A chapter

*

 The bulldog sitter Mike texted me around 6.30am stating everyone had had a wee this morning and all had gone back to bed. Dorothy had been given her painkillers hidden in a piece of boiled chicken and had slept by his side on the couch all night.

They had watched an entire box set of something I’ve not heard of and he had eaten three quarters of the quiche I had prepared yesterday in addition to the beers I had bought in special 

I was somewhat embarrassed when he told me he’d done a load of washing after spying a small pile of underwear, uniforms and T shirts in the laundry basket by the washing machine 

That’s a friend for you.

But I’ve had a busy long night and need sleep so I didn’t dwell on things.

* Yorkshire Puddings version of Going Gently the novel lol

Ps the ponies are back

 

This childhood prayer came to my mind today

“ God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

This isn’t about Dorothy 

Believe me I’m much too pragmatic to be catastrophizing about a much loved pet. Dorothy is unwell but miles better today than she was. She is pain free, eating gently, hydrated and remains comfortable. But she IS around eight years old ( the vet was shocked as she looks like a bulldog half that age) and will have inherited the genes of dogs not built for old age. She has clearly lost weight, a possible sign of some further malignancy, but I and she will carry on as long as her quality of life remains good for her.

Thank you all for your kind wishes.

I was working yesterday and could not have sorted what I did, if it wasn’t for the support of manager and colleagues who made everything a whole lot easier. A thank you to them.

I’m sat at the newly cleaned kitchen table, Dorothy remains clingy, so she has slept with Mary on the kitchen reading chair. I have cleaned the who kitchen so she knows I’d never leave her and the kitchen.

I turned on talk radio , but turned off the news discussions. 

I have realised that I don’t watch the news anymore. I don’t tend to read blogs that cover the conflict in Gaza either, I find the feeling of impotency, after reading them, fruitless,  and the anger generated by them of little use. Some people need to have that anger stoked and I get the power of sharing it, especially as the answer to many is a plain yet fruitless stop it! But anger attracts anger and what good does it eventually do in the long term.

My niece-in-law lost her mom today and needed a kind word. 

I’m working tonight and a friend has offered to bulldog sit for me.

I’ve made him a thank you quiche

Sick

 

Dorothy is not well

The vet thought pancreatitis 

I agreed she has the symptoms, though not the temperature  

Meds, pain relief but not yet needing IV fluids

She will be reviewed again tomorrow morning.

She’s clingy and needy and sad 

And almost collapsed once when trying to vomit

I’ve seen patients do that so didn’t panic 

I don’t panic when the animals are poorly

She’s wrapped in one of my jumpers with her head on my side

They break your heart just a little, don’t they?

Spanish Interlude

The lisping gets me everytime

I’d love a Spanish boyfriend

I’m at the hospital 

A faceless outpatients

Running late

Thank goodness for wifi

Dorothy is unwell today

 

Gwahoddiad

Old Trevor’s funeral was held at Prestatyn Church. I know the Church well, mostly negative memories of family funerals for my grandparents , parents  and brother all had their final services there.

The church was cold and I was thankful for my new woollen coat.

I spied Animal Helper Pat and walked in with her, there was a good turn out given Trevor’s age

The young vicar Gregor performed the service after testing the microphones in the pulpits with a brusque 

testing ! Testing ! 

My mother would have frowned at that.

And in the half silence before service I remembered my grandmother being supported up the aisle by my mother and Uncle Jim at my grandad’s funeral

She was wailing “ My boy, ,my poor boy!” 

That was a bad funeral

Trevor’s was an uplifting one. 

A long eulogy read by Canon John Evans centred upon a life well enjoyed and lived but it was kind of sad to see the tiny coffin, just a little bigger than a child’s being wheeled past covered in lilies. 

The congregation sang Abide with me well and the Welsh hymn Gwahoddiad passably but it is really a hymn that needs a totally Welsh speaking congregation to do it proud, having said that I could hear Animal Helper Pat’s sweet soprano mingling in with my sudden bass . And a few Welsh voices at the back lifted the harmony enough for it to be moving.

I didn’t stay around the Church door after the service as so many do.

I find all that really embarrassing.

I walked around the Church and looked briefly at my parent’s Gravestone which lay unattended and cold looking, before heading off for home. 

My new coat keeping me warm was a comfort on a bittersweet day.

The Rose -Trelawnyd male Voice Choir

When Spring IS Mrs Doubtfire!

Yesterday I parked at the beach with a coffee and just closed my eyes to the sun 

Gawd I felt so much better.

For the first time since Lockdown, I reckon that this winter has been the worst in my history

It’s been dreadfully depressing

Physically depressing .

It’s almost caught me out

But hasn’t ! 

Yesterday’s sun was my MRS DOUBTFIRE moment 

The snowdrops by the garden arch

The daffodil buds by the garden gate

Tracy Manchester’s kind text about the Memorial Hall windows

Help is on the way dears! 

Spring is on the way 

Funeral Etiquette

 

Even working Friday night, it seemed a long weekend, all told.

I don’t do well without at least some company over a 48 hours, even if it’s a phone call or a brief chat,

C’est la vie !

It’s Trefor’s funeral on Wednesday and I’ve nothing to wear

The etiquette for funerals generally is pretty fluid nowadays but even I recognise the fact that I cannot go to the Welsh funeral in a custard yellow sou’westers jacket even if it’s Northface made

I’ve been needing a proper, coat for years.

So this morning I bought one from Marks And Spencer 

What an indulgence ! 

It’s lovely.

Grey, wool and simple .

I tried it on with my own green cashmere scarf ( which Chic Eleanor even noticed) and looked very New York. Even with my crocs on.

The camp, tubby salesman rather enjoyed it when I said I felt very New York and joined in telling me if I had a floppy hat on I’d look very Helen Bonham Carter! ( he was referring to my crocs) 

Cheeky cunt!

Don’t worry your sweet little heads about my crocs dear readers,  they will not be worn on Wednesday.

On a roll I also treated myself to some budding daffodils and a new fruit bowl from Habitat in Sainsbury’s which was reduced in their sale to 5£  

I bought a MacDonalds coffee and sat at the beach with my face to the sun.

It was glorious and felt like such an indulgence.

It’s half term this week, but I need to catch up with my Uni homework so have booked a room in the library for all day tomorrow 

Hey ho

Bloody Roger

 

It’s been a bit of a bust of a day.

I had nothing planned, and there were no good films I hadn’t seen yet at the cinema, so after a walk and breakfast, and a perfunctory chat about dog dirt along Bryon Street with Mrs Trellis, I lay back down on the bed to read.

I woke around 2 and could smell burning. 

I suspected that village Elder Islwyn was up to tricks, but the smell wasn’t damp woodsmoke but smouldering banana and orange.

Roger! 

After mopping the kitchen floor I had left Roger’s crate against the washing machine .

In his gleeful few hours of being unsupervised he had climbed onto the crate, then onto the kitchen worktops where he ate three eggs from the fishy designed bowl, several reachable sugar lumps from a container which I thought would have had a lid a Dim Welsh terrier could not have opened.

More importantly he had turned on the halogen oven hob with his warm paw. Luckily it was a back burner, the one I seldom use, but a much loved fruit bowl lay to one side and in his adventures Roger had slid it back over the hob.

I was lucky the cottage didn’t go up in flames

Now before the collective gnashing of teeth starts

We’ve all had one of these moments of luck in our lives.

More graphically I remember silently drowning in a swimming pool in Lloret Del Mar when I was ten, before some nameless man reached down to laugh me out. 

No man , no Going Gently, no little life lived

It’s a real It’s a wonderful life kind of moment if you let your head run away with things.

A Letter In The Post

 There is always something to be grateful for.

Last night as I was driving to work, I listened to an old friend’s personal podcast

A verbal letter to me from sunny Australia

A personal hello, to me in the Bluebell confessional 

In the dark and rain

A friendly voice in a dismal winter.

I have known Nia since her childhood. 

When we were both gauche, and products of our own little town.

We haven’t grown apart in forty years for our affection for each other remains.

We just don’t talk regularly.

So now Nia will send me a podcast message.

A chatty Kathy round Robin to match what she catches up on Going Gently.

Her family news in Australia, her thoughts and feelings and worries and triumphs 

Wrapped up in a verbal letter,

Like the ones we used to send

A million years ago.

Gemini

 I’m late with my nephew’s London visit gift. I’m pushing him to try for a revival of A Chorus Line at Saddler’s Wells, but we shall see. I also want to go to Buckingham Palace which opens July to September. That’s one for my sister Janet too, a birthday gift to both of us.

Some guys from work have invited me to see Cosi Fan Tutte by The Welsh National Opera in March

I’m going

Do you believe in star signs ? 

I never did.

But I do now as I enter my dotage.

I’m a typical Gemini 

I am Quick witted, and I miss nothing.

That’s a curse too sometimes

For I can tell you word for word of a conversation made and long forgotten by many, especially if I was hurt by it. 

My grandmother used to read tea leaves but I knew she could read people 

Some people can

Most cannot.

I am drawn by confidence, and warmth and brightness.

And manliness but not testosterone 

We are back to the hole in the jumper thing.

It’s the middle of the night and I’m having a stream of thoughts as I sit and read and type. 

It’s quiet tonight and we are babysitting rather that treating and medicating and comforting .

Everyone is having normal sleep.

And that’s how it should be

Sleep ..yes and I’m Including one of the magnificent Orme Billy goats here, who has sheltered from the blustery night, by sitting under the canopy of our reception .

Bits

 

Weaver, get your carers to bring you in a McDonald’s kitikat McFlurry, when they get a chance, bloody lovely.

I had one tonight on the way to work with a coffee and sat on the dark Promenade in Colwyn Bay listening to the sea as I ate it.

I’m on two nights and we’ve had no snow, even though it had been forecast. The hospice was grateful as covering me would have been difficult if I’d been snowed in. The parents of the local school children were pissed off as the school alongside 77 other ones in Flintshire had been closed as a precaution.

I’ve received four phone messages, one phone call, one audio message and a valentine’s card today.

The audio message was feedback for my skills practice from my tutor which was nice as it was positive. My first few have been a work in progress, shaving away all the bad habits I’ve employed over the years.

I can be “ too challenging” at times…..something which is common in Gemini men.

I’m working on it.

The Valentine card was from a blog reader and it was kind.

One message was from a beautiful Greek girl who used to work in the hospice. She now lives in Manchester and is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. She misses me. I used to make her laugh. I miss her too.

Funny I watched the Guns Of Navarone this afternoon. 

Didn’t Irene Papas have big eyebrows?

Just a thought

Manon

 Kenneth McMillian’s tale of unpleasant people acting unpleasantly in 18th Century Paris  comes into its own when the poet Des Grieux ( Reece Clarke ) dances with the dying love of his life Manon (Natalia Osipova) in the New Orlean Swamps.

I was wrung out by the end of it all. But I must say one other small scene made me more emotional , and that was when the Corps de Ballet , their hair shorn, their dresses in rags entered as one as they played the prisoners sent to New Orleans by ship. When they danced, with arms around each other, I felt overwhelmingly sad and incredibly moved.

A powerful and amazing bit of theatre by The Royal Opera House 

Calon Lân

 It’s old Trefor’s funeral next Wednesday . With the church now shut he’s had to wait for a slot in nearby Prestatyn, where his sister’s lived. I wonder if Calon Lán will be sung at his funeral? The hymn is often the first choice at funerals is as it means a “Pure Heart” in Welsh.

The above version has been set to different music, but remains powerful in its own right, a credit to the two young Welsh women singing it.

Thank You

Mary

Thank you Will who called today to check on a missing roof slate when he didn’t have to and to promising to sort it by the end of the week.

Thank you to Donna from Uni who checked up on me when the tutor told the class I was off sick.

Thank you to Trendy Carol’s Hubby, who looked after the dogs when he didn’t have to today.

Thank you to sister Janet who asked me to see Manon at the cinema tomorrow 

Thank you to Trendy Carol who kept Mary a few hours longer as she was asleep , like only older dogs sleep when they find a comfy corner.

Thank you for your blog comments and

Thank you whoever invented macaroni cheese 

Bloody lovely for a late tea after sleeping all day 

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.