I am writing this blog entry on my break..intensive care is quiet (at the moment) with all the patients sedated and ventilated, so all you can hear is the faint "hiss" of suction and oxygen and the gentle "push push" of the ventilators breathing for their charges.
The sound can be rather soothing, especially when the alarms of the fukuda monitors don't go off, and the peace of this evening is rare and appreciated...
generally the unit is fraught and noisy, and after an 11 hour shift all I crave is the quietness of the field and the howling of the wind in the trees.......
lets hope the rest of the night remains as silent as it is now......
Work day
I have not had a great deal of time to do very much today. Just enough time to complete the supermarket shop, spend another 60£ at the vets for flea treatments for the dogs and Albert as well antibiotics for William and supervise a brief but welcomed visit by cousin Carol and her hubby Ken, who brought a huge pile of treats up for the animals.Working tonight, here's hoping for a quiet night on intensive care....yeah right!
ps
had to laugh at my friend Geoff's turn of phrase in his blog relating to a condensation problem on our chimney breast (see http://onceinalifetimeinwales.blogspot.com/2010/01/that-friday-feelin.html)
I love this photo!
I love this photo.....Working for 17 years on a Spinal Injuries unit, I was always reminded that nothing is impossible to be attempted after paralysis has initially devastated peoples' lives...
This photograph embodies that living spirit, I observed in patients time and time and time again....
On reflection ( and you will need to read the previous post) it is this strength of ordinary people that I do miss from my Sheffield work days.
How we got here!
The first of my huge allotment beds has been dug over and manured today, and I feel as though I have turned the corner in starting to clear up the damage, and untidiness of winter.As I have worked I have thought about something that blog reader Jim wrote on yesterday's blog; he stated:
"I must say John, I am jealous of how you live. Though not glamorous, it seems toIn many ways I agree with what Jim said, but I must admit the change from living in a Yorkshire City with a charm and personality all of its own to entering a small and in someways closed village community was not always the easy one that I may hint to in my sometimes overly fluffy bunny blog.
have a charm, and be charmed"
Believe it or not, I never really had an overwhelming urge to live in the country. Chris did, and was always quite vociferous about it, but I was always happy living and working in Sheffield. I had reached my objectives career-wise, and had experienced the highs (and lows) of running my own ward, and our social life was busy, varied and supportive....so when and why did it all change?
Well I got to thinking about this today, as I indulged myself in the repetitive dig-turn, dig-turn of the allotment clearing, and, as so often is the case with large life changing decisions, it was a series of "small" events that precipitated my change of mind.
As a ward manager, I witnessed changes within the Hospital trust that I had difficulty "selling" to my staff. Corporate loyalty was stretched to the limit sometimes, and quality of care was always demanded but sometimes was difficult to attain with job freezes, audit needs, and the "hands tied" rules of job's worth policy, HR demands and clinical protocols.
Colleagues that had been friends for years left the service through one reason and another, and this left managers like myself more and more isolated, as our "touchstones" and like minded professionals disappeared.
I left the Spinal Injury unit, still loving my job, but being realistic enough to understand that things would not always be the same, an event that I think is not unique in middle aged men who are questioning their lives. Chris' wish to live in the country, gave me the springboard to try something new after 17 years, and I thought "why the hell not!"...without giving the reality of rural Welsh life a proper in depth thought
At first my energy of the move went into the two cottages that we bought. Our first cottage and weekend holiday home had to be sold and a new property sought and sorted!During our first year here, building work needed organising,decorating needed to be done and a whole garden needed to be built and designed. I was happy at doing all this, as it gave me a focus and a goal, which took over from my old work responsibilities, but after the initial adrenaline rush of hiring and firing, I was left with a slight "dip" of "what now?"
And so the animals started to arrive!
In drips and drabs, more dogs galloped into our lives, a couple of pure breed hens lived in the garden which was only the start of things to come, and the excitement of feeling responsible for a group of little beings instead of 50 staff members started to fill all of the gaps for me.
The animals and the accompanying allotments opened up relationships within the village community and I learnt to socialize more with the locals and with village groups which was a new thing for me. Friends were made, and roots laid down in community events and in a space of another year Trelawnyd became "home" in the truest sense of the word.....sounds easy eh? ....not always.......to be sure.....and I so still miss Sheffield and my friends there ( but strangely not my previous manager's position)..yet, on reflection,blogger Jim was right, I know I lead a charmed (though not glamorous) life
Turkey dances
Most of my day has centred around scraping manure and slurry from the pig enclosure into impressive piles of fertilizer next to the allotments. Not an exciting day, nor a particularly interesting one, but these stinky jobs need to be completed.The one positive thing about all this repetitive work is the fact I have had an opportunity of watching the newly formed turkey flock from close quarters, and what an entertaining little bunch they are too.
The four youngsters (now sexed as 2 stags and 2 hens) are robust, mischievous, bright and greedy birds who spend long periods jousting and larking around like teenage boys after school.
Out of nowhere, one will take a fancy to start an odd looking kind of skipping movement, and suddenly all four are gambolling in crazy circles, wildly flapping their great big wings like idiots.
This "crazy" behaviour carried on throughout the day, albeit in short bursts; and the rest of the time, the four turkeys indulge in their other passion, namely eating.Every time I venture into the feed shed for something 8 huge black soulful eyes zoom onto my movements and the babies start calling and gobbling excitedly, bouncing up and down as if shouting "Me!!!me!!!!me!!!me!!!"
Call me a softie, but I always succumb to this blatant and hammy begging, and the turkeys know it...and as always they get offered a large handful of corn or wheat, which they bolt down within seconds . No wonder they now resemble four brown feathery barrels! and no wonder I am going through a sack of corn a week!
note their beaks, sharp and painful if they accidently peck you during a feeding frenzy...I should have clipped them short when they were poults
The White Ribbon
The last couple of minutes of THE WHITE RIBBON, was spoilt for me,only because the new digital technology at Prestatyn's Scala Cinema, let everyone down by removing the subtitles from the screen!Having said all that, the audience generally worked the final conversation out for ourselves not that it gave any clear cut conclusion to one of the best films I have seen in the past few years.
The White Ribbon is an unsettling,suspenseful and truly gripping ensemble piece set in a small isolated German village before the start of World War 1.
The village suffers a series of seemingly unrelated but unnerving dramas over a period of a year. The village doctor is injured in a riding accident, a woman is killed in a sawmill and two children are tortured and beaten. At the same time other more "minor" mishaps befall other seemingly upright and respected families. The parson's pet bird is butchered, the Baron's son is bullied and a baby becomes ill in mysterious circumstances, and the narrator (who is crucially an outsider and the villager schoolmaster) by default tries to to work out what is indeed going on.
Director Michael Haneke cranks up the sense of dread and malice slowly and deftly, especially when the onion skins of respectability are peeled away from the characters, revealing a community run by extreme discipline , punishment and in one awful case, sexual abuse. The Children of the village are key to this movie. as they roam around in the background in an ever present pack, yet, we are never fully sure that it is their abused personalities that are central to the strange events and heavy atmosphere.
Everything in The White Ribbon is left open ended and unsettling, and as the villagers are finally led into the war, we the viewers are left with more questions about the approaching fascist threat, a decade or so away and we are left wondering about what role the children will play as they approach adulthood in the changing German world
Key scenes linger long in the mind. A child frightened and alone searching for his sister in a dark house. A tearful teenage boy being lectured about the horrors of masturbation, and the dreadfully calm verbal abuse delivered to the doctor's mistress, all add up to unsettle and wrong foot the viewer time and time again.........and I must admit that it is a long, long time since a film opened up so many avenues for analysis and review after the last reel is over.
I gave it a brilliant 9.5 out of 10
Grumpy Old Women
Last night I caught a re run of the tv programme Grumpy Old Women, the talking heads show, where celebrity middle aged ladies grumble about the woes of life.Now, I not going to complain here! In fact the whole series is quite hilarious, especially as I found myself agreeing with everything these women had to say about the trials and contradictions of life.
Here are my recent top 3 gripes
- People talking in the cinema
- People speeding through the village
- People talking to animals as if they understand English
People talking in the cinema
Now, this is my biggest bugbear! and the older I get the less tolerant I have become of this discourteous and unthinking practice. When we were at the Scala recently enjoying George Clooney at his most flirtatious, two lads at the back of the cinema were indulging in what could only be described as a full blown and animated debate! After a brief, rather British moment of tutting, I got up, walked slowly (and you always have to walk slowly for the best dramatic effect!) over to where they were sitting and leaning right over them said in a loud firm voice " can you both shut up right now?"I have always found this direct approach to be the best action as it not only embarrasses the chattering culprit but it gives a warning to the rest of the audience to keep quiet!
Now, I don't discriminate with other social groups here! In my experience older ladies at the arthouse cinema in Theatre Clwyd are the worst offenders, and all have to be treated in exactly the same manner.....firm and fair (much to the embarrassment of Hazel, who can be often seen sliding down her seat almost onto the floor!) The last time I told two well dressed matrons off, I received a "hear hear!!" from people in the back row!
People speeding through the village
I am becoming obsessed with speeders! Balancing on the narrow pavements, often with two dogs in tow, I now seem to have the innate ability to judge when someone is driving "dangerously" over 30 miles an hour and offenders often have to "suffer" the surprise and shock of me, and middle aged man in a silly woolly hat, pointing at them with a disgusted look on my face whilst mouthing "TOO FAST!!!! TOO FAST!!!!!" in an exaggerated Helen Keller type of way
We have a zebra crossing in the village, and sometimes when I am waiting to cross it, drivers will ignore the fact that I am standing there and will drive ahead regardless....I now have a somewhat devilish plan to shock these kind of drivers, and occasionally will make a big exaggerated show of stepping forward (with no intention of walking out!) subsequently the drivers have to slam on their brakes and I can walk out in front of them smiling sweetly and bathed in the warmth of a small victory !
People that talk to animals as if they understand English
Now I have blogged about this subject before and it drives me NUTS! so much so, that when I go to the vets and have to sit in the waiting room with the usual crowd of fellow pet owners, I will do so only when I am listening to my digital radio so I don't have to listen to the drivel that some people come out with!
I remember one lady that had a badly behaved collie which was snapping and growling at every other animal in the room. She talked to the animal constantly in a strange sing song voice, telling it it was a "bad dog" and explaining at length why it was there,what was going to happen to it and why it should behave a little better!
After 20 minutes of this constant chatter and her inability to control her unsocialized animal , I was beside myself and when I finally went in to see the vet, I turned to her and said "I would give up, if I was you, he obviously does not understand English!"
................It is official........I AM a grumpy old git!
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