Grateful

 A day at the kitchen table.

Sorting out the record of my counselling experience 

Times,session numbers, progress made.

Lines and lines of facts and figures

Watched by my own 9 Gormley figures and Roger of course

I was reminded of a client who once showed me her gratitude diary 

It was homework given to her by the mental health team 

And it was empty

She had nothing to fill the pages with

I wrote my own in my head today as I listed my clients and their histories

Old people eating Ice Cream,

No one in the cinema in an afternoon,

A thunder storm, 

Tiramisu,

A blood sugar of 5.9

Praise,

My best Walking Dead T shirt that now fits!

Bun cuddles,

Fresh flowers on the lane window ledge ,

My first A grade at University,

Friends,

Walking into La Sagrada Familia for the first time,and crying

Scented candles

Roger being dim Roger,

Realising I am content,and more self aware than ever I was

A flirt with an attractive man ,

Thinking an attractive man is flirting even when he isn’t ! !!!!

Lemon curd

A cracking movie, standing in an ovation in the theatre,

Miso soup,

The Lisping Spanish Choir.

A hot shower,

The people in my village,

The Storyhouse cinema,

Being respected. 

My family time

A memory of a scotch egg

I’m also grateful for little films like this one 

If you have a minute watch it 

It’s delightful 

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdNy6TrL/

Post Presentation Ice Cream

Ive given two presentations today and due to the nervous energy in the air Iso need a break. so im in Parisellas cafe on the beach and like one crazy mad bitch im having a scoop of ice cream fuck diabetes for 4 minutes.

Balloons In The Kitchen

The kitchen is filled with helium filled balloons, all tied to the kitchen cabinet knobs.They are part of my presentation tomorrow ,a Gestalt view on grief treatment. you may remember the latest Bridget Jones movie where she and her children send messages to the deceased Mr Darcy in an attempt to resove the pain of their grief. All heavy handed but you get the gist.

Tomorrow afternoon, I have another presentation to give, this time a case study. My presentation will be recorded and graded by two tutorial staff. message to self wear my jumper without the gravy stains! psRoger has burst three balloons already

Holiday.

 Last night, on my break, I made sure all of the Madrid trip was sorted. 

Flights tick

Lisping Choir Tickets tick

Airbnb tick! 

I’ve booked a two bedroom apartment which three balconies overlooking a cafe filled square

If that isn’t Spanish enough then I’ll eat my sombrero 

You always take a chance with Airbnb, who knows what horrors lie under the bed

Painting

 The yappy dogs from next door woke me around three. I gave the Welsh a wee and fed the twins who were annoyed that the dogs were upstairs. The sunshine is glorious ( a bastard of a thing to happen for night workers) so I’ve eaten spicy bean soup out of the slow cooker followed by houmous and celery.

I checked my emails to see if Yorkshire Pudding had received my message ( 😟 he hadn’t) but did open an email from Donna in Tennessee who enclosed this copy of her painting of Winnie 

It’s so captured the essence of that bulldog, who spent her life acting like a gay man in a fat suit.

It’s wonderful, and it made my day

Rattle , Emails and waiting for the Binmen

 It’s sunny with a cool wind.

On our morning walk I picked yellow Rattle which fills the gateways of the fields down the felin . It looks cheerful in a vase on the table and will look better in the lounge after coffee. 

The twins still have not left the cottage after dawn, and sit by the open door by the stairs blinking in the strong daylight. 

It’s Saturday and Roger is waiting for the bin lorry to arrive.

The bin men make a fuss of him which he adores

I’m going to have a long shower and a shave before work tonight. I may go in early if Yorkshire Pudding emails me. He’s on a short break in Llandudno and according to his blog, emailed me to, in order to hopefully meet up. He’s emailed me on my old hotmail account which has now effectively locked me out after a bout of difficult log ins so I’m effectively cut off from an email which I’ve had since the Dawn of the internet. My new email is similar but strangely quiet 

jgsheffield@icloud.com.

I’ve left him a message on his blog, I hope he reads it, or reads it here.

I will leave you with the lisping choir whose first chorister to be seen is my very favourite . The piece rises to a crescendo of sound, much more effective when heard live like I experienced last year. 

It’s one of my favourite pieces

Death By Rubber Chicken

 

It’s been a bit of a death filled week all told 

I’m working the weekend which will no doubt be death centred, so today I’m rolling with the punches so to speak

Apparently my  father died telling a joke at the breakfast table. 

I’m not sure this is true as my father seldom told jokes at home, and certainly didn’t exhibit a sense of humour early in the morning. 

My mother died in hospital, it was peaceful, but she was post respiratory arrest so there was no way back.

I took her oxygen mask off which was belting out 15 litres of useless oxygen only to be told off by an officious support worker to replace it.

I didnt 

My brother died peacefully minutes after I had looked after him on one of my “babysitting” Thursdays in December. The car slid on black ice when I came home.

Funny what you remember.

We would all like a Hollywood death me thinks ….

A clean bed, next to an open window, overlooking a perfect garden

Your significant other running their fingers through your hair as you gently fade

The dog by your side,

As the neighbours lower their heads and remove their hats

Life is fickle and seldom helpful when that sort of death is concerned

People die on the toilet, or fall behind the dinner table at ungainly positions 

People collapse at the theatre and stop the show, 

That’s not a bad way of going I suppose…

To die laughing.

Winifred, my second to last bulldog had the best death ever

One cold night after a mad half hour trying to disembowel her rubber chicken, 

She quietly collapsed against the kitchen door and lay her huge head on her bear like paws

Like Shelley Winters did in The Poseidon Adventure 

( the collapse part not the rubber chicken part) 

I never cried over Winnie, ( unlike Gene Hackman who sobbed over Shelley’s face until he spat on her) 

Her death was valiant and brave and right, I just sat down next to her and gently rested my head on hers

It was during lockdown too, as I remember .

I still have that rubber chicken, it was going to be framed but my requests for a pink frame with the epitaph 

Queen Salote Tupou III 200?-2020 overfaced the picture framer somewhat so I never felt I could nag him to complete my order.

The chicken still lives in my heart  and my bedroom

Until it is flung away, 

It’s significance unknown, 

After I pass away, hopefully,  after telling a joke 

Or made blissfully unaware by a syringe pump filled with opiates.

Or even bouncing around the kitchen with Winnie’s rubber chicken in my mouth

Now wouldn’t that be something?

Stand up

 

Chic Eleanor and fellow theatre lover Del and I went to see the stand up comic Mark Steel tonight. 

Known for his left wing humour, Steel concentrated his set on his recent experience of having throat cancer. 

Humble, honest, incredibly funny and poignant it was refreshing to hear a man celebrate his friendships which saw him through the darkest of times. But real life took an even darker turn when after he noted the demographic of the audience and told a story of how one member collapsed during his show , as he was almost finished , an audience member in the Gods suddenly collapsed and I think died 

We left after the stage cleared and the house lights were turned on.

Are You Free?

 I caught up with The last Of Us tonight

Moving as fuck ….

I’m drifting today, and am overly reflective

Someone I know committed suicide on Monday, 

Not a friend 

But someone I met professionally 

I’m drifting and am out of sorts 

and then Chic Eleanor rang out of the blue

Did I want to go to the theatre tomorrow?

Darling I hope you are free she gushed

I said yes immediately 

Grateful, oh so grateful 

That

Someone remembered me 

Unidos por un sueño, Alejandro Vivas - Grupo Talía

This gentle little piece was performed by the lisping choirs and the Metropolitan Orchestra on line during covid, and is more of a hymn or a lullaby than anything else.

In light of some more information I have received I have edited this entry today

The music was written as an on line performed piece during covid 

Turandot

 It’s been on my bucket list ( the back burner one) for years, Puccini’s  Turandot

But tonight a friend asked me to go with them to see it as they had been let down at the last minute .

I’m not asked very often so I jumped at the live showing of the Royal Opera House production .

Operas are often overlong, ( and this is no different ) but I loved Seok Jong Baek as the tubby Prince and

Sondra Radvanosky as Turandot and the 1980s staging was wonderfully impressive

Weaver & Roger’s Little Game

 

The game started on Saturday when I started nights 

I went to bed in the afternoon with Mary and Bun then joining us, frightened to be left out.

Weaver stood guard at the top of the stairs with narrow eyes

Roger was sat on the kitchen table watching the comings and goings in the lane

I almost fell asleep

But then Roger started his usual gallop up the stairs in a clumsy effort to join in.

Roger hasn’t quite mastered staircases, even at the robust age of 5 

He still sorts of runs at one full pelt and hopes for the best

And this time as he almost reached the top, legs spinning wildly, tongue lolloping out of the side of his mouth , when…

Weaver jumped out at him and chased him back down the staircase with a manical yowl and a paw swipe.

This pattern started to repeat itself again and again 

Dog versus cat

With cat winning every time

I had no sleep

They had the very best of times, and gasped like tired children at a garden party by the time I left for work

Like Roobarb and Custard on a repeat time frame.

Camp As Christmas

Next month I take my sister Janet to see the ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House. We are having lunch at the Opera House Cafe and so I think we need to dumb down the night before with a touch of camp. 

What could be better than a romp through the musical Titanique? 

I booked tickets today

Two very different nights out 

What fun 

 

Food Porn

 Positive thinking, I finished my presentation last night, plowed through the references and made a slow cook beef stew when I got home. I had forgotten the clocks went forward , what fun.

I hardly noticed that Bun and Weaver had spent most of their evening sitting inside the living room cupboards ( don’t ask) and remarkably not one bit of China was broken.

I’m off to bed, enjoy my food porn

Bra Straps

 I didn’t want to go to work yesterday. Having nearly three weeks off has done me good. 

But I did go, and it was incredibly busy.

Today I feel flat with two night shifts ahead and a presentation to finish. Funny how your mood can drop as quickly as it soared. So I went to bed. Mary under one arm Bun on top of me.

Chilli bean soup was bubbling away in the slow cooker when I got up and I cleaned the kitchen with purpose after eating two bowls until my lips went numb.

Bra straps ready pulled

I’m not letting a low mood win today

I’ve packed my study books and aim to finish the presentation on my breaks

I will leave you with this choir who are singing a version of the Finnish Reindeer song so loved by my choir

Gorse

It’s a lovely day in Trelawnyd today. I’m working overtime later and I’m finishing my presentation this morning, but I was out early walking the dogs.

The Gop is covered in golden gorse bushes which are in full bloom.

The hill looks glorious.

My cottage, looks neat and tidy too, I snapped a photo before collecting my McDonald’s porridge

Lou Sanders vs Joe Wilkinson - Naughty Taughty -

This is what we need in blogland right now. 

A bloody good laugh

Last One Laughing is a comedy show on Amazon I believe

I’ve not seen it fully, just relying on clips like this one to enjoy but the premise is simple

Ten comedy performers are locked together and they have to make each other laugh

The last one not to laugh is the winner

A simple parlour game , elevated by some cracking performances and golden pieces of TV 

No wonder the show has gone global

It’s an addictive watch 

This clip is better

Last Therapy

 

I had my last therapy session yesterday

It was my therapists last session before retirement 

The session went over by twenty minutes but neither of us said anything

We shook hands as I got up to leave and we both looked a little tearful 

An 80 year old therapist and her 62 year old client

“Be Happy and confident in what you do “ she said squeezing my hands as my grandmother or auntie 

Glad  would have done 

“I will miss you” I told her honestly 

“ I know” she replied, her old eyes twinkling. 

Reflection

 I’m writing a presentation today on a Gestalt therapeutic intervention 

After this I have one client presentation to write and give and one assignment on diversity in the workplace to complete. 

Then if I have all of my counselling hours in place by May I will graduate.

Three years have shot by and only now, do I feel that I could become an effective counsellor.

So what have I learnt in these years?

I’ve finally understood what a therapeutic relationship is and how, by walking beside someone who is actively engaged in therapy you can reflect and support and help with their ability to change.

I’ve learned to be still and to listen and to use supervision as a tool to learn and to grow

I’ve engaged with my own therapy and used it to understand my own motivations and patterns of behaviour

And I’ve realised the importance of self care, not only within the counsellor/ client relationship but generally in my everyday life

Obviously there are the academic theories and ideas to be added to this list, as well as IT skills and the like 

But I’m a very different person than I was three years ago

I’m kinder

Kinder to myself

I’m having my last personal therapy session this afternoon

Hence the reflection

He Used To Be Mine

This isn’t a love song

It’s a song about change

And is all about self awareness

It’s One of the most moving pieces of musical theatre I know