I have come down with a small bump today. Before cooking , I took my two boiled fruit cakes to friends in the village. One to Eirlys who didn’t make the show and the other to John & Mandy next door.
I’ve cleaned the cottage and let Roger explore upstairs when the kittens are out of their room. He did so silently and carefully and apart from a few kitten hisses, he returned downstairs ten minutes later rather nonplussed.
I’ve made a parmesan aubergine bake top heavy with garlic and whilst it was cooking, sent in my nursing revalidation in ( my final one ever)
He enters most years. An elderly man, confused with the labelling of tables and who needs a hand to display his small collection of exhibits.
He’s quiet and diffident and wears a tank top.
And enters five or six vegetables or fruit classes.
This year he won two firsts and second place.
And it made my day when I watched his quiet joy when he checked over his entries as the show opened.
It’s moments like these that make all the hard work survivable.
There’s lots of moments that does your head in though.
The photo of a pet with a family member breast feeding in the background
The plethora of complains about the lack of art entries
The lady that held the queue up for 20 minutes complaining about her admission change,
The child that pressed a long finger into a Victoria sponge.
I could go on
A new lady in the village won the cup for the most marks in the cookery eliciting a self deprecating “ I should have had my hair done” comment before receiving her cup from our local MP Becky Gittins, and suddenly a new tradition is made by her surprised pride
I’m tired and after a sit down with a Welsh licking my feet, I will have a gin and will go to bed.
I’ve seen clients this morning and met a friend for lunch, then shopped for things for the flower show .
Instead of garden flowers to decorate each tea table I’ve bought a delicate single potted cyclamen which will be given as a gift to the volunteers and some of the elderly people of the village when we close.
Pippa who is in her seventies ,stopped me when I was approaching the cottage and talked at length about the show
She got off onto a tangent and suddenly she was sharing that she stopped breast feeding because her son bit her once.
This melancholic lullaby by my lisping Choir suits today’s mood perfectly.
I caught up with an old friend last night for a meal at The Goat and he looked tired and a little sad
Life can be a slog at times and sometimes all you can do as a friend is listen and understand.
It was lovely to see him.
I’ve done a little more of that this morning as I complete my nursing revalidation, sat at the kitchen table,
And from time to time, in between sad texts and messages, I’ve allowed myself to daydream and get lost in the art wall, where the Chicken is always smiling and the wide eyed dogs are galloping joyfully towards the hills.
I’m not depressed or down today, …..I’m reflective
There’s more sadness that’s been passed on to me today that I don’t need to share, and this in turn has recharged old memories and feelings.
It’s hard to soak up a great deal, of sadness and pain and stress, not that anyone is forcing it on me, but when I mean soak up, I mean to assimilate it, to process it.
Now follow me right now, drop what you are doing and go out in your garden, or your park, or your nearest patch of green.
It’s grey here with the gentle hint of rain
There’s a breeze blowing too.
Now lie down on the grass,
my grass is cool and damp and luxurious
And watch the clouds
Like rabbits do when they think you cannot see them
It’s been a day of catching up with Flower Show jobs.
I’m chasing up with previous winners who have not returned their cups and already I’m 3 short.
I’ve washed and ironed my mother’s donated table clothes and bought ingredients to make cakes and entries for the cookery classes as well as build up a food hamper from scratch to support the raffle.
There is enough to do.
An old friend John, is in Llandudno this is week so we are meeting up for dinner tonight.
I’ve also heard from weaver who has eaten a bit better this week because of the positive influence of visitors . She’s been in touch with Rachel,who had shared Weaver’s best wishes around blogland which is nice too.
Not everyone has a needlepoint which captures a year in their life.
I have!
Thirty three years ago I was a Charge nurse on a spinal Injury Unit, who lived in a tiny, house in Walkley Sheffield with ginger cats, a miniature garden, a spit and sawdust pub around the corner called The Sportsman and a collection of antiques started with a black 1940s Bakelite phone from a local junk shop
It’s charming and it’s been hanging on my landing for an absolute age now and now needs a move to a new corner which will allow it to be viewed all over again
A minute later the dogs walked in on their leads and the kittens flew into their carrier, wide eyed and spitting . It was a long hour, with the kittens in defence and Roger in benign greeting.
Every hiss had him bouncing back behind me, a worried look upon his face.
Mary watched carefully , stepping forward, then back then forward again until she grew bored and at the 50 minute mark she sat down to sleep.
Roger wined and barked some, then repeated his hopeful greeting before jumping back yet again.
Both dogs turned their attention to me when I retrieved a small lump of cheese from my pocket, from which I gave each a morsel
I will repeat the process tomorrow until boredom and cheese dominates
Another study day today, this time in Bangor along the coast. The drive in good weather is glorious and the defib part of our training was interesting so the day felt worthwhile. Our trainer was a woman from furtherest West wales who couldn’t have been more Welsh if you had dipped her in larverbread, she talked about drones being employed to fly defibrillators to wherever they were needed
The Welsh come out with me on Thursdays. They sleep in the car when I see clients and we have a walk inbetween.
On the way home they are treated to a single cheeseburger each, which they both eat with closed happy eyes.
Weaver emailed me. She’s poorly but very pragmatic and has the most informed family doctor who has prempted all the advice I have started to give during our correspondence which is reassuring to say the least.
In hospice terms our dear Weaver is on the landing and she’s she knows that.
The landing is the place at the top of the stairs , the plateau before a decent.
It’s a time of lethargy and of naps
And it’s a time of getting thoughts in order.
She is not eating
But she sends her love.
Please don’t thank me for sharing The Weaver Update I’m very privileged to be able to do so.
I’ve done little this evening, but watched Dial M For Murder and presently Suspicion ( is it me or is Cary Grant camp as Christmas in it?)
Roger is clingy tonight and is asleep in the crook of my arm
The kittens are tamer tonight in their room upstairs
I we have had rain and the nasty humidity of the last few days has gone
The Derbyshire Spa town, is very roughly half way between Wales and Sheffield.
I’m meeting my “spinal” injury mates
Sarah and Nigel, two people who have part of my life for 34 years.
These two have followed me, supported me, liked and loved me for a generation and it was time we met up again to touch base, revisit each other and share ourselves as we used to when Sarah was a matron and Nigel and I were Charge Nurse managers.
I love these guys, I love them so much
They walked beside me for years in Sheffield
Walked beside me, tutored me and guided me
That’s so important
So we are catching up over coffee and lunch and chatter .
Apart from the overlong Golden Voyager bit which should in essence be performed in the opening ceremony, the closing of the Paris Olympics was dreadful. A couple of lacklustre bands, an orchestra who played down La Marseillaise and some suitably pouting French teen failing to lip synch in a posh Parisian garden.
Tom Cruise picked up the flag for Los Angeles and the dye was set for a repeat of the terrible 1984 games where money was no object and whole thing was overblown and souless.
Paris did something different which almost worked . Greece and the UK captured their own countries perfectly and the Sydney games underlined fun ( how could it not with Kylie on a twenty foot flip flop)
I’d booked for a four hour,”Cooking experience” this morning which turned out to be somewhat of a disaster. It was advertised in Llandudno at what I thought was a hotel but turned out to be a small private house in Craig Y Don, and the hostess seemed surprised I had turned up even though I had talked to her partner at length via email and messenger,
I walked into the dining room to see four unsmiling faces already preparing vegetables to centre sushi or pancakes, and the head of the group, a woman in her twenties reminded the host that she had booked a private session for just her and her friends and non said hello in response to my wave and smile.
The host apologised, when I showed her my booking acceptance on line, but shrugged her shoulders and said she wasn’t expecting me.
The client talked as though I was invisible and told the host that she “ felt very uncomfortable that a MAN was potentially, going to join her group .
“I am standing in front of you” I reminded her, but the atmosphere was too toxic for me to feel that the teaching could have been in any way acceptable , especially as the four women whispered away amongst themselves.
I walked out,
Suddenly aware of my sex, just a tad angry and a tiny bit tearful
Kindness abounds “ Does the fact you have cats now fill the lonely void in your life?”
It was a question in the comments of yesterday’s post.
The slightly wry one ( or as I thought) about Roger’s dimness.
The comment as the one before it was meant to upset.
Loneliness, I can tell you is like grief and in the same way it kind of hits you in waves when you least expect it.
It’s only surfaces sporadically, and not always when you are alone and the nearest I can explain it is how Helen Hunt’s waitress Carol explains it in James L Brooks’ As Good As It Gets.
