Lockdown

 

I wrote this on Suffolk Sue’s blog..it’s kinda like a poem

“ My loneliness is intermittent and cunning,

                       It catches me unawares, when I least want it to

                       Most of the time I’m fine and grateful to have what I have

                       But loneliness still lurks like a child’s monster under my bed” 

Is this news?

 

Dog drawing by Gwynneth Rixon

I’ve just spent nearly a hundred pounds at the supermarket.

How did that effin’ happen? 

I’ve also had an argument with a couple of entitled mothers who let their respective children invade Dorothy’s  body space 

I’ve had several such altercations in my time. 

I cannot abide parents who think it’s perfectly ok for their little darlings to approach a dog they don’t know without permission .

I missed coffee with Chic Eleanor which pissed me off

Dorothy also happily shredded two extra large kitchen rolls in the back of Bluebell  during the ten minutes it took me to collect some meds at the vets.

I had to pull what looked like a ton of white papier-mâché from her mouth and throat in the vets car park with the help of a man with a poorly and very shy dachshund which caused a minor drama in itself  

Three bits of excitement for the day.....

I bought a cheerful fruit bowl, an indoor primula and flowers... from Sainsbury’s ....it’s yellow interior pleased me. 

This afternoon , I made sweet pepper soup, and talked and swapped moans with Nu as she walked around some westLondon parks ......

Tit Of Yourself

 This open letter was posted on the village Facebook page today . 

A sign of the times and a kindness from a nice villager. 

And something I need to share today.

Most of my colleagues at work  now have their second covid jab appointment and I’m proud that my little country is leading the entire world with the percentage of population vaccinated 

One by one my loved ones are getting the jab and are moving one step closer to safety .

I hope to hear about my appointment in the next day or so.

I’ve just come home and although shattered I’ve lit the fire and refused to eat crap for supper.

Work has been hard but I’ve laughed regularly all day.....

Laughter is common in a hospice .

The girls were curled up on trendy Carol’s trendy conservatory sofa when I collected them and they were so happy to see me

It’s after nine and I’m catching up with the latest Line of duty download, with a chicken salad made by the chef at work.

I will leave you with this my most favourite of line of duty  put downs 

It’s a cracker

 

Crumbs

I came home tonight and went straight to bed after walking and feeding the dogs

And giving Albert some kitikat 

I couldn’t be bothered lighting the fire and the cottage was freezing

So I shared a large bag of cheese and onion crisps 

And watched this 

under the duvet 

The crumbs got everywhere 

And I can’t be bothered removing them 

I’m so degraded 

Nite xxxx

 

Frozen

 

The lane this morning 

Thanks to a local farrier who gave me a push to work

Sir Basil

 When I was 18, I embarked on a very short and exceedingly unsuccessful career as a bank clerk.

Banks in 1980 were still staffed by dozens of clerks, all beavering away behind counters and in machine rooms and in the hierarchy, so evident in those old beige offices, I was the lowest of the low .

Now one of my daily jobs was to fold individual statements and seal them into envelopes before franking and posting . Now Certain statements of the most special customers had to be pulled out separately and their envelopes had to be hand typed by the junior clerk and the one I always remember was Sir Basil Rathbone * 

Now Sir Rathbone had no less than twelve letters after his name and every month I somehow managed to get one of those letters wrong. The B in OBE would be in lowercase, or the K and B in KBE would be reversed: I’d forget a comma between award letters and one time I actually had the audacity to forget a full stop.

I was forever being dragged to Mr William’s, the deputy manager’s booth, stationed behind and above the counter clerks to be bollocked for getting the envelope wrong and after a year I grew to hate Sir Basil and his difficult twelve letters, even though I was the one that had done the wrong thing and he was “petty enough” to shout down the phone to complain .

I eventually started my nurse training a short while later but on my very last day, I spied Sir Basil’s statement waiting patiently for it’s typed envelope and couldn’t resist completing it myself.

Before franking and posting the letter, I read out the top line of the addressed envelope to myself

It read

Sir Basil Rathbone SOD, BUM, ARSE, HOLE, TIT

POSTSCRIPT: a few years ago I remembered Sir Basil and looked him up online 

His obituary was written in 2015 when he was in his nineties and chronicled a war hero of some renown and note a fact that made me feel almost guilty for  the typed letter.

.......almost....... 

 

* not his real name

I Rather Than We

Rachel Phillips said this in her blog of today


“ All you people who wake up in the morning and write about "we this" and "we that", spare a thought for those who it is "I this" and "I that" when they wake up and for the rest of the day“


I heard and understood her loneliness so well this morning. The loneliness of lockdown and the loneliness of living on your own is sometimes a difficult one to deal with and although I think I can speak for Rachel too when I say we are not banging on about all things singleton it’s nice to acknowledge that life is sometimes just a bit tougher when it’s only you at home when the doors are shut and the curtains are drawn.


Last night my friend Ruth popped around for a night in. We have been in each other’s bubbles since the start of lockdown and so it was her turn to organise dinner.
I was online completing my Hitchcock - The spy films lecture when she turned up laden down with food , and so, for a change she pottered around the kitchen preparing a delicious salad to have with Waitrose pizzas, wine and garlic bread as I worked away online.


Seeing someone else in the cottage, albeit in the background of my zoom box made me feel part of something a little bigger from what I have.......and to eat in companionable silence with someone after conversations of interest and light was a treat much more savoured that it ever used to be , because of its rarity .

We watched a film together and someone else but me cried “ oh no” when Dora left Josuè at the end I walked the dogs, whilst Ruth had a cigarette in the garden and this morning I made coffee and breakfast and loved the fact that two plates were on the table rather than just one.


I’m not banging on, I’m not saying poor me..I’m really not ...and nor is Rachel , or Libby, or Sue in Suffolk or Weaver or any of us singletons at home on this cold Friday in February ..but today I understood Rachel so well when she said what she did without self pity but with a certain sadness,


“spare a thought for those that have to say I rather than we”

Central Station

Fernanda Montenegro

Central Station is a film I have always adored

I’ve loved it for twenty years 

Brazilian Dora is a retired  teacher who writes letters for the illiterate at the central Station in Rio 

By chance she meets up with a young orphan Josué and the meeting allows her to find some redemption from a life of cynicism as she finds herself responsible for his future happiness 

Me and Ruth watched it last night and cried buckets at it 

It’s message about redemption and reinvention is universal and recently so pertinent 

It’s a pivotal film in my cinematic history 

I adore it