They quietly watched me weed the garden for hours
Dum, Ba, dum, dum, dum..............
I had trouble with him my dum dums last night
But after a bit of struggle ( and some shameless copying of the lead Bass) I got there in the end.
Choir practice is not easy, but I'm getting there.
There is no music to follow, no elderly matron playing the piano in the corner, there is just the slightly manic choir master who sings your bit briefly showing you the note with his flat hand, and off you go.
My favourite song we performed was Soul Wind an African American song from the Deep South.
I loved it....here is another amateur choir singing it ( a video I've been practicing to this morning) and I must say that our version wasn't too far from this performance, but perhaps that was down to the acoustics of the village hall.
You're not yourself either....as you are one of many
And even if you are dum dumming at the back
You're a vital part of the group!
And that's nice.
What was the last song you sang?
And to end......
Thank you all for sponsoring me and Ann for our zip Wire Challenge which is booked for the 26th
I have finally reached my goal of raising over £4000.00 for Rhyl Samaritans, which is a phenomenal amount of money, especially given the fact that my original goal was just £300.00
I am very proud and humbled by the support given
Growing Up
There are moments in life when lightening strikes and you suddenly grow up into being and more importantly understanding what it is to be a real adult.
I remember one such moment today
I was a young 27 year old nurse, who worked hard and played hard
I had just started my career on the spinal Injury unit and found myself working on the readmission Ward which catered mainly for patients who suffered from the complications of long term paralysis, namely skin problems , urological dysfunctions and carer issues.
There I became friends with a big gentle bear of a chap called Noel.
Injured in a car accident two decades earlier , Noel lived with his family in a small rural Norfolk community . He was paralysed from the neck down and required full time care even though he could drive a car and had attended a local university.
He was a strangely sanguine man, with a calm good natured dignity to him.
I liked him immediately ,
On reflection I fell for him immediately.
Noel was on bedrest due to skin problems but his enforced captivity never seemed to get him down , indeed rather conspiratorially he suggested that I lay down next to him one morning when I was suffering from a dreadful Leadmill nightclub induced hangover.
We became firm friends.
A year later, after Noel's skin issues had healed and long after he had returned home ,I caught up with him for tea, when I was on a flying visit to see another friend who lived in Cambridge
Noel was his usual gentle natured self.
His health wasn't good , but he blossomed with the care his sister and her family gave him, and when we sipped our tea, she and his grown up niece disappeared off to do some shopping.
" She's not my real sister " , Noel eventually told me as we chatted and caught up "they are not my real family.....my family abandoned me after my accident"
He then told me the whole painful story of a dysfunctional family who had turned their back on a newly disabled boy of twenty who had been confined to a wheelchair .
Almost from nowhere a local family with two small children offered to give Noel a home and when Noel was 25 they officially adopted him into their family without any fanfare or ceremony.
" They saved my life" I remember Noel saying in his usual calm and reasonable way
"They didn't have do it ........I wonder to this day why they did!"
And As I watched him struggle a little with his emotions , I realised just why they had done it
This gentle sweet man had given them as much happiness as they had given him
I held his hand briefly even though I knew he couldn't feel it.
And as we drank our tea outside a tearoom in Bury St Edmunds, I grew a little older......and wiser
I remember one such moment today
I was a young 27 year old nurse, who worked hard and played hard
I had just started my career on the spinal Injury unit and found myself working on the readmission Ward which catered mainly for patients who suffered from the complications of long term paralysis, namely skin problems , urological dysfunctions and carer issues.
There I became friends with a big gentle bear of a chap called Noel.
Injured in a car accident two decades earlier , Noel lived with his family in a small rural Norfolk community . He was paralysed from the neck down and required full time care even though he could drive a car and had attended a local university.
He was a strangely sanguine man, with a calm good natured dignity to him.
I liked him immediately ,
On reflection I fell for him immediately.
Noel was on bedrest due to skin problems but his enforced captivity never seemed to get him down , indeed rather conspiratorially he suggested that I lay down next to him one morning when I was suffering from a dreadful Leadmill nightclub induced hangover.
We became firm friends.
A year later, after Noel's skin issues had healed and long after he had returned home ,I caught up with him for tea, when I was on a flying visit to see another friend who lived in Cambridge
Noel was his usual gentle natured self.
His health wasn't good , but he blossomed with the care his sister and her family gave him, and when we sipped our tea, she and his grown up niece disappeared off to do some shopping.
" She's not my real sister " , Noel eventually told me as we chatted and caught up "they are not my real family.....my family abandoned me after my accident"
He then told me the whole painful story of a dysfunctional family who had turned their back on a newly disabled boy of twenty who had been confined to a wheelchair .
Almost from nowhere a local family with two small children offered to give Noel a home and when Noel was 25 they officially adopted him into their family without any fanfare or ceremony.
" They saved my life" I remember Noel saying in his usual calm and reasonable way
"They didn't have do it ........I wonder to this day why they did!"
And As I watched him struggle a little with his emotions , I realised just why they had done it
This gentle sweet man had given them as much happiness as they had given him
I held his hand briefly even though I knew he couldn't feel it.
And as we drank our tea outside a tearoom in Bury St Edmunds, I grew a little older......and wiser
Shitting Myself
my friend Jane doing the wire
There was a small collection of cards waiting for me in our Samaritan centre last night
All but one had foreign post marks....
More cheques and money sent directly to us from blog readers
So a big big thank you to S Vercoe, Alma, The Pattersons , jenny O and Jerry
I cannot underline enough just how frightened I am of heights
It's an inherited fear, passed down to me by my mother who was famous for negiotiating any hillside walk on her hands and knees, and for years it has crippled me from doing many things which is strange given the fact my favourite movie of all time is The Towering Inferno.
When my sister and I were eight were went on our first ( and indeed last) foreign holiday with my mother and Auntue Greta. Loret del Mar in the 1970s was a place full of high rise cheap hotels that seemed full of beige furnishing ants and straw donkeys. Our hotel rooms were on the tenth floor and it was easy for an eight year old to lock himself and his mother out of their room.
The maid suggested to my mother that I was small enough to climb from my aunts adjoining room to ours across the balcony in order to unlock the door and the bloody woman ( probably fired up by the local gin) totally agreed!
AGREED!!!
Thank god I was an assertive little sod even then... though my impassioned arguement that an appropriate adult negiotiated the 150 foot drop rather than a knock kneed geeky child with a big head did fall on unimpressed ears....common sense prevailed
Heights continued to terrify me.
I've blogged before about being led off the observation deck of Seattle's space needle by an elderly Japanese tourist during a thunderstorm ( my knuckles were totally white and totally cramped)
I was 40 then
And on a trip up St Paul's I farted so nervously on the dome staircase an American woman had to gasp a " Dear God in heaven " comment behind me.
When painting the back of the cottage ( 9 feet above the ground) I got so nervous I had to ring my brother for help.....he and my neighbour Sailor John thought I was a pussy.
So I hope I have illustrated just how hard the Zip Wire Challenge shall be for me
Ann and I do it on the 26th and would love a bit more sponsorship to seal the deal
So I hope you don't mind that I repeat that my donate page can be found at
https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/johngray1
You can also donate directly at PayPal ( jgsheffield@hotmail.com)
Or by cheque to the Rhyl & SE Wales Samaritans,
23 Bedford Street , Rhyl, Denbighshire North Wales LL18 1SY
Thank you soooo much my friends ..we are up to ( with gift aid etc) 3,700£+.let's reach 4,000£
Good Mornin'
A friend said this today
"If there is a lesson to be learnt here, it is that most feelings of hopeless melancholy serve no useful purpose other than to ruin your evening"
He's right so Have a bit of Gene and Donald and the fabulous Debbie
Enjoy
Cake Tin
It reminds me of our lurid pink flamingo Christmas lights carefully packed away in a box in the bookshelf.
I wonder if those will stay with me or go with The Prof when their time comes.
Another thing yet to sort.
It's the small things that pain.
The objects that transport you to another time, another place and another country when you look, feel and experience them.
Conduits of memory.
A few weeks ago I collected all of the special Christmas decorations the Prof has amassed over the years, from London and Sydney and New York and SanFrancisco and placed them in a cake tin labelling it unsurprisingly Xmas decs.
Ready to go.
Hattie
I felt I was in one of those nice , middle class wartime films this morning. I was sat at a table of the Trelawnyd Community Assiciation's Book swap Coffee morning with Heulwen and Hattie..
Now Hattie is the new girl in the village.
She's in her twenties, is painfully pretty and has a bubbly charm of Lily James' Character in The Guernsey Literary and potato pie Society .
She also wants to meet her fellow villagers, with a eagerness which is as sweet as it is genuine .
After a slow start the Saturday coffee mornings seem to have taken off well.
There is no pressure on people to attend at a fixed time , so people pop in when they want have a mooch through the large array of books, grab a coffee and a cake, read the paper or chat to their neighbours .
All the tables were in use when William and I went in.
I pointed out the characters to Hattie as they came in .Hubert the old village baker, Boffin Cameron's mum and dad, velvet voiced Linda, sailor John, Daphne and Meirion from the flower Show committee ..Mrs Trellis
Hattie darted off to introduce herself to Margaret Walker and Heulwen and I smiled at each other like extras from that wartime film
" she's a nice girl" we said together
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