was called . In that time I watched a couple in front of me as they waited for the triage nurse. He was the attentive one, going to the desk, collecting a cup of water, helping his wife to stand up on her swollen fat feet,
And I found myself envying that attention as I sat there by myself .
Being alone and unwell
Isn't nice.

Ursula

Bwthyn-y-llan, 

Wales.

Dear Ursula,

We need to have a little chat you and I
It will be the very last chat we will indeed have.
This chat does not need or indeed elicit a response . It is for you to read and no doubt rant about on your own blog which lies in a somewhat quieter part of the internet.
It for everyone to read too....for I've found just writing something pithy in my comment box invariable fails to get through to you.
Perhaps in the future others can explain my comments,
That's if they can be arsed.

You have been what my dear rancid old mother would call " a mixer"
From the get go, you have felt almost a divine right to argue the point almost on every blog you visit
You enjoy throwing written grenades into the blog mix. You enjoy being the devil' advocate and you enjoy the thrill of the arguement.
Now I understand some of where you are coming from. Indeed, there is no one better than me who understands the joy of prodding someone in the ribs, especially if they are pious, or pompous.
But, hell Ursula you take it to the limit.
Every point has to be examined, discussed or disagreed about, and a better solution suggested as if we are all really bothered.
You've thrown your baby out with the bath water !
By over egging the pudding.
You just cannot rein yourself in like any normal person can do...you have no off button
You just don't know what's best for everyone

You have insulted me and my friends on the web, then you have waited a while for the dust to settle before reappearing like a long lost old buddy.
But you are not my buddy, I really do think that you are no one's buddy

I have enough buds of my own
And so...publicly and for the last time you have been told the truth as I see it.
If you return to bleat, to defend, to argue or to troll, I shall photoshop you, then delete you and finally I shall report you.
You have been warned
There, I have put an end to your silly ways here....with one letter... no threats of shoving  a scotch egg where the sun don't shine, no quips about " cheap shoes" ....just a final two words

Grow up.

Yours,

John Gray

Pee

I'm pissed off with piss today

Yesterday, I caught a somewhat disoriented William weeing all over my duvet and pillows.
He'd obviously had done it before and obviously had a bladder the size of an average water melon. It took an absolute age to had wash everything and make good the smell.

Today I've got an unrelated urine infection
I get them from time to time and the pain, discomfort and inconvienience can lay you low for a few days.
My psoriasis is worse too, so I suspect my reserves are a little low at the moment

I'm off to get some antibiotics and hope I'll be ok for choir practice later.

Searching

If Alfred Hitchcock was alive today he would have made the movie Searching 
Filmed totally from the perspective of a laptop screen, smartphones and go pros it is the old man-facing -a-nightmare-situation- alone story where widower David Kim ( John Cho) has to troll through his sixteen year old daughter's internet life in over to piece together just why she disappeared suddenly one night.
It's a clever premise with dad bouncing from Facebook to on line banking, to blogs to vlogs like a thing demented the movie keeps most of the audience guessing even though these are some elephant sized holes in the reality of the piece.
Cho plays the Cary Grant lead role very well. Michelle La is suitably enigmatic as the lost daughter Margot and Debra Messing rather surprisingly pops up as a caring police officer assigned to the case.
A good satisfying early evening movie
8/10

Disneyland For Grief

What do you do on a Sunday morning?
You get an invite to a local pet cemetery for breakfast of course !!
It was the most surreal of moments
The pet cemetery is a phenomenon I find a great deal of difficulty with
I've passed the place hundreds of times on the A55 and it looks very much like a regular cemetery save for a modern brick and glass building which houses a grand and very popular tea room which overlooks the greenlawns and gravestones.
I've always had a healthy disdain for the place
Disneyland for grief , I've always thought

But yesterday morning I found myself parking in it's neat car park with Mary in the passenger seat as moral support. We were 20 minutes early before I met the others for a cooked breakfast (!) so the both of us wandered about the graves of pets long gone.

It was a strangely emotional experience. Set in neat lawns with runner ducks wandering around like stupid wine bottles I read the emotional eulogies of "fluffy",  and of "Leo" and of "International velvet " the racehorse. So much more emotional than the aseptic gravestones of us humans , the gravestones shrieked of loss and love and pain.
A "best friend" lost, a "darling baby" gone, a "rock" mourned , we ambled past dozens of expensive headstones feeling overwhelmed by the loss shared in a safe public place......
I stopped at this grave and promptly burst into tears at it's simple statement of grief

I was glad that Mary and I were allowed into the cafe together. As my table mates and I ate our breakfast platters, the waitress brought Mary her own bowl of chopped Sausage

I hugged her all the way home 

The Blue Lady Of Trelawnyd..a guest post

Today's post has been written by Ann Maltoff
She is my co pilot on the zip wire challenge
Ann is one of those people that light up a room by walking into it.
She wanted me to thank all of you, who have donated to her just giving page by giving you a a little background to why she chose Alzheimer's to support.
The "Blue lady" of the blog title is a description of her mum as in the latter days of her illness she would only wear clothes that were blue!

Hi John I want to say first and foremost that you are the outright winner of this Campaign! You have the most generous and kind hearted followers and dear friends on your Blog. The donations they have made in the last 24hrs has been amazing!  They have not only supported you & the Samaritans but the Alzheimers campaign as well! 

I wanted to say a personal “Thank You” to each and everyone for their help raising money for these charities. My mother Dorothy Morgan as you know passed away last February after suffering with Alzheimers for 17 years. Although this cruel disease took her bit by bit we created many happy memories, which I would like to share with your readers in the form of photographs.

My Mum was always smiling! She had the most beautiful blue eyes. When this first photograph on the left was taken she didn’t know my name but was comfortable in my presence. She lived in our village in sheltered accommodation & was able to live independently with daily support from myself and our family for a few years. We would drive up to the Gop mountain which presides over our village and sit on the white bench admiring the view.

Mum also enjoyed Christmas and visits from her great grandchildren. Although she didn’t know who they were she loved watching them play together. The last photograph on the right shows her enjoying a moment on her 90th Birthday party. Although in the late stages of Alzheimers with limited mobility and speech her spirit for life still shone through!

Please send my sincere heart felt “Thanks” to all your blog readers for their support in making a difference to the lives of these people suffering from Alzheimers who don’t have a voice…. 

Congratulations again my friend!  Catch up soon.

Love 

Ann  x

Anns just giving page is

 https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ann-malthoff

A Bridget Jones Night

I'd planned to go out with the affable despots tonight for a night in the pub but I didn't quite feel up to it.
I hope they understand.....of course they will.
Instead I did what any self respecting gay middle aged old pongo does when faced with the glums
I put my pyjamas on, made chicken and Thai noodles, Skyped a friend for an hour, and rearranged the living room furniture .
I also set up a cheap DVD player I had bought from the supermarket and am now sobbing myself through Amelie 

I now have an armchair for reading in

Butch

One of my colleagues at Samaritans has the nickname of Gorgeous George*
This nickname was attributed to him by a female friend of mine who has long gone from the centre , but the name stuck....because George is indeed gorgeous, buff and a very very attractive thirty something
Now George only does occasional shifts and yesterday he worked with me.
I was his mentor when he started two years ago.
We haven't seen each other for an age, so we swapped news before we started shift
I told him I was now single
He told me that he was too
He had a long term girlfriend and children.
I had a husband and dogs.
Now we are both bachelors of the parish
We counselled each other over custard creams
" Can we have a boys night out ?" George asked passing my coffee " do you play pool?" 
" I'm a 56 year old gay ......do You think I play pool?I quipped
He nodded then added
"Netball then ?" Rather helplessly....
I liked the joke
" Pool will be fine" I told him " I'll butch up!" 
I ve never played pool in my life! 
If I have to drape myself over a pool table with one leg up , I just know I'll break wind with the force of the Queen Mary's hooter! 


* not his real name

Musical Interlude

Someone has commented on one of my husband's social media pages today

I suspect it may be one of my followers though to be honest there is no way of knowing

I don't want things like this to happen 

I have never ever bad mouthed my husband here. This is a safe place for me and my feelings  and my journey during this difficult time I know I have shared with you all, but I don't want anyone to feel the need to chip in, in order to give him their two penneth worth. 

It's just not anyone's place

Now enjoy the lovely ( and very gay) Matt Alber

On a more positive note I'm still getting some donations via PayPal and by the donation page so keep em coming. It would be lovely to reach 4000£ xx

Violas

Thanks to a lateral thinking blogger, I have now recieved four more donations toward my zip wire Adventure via PayPal .This seems a good alternative to my donation page which some people have found difficult to navigate. My email for PayPal is jgsheffield@hotmail.com

Any bloggers who want to donate off line can send a cheque payable to Rhyl & NE Wales Samaritans to us at Samaritans , 23 Bedford Street, Rhyl Ll18 1SY

Right that's the money stuff done.

Last week Mr B took me to task about the state of my plant pots

" They are not up to your usual standard"  he commented looking at the barren dried earth filling each planter. 

His subtext shrieked 

" Get yer arse into gear!" 

This morning I planted them out with cheap violas. Violas are the most valiant of flowers I always think and the kitchen wall has been returned to its usual cheerful backdrop. 

Mrs Trellis stopped as I was watering and I had that conversation I was dreading. . She had heard in church about my marriage break up and wanted to check for herself.
She was pragmatic and thoughtful and diplomatic

The ponies are leaving fairly soon and as you can see the field, which had been totally overgrown only a month or do ago, has been cleared almost down to its last weed. The carcass of the Ukrainian village has now been picked bare and this week the dilapidated hen houses will be dragged to the bonfire for burning and the allotment borders of Bosoms will be dug out again in readiness for winter planting 

The robust home made hen house on stilts can then be cleaned out and made good again.