Looking After Oneself

 I met a couple new to the village last night. 

They were walking their dog up the lane and I was watering the sweet peas which had climbed nicely over the garden arch.

The wife said something that pleased me greatly

“ I always love your flowers” she said “The ones in your side window”

Ive said this before but Ive always had at least one bunch of flowers in the cottage at any one time. Ever since I bought my first home back in the 1980s flowers have always been my constant. Even when I was low on money, I would always have enough for a bunch of something bright to fill a vase or a gap on the window sill. 

Flowers make a home, homely. 

In that sense they are very much like a cat, for cats warm a house by nature of perching happily in the background. 

I’ve just heard that the ponies are returning to the field for a little while

This pleased me too, as their presence, for a few weeks, will bring a lot of happiness with it.

There is a great deal of satisfaction seeing them munching through the weeds, the Ivy and the overgrown grass.

The cottage is filled with the smell of garlic and onion

I’m making a colourful butternut squash Katsu curry

I’m coasting at work a little this week as I have a few more day shifts before my next holiday. 

I find I need a break from the hospice every two months or so….

The holiday, like a cat in the background, the ponies in the field and the flowers in the kitchen window will please and heal me 

Where My Trust Is Without Borders

This song is running around my head rent free and has been for days.

I don’t have a faith at all, but the words, I find rather moving

I left work early today after taking my time owed and spent a slightly frustrating hour on the phone with Mrs Trellis discussing her ideas for the Church meeting on Thursday as soon as I got home. 

I watched episode 2 of The Walking Dead on my IPad , then had cold homemade leftover  felafels for tea. 

Soon it’s Only Connect on tv with my diet allocation  of gin and slimline tonic

Mary has her collar of shame on as she’s got a sore bum which has been made worse by Dorothy’s licking.

Albert’s got worms , probably caught by eating rabbits.

My friend Alex who lives in Poland has messaged asking me to meet him in London next week

I think we are going to the theatre

Ps I’ve just bought this lovely tea cup

Quite beautiful

Autumn

 

I feel a bit spaced this morning.

I only finished night shift yesterday morning.

Now I’m drinking a bucket of coffee before a long day at work……with my head fried 

All my fault.

It was darkish when we all got up this morning. 

And when in the lane I noticed a yellowing of the hedgerow and felt a slight autumnal chill in the air

Where has the year gone? 

I was nearly late for work.gridlock welsh style

Hathersage and Hope

 

The Sheffield City Hall Ballroom

The dining ballroom in Poseidon

When I was repainting my bedroom that smart navy I cleared out lots of clutter and flotsam.

Amid the detritus of 59 years on this planet, I found a box of photographs.

We don’t seem to have or keep boxes of photographs anymore do we?

Amongst them, , when I got to sort through the memories as I was sitting in the bedroom window seat, was a postcard of the moors above Hathersage in the Hope Valley.

I remembered who had sent it before I re read the inscription on the back

Sorry, call me please….Adam x …it said simply 

I had met Adam at the unlikely sounding Poptastic back in 1995. I was on a break from a boyfriend and a relationship that was fraught with difficulties and too much drama, so wasn’t looking for anything in particular. 

Poptastic was a camp-as- Christmas gay night at the city Hall Ballroom  in Sheffield.

I loved the night, not particularly because it was gay themed….it was more that the surroundings reminded me of the Art Deco dining room in The Poseidon Adventure . 

A middle aged gay movie buff’s fantasy .

Adam was a farmer, well to be absolutely pedantic , he was a  powerfully built livestock feed salesman who used to be a farmer and he looked every inch of one, what with a rosy expression, a tweedy jacket with brogues,  and several young female friends from Hathersage and Grindleford and Hope all determined to have a great time on the works night out. 

He was perhaps 32 and had genuinely never kissed a man before 

I was a tiny bit older and had kissed a few so I was surprised that only after some mild flirting on my part

he came home with me. 

He was closeted, gauche, sweet and very serious and he fell in love with me after that first fumbling evening, even though he was terrified of his family’s and friends’ reactions to the fact he’d gone to bed with a scruffy nurse from Walkley. 

I fell for him too.

For he was a gentle, kind and old fashioned soul

Who couldn’t of? He was a big puppy of a guy. But I was in the throes of a destructive relationship where my boyfriend was already closeted and secretive and at the time ashamed to be gay and I was realising what I could cope with and what I wanted and so a man who was so new to the the gay world wasn’t quite what I needed .

But I saw him again, and again, when he would turn up sweetly with bunches of flowers and an uncorrected assumption  by his parents that he was visiting a girl in Sheffield . 

Then my ex started to call too…..we’ve all been there…..

When I finally broke up with Adam , he cried like a baby. and broke a pane of glass in my kitchen door as he stormed home …..soon after that I disastrously revisited my former relationship which lasted and limped on, like a sick rat until the millennium.  

In retrospect I’d probably been better staying with Adam 

It was a timing issue  I guess. 

It often is…….

The postcard arrived six months later . 

I kept it but never replied to it

I’ve always liked Hathersage 

Such a pretty place.

Saturday

 I’m working tonight as a favour to a colleague.

I’m back on day shift Monday .

It means she can spend sometime with her son . 

She left me a goody bag of gin and men’s toiletries as a thank you and when she had her break 

I sat at the nurses station with a manly face pack on 

I haven’t slept much today. 

Lots of noise from nearby village gardens.

I got up , made falafels which I baked in the oven 

That’s about it

Chilli Scotch Eggs to die for

 

My obsession  love affair with scotch eggs is now the thing of legend. 

Just recently a I ❤️ scotch Eggs T shift was delivered to Bwthyn Y Llan and before that a gift of two,were left on the kitchen wall, wrapped in silver foil and an Aldi Carrier bag.

Tonight I was left a trio of bespoke chilli Scotch Eggs, a gift from the a hospice head housekeeper whose husband works as a Butcher in nearby Conwy.

Suffice to say my diet went out of the window

The butchers they came from is Edward’s Of Conwy 

https://shop.edwardsofconwy.co.uk/

And it must be said their chilli scotch egg is a thing of sublime beauty 

I ate my first without taking my clinical mask off, which is not an easy procedure in anyone’s books…and the second I savoured more slowly….like a Frenchman may do over six oysters and a glass of champagne

Two minutes later, I was finished

The third I shared with some colleagues. 

As I didn’t want to appear as greedy.

I am set up for the night now, and as I was placing my patient on his ventilation system he gave me a questioning look ….which obviously meant you,reek of chilli and sausage meat!

 

Goodbye Ben

 

Ben and his family

Ben and I were interviewed for the same job at the hospice on the same day. 

I was convinced he would get the job over me as he had worked there already, was responsible for research between the University and the hospice and had taught student nurses as a lecturer in my ex husband’s School of Nursing.

I was desperate for the job and was retired and felt old.

Getting the job meant that I could finally afford the mortgage on the cottage

As it turned out we both got the job

And Ben turned out to be a dear and loyal friend .

In the last two years, he, fellow nurse Ruth and I have been part of the same messenger group as well as work colleagues. We are planning a reunion in his new home next year.

We “talk” out of work more than we do in, and the banter was a lifeline during lockdown 

That group will continue to flourish, I am sure,  as it’s a site for banter, childish innuendo and gossip.

Ben, as the only straight man, is inordinately gossipy.

The only downside to the messenger group will be the time difference.

For Ben and his family are off to South Korea.

I had the challenge of buying Ben’s leaving gift, which wasn’t too hard as he is travelling light and will just have the money. But I wanted something a little more special for him, given the fact he’s a bit of a hippy.

Finally I thought of something and I’ve bought three trees in his, his wife Sokyo and daughter Luna’s Names from the National Trust.

So they will have something of theirs rooted in the soil of Britain