Change Only What You Can Change

Sharing a car with a soon to be ex husband is difficult,
Like many things that have happened to me recently I feel that I am in a position devoid of any control, in the country, without access to a car, you are effective marooned at times, and reliant on the kindness of friends and family....so it's a big official thank you to my sisters, sister in law, neighbours and Jason the affable Despot

Recently it's felt a little like life is happening to me rather than with me.

It's always the case that you can see solutions in other people's problems and life issues whilst being totally incapable to sorting your own out, and so when reflecting and exploring a life change with a caller at Samaritans the other day I experienced a bit of an arhhh Ha !  moment .
Change only what you can change I suggested
It's not fucking rocket science is it?

I bought a car of my own yesterday.
It's not flash, it's not sexy.....but it is clean and economical and it's bleeding mine
It has five doors and a roomy back seat just built for dogs and tomorrow Winnie will travel in it for the first time , a trip a for a check up at the vets, a check up which will hopefully concur that she is indeed recovering from her " do" of the other night.
She's brighter again this morning and to prove the point has just sucked all of meat off an Aldi lamb shank.
She's the only dog in existence who could probably be resuscitated after a full cardiac arrest by wafting a garlic sausage under her nose.

My old girl is back!

British Bulldogs are built of strong stuff

Update

The View of the village this morning

I slept in the living room last night sharing the couch with an old bulldog. She's still with us this morning, a bit uncoordinated but, still with us.
I look like the wreck of the Hesperus in comparison.
Two fat lumps on a small sofa  eh?

Thirty six hours after her stroke , Winnie seems to be improving slowly.
Her recuperation seems to be mirroring her recovery from pyrometra last year.
You may remember that the vet warned me that she would probably die on the operating table then...and 24 hours post op she was standing behind the vet's reception desk bumming crisps from the secretaries.
If dogs were human, they would save the NHS millions.

I'm tired today and I'm working a twelve hour shift tonight, so I'm off to bed shortly. This morning Mary and I walked up the Gop, which blew the cobwebs away, then we returned the carpet cleaner and paid the fuel bill. On the way home I bought Winnie a MacDonalds cheeseburger which she has just enjoyed whole

Hey ho

Prognosis

The vet agreed with me.
Winnie probably experienced some sort of stroke during the night.
The bewildered and stressed look thankfully left her around 8am, the time she eventually woke up but the head tilt and unsteady gait remained with her as she pissed like a horse on the living room carpet.
Scans and steroids were discussed briefly but as she was able to drink from the bowl I offerered her, I decided to take the old girl home to deteriorate or recover as the will of the stroke dictates.
Her eyes were focused and as the vet took a blood test she tried to offer her face up for a kiss ( Winnie and not the professional) and when we got home she took herself off rather unsteadily for a piss on the lane verge .
She smiled a lopsided smile when I praised her, and I could have cried at her valiant good nature
This year has been too much a rollercoaster ride

Tonight she's had cocktail sausages for tea and slept on the couch when I shampooed the carpets.
As long as she doesn't extend last night's infarct, she has a fair chance, but she's old and fat and heroics will do her no favours

I'm writing this listening to The Archers .
As Lillian discussed Auntie Chris' fall with a pious Jennifer, Winnie belched loudly from her place on the couch and filled the living room with the faint whiff of sausage

03.17 am

Winnie woke me up just after 2 am with a constant series of sharp little barks

I found her disorientated and distressed in a corner of the living room with the other dogs and Albert milling around in stressful circles around her

I think she's had a small stroke in her sleep

I calmed them all down, checked her neurology  and cleaned up a large pee stain 

And a few minutes later she shook her massive head as if waking from a long sleep and climbed onto the couch with an over serious Mary in tow and fell into a long calm sleep

It's 3 .22 am now and I'm just about to go to bed. 

She's home and she's now comfortable so I'll leave her until dawn

She's an old gal, so lets be serious here

Then we will see what we will see. 

These dogs ..they.break my heart

Lord Of The Flies

Lola Adaja as Ralph and Gina Fillingham as Piggy

We studied Lord of The Flies in school when I was around fourteen, and I remember then Miss Betts posing the question -would the outcome of the novel be any different if the stranded school children had been girls and not boys?
I can't remember the answer we gave but I suspect that kids from a 1977 CSE English lit class would have unanimously plumped for an answer of yes. Girls are much more civilised than boys.
Or they were then in a semi rural Welsh secondary school.
It is interesting therefore, in this age where the differences between the sexes seem so blurred that Emma Jordan's production has an all female cast where  the " girls" very believably turn out just as savage  and as feral as the little boys.
Maybe it's a sign of the times?
Flies is not an easy watch; there is much shouting and " silly" behaviour where Golding perfectly captures the arbitrary and irritating part of childhood communication and imagination but the tension builds nicely to a fast paced second half where the shit literally hits the fan and the girls descend into out right War.
In this production the Piggy character who could be so irksome in the book is changed from a geek to a stroppy Yorkshire teen and Gina Fillingham brings a much welcomed warmth and humour to the role. A performance equalled by the other lead members of the cast.

soggy bottoms

You can't get a flavour of just how wet it is here at the moment.
Wet and dark and miserable.
18 th century cottages don't do well in such weather as their thick walls and small windows heighten the gloom, and so to keep your head above water, every lamp has to be switched on in every corner.
I've just been sitting at the kitchen table, deciding on what to do today.
I'm rapidly beginning to hate Saturdays .
For me, they are becoming somewhat lonely days.
Mind you a quick glance at the calendar hanging up by the door has perked the old tits up so to speak.
For on it, scribbled under today's date is the words Theatre lunch!
I'd forgotten but a couple of Samaritan chums and I had planned lunch out followed by an afternoon performance of the acclaimed Theatre Clwyd production of Lord Of The Flies.
What larks pip! 
Ok , an all female version of flies won't be a bag of laughs but it will be stimulating and a respite from the miserable weather
I was just digging out my best Walking Dead  T shirt to iron when my sister in law messaged me about an impromptu  family meal planned for tonight. The meal is a belated celebration of my sister and brother in law's 50 th wedding anniversary
Gifts and cards for a 50 th wedding anniversary can look so old fashioned and frumpy and so not in keeping with my sister's personality so I've now decided on buying them bunches of sunflowers in celebration.
You can't get any more golden then a sunflower.
Hey ho

Cassiopea

I'm going out with Mary in the torrential rain and 

I'm  going to listen to this music from Really Slow Motion

Tankard

I've always liked cleaning silver
There is something intensely satisfying in the transformation from tarnished to gleaming that pleases me greatly.
Last night I switched off the television and cleaned the silver whilst listening to music.

This little silver plated tankard was given to me in 1989..
It's sat on a shelf in every home Ive had since then
It was gift from the partner of a patient I nursed.
And it was a thank you for a kindness perceived
But it wasn't a kindness.
I'd been party of doing the right thing.

I don't remember the patient's name but I do remember that he had suffered a catastrophic series of  strokes at the relatively young age of 60. He had been placed in a side Ward on the busy medical ward I was allocated to and he was dying.
The man's sisters and their husbands were in attendance and it was a night shift, as I recall.
The dying man was gay, a fact that had come to light only to nursing staff during his admission when a closeted older partner had visited unbeknownst to any of the family members.
The nursing staff had managed to negotiate a tricky job of supporting both parties admirably but In the last new hours of the patient's life, his biological family, took over the vigil at the bedside with the " friend" having to take an aseptic role of visiting old friend.

Louise, the senior staff nurse in charge and I hatched a plan that night when the tearful partner turned up at the back corridor of the Ward after being informed his lover was now " being made comfortable"  The plan was simple enough. I pretended to find that the patient's catheter was blocked on my rounds and asked the family to leave the room so that I could change it. The proceedure, I told them, would take a little while. Louise marshalled the family and showed them to a " family" room away on another Ward which had suddenly been found free by the conspiratorial senior nurse officer on duty. They were then provided with tea and sandwiches
As the family were escorted out  by one of the auxiliary nurses, I ushered the partner into the side room via the nurses office.

All this perhaps sounds a bit larky, but the reality and pain of the situation became only too real to Louise and I when the visitor started to cry as he lay down next to his partner of God- so-many years. It was the first time I had seen a man kiss another man properly and with feeling on the lips, and the fact that both men were " elderly" seem to make the whole moment that much more poignant
The two men were together for over an hour, saying their goodbyes.

I left the Ward soon after and was tracked down by Louise when I was in nursing class a week or so after that. The nursing school was on the top floor of the Sheffield hospital only a floor away from the
Ward I worked on, and Louise was in full uniform when we caught up. She gave me the tankard which had been wrapped carefully in black tissue paper and ribbon and she was tearful.
It was a thank you gift from the partner of the patient who had died later that night . Louise and the conspiring auxiliary nurse had been given similar personal gifts for their roles in the deceit , gifts which she had accepted against hospital policy.

But gifts that were so gratefully given.