Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

This is a nice story. 

It is also a true one .

It happened nearly three years ago now and it a testament to serendipity.

I shared it with a loved one recently, to illustrate how things will often change for the better when you least expect life will......

Like I said it is true.

It was my first visit to my divorce lawyer. 

I had to borrow a car from Jason The Affable Despot to go.

The solicitor’s office was located in St Asaph, right next door to the cathedral, and like today, it was a sunny day. 

I remember little else about the interview apart from the kindness of my solicitor and the projected estimated bill of “ several thousand pounds”   

I left the office numb and silently panicked 

I hadn’t got a bean to my name..

How could I fight any divorce with no car, no money and no job

I sat in the cathedral for the longest of times.

Long enough for one of the ladies that ran a small coffee stall in the corner of the naive to quietly wander over to rest a serviette on the chair next to me.

Eventually, with bleary eyes   I got up and drove home

Mary was racing around the cottage when I walked in. She had a chewed envelope in her mouth. Her and William had attacked the post again, in transference to pulling off the postman’s fingers.

Flat and upset I opened the letter which was covered in bites and terrier saliva

It was from a Solicitor’s office I had instructed months before to look into any PPI claims (personal Protection insurance) I had with banks and credit cards I had in the 1990s

I had long forgotten about it .

 

Apparently, it said , I had a claim! ........in fact, the woman on the phone said when I hurriedly rang her , I had several claims that were successful and after 30 % fees and VAT and others costs I was in line to receive over eleven thousand pounds ! 

Eleven thousand Pounds ........in fact the final sum was greater than that!

I told the clerk that I could kiss her .....she laughed good humouredly 

That serendipitous windfall saved me . It paid for Bluebell and paid off my credit cards and overdraft and vets bills and it allowed me to put some away for the solicitor , deadening the fear and the worry of officialdom at its worst.

Serendipity........

It’s such a frivolous sounding word 

For something that proved to be so vital .

I’m not over fat just under tall

 

It’s funny...

But I do find the presence of stuffed toys in a totally adult household , just a bit creepy. 

I say this with the sudden realisation that I have three stuffed toys in the house. Colin The Chameleon, with his jaunty leg kicked sideways underneath the art wall; a cute duck billed platypus bought from Sydney Zoo is sat in my bedroom bookcase  and a now almost 40 year old Garfield sat benignly in my living room cupboard with a gentle smile upon his face.

I reassure myself that owing stuffed toys only really becomes creepy when they occupy your bed, you know the sort, sat unseeing , face forward between the pillows .....that’s when toys are creepy

Garfield was given to my by my twin sister when we were in our twenties.

I liked his slightly cynical view on life back then, and that’s a riot in itself. 

When most young people were saving the whale, joining Amnesty International ( which I later did lol)  and stretching their political wings against the poll tax or Thatcher’s policies 

What was I doing? 

I was watching movies and following the mantras of a ginger cartoon character

Go figure.

It’s a lovely day today and I am in my office sorting out what to do on my holiday next week.

Right on time Mrs Trellis totters past with Blue

She doesn’t see me up at my desk

I’ve already sorted a few meet ups with friends, lunch in Liverpool with Colin. More lunch with Cheryl from Ramsbottom ( a great sounding place) Outdoor dinner with Chic Eleanor and our friends in Conwy and a family get together this weekend if the weather holds and a socially distanced picnic with the hospice staff on Llandudno’s beautiful West Shore....

It’s a little too early for a Sheffield trip but that is on the cards alongside a London trip to see Nu....

I have missed her so over the past barren year. 

Mrs trellis 

My Wood Is Missing

 

It’s been an extraordinary busy day

Made easier by some funny vignettes 

The best was when I had to meet a huge extended family of a patient for the first time one of which commented quite loudly to another in an adjoining room “:He doesn’t look like a nurse , he looks like a Samoan rugby player! 

Hey ho

I left work late, and didn’t get home until well  after half nine and all I could think of was a cold beer ( I had one in the fridge) a good foot  licking by Dorothy and a warm roaring fire. 

Well two out of three ain’t bad

When I went out to the back shed..the one bordering on the lane behind bluebell ...the door was wide open and all of my remaining kiln fired wood ( some thirty logs  or so) had been stolen 

Hey ho....

Be Prepared

 My sister warned me that there was a group of nefarious types stealing dogs locally.

Apparently this has been a more common practice given the lockdown phenomenon of soaring dog prices and increased demand for designer dogs.

I saw Maggie from the village this morning and warned her as her sweet cocker made goo goo eyes at Mary 

“I’m prepared” she said pragmatically showing me a specially made waist band to which she had fixed her dog’s lead to with what looked like a climber’s carabina. 

“Keeps my hands free” she said, “ in case of emergencies”

I looked impressed 

She pointed to a small piece of equipment on her wasteband 

“ Here is my rape alarm too !” 

I laughed and was just about to ask her if she was packing a gun , when she fished into a pocket and brought out a small canister 

“ pepper spray !” She explained

God help anyone trying to steal Maggie’s dog I thought 

Molly Sanden & the Children of Husavik perform "Husavik" [Live Oscars 20...

This should have won the Oscar for best song last night...

It didn’t......

Even though Molly donned 48 earrings, two miles of oven tin foil and was surrounded by a gaggle of fat Icelandic cherubs all dressed in home knitted jumpers, the beautifully lit Reykjavik skyline and the whole country’s firework stores

Pity.....I liked i

Cleaning The Kitchen late

It’s been a funny old day all told.

I got up early walked the dogs , had eggs on panini toast then realised I hadn’t planned much for the day.

I went back to bed and watched internet movies and tiktok crap then day dreamed about meeting a floppy haired bear dad with no baggage and holes in his jumper at the village hall.

Of course this only happens in specialist indie movies based in Yorkshire  , and so , I walked the dogs again, and returned to bed fully clothed where Albert gleefully took advantage of a group siesta and slipped in between Mary & Dorothy before the latter made herself comfortable by resting her chin protectively over mine. 

We all slept until four .

I woke slightly disgusted in myself for wasting the day, so in a fit of energetic pique, I cleaning the kitchen within an inch of its life and made soup for my lunch at work tomorrow.

Hey ho

Oh Yes

                                         

    When in doubt, TWIRL YOUR EFFIN’ ARSE OFF!

 

The Prone Trolley

 When I worked In Sheffield’s Spinal Injury unit, the occasional patient would have been able to mobilise out of bed by using the Prone Trolley.

These patients were usually ones with older spinal injuries but with new, more acute skin problems or pressure sores on their bottoms and sacrum. 

The prone trolley was in fact an adapted theatre trolley , which the patient could like face down upon, usually with strategically placed pillows supporting hips , sternum and feet. 

The patient would move the trolley with his arms, which would propel the front wheels, allowing him or her the freedom to navigate the Spinal unit, and at the same time no pressure would be exerted on the more vulnerable sore bits , allowing them to heal naturally .

These patients would generally be covered with a light sheet , below which they would be naked and paralysed .

One patient I remember who used the trolley was a bit of a wag , I shall call Norman

Now Norman was in his thirties, and it would be fair to describe him as a bit of a joker and a wide boy. He would spend his time with the newly injured and sometimes more sensitive patients on bed rest and was one to joke around and play tricks on them and the nursing staff , who put up with his antics with uncharacteristic thin lips.

I remember one day when Normal pushed himself onto the balcony garden of my ward, he entered into some ribald joshing with several of the patients on bed rest. Unbeknownst to the staff, a couple of the patients had clubbed together and with the help of a visitor turned the tables on poor Norman and an hour after he came he announced to the staff sitting at the nursing station that he was returning to his own ward for tea. 

The staff said nothing as he wheeled himself past the nursing station and allowed him to pass my office which was at the end of the corridor without further comment.

As Norman wheeled himself merrily part he shouted out a greeting which I answered 

And I turned to watch him pass I saw that his fellow patients had secretly removed his sheet  allowing the world to see a large expanse of buttock with two large capital W s drawn in lipstick on each cheek.

And placed very carefully between the butt cheek itself was a hastily picked daffodil, standing proud, yellow and very tall.