A Wedding Ring and What WOULD Josh Groban do?

The Christmas Wreath on the front of the cottage

The day before my wedding my sisters gave me a series of gifts
Something old , something new
Something borrowed 
Something Blue.......
The something old was my grandmother's wedding ring, one of the very few bits of jewellery she ever possessed.
I found out this morning that I had mislaid it.
And I was distraught.
Click here to see original blog

After turning the cottage upside down without success and feeling somewhat jaded, depressed and still full of cold
I left the mess to it's own affair and went out to deliver the Village Christmas Cards thinking this mundane job would blow away the cobwebs.
Our choir concert takes place tomorrow night and I am in no way prepared for it. I doubt I shall be able to sing properly given the nature of my man flu but I am determined to give it a go,so I picked one song that I have not been able to practice yet, downloaded the bass section of it onto my phone , put in my earphones and marched around Trelawnyd trying to sing the harmony of You raise me up! as I went....
I almost nailed the first verse when Trendy Carol ( in a very nice cream ski jacket) caught me for a chat. I'd sung it twice more when David from Well Street stopped his van to ,tell me I looked " hip" with my earphones in and one look at Jo's three legged whippet in a pair of hot pants on at the old policehouse made me totally forget the difficult bit where the basses have to La La as the Tenors belt out " on your shoulders!" 
( the hot pants, I was informed , were an effort to stop mini accidents around the house)
A car stopped on London Road just after I dropped Hattie's card at her tiny cottage and two sopranos from the choir waved excitedly, they live in the next village along
" Are you ready for tomorrow?" Soprano 1 asked
I told them both I was heavy with cold
Soprano 2 looked worried after I asked if they could suggest anything would help, and she turned to her friend saying " What would Josh Grobin do at times like this?"
" Mime " answered Soprano 1
It's an option, I thought as I walked for home

In all it took me almost 90 minutes to deliver all 50 cards and when I got back home I was Cold but certainly feeling less stir crazy than I was even though I was faced with the depressing mayhem of untidy drawers and hastily searched boxes and files.
I'd just started to clear up my ring searching mess when the phone went.
It was my sweet natured Welsh solicitor in her best sing song voice.
" I've rung you several times John " she explained and my heart sank thinking what else can go wrong in one day
" I opened some documents you sent me the other week and found a small gold wedding ring tied with a blue ribbon tucked away amongst things " 
She had found my grandmother's wedding ring!!!!

Poor Baby Baby

There is a famous photo of the writer Dorothy Parker that shows her haunted depressive nature. It may of been just a fleeting moment, caught by luck by a journalist's camera but the deadness behind the eyes is unmistakable .
I defy anyone to see any hope in it whatsoever.

I have a patient with such an expression.
She is dementing and at night spends long periods awake in the darkness, her gaze as fixed as Miss Parker's as she waits and longs to go back to a home she has most certainly has forgotten .
She refuses the comfort of a bedroom light, asking for the  one I set hastily set up to be " put out"
The darkness shrouds the reality of a care home bedroom that's not home.

A couple of weeks ago, I called into work to complete some paperwork and took Mary with me.We sought the patient that looked like Dorothy Parker out and carefully I sat  a wounded post op Mary onto her lap.
Mary sniffed a whiskered  chin with good nature as she was patted with a flat palm
And the deadness behind the eyes lifted
" Baby Baby Baby" the patient whispered " poor baby , baby baby"
It's a cruel disease 

Santa's Sack

Ten days to go and I think Ive bought all the gifts I need to. The craze for buying your pets Christmas gifts has thankfully passed me by as I find the whole phenomenon of doggie stockings a pointless and somewhat perplexing activity
So ive saved some money there

Its our choir concert on Tuesday night and as instructed by Jamie our choir master , I invested in a cheapo Christmas Jumper for the night...its my
last major Christmas indulgence..working tonight again do Im off to bed after rubbing the soles of my feet with vicks

Clingy

Strangely, out of all of the cottage animals, it is Winnifred that has been most affected by William's death. Although she remains her usual lugubrious self, the old girl has become more clingy as of late and now will follow me upstairs when I go to the loo or when I go up to make the bed .
Just now, she is sitting my my side as I splutter my way through a lem sip and a packet of tissues, and will no doubt follow me to bed when I go up in an effort to shake this cold I am suffering from.
She's a giant emotional sponge is Winnie.
That's one of her strengths.
And one of her weaknesses.

I'm feeling sorry for myself today as my cold is making me headachey and muzzy.
Being alone with man flu.....made me envious of a gay couple I followed as they were doing their good natured shop around Sainsbury's this morning.
My basket of cold meds, tissues, small bottle of milk and cat food made me feel like a right sad sack.
I miss a cool hand on a hot forehead and a gift of a cup of hot lemon

I have to go into work tonight and tomorrow too..
No work
No pay.

Hey ho

An Unexpected Gift

It's over to you today, dear blog readers! 

Let's have a celebration of nice behaviour! 

Can you share a time when you received an unexpected gift?

A gift out-of-the- blue.

Something that warmed the cockles!

Today I've just did a runaround ...a long list of jobs including another trip to the solicitors 🙁

When I got home I found a lidded saucepan sat at the back door.

A saucepan full to the brim of the most delicious stew

No note, no fanfare  

Just a bloody lovely pan of stew! 

So what unexpected gift have you been given? 

Share it with the group! 

An Invite

The day couldn't get any worse
But it did.......as shit days often do when you don't want them to.
I eventually had a very hot bath and breathed Vicks steam through a flannel over my face, which was nice.
I drank another lemsip with real lemon.
The phone went late afternoon, just after I had lit the Christmas Tree
It was Mrs Trellis, in her usual precise sing song voice
" I just wanted to invite you to share a mince pie and a glass of something one afternoon next week" she said carefully, enunciating every word with care
" I have a rather good sherry and the new range in the kitchen is ever so cosy" 
I started to think of some excuse or other when she added
"It would be lovely for me if you could come " and suddenly all of the day's shite was lifted away by the simple and sincere invitation  of a mince pie and a schooner of sherry.

"I'll shove that Celery Stick up yer........."

I'm not in the mood for bullshit today.
A heavy cold, headache and a run in with a rat run driver who refused to slow down in the lane this morning and almost ran over Albert set me up for a bollock morning which was capped off by more solicitor stress, a small dent in Bluebell where some old fart backed into her in Tesco's car park and finally a minor disagreement with George's groomers  about an uncharacteristic ally hairy tail.......
I should not have got out of bed

Glass Thingies!

Time for some national and international adulation! 

I'm full of cold after night shift so have to miss choir practice  but things have been brightened up by my sister dropping off my homemade glass Christmas decs

How talented am I? 

The Nativity ( alternative use of)

I have a friend called Ruth who I know regards nursing practice through very individualised eyes.
I havent spoken to her in an age but I am sure she will forgive me for sharing this nativity based post which underlines her humour and slight lack of professionalism.

Just before Christmas 1991 we nursed a new patient on our spinal injury ward. The patient was a young nurse from a busy inner city intensive care unit, I shall called her Siohban .A fitness fanatic, she had worked hard in the gym, and at work and typically had not eaten properly. In the middle of the night she had got up for a wee and had become dizzy due to low blood sugers. Unfortunately she had fallen down the stairs paralyzing herself from the chest down.
Siohban came from a large Irish catholic family who visited daily, and they were a family heavily dependent on the hope things would improve for their daughter, a daughter who allowed them to rub her with holywater that would never heal
Faced with her family's blind faith and the reality drummed into her by her career. Siohban finally shut down psychologically and more or less went into a coma or fugue state.
Sometimes this mental 'downtime' lasts mere hours but in Siohban's case hours turned into days and so a concerned Ruth took it unto herself to move things on a bit with the help of several wise men, a couple of wooden donkeys,6  sheep, a cow or two and Mary, Joseph and a fat baby jesus in a manger

" I found these in the store room" Ruth told me breathlessly unpacking a robust looking shepherd
...she was always breathless because she was overweight and always rushing, but she was also excited with an idea to gently bring Siohban back to the world of the living.
" Help me arrange these around her bed" Ruth gasped and like two giggling children we grouped the figures on and around Siohban's prostate figure, so still in her bed.
In sone strange way we found a devout catholic paralyzed patient being surrounded by nativity characters insanely funny.

In retrospect, the whole thing looked totally mad bordering on dreadful bad taste of the biggest order .... but it kind of worked snapping her out of her mental isolation .
Whether it was the giggling that made Siohban open her eyes or the fact a passing staff nurse asked us what the fuck were we up to, but open them she did and after she focused immediately upon the virgin mary looking at her with a benign smile and outstretched arms she swore at Ruth with the practiced ease only the Irish could muster.
The figures were left around Siohban's bed until well after Christmas and Ruth and I became firm friends with Siohban even after her discharge home nearly a year later.

Roasts

I still have no clue who dropped off my Christmas Tree yesterday.
I'm off to bed now for a few hours...work again tonight, so I guess I won't find out today.
One of my patients mentioned just how funny Don Rickles was so , having no real clue of who he was , I googled him the other day.
Not PC nowadays but incredibly funny,
He's entertained me before sleep

Christmas Tree

I think I've got this Christmas Shopping this sorted
Got to Chester for 10 am, buttonholed Marks and Spencer's sales lady to show me where requested "items" were located and boom!!!! All done dusted and sorted before the shopping hoards arrived and the streets were nose-to-nipple with bored looking shoppers.
I rang my friend Nigel for a chat as I sat under an umbrella by the river then went to the Storyhouse to see  midday screening of the Japanese movie Shoplifters which is a powerful but meandering and slightly depressing story of the importance of family.
When I got home I found a miniature Christmas Tree on the doorstep with a simple unsigned  note pinned to it which said " Everyone Needs A Christmas Tree xxx" 
I've set it up in the living room
Whoever left it.....thank you

Diprobase

I was out longer than I anticipated today
The village coffee morning, interviewing for Samaritans then Christmas Shopping in Llandudno

I bought myself a tiny " pourer" from the Mostyn Art Gallery  which I shall use for flowers.
The same camp salesperson  who sold me my chicken print saw to me.
"You like your birds!" he cooed

It was dark when I got home and I found that Mary, bored with my absence, had broken into a tub of diprobase emollient
It's taken a very hot bath and some swafega to clean her properly

Wild Night

It's a wild night outside and the living room is lit only by the fire and some battery run Christmas lights hung around my beloved Manhattan snow globe on the mantelpiece.
The wind is howling around the cottage almost with a roar.
My remaining dogs ( and cat)  are all curled up with me on the sofa......sleeping the night away

"It's an Unfair Cop Gov"

I was stopped by the police today just after entering Sainsbury's car park in Bluebell.
The policeman was nothing but polite and told me he'd just seen me talking on a mobile phone as I was going around the mini roundabout. He was still in his car so it was just a friendly warning through driver's windows.
As I told him I had left my mobile phone on the kitchen table, Winnie blew him sloppy moo moo kisses from the back seat.
And he looked slightly perplexed at my explaination
Apparantly I had been adjusting my bobble hat whilst practicing to the choir version of Freedom Is Coming on the car cd at full pelt.

Am Dram

I'm irritating myself
Last night I went with the family to an am dram version of Charles Dickens Ghost Stories which despite a couple of fair actors in it , couldn't have been more dire if it tried.
Usually I would have seen the humour in the bad writing, wooden acting and stinking ramshackle theatre but to be perfectly honest, the whole event just depressed me even though I tried to be amused when a near mute Judge came on during a court scene wearing a Lily Savage wig and Father Christmas coat ......my heart wasn't quite in it from the get go
If it was a professional performance, the quality of the piece would have pleased me- I'm not very tolerant of bad anything at the moment.
I've just been short with the vet's clerk on the phone for not sorting Mary's claim forms out and at the Christmas Market the other day, a well intentioned lady who demanded a hug and my presence at her Christmas Day dining table after she just heard that I am now living alone nearly got a sharp leave me the fuck alone sort of comment.
Of course I smiled and thanked her and moved on.
Smile and glide....smile and glide.

I'm up and down like a pair of whore's knickers.

I've decided to have Christmas on my own this Christmas and I suspect suddenly single people may understand this much more than any concerned observer who just want to support could do.  I have Bluebell so will pop down with gifts for my family in the evening, and Bluebell will allow me to take control of what I do and when I do it.
Christmas morning the dogs and I will go to Colwyn Bay Promenade with coffee and cocktail sausages .
I don't want people to "pop in"
Having people feeling sorry for me is almost a painful thing at the moment and I feel a bit shamed by it all.
I also know that I'm not much company at the moment and I'm irritated at my own petulance

Smile and glide John ...and shut the fuck up

Christmas 96

I wrote this post in my head a few days ago.
Reminded by an old photo of a group of smiling nurses grouped around a man in a wheelchair.

When I was a charge nurse, through necessity and like many singletons ,I often worked the late shift on Christmas Day. There was often an unwritten rule that nurses on that shift came in slightly early in order for the morning staff to get home to their families but the interview room was filled with goodies to eat and visitors catered for the patients for much of the day so the shift was as pleasant as it could be,and on Christmas Day 1996 the five nurses working with me were a grand bunch indeed.

Our patients were the spinally injured who were newly paralysed usually through some trauma and most were nursed on flat bedrest in order for fractures of neck or  back to be strong enough to start to allow the patients to mobilise in wheelchairs.
One young patient had proved to be a nursing challenge for several weeks prior to that Christmas Day.
I shall call him Darren.
Now Darren, a man in his early twenties, was paralysed from the waist down after crashing his stolen car during a long police pursuit. A skinny terrier of a man, Darren lived his short life ducking and diving in the extremes of poverty, institutional care and crime and after his injury had become sullen and combative with the Spinal Injury staff overseeing his care.
We all knew that Christmas that year was bringing Darren to some sort of emotional crisis;  the experienced staff had seen this sort of thing time and time again, and so when visitors arrived from all over North Eastern Britain to support the three other patients in Darren's Ward leaving him feeling angry and resentful and foul mouthed, we were almost prepared for how things unfurled .

Nursing care is intensive on an acute spinal Ward, with each patient being specially turned every two hours by a group of three carers and all it took was a gesture of kindness for the floodgates to be opened on Darren's pain. Pain and grief at being disabled and alone at twenty five years old.
I remember Darren being tight lipped with his arms crossed as he was turned and I remember the nurse nearest to him pausing before we left for the next patient.
The nurse was  Edith Marimbirie and I remember her clearly. A heavy set, gentle faced Senior midwife in her native Zimbabwe Edith had come to our Ward late in her career and like most African nurses I have had the pleasure to work with she carried out her work in a graceful unhurried pace all of its own.
With a motherly hand and a gentle word she gently cupped Darren's teeth clenched cheek for a long moment and that's all it took.
The tears flowed.
Without fanfare another nurse pulled the curtains around the bed and all but Edith left the bed space quietly as Darren sobbed and sobbed and sobbed his pain away, and for the next few hours Edith never left his side.
A mother soothing a child of a man.

I remember that Christmas Day well as we were busy.
But with Edith effectively out of duties the remaining nurses on the Ward never complained that they had more to do, not once and finally, hours later , when Edith joined her colleagues in the interview room with its desks heavy with brought in party food , she was hugged and kissed in thanks for what she had done that afternoon.

Darren turned a rehab corner that Christmas Day. And he went on to be successfully discharged , self caring in his wheelchair.
And Edith used her motherly warmth a score more of times in a way the nursing curriculum never teaches you or even really acknowledges .

Therapy

Therapy
A nearly silent two hours designing and painting three glass Christmas panels for the Christmas Tree
Not my usual pastime but a strangely calming one at The Studio Prestatyn ( link)
Thank you to sister Ann for pushing me into it and thank you to sister Janet for leaving a buddleia and Sweet William plant seeds by my back door this morning.
And thank you to everyone who left their best wishes here. So many comments ...not all can be read on just one page ( there is a link to the next page at the bottom of the comment box)  please rest assured I've read all of them.
2018.....has been a shite year!

Just thought I'd share an old photo which illustrated William's gentle nature

As my old cat Joan was poorly just before she died William lay with her for an age

his paw resting gently on her body

Sweet William

William chasing bees

I got home from work at around 8.30 am and walked the dogs during a torrential rain shower which had lasted several hours .
As I made myself eggs and toast George rested in his usual spot under the table and the terriers curled up together on the sofa to sleep.
Winnie watched me very carefully in the kitchen....waiting for scraps
I fed Albert and cleaned muddy paw prints from the table and the window sill and from the back of my new chair
I then mopped the floor and washed the pots .
I pottered listening to the radio .......some shit about brexit
It was well past 11.30 when I finally decided it was time for bed
I locked the kitchen door and walked into the living room

I could tell by his position and the fact that Mary was sat bolt upright looking worried that
William had died in his sleep.
Like with people, when a dog's soul leaves its body it leaves behind a stillness which screams at you

My sweet, sweet natured old boy.
An animal with the gentlest of souls I ever knew had just faded away without fanfare or attention......and All I could think of was him at eleven years old joyfully chasing bees around the back garden like a loon.....
.....And that's exactly where I have buried him.

Thoughts of a singleton

Being newly single is an odd experience .
It feels very different than when I experienced the single life back in Sheffield
It feels somewhat harsher
Back then being single was an adventure backed up by a myriad of friends and socialising ...I was also in my twenties and thirties back then, so I was one of a few singletons
Now it all feels very different now that I'm in my mid fifties .

Being single in this hetero-normal couple world can be hard..
You can be viewed as a failure, a threat.......a saddo....
I don't really identify with a totally gay world because for two decades it was never important or significant to do so.
Being gay was a single fact, but it was never a label that defined me as a person.

With phone apps and the like it is easy for anyone regardless of sexual preference to hook up with another and do with the precision of a sat nav! So many gay men now have casual encounters whilst married in open or not so open relationships .
Apps make selfishness easy
And monogamy redundant.

I'm no prude. When I was single I kissed many frogs and a few princes but when I met a man I loved
the thought of no strings sex with another just wasn't on my agenda .Perhaps that's just a reflection of my hetero-normal attitude regarding marriage.
Many gay men would disagree with me.
Being gay or  queer means different things to different men

So does being single....

Countdown

The glass decoration course thing was cancelled until Tuesday so I had time to go to the Village Christmas Market 
The place was packed.

Gwawr Jones sold me a bloody lovely roast pork sandwich  ( with stuffing and apple sauce ) 

 Father Christmas ( aka Dave from the community council ) turned up on his motorbike and sidecar

I ended up buying all sorts of things I didn't really want! 
But that's a given at these kind of events
2 expensive homemade Christmas Cards, a handmade wreath and a homemade felt star were carried home as a gaggle of school girls on the hall's stage, did the floss dance behind the main class who were massacring a Mariah Carey Christmas ditty