Both Sides Now

 Joni at the Grammys, was a lesson in respect and class. I watched it last night in tears and again this morning. 

I’m not 100% today, overnight my bladder has decided to play up and has put paid to college today. I’ve pushed the fluids, taken extra antibiotics and will return to bed. Trendy Carol’s hubby had already arranged to pick the dogs up and they lined up neatly ready to greet him as I was on the loo.

Last week I received a two page letter from the health board apologising that I was one of the thousands still awaiting review. 

We are All Just Walking Each Other Home

Emma Freud Pick of the week Radio 4

“ My final pick I the final moment of the award winning prison drama “This Thing of Darkness”
It’s a programe about the psychological impact that the act of murder has on teenagers who committed murder.
These are the closing thoughts from the psychologist running their prison therapy group
It’s the heinous act of murder taken not as good versus evil but viewed without judgement by an expert on the darkest workings of the human mind.

“I had a wise forensic colleague who had a particular interest in the way violent offenders changed their language of agency over time. As if they were filling in the missing colours of their personal narrative. He talked about a long staircase of acceptance; they climbed with small incremental steps, beginning with the first step of, “It wasn’t me”. And ending in a final step of taking responsibility by saying “I killed”.
Antony had got stuck on the first step.
Not helped by his mother, who so desperately wanted and needed to believe in him. I have seen many mothers like her, clinging fast to righteousness no matter what their children had done.
I do like the image of the staircase, but often what Ive seen, coming out of denial is so hard and so bad, it’s more like walking on the road to Calvary , a kind of excruciating stumble towards responsibility and redemption .
Not everyone gets there.
Therapists neither like me, judge nor fix those who travel this difficult path. Nor do we try to make them behave better
We just walk with them,
Whilst they do the work of accepting who they are.
We are their companions to the way, keeping them company on the journey.
I thinks that is the most we can ask of any of our fellows in times of suffering, to be with us.
I think of the great spiritual teacher Ram Dass saying

We are all just walking each other home

Ghosts

 I fell asleep on the couch yesterday afternoon and woke in darkness. The tv had turned itself off ( it does this as it’s on some sort of timer I haven’t been able to figure out as yet) but the fire was still burning , just that much to give the room some warmth and some light. 

The dogs were asleep.

Dorothy next and on me, the other two in the cracks.

I wasn’t sure when it was, and lay there blinking. 

I could hear the wind, and the tick of the kitchen clock

Then Albert walked passed the couch. 

I heard him rub the couch as cats do with their sides when they are not in a hurry.

A muted rub and a vibration through the cushion 

Then nothing more

I blinked once again and didn’t move then closed my eyes again for a few moments 

before realising it was around 6 pm and time to get up for work

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power Of Love

The tongue in cheek video, somehow spoils the song, which was the backdrop to my psychiatric nurse days back in 1984. It was ironic , for despite being madly in unrequited love with my best friend two years before this date, I was not going to properly fall in love with someone for another decade or so. 

That decade taught me to make and nurture and love my friends

Most of whom I still retain to this day.

At the end of Les Mistersbles , Jean Valjean and Fantine sing “ and remember the truth that was once was spoken….to love another person is to see the face of God” 

That’s where the Frankie Goes to Hollywood video hails from, me now thinks.

I’ve been in love with three men in my life, only one of whom properly loved me back.

I’ve loved many more men and women, as friends and more, and I’m lucky those that love me back do so in a way that I can acknowledge and get comfort from.

My dogs love me too but in a different way as I love them 

They are animals where

Love is more a bond.

“ Dreams are like Angels,

They keep bad at bay, bad at bay, 

Love is the light,

Scaring darkness away”

All Of Us Strangers

Intriguing and emotional films, should in my mind, be seen with someone else in tow. 

Post Mortem’s need to be sat through. Points of view need discussion and raw nerves need to be soothed

As All of Us Strangers finished Chic Eleanor wiped her cheeks and tearfully lisped “Darling that was beautiful “ 

And she is right, it is….it’s a lovely film.

It’s a four handed drama that centres around a forty something gay scriptwriter (Andrew Scott)  , his tentative romance with a lonely brittle neighbour ( Paul Mescal) and his unexpected reunion with the  “ghosts” of his dead parents, ( Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) who died together in a car accident in the 1980s 

I will not explain it any more than that, as this hypnotic, beautifully shot and incredibly acted study of grief, childhood damage, and redemption through love can be viewed in a score of different ways. 

Suffice to say , that Scott’s painful memories of being a gay child in the 1980s are beautifully and from my perspective painfully portrayed as his loving but slightly clueless parents grapple with the “ reality” of how their 1980s parenting helped and didn’t help him through

It’s an intensely personal and heart wrenching study by director Andrew Haigh. Andrew Scott is magnificent in the lead role, he wears  a sad smile which could literally  break your heart, as he plays opposite his “ parents “ and one scene in particular when his dad realises that he has let his son down is a wonderfully powerful piece of cinema , made so much better by Jamie Bell’s subtle depiction of a kind man just out of his depth. 

Is it a ghost story? Or a love story ? Or a metaphor for therapy and forgiveness ? 

It doesn’t matter

As All of us Strangers is all of these things and more.

It’s a great piece of cinema.

Roseanne: DAD'S DEAD!

Nurses are taught to say “ Died” not gone, or passed or anything else

I loved this bit of tv gold

Lovely quiet day today. I met my sister Ann, her husband and my late brother’s wife for lunch at the Dinorban Arms https://www.brunningandprice.co.uk/dinorbenarms/homepage/

I scrubbed up and enjoyed lovely food but average service 

Tomorrow, Chic Eleanor and I are off to see All of Us Strangers 

ABBA The Visitors - Under Attack

I went to Sainsbury’s for lunch.

Their filter coffee is nice and the bustle of the cafe reminds me I’m not feeling lonely today.

A chap started talking to me on scruff which is a chatting/ dating app. He seemed interesting and chatty and talked about choirs and theatre and cinema that was until he asked to see of Photo of me . I sent him one of me and Dorothy in profile and he asked if he could view a “ lower one” 

I sent him a photo of my shoes prefixed by the word, sigh , then blocked him.

I had bangers and mash for lunch and had a small bout of road rage on the way home when a man stopped dead behind tome minor flooding causing several cars to shriek to a halt . The man refused to move on, for an age and I called out in my best Les Dawson voice You Big Girl’s Blouse ! 

Incongruously he waved what looked like a large feather duster at me

So much for learning all about being non judgemental in college yesterday

I played my ABBA LP When I got home 

Who was the favourite?

 Who was your favourite patient ?

It was a question a more junior nurse asked me a few days ago. She punctuated the question with the word ever! 

Thus making the answer all rather difficult.

Forty one years of patients

You’d think they would merge into one.

They don’t! 

Former medic Should Fish More will, I think agree with me here

Certain patients will capture your heart, head, humour , conscience, memory and psychi for all different reasons, and will remain close by like memories of a lovely holiday or a particularly sad family funeral.

Favourite isn’t the right word to use here, it can’t be.

A chic Italian interpreter who wanted to dance with me before she died ( we danced)

A lost, and handsome  North Yorkshire man, shaken by mental illness wanting to hold my hand when he saw me out shopping in central York in 1987

An Iraqi boy of eleven, paralysed in the war careering around the spinal unit, cackling like a loon, with my first dog Finlay tied to the front of his wheelchair.

Indumati, a bad tempered, irascible Hindu lady who could hit me with a piece of fruit at ten feet even though she was blind as a bat.

Being the birthing partner of a Sheffield teenager giving birth to her first baby who she called Harley Davidson 

The wife of a man with a lacerated liver who begged me to save his life as he bled to death.

The jovial schizophrenic lady to annoyed the pious chaplain of Chester’s Deva hospital by peeing on the chapel’s floor during Church service.

And the Welsh farmer’s wife who gave me a pair of Turkey poults after I had looked after her on intensive care.

I could go on….. I’m on a roll.

Self Care

 I’ve got skills practice in an hour. 

This is a recorded zoom meeting between me and my colleague Donna .

It will last an hour with each one of us playing the therapist for thirty minutes each.

Our tutor will assess the video sometime this week.

Yesterday I set up zoom and got everything set up.

In between times I called friends for chats, 

It’s amazing how much the cottage feels alive with the sound of chatter in it.

I’m working nights tonight so made a big brunch.

Soda bread toasted with garlic topped with Greek yogurt, salmon and avocado , topped with a left over spoon of mushy peas…

Bloody lovely.

I won’t eat again until this evening 

Eating special meals has always been important to me, and it’s a skill I have indulged myself in since I was single. 

In counselling , it would be termed self care 

Respect and care for myself in a time which isn’t always as nurturing as it could be.

Or perhaps I just like my food 

The Zone Of Interest

Domestic Holocaust

Jonathon Taylor’s adaptation of the novel by Martin Amis is a cold affair. Cold, chilling and hard work.

Filmed as if it was a fly on the wall documentary we follow the everyday life of Hedwig Hoss ( Sandra Hüller) the wife of Auschwitz Commander Rudolph( Christian Friedel) who runs her household of five children, maids and gardeners in a well appointed modern town house, feet from the concentration camp wall. Her house and particularly her garden is her pride and joy, and it is soon apparent that the war and her marriage has elevated her in rank and privilege to become the self proclaimed “Queen of Auschwitz “

We see very little of the camp itself , save for the fire in the sky chimneys of the crematoria, casting light and noise in the night like something from Tolkien .

But we hear it.

The factory hum of machinery and traffic, the constant shootings and occasional screams , this is the backdrop to a horror ignored by Hedwig who raises her family in the Hitler Way, with good food, exercise, fresh air and country pursuits .

The negative effects of living such a life is lost on the adults but we glimpse how the children have reacted. One sleep walks nightly, another collects human teeth, two others swim in the river and are covered in human remains and have to scrubbed in the kitchen sink whilst another boy, rather heartbreakingly listens passively as a prisoner is drowned by guards for not following orders. 

Only one person is shown to acknowledge the horror of the Hoss’ new life and that is Hedwig’s mother who leaves the family home in the middle of  the night to escape the world beyond the garden wall.

This is a hard watch. The actors are given little to soften their characters and the sounds of the camp never leave the narrative and wear you down by the end the film. 

“ Audrey “

 Years ago I had a conversation with a visitor to the graveyard. I had an enamel bowl filled with dirty duck eggs, she had been putting flowers on a grave. 

I remember it, only because it was the first time I’d ever seen her remotely chatty.

Usually Audrey was a shy old lady who would nod nervously when approached . She was single and lived in her parents bungalow along London road, 

I remember her once making me a custard tart for my allotment open days tea tent and how difficult she found it to knock on my door to deliver it .

Years ago now she left the village to live in a nursing home and only yesterday I heard she had died, with her cremation taking place today. 

I remembered my conversation with her at the Churchyard fence and how happy she seemed to be when talking about joining her parents in the family grave when her time came.

Her voice was full of affection for parents long gone 

Her face animated and her voice suddenly strong .

Like I said, 

I had never seen her so chatty.

Yesterday, I was told that she had recently died. The news spreading on the back of Trefor’s death and that of Hubert Evans who used to be the village baker. 

The news of Audrey’s cremation was one of the by the way news 

But it stung

As I remembered her wish to be buried with her parents 

Apparently Audrey had run out of money and the council had to fund her funeral 

And cremations are always cheaper

How sad

But on a brighter note , here are two videos that made my day so much better

The lisping Madrid National Choir ( I wish I was a part of so many lovely looking old bears ) and the delightfully “in the moment” Gwendoline Christie at the Maisonette Margiela fashion show

Enjoy both

News Osmosis

 

One of my strengths is being able to deal with families that are going through trauma, loss and stress.

It would be a poor showing, that after 41 years of nursing , that I didn’t know what my strengths and weaknesses were.

I had a hard night at work last night.one with much emotion and I knew that only for the fact I fell asleep, and deeply asleep on the couch when I returned home. Luckily I had set my phone alarm for eleven , for that was the time I’d promised to take a neighbour to the dentist , but I was so deeply asleep, it took me an age to even react to the alarm tinkle let alone get my arse off the couch.

Sleep, and heavy REM asleep , it has been shown , is the major panacea to stress and trauma, and for me, it’s something I can access pretty effectively, if I have to.

At 1 pm there was a call over the kitchen wall. It was old Trefor’s niece. 

Trefor had died yesterday after being taken ill suddenly.

Moments later Animal Helper Pat, called over the wall with the same news.

Osmosis of information in a small village.

Effective and insidious.

Pat had more news too with two more deaths of Trelawnyd residents to report.

Both I knew but not as well as Trefor.

It feels a grey day

There is no food in the house, so I’m off out to shop

I’m making beef stew for supper, 

With dumplings, I need dumplings today

This photo of the village was taken around 1925

Trefor is the baby being carried behind the bus 

Kittens and Group Therapy

 

Albert was a hard act to follow

A bruiser of some note, he struck fear into the backbone of every vet nurse within a ten mile radius of Trelawnyd .

He hated medical intervention with the single minded passion of a serial killer. 

Today , after college , I filled some paperwork at the local animal rescue centre.

I’m looking for a cat, well versed with canine company.

They know I’m fickle but I’m sticking to my guns 

I met two this afternoon , One an older Tom with certain health problems which I discounted and a middle aged Queen called Dolly who looked as though she could hold her own alongside a grizzly bear in a bar fight.

Neither felt right, and I have to remember that when I met Albert everything just felt right when I saw him.

I will take my time here

I won’t rush things .

Visiting the animal centre on the way home from college did me some good.

Psychology-wise the day had been challenging as our group started group therapy in our counselling course.  

I had a headache when I left university, my fellow counsellors all feeling the same 

The Holdovers

 

Dave and I went to Hamayuu for supper. The old waitress was wearing a lovely, subtle kimono. 

The food was excellent .

We went to the Picturehouse afterwards to see The Holdovers a charming, gentle comedy set in an American Boarding School at Christmas  1970, where we meet three people marooned by circumstance .

Loner, unpopular Classic master Mr Hunham ( Paul Giamatti ) has to take charge of Angus ( Dominic sessa) a troubled but bright teen dumped by his mother and new husband) and both are looked after by the school cook Miss Lamb (Da’vine Joy Randolph) who has just lost her only son in the Vietnam war                            

The story of three misfits coming together over Christmas is a story rife for sentimentality, but in the hands of director Alexander Payne , we have a nuanced, gentle and Wholly believable story of the coming together of three rather lost souls. 

It’s a beautiful film, brilliantly acted by the three leads , but especially by Giamatti who is a real class act)

Loved it. 

Head?

 What’s in your head at this very moment? 

I feel I need to kick myself up the arse

With a few things 

I don’t like myself today 

Nothing too drastic

The emotion is more vague, like a minor headache you can’t shift

Or that shadowy feeling of guilt after drinking and saying too much at a party.

I’m meeting Gorgeous Dave for dinner then The Holdovers at the Picturehouse

I’m a Gemini and need stimulation 

So It will do me good

Where’s your head at this moment?

Storm ISHA

It’s a rough night.

Almost by osmosis the dogs have wrapped themselves around me on the couch

Protection more important than fireside warmth.

We’ve been for a walk and I could tell they were thrown by the ferocity of the wind, and stood blinking hard against the gusts and rain.

We all hurried back for home as branches from the last ash trees cracked into the graveyard 

It’s dry January but I poured myself a port

Watching Over

Anxiety is always compounded by the dark

Nightime feeds it, as effectively as multiple spoonfuls of sweetened porridge.

Old nurses have certain ploys before they resort to opening the medicine cabinet 

A face and hands wash with hot soapy water and straightening of the bedsheets , will get rid of the restlessness in the muscles that get tossing and turning so exhausting before five am.

A milky drink, even if you can’t stand the skin on the cocoa, will remind you of childhood when the cool hand on a forehead and a stern yet loving voice of your mother , told you in no uncertain terms that it was time to SLEEP! 

More often than not , it’s the sense of having someone else around that calms the night terrors

A half opened eye glimpsing a pottering uniform, the sound of a trolly being pushed with the accompanying clink of crockery.

Does the mobile phone help? 

Sure does….but only when texts are answered and emojis sent

Tiktok diverts but it’s not real company.

The company that reminds you that there is someone watching over you

Best Of Both Worlds

I’m tired

There is a stiff wind blowing from the South West

And the cottage feels under siege, with the gusts roaring through the graveyard trees.

It doesn’t seem like 24 hours ago, I was power walking through Bloomsbury, with the obligatory Americano in hand , looking every bit of the London commuter scurrying to work. 

I’ve fitted in a 12 hour night shift too.

Nu now lives in Surrey

I have little notion where that is, suffice to say it’s only an half hour from Paddington, she’s having a birthday party there in May so I’ve booked the time off last night. 

I’ve just fallen asleep on the couch

Woken by Dorothy who knows it’s time for bed

BackStairs Billy

 London was freezing, but looked lovely, as it always does at night.

I got to Dishoom early and sat at our table nursing several consecutive glasses of hot spiced chai

Bloody lovely.

It was lovely to catch up and see the photos of new house, it looks delightfully villagy

But then I’m biased

 We gossiped and talked as we walked across to The Duke Of York’s just in time to see Backstairs Billy 

A frothy tale of upstairs downstairs at Clarence House in 1983.

The story of head footman Billy ( nicely played by Hollywood heartthrob Luke Evans) and his relationship with the Queen Mother ( Penelope Wilton) isn’t rigorous or in anyway in depth, it shows the mutually needy banter between “ one old Queen and another” 

Billy’s, job is to entertain and boost an ever growing isolated and lonely Queen Mother and she validates his camp existence by promoting him into a position of power.

On reflection both exist in a somewhat melancholy way, and it’s is a relationship, which Billy, is finally reminded, to be one sided without parity. 

Wilton plays the Queen Mother with affection, giving her a certain physicality and vitality not captured by the television footage we have all grown up with. But we have plenty to smile at too , as corgis run merrily across the stage and sycophantic guests are privy to her infamous afternoon drinks party.

Falls From Grace

Yes my hair does look somewhat “ surprised” 

I had a fall, getting out of the car at the station and hit the pavement with all of the good Grace of a sack full of tripe.

I lost my reading glasses in the kurfuffle but have only just realised that , now I’m sat on the train, an almost empty train on its way to London.

I’m getting used to the dismal service provided by avanti trains and decided to catch the early train to London after hearing that my midday service had been cancelled at 8 am. It was a good call but only one I’ve learnt after a plethora of bad journeys to the capital in 2023.

The dogs had been walked and fed and were left asleep for Trendy Carol’s hubby to pick them up at his convenience 

I will arrive in London at 12.30 , more than enough time to have a late breakfast, mooch around the National Portrait Gallery, check into my hotel before meeting Nu at Dishoom on Kingly Street, around the corner to Carnaby Street.

Nu and London has been somewhat of a touchstone for me over the past few years and despite some fraught journeys , it remains very much that.

A place always associated with laughter and with theatre