“ John Gray!!!!”

I bought a nice fish dish yesterday. I’ve put my smaller money plants and cactus in it

Albert has recently amused himself by knocking the plants onto the floor

I think it’s a case of transference because Mary is chasing him a little more over mistaken jealousy over the rubber chicken

I photographed the dish 

Preempting my post of today, 

yes it’s been a slow week

 I’ve been sat in a waiting room for 28 minutes.

I’m precise because there is one of those digital clocks on the receptionist’s desk

And this is the third waiting room I’ve been in this morning and it’s only 11.23

The hospital has WiFi thank god , but not enough to stream The Walking Dead

That’s probably a godsend as zombies can be noisy when you’ve forgotten your headphones.

I’ve not seen a doctor yet, just a series of technicians . 

The ultrasound woman was a bit of a pig, so much so, I asked her if she was having a bad day

“ Staffing is dire “ she moaned behind her mask.

The phlebotomist was more sanguine she told me she was off at one and was going to Sainsbury’s to buy her daughter a birthday gift. 

Tu’s range of girls dresses are lovely and very reasonable apparently 

It took her four goes and two arms to get a sample.

I don’t want to be here

Heartstopper

A friend’s daughter told me I should be watching Heartstopper on Netflix. 

“ You’ll love it” she told me

I looked it up. 

Based on a graphic novels by Alice Oseman, it is a coming of age tv series about the lives to two teen age boys Nick and Charlie and it has a wholesome, innocent but very modern look on teenage first love.

I joined Netflix in order to watch it and I must admit it is incredibly sweet , and angst and all consuming the way love always is when you are fifteen.

Oh how I wish we had Heartstopper when I was a boy.

I’ve had a paperwork morning. I’ve sorted out travel insurance, logs, vets appointments, urology appointments , banking, theatre tickets and my counselling course, and now I’m just organising some batch cooing.

My new food bible is Slimming Eats by Siogban Wightman who is a blogger favourite of mine.

I’ve decided to get my eating under control by always cooking something flavoursome and in quantities that can be frozen as well as eaten. Therefore anything I’m tempted to eat in the house will always be homemade, slimming, tasty and easy to get hold of. 

Tonight it’s lamp balti curry with cauliflower special rice.

Old Trefor is ok today btw.

Little Bathroom man has just messaged , he hopes to start work next week.

Lamb balti and cauliflower rice

CODA

CODA (child of deaf parents) is a nice movie 

It’s not a great one, but it’s a sentimentally sweet one, the kind you enjoy of a Sunday afternoon when you have nothing to do. 

The story is a simple one. 

Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing person in her hard working fishing family. When the family business is threatened she is torn between supporting them or going to college to study singing.

It’s an appealing coming-of-age story with a lovely performance by the doe eyed Jones,and if you want a blub, just enjoy Ruby’s audition into Berklee where she signs and sings a version of Both Sides Now quite beautifully .

I was sobbing like a real man when there was a knock at the kitchen window. It was Mrs Trellis with Blue She had met up with old Trefor down the lane who had taken a bit of a turn . 

“can you come?” She looked worried 

We all piled into Bluebell 

In his late nineties , it had seemed that Trefor had walked a little too far on his daily sabbatical and was a little shaky stood at Graham’s field when we got to him and it didn’t take long to get him back home with a beef dinner on hand .

I checked him again at tea time and will do so again tomorrow morning

When I was pottering later Lywenna stopped briefly. She is the widow of Gentleman Farmer Ralph. She told me she was in the process of picking out her husband’s headstone and our eyes met briefly, in a silent acknowledgment of just how hard a job it was for her.

Lywenna has a quietness and wonderful  dignity about her, 

I’ve always envied that 

It’s been a nice day

Spring Garden

My sister arrived early on and licked the front garden into shape.

I videoed the result and have mooched around it for most of the morning. If my new neighbours are out in their back garden I try not to be around in mine, for all I seem to hear is an elderly Yorkshire terrier’s incessantly yapping followed with their incessant bellows of “ Shut up Charlie” 

It’s all a bit common.

Speaking of common I’ve just braved Tescos in Prestatyn 

Which can be a trial in itself if you aren’t in the mood for badly behaved kids and their sports wearing parents.

I soothed my nerves with a mooch around the home department of TK Max and bought a rug, and some accessories for the new bathroom.

Charlie was at full hysterical yapping stretch when I got home so I closed up the back of the cottage and opened up the front to the sun.

Hopefully he’ll have a Stroke soon 

( I only mean that a little )

The sea pinks

It’s still glorious here.

The honeysuckle which Janet so fervently cut back last year has formed the front door in dark green healthy leaves in which the hedge sparrows from the lane are presently chattering.

The sea pinks in the basket by the door have finally bloomed and are thriving in their mid air beach.

I’m going to make butter and bread and a seafood paella later.

I’ve watered the houseplants using the garden toucan and the front room now feels a little humid in the direct sunshine

FarSide and Killing Eve

 I’ve been accepted into the far side Facebook group 

Some of the old cartoons are new to me 

Love it 

Killing Eve had a lot to say about the the power of relationships 

I loved the finale tonight and cried 

Eve was always the survivor 

SRA

We treat each other on nights. The night before last, Di brought in bespoke chilli scotch eggs from Conwy 

Hand grenades of beautiful flavour.

Last night I brought in watermelon and mango and left them in the car.

I’m not pretending it was busy.

It wasn’t 

I read a lot about the use of visualisation in pain relief, in between patient care

And I’ve booked tickets to The Play That Goes Wrong, a guided tour around the famous Liverpool Liver Building , tickets for a welsh play Celebrated Virgins ( About the famous Ladies of Llangollen) 

Oh and I’ve finally found a suitable shabby chic hotel for Gorgeous Dave and I to stay in when we are in Rome.( 2 bedrooms rooms, en suite near the Vatican City)….all very La Dolce Vita

I've helped training up a student nurse recently and have asked him to listen to other experienced palliative care nurses in the weeks he’s been with us . " Pick and choose those interactions you hear nurses give their patients !" I advised " Be sure to steal them for your own interactions !"We all steal words and phrases we hear others use.
Sometimes those words have such resonance they burn themselves in your own vocabulary for life.
All of us sponges...for the different, the funny.....the pertinent.

In the late 90s I nursed a somewhat taciturn man for many months.
He was a formidable character, every inch a stereotypical policeman from say a 1970s tv drama...butch, unsmiling and ever slightly distant....think Valquez from Aliens and you'll get where I'm coming from.
He was difficult to engage and only seemed to perk up when he was visited by his police colleagues both male and women.
One policeman that visited seemed to be more smiley and less frivolous than the other visitors and I suspected with my gaydar at full beep that they may have been closeted lovers.
One day, when the visitor was leaving, I noticed my patient murmur " S R A" almost under his breath and this three letter goodbye was noticeably used too as a greeting after several visitations .
A week or who later , when I was teaching the patient how to manage his own bladder I asked him if I could ask a personal question and given the intimacy of the situation he surprisingly agreed , albeit gruffly.
"When your mate comes to visit ....what does SRA mean?"
I busied myself with preparing the nursing equipment as he looked at me squarely and after a long pause he said carefully
" It means a Sudden Rush of Affection!"

A hidden code between lovers

SQUID GAME …Grandmother’s Footsteps

On nights, When I am sleeping during the day, I am overseen and carefully monitored by Dorothy.

She will lie with her back against mine facing the door and there is method in her slightly obsessive madness as from that position she can maintain her top dog status with Mary and the ever more slightly cropped Albert.

For as I am happily snoring my best ( Poor Alex….less said about that the better) the animals embark on a strange game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.

The game is started as soon as Mary or Albert realise that I have gone to bed. One or both will then gallop up the stairs and will jump into the foot of the bed.

Then Dorothy will let out a low rumbling growl

She is staking her claim.

To stop any escalation of hostilities Mary and Albert have learned to freeze exactly where they land, and by doing so Dorothy will stop her growling. 

This tableau remains unchanged until Dorothy closes her eyes  thus allowing Welsh Terrier and cat to move another millimetre until the growling starts up again.

I’ve pieced the “ game” together now after several aborted efforts to sleep over the past two years 

And know that the growling and mini movements will continue until all animals are within a knat’s Crotchet of my body and peace reigns.

Simple

 

It’s been a long night all told

Even with a few hours sleep before I left the house last night.

My times of burning the candle at both ends feels to be somewhat over and

I’m looking forward to bed this morning.

Bed with bulldog licks on the soles of my feet.

There was a gift waiting at work for me last night

Pressed into my cubbyhole alongside papers on palliative care and mail was a gift wrapped neatly in brown paper. 

It was from my friend , one of the hospice doctors

Two artworks of Dorothy and Mary

It kinda made my day.

I will leave you with this simple thought for the day

There is a lot of psycho babble on the internet

But this wise old woman keeps it simple, to the point and uses language we all understand

Doesn’t that make life sound so……

So……….

Simple……