My only New Year's resolution is money related.
Extra unsociable hour shifts have helped paid off my solicitor invoices and tax bills and in perhaps six months I shall be clear of major debt except, of course my mortgage .
I've worked almost every weekend in several months!
This weekend I'm off!
In a wooden caddy, somewhere safe, any spare cash gets hidden away.
I know that Dotty needs spaying
I know my car insurance has gone up.
I know know that at some stage some social disaster will occur
But I'm saving up for a break away.........
Gwyneth selling ice cream at one of my village allotment open days
After work I called up to my sister-in-law's home for a family meal
I've only just got home.
It was too late to call down to see Trendy Carol or to knock on Village Elder Islwyn's door.
I wanted to give them both my best, as after an age of both caring for village character Gwyneth E They both found themselves grieving , not only for someone they looked after in her own home for many years.
But saying goodbye to a dear friend.
Over eighty years ago Gwyneth was born in Trelawnyd..
I think she lived here for most of her life, and years into living a normal life she started showing the symptoms of the disease MS . Islwyn and Trendy Carol amongst others cared for Gwyneth in her own home.
They cared for her better than any trained nurse would ever have done, and they kept her free of the lottery of district general hospital care by pragmatic and informed skill and affection and so when I arrived in the village it was common to see Gwyneth in her electric wheelchair going to church or the village Hall or to one of my open days with one of Trendy Carol 's dogs on her knee.
I never knew her complain or moan once about her lot
She was an old trouper.
And so I am sending my best wishes to Carol and Islwyn today. Unsung heros of the carer world.
Two carers who will miss their charge so acutely as if she was their own mother
You both did Gwyneth proud .
Gwyneth ( left) as a girl in the village by Wynstays ( near affable Despot Jason!s home)
I was expecting something different from today.
The cottage is now mine. The solicitors have sent my soon to be ex husband his requested monies and so there was just the simple job of sorting a few minor joint bills out and that, more or less, would be that!!!!
All neatly in time for New Years !!!
Yeah right
Things never quite go as planned..do they?
It's like being on an unknown rollercoaster
That's a theme from 2019
Rollercoasters and serendipity.
More about serendipity later.
I started 2019 at my very lowest ebb
I've never been so unhappy and out of control in my life
I had just returned to work in a miserable nursing home ( such a comedown for my self image) I had to borrow Jason's car to get by and I lost William, my old dog with the very gentlest of souls.
My life was uncertain with the cottage eventually having being put up for sale
Single in my late fifties.
And Jointly responsible, I guess, for a failed marriage which had come out of the blue.
I was in a sorry state to be sure
Then serendipity started to place her fickle hand on things
Over weeks and months and purely by chance I started to sing in a choir that fed my soul with light, I bought my own car with the help of a gay friendly bank clerk divorcee and I grew restless with the mundane work of a badly run nursing home and found a job advert for a nursing position at the hospice unexpectedly one night.
I got that job in the most fiercely fought and needed job interview of my career.
And by getting that job, I was steered onto a course of obtaining my own mortgage. A course which has never run smoothly or easily, but one which finally ended just a few days ago when £300 took my husband's name from off of the land registry records.
I lost my dear old George in the summer and made new friends here and abroad and felt supported by old ones as my family watched quietly in the sidelines as they have always done ...And eventually I lived more interesting days that were not always filled with tearful self reflection and overwhelming grief .
I made mistakes ( oh why did I put myself through going to my father in law's funeral?) but I also
learned from a friend's experience of divorce that you just need to accept when someone has fallen
out of love with you.
It just happens...
And I get that fact..I really do
But I also get that the most important thing about divorce is not that you want one
It's about how you go around getting one.
It's all in the doing.
No lies, no half truths no unkindnesses I've seen a quite a few
and Hopefully no in laws that drop you like a cheap whore once sides have been taken
I will never forgive those callous moments of pain.
And I should know what was done and when for in the words of Jim Steinman at the beginning of his Classic Love and Death and the American Guitar was belted out...
" I remember Everything, I remember Everything it only happened yesterday"
Divorce and a good memory
Are very bad bedfellows.
Believe me, indeed they are....I know
And so on this New Years Eve the whole sorry mess of my divorce is almost over.
Not quite, but almost over and
I've finally realised that I have survived it.
I have my family, my new friends and my old ones
I have my blog readers and my new wonderful colleagues
I have my dogs and a golden eyed cat called Albert
And I have my cottage
In that tiny corner of a village I call home.
And, like a feather in a cap, I can honestly now say that I have my sense of humour which has slowly returned to me , like lazy swallows do in early summer long after you think that you will never see them again
" Why are you texting me from the cinema?"
That was the message I received from my nephew Leo during my time watching The Rise Of Skywalker
I was a bit bored
The Jedi twins fight, fall on the floor, fight a bit more, fall on the floor a bit more and feel at one with the force
The rebel alliance gets attacked, look worried, get attacked again, have lots of group hugs, look even more worried after most get killed then hug again when reinforcements turn up
We have seen it all before, and it's all polished and good fun
But hardly original at all.
I missed Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) who starred in the previous movie The Last Jedi but who had a tiny role in this the sequel.
She gave the franchise some warmth and heart
I ate my last Fortum & Mason's scotch egg this evening when I got home from work
I ate it very slowly as I read the news on the loo
There is only one thing better than a posh scotch egg
Today I'm sorting lists, paying bills and making plans at the kitchen table.
I like to do this in silence.
Well silence , save for the loud ticking of the kitchen wall clock and the snoring of the bulldogs.
I always face my art wall when I work like this
I don't like looking at the lane window, especially at night.
The lane window, used to be the kitchen door which opened up straight on the lane.
I don't like the thought that people can look in directly from the road.
Last night I was arranging paperwork on the table and had just started a satisfying " to do " list on my right. (I was using my Christmas pens too which pleased me ) when I saw Dorothy raise her head from the reading chair to look at something just beyond my shoulder.
She was silent but her hackles were raised.
A gentle tap-tap at the window made her sit up sharply and brought Mary yapping loudly in from the living room.
A man's face white was pressed up at the window as I turned around, he was mouthing words I couldn't understand
"Shit a brick!" Was all I could say
One of my pet fears is faces at windows at night.
I composed myself and pointed up the lane and went out to the kitchen wall, flanked by all three dogs in their stiff legged defence pose " I think your cat is in my car" the man said with a worried face " he has quite a temper on him"
It turned out that the man had stopped outside the church to drop off a Christmas wreath and had left his car door open in order to empty the car's rubbish into the Church's bins which are tucked away behind the lytch gate.
Ever nosey, Albert had appeared from nowhere and had jumped into the driver's seat then hopped into the back seat for a good sniff around . He was sitting rather angrily on the back window ledge when the man caught sight of him in his rear mirror as he returned.
Albert has a permanent look of surprise which is often mistaken for temper and wouldn't be moved even when the man had prodded him carefully with a plastic snow scraper
" He scared the shit out of me, sitting there like a black panther " the man admitted and when we got to the car, Albert was indeed sat in the back of the car, whipping his tail back and forth in anger.
" I asked in those houses who he belonged to and was told it was you" the man said
The car was only a two door sporty number and that's why Albert had not moved to escape and so it took a bit of arse squeezing on my part to get beyond the front seats in order to get a firm scruff hold.
The old boy eventually came quietly with his legs dangling
The man stepped back as I brought Albert into the open air " Im glad I saw him when I did." He said " I live in Blacon "[outside Chester ( some thirty miles away)]
