Trelawnyd Boffin Sponsor

As promised I am bigging up the teenage Boffin Cameron's sponsorship page.
He's doing the Denbigh 10k to support his Cricket Club.
I'm expecting great things from his Flower Show Entries in return!
See link
http://www.leetchi.com/c/cameron-ackroyd

" Oh William!"

Old dogs have accidents .

Old people do too. 

It's the way of the world as we all get older

I once skidded on a puddle of urine as I was rushing around a corner of a hospital ward and fell hard on the floor ripping  the backside out of my pants and I remember often finding malteezer sized balls of poo lurking like land mines around clinical areas after being warmed and shaped down pyjama trouser legs and around netty knicker incontinent pads.

Nurses on elderly wards always keep one eye fixed on the floor as they go about their business.

This morning the Prof sang out that William had "flooded "  another corner of the living room after being let in by Albert. and  with a sigh I grabbed the biological cleaner and kitchen roll.

5.30 am is not a time to be cleaning up pee.

This afternoon I caught him just about to wee in the same, newly laundered spot and after I yelled his name, he sort of "came to" and realised his mistake, hanging his head in the shame of being shouted at yet again

Yells of " oh William " seem to echo about the cottage at the moment.

I put down the bucket of ashes I was collecting from the fireplace  and scooped him up into my arms and we sat on the armchair together for a long long sweet moment.

Old dogs are just like old people. 

They don't mean accidents to happen

Fat Club!

There were more people queueing up for fat club than I expected yesterday morning.
As usual there was posters advertising just how effective the programme adorning the hall and on a table there was boxes and packets of diet cookies, cakes and anaemic looking pasta all ready to be bought.
I know the routine, I've been there before.
Most of the " clients" were women and most disappeared off to the toilets before joining the weigh in line in order to squeeze that last tiny bit of urine out of themselves before they jumped upon the scales. There was only one bloke in line and like me , he was the newbee.
He flashed me a sympathetic look.
The woman behind me had a handful of dogeared paperwork and told me that she had been coming to the meetings " for years" 
" They are my social life" she admitted " they gets me out of the house"
I asked her how well she was doing with her weight loss and she laughed
" I haven't lost anything since Christmas"  she confided "But I am on diuretics now so things may start moving" 
I nodded
" How long have you been big?" She asked me after a pause
I thought I'd be honest
" I was born big" I told her.

The Walking Dead Finale ( Spoilers! )

He never saw her coming ! 

The producers still had  a few tricks up their sleeves as The Walking Dead draw to a bloody climax tonight.
With the ambiguities very clear of who are the goodguys and who are the bad guys , " Team Family"  is effectively double crossed by the ill conceived junk yard group and find themselves again at the mercy of Negan and his band cut throats.
Nothing New there, especially as the audience could see Sasha's self sacrifice coming a mile away, but the  real satisfaction of this last episode comes from the sight of Carol leading the Kingdom's small band  of knights alongside Maggie and a rag tag band of brothers from Hilltop. Who turn up at the eleventh hour to save the day.
In actual fact, it is the remarkable CGI of Shiva, who steals the show, as she interrupts Carl's murder with a murderous attack of her own, dispatching Negan's men with  a crowd cheering munch!
In the end no more of the now united team family are killed, and Negan is driven off alongside Dwight who is clearly Rick's new cuckoo -in-the-nest .
Maggie's final voice over, as the leaders of the communities unite,  is strangely rather moving  and underlines the equalities of the sexes and just how far many of the characters have now come.
" People that once would pass each other in the street" are now family. she muses in her southern drawl.
I do hope baby Hershel survives in season 8!

The Sun On My Face

I've always made it my policy that if I see good clinical practice I let the person involved know what I think.
Last night I watched a young doctor deal with several complicated scenarios. These included a cardiac arrest, the admission of a desperately ill young man and several other knotty medical issues.
She competed her tasks with a cool and precise professionalism and in a brief lull in the proceedings I told her exactly what I thought of her.
I think she was surprised but pleased with the feedback.
It was a hard shift all told which she summed up beautifully to the tired group of nurses just before dawn
" I will be so grateful to feel the sun on my face in the morning" she said with feeling

Sunday

I was going to say it's a lazy day today, but already I have walked Mary in a power walk, ambled with the others, cleaned the cottage, prepared a roast lunch and cleared the ash from the woodburner.
It's fat club weigh in tomorrow and because we went out for a nice meal with friends last night where I had a baked Alaska to  myself, I need to keep activity levels up.
A farm lorry broke down on the school crossing this morning which caused a temporary gridlock in the village, a traffic jam only beaten by the moment Winnie decided to open her bowels on the zebra crossing at the end of school one summer's afternoon.
I stopped to say hello to Mrs Trellis who was on the way to church. She told me she was off to Spain on her holidays.t
Some new people were moving into ( or moving out of) one of the rented cottages on the main road, and I had to walk into the road with the dogs in order to pass their white van.
Short term lets do nothing for the village community. People come, they sleep, keep to themselves then go. It's a shame.
I spied Sandra C in her wellies as she ambled to her allotments behind Bonc terrace and Terry M who was out walking his dogs gave me the thumbs up when I called to him that the next Flower Show Meeting was due next week. Trelawnyd Val, who, comments here from time to time has agreed to join our committee though made it very clear that she doesn't DO scones! 
She will be a very welcome addition to our team of twelve.
Cameron the teenage boffin, is no longer the short geeky adolescent from last year, sporting longish studentish hair like Carl's  from The Walking Dead I caught him out jogging, a practise run for a half marathon he's doing to raise funds for his School's cricket pavilion.
I promised we would sponsor him , I think he's off to University this year!

The weather is warm and clear today, and all I can hear through the open cottage window is the crowing of the bachelor cockerels, the cheep cheep cheep of the sparrow flock on the stone wall and the dulcet tones of the Prof as he yells lustily at Winnie for accidently stepping on the tulips

3-0

I played the Professor at badminton yesterday

He was so competitive

I fucking won 3-0 

Not bad for a fat man

Retirement

" You're not old enough" 

" You'll be bored" 

"Really?" 

" What are you going to do with yourself?"

These are some of the reactions I have had from people when they hear that I am due to retire from nursing in August this year.

I've even had a lecture on just how the baby boomers should have paid more tax throughout their working lives from one person and a thinly veiled snort of disgust from another who equates retirement with waiting-to- die, old lady behaviours. 

Envy, resentment and irritation, I can understand, for many of the younger workforce coming through the system,  have to work until they are 65 before they can leave but the generalised negativity I have felt about Early retirement has surprised me.

I have worked since I was eighteen. Two years as a bank clerk, thirty five years as a nurse. I've trained four and a half years as a student nurse in mental health and general nursing and have spent another year specialist training in high dependency and spinal injury nursing. 

I have worked as a ward manager on an acute Spinal Injury Unit, facilitated good practice within sexual health care and like many of the specialised staff on rehabilitation units all over the world worked long unpaid hours providing extracurricular care to patients, many of which became firm friends.

I have also worked part of most weekends as an intensive care nurse for  over a decade.

I have mentoured, guided, disciplined and supported more staff than I care to remember and I have provided end of life care to patients and their families over a hundred times during long sad shifts.

I have been spat at, punched and slapped by patients and their family members.I have worked night shifts, Christmas days and most public holidays and have not had a pay rise for the past few years.

As a manager, I fought fires on a daily basis

And so I am looking forward to my retirement. 

I think I deserve it.

I hope to work occasionally, perhaps in the local hospice, a place which is more suited to my skills and experience, but retirement will ostensibly free up our weekends to do other things. 

Relatively soon we will move on from the village to pastures new. The Prof will blossom further up in his academic world and there are so many new things to do  learn, experience, travel to and enjoy.

I will also write my book, 

I may even have time to support Mary in some puppy care

It's time to move on.