The Little Pink Spot

 

“I’m deciding who will get what” 

My patient was a single woman in her early fifties, and she was making copious notes on a Basildon Bond writing pad.

Her answer was a reply to my finger pointing 

I sat down and waited for the rest of the story.

My patient was due to be discharged from hospital later that week. 

She had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer for a while now and this was to be her last admission for any medical treatment  . 

When she deteriorated further she had asked to be sent to St Lukes, which was Sheffield’s hospice at the time. 

I knew she lived in a large family house in Broomhill, which was the trendy and expensive suburb of the city, 

Her house, she told me , was filled with trendy objet d’art .

She was a popular woman too…who went to the Crucible more than I did 

It was her collections and belongings she was worried about .

She wanted the right thing to be given to the right person and was worried that her will , although completed was woefully inadequate for the job 

So she was making a list. 

I had an idea.

I rooted through the ward clerk’s cupboard and found several sheets of multicoloured coloured stickers 

“ Put a sticker under something you want to leave someone and leave your executor the key “;

She thought it was a fabulous idea so much so that she promised to leave me “ an item” for having the idea when she got home. 

By the end of my shift she had such a long list of bequeathed gifts , she had to enter various symbols and letters inside the sticker so that things could be allocated .

I never saw the patient again . I never heard from her executor either 

The pink sticker must have fallen off ……….

Post script 

In the top right hand drawer of my lovely new office desk, in the west wing of Bwthyn y Llan is a sheaf of multicoloured stickers . I bought them in 2009 from Woolworth’s in Prestatyn before they closed and

Someday in the future , I will take the day off ordinary chores and activities and I will amble around my cottage putting stickers on every last bloody thing 

There is some strange satisfaction at this simple thought

Time

 I’m sat in X-ray waiting for my appointment . 

I’m fifteen minutes early.

I’m early for everything I do.

I’m very seldom late.

I was musing about this fact only the other day. 

And now being early is a long term friendship joke.

When I’m off to the train out of London at say 7 am, Nu will often say that I’m catching the afternoon train home.

She knows me well.

I know myself very well too.

For this abhorrence for lateness comes from the constant and low level anxieties a child has when going to school.

As young twins, my sister and I were taken to school by my father, who was notoriously bad tempered in a morning. He was also slightly lazy and would not be hurried by school rules so every morning we suffered from anxieties bordering on abusive levels when trying not to chivvy him into snapping but balancing prudent silence against encouragement to get through the school gates on time. 

That constant, low level anxiety shaped a need to be always on time if not early.

It’s not rocket science 

I took the dogs down to the beach after the hospital visit, came home and prepared a Korean fish curried soup which is simmering on the stove . 

I’ve done laundry , moved half a hundred weight of kiln dried logs from the driveway into their store by the kitchen door and have had to sit down as my back is aching like a nun’s knee

Time to watch the latest Walking Dead on Disney….

What strange bedfellows

I Love BBC Radio 4

 If you can,  listen to this, either live  or on podcast.

It’s an often hilarious conversation between two bright Irish women. The author Marian Keyes and actress/ writer Tara Flynn

Simple, engaging, and warm 

Real autumn fodder Radio four does so well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09zgv36

Catch Up

 Not the best photo , but you get the gist .

Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, which was tasty and filling and the whisky cake was a bit of a winner especially as I cheated with squirty cream. 

We hadn’t got together since well before the Queen’s demise, so there were lots of opinions flying about

A Nice, relaxed evening

Charity Begins At Home

 I’ve been pottering around in the kitchen all day.

Nothing stressful , just all rather mindful 

Dinner is more or less ready. Just candles to put on the cake.

It was my sister in law’s birthday yesterday.

From the kitchen window, I could see Islwyn beavering away by the Church , so I took the dogs up the lane for a walk to see what he was up to. 

He had cleared the Church path of weeds and moss and had uncovered many of the old gravestones that had been lain flat in the 1980s. 

The covid snake stones, he had collected up neatly to be rearranged again, whilst another villager Mr Morgan finished varnishing the lytchgate. Mr Morgan Islwyn told me had financed the work himself.

I asked Islwyn why he working on the graveyard after the Church had been closed but I already sort of knew what his answer would be. 

“ I was a bad man my youth” Islwyn chucked “Now I’m earning myself some brownie points” 

Bunches of cyclamen planted by the Church gate by one of the members of the community association .

I haven’t got much else to do ( hence the blog entry) just wine glasses to polish, pudding to make.

Shit I’ve missed out an ingredient for the main course…time to sort it out

Buteo Buteo

 I was content to let the previous, rather lazy post suffice for the day.

Nothing has much happened, so there’s nothing to report.

But I’ve just been for a walk with Mary, who has been a little under the weather today, and I needed to share something, like you do when something quite profound, or beautiful or both has just happened.

We walked down the lane to Graham The Shepherd’s gate. His fields lead off to the West and the dusk sky was still clear against the silhouettes of the hawthorn hedges and trees and fences. 

It was cold and fresh and sat at the very top of the dead Ash tree , the one that always dominates the skyline sat a lone buzzard. 

He was crying out like buzzards do.

A strange mixture of cat call mew and squawk…a keey ya! 

Sharp and plaintive 

A lonely call in the darkening dusk.

I picked Mary up and she rested her feet on the top rung of the gate and she watched and listened as Welsh Terriers do and I could feel the thump of her heart against my chest as it raced to the cry of the buzzard as  it continued to call in the dark.

A moving rather  beautiful and simple little moment,

Caught by accident on a Friday evening

Rainy Day

 Dreadful weather today. Torrential rain 

Three dogs on the couch day 

Watched Amélie, Airport 77 and ate fish pie

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris

 

Towards the end of this movie the gentle hearted Mrs Harris ( Lesley Manville) turns to the finance director of the Dior fashion franchise ( Lucas Bravo) in the street and says “ We all need to dream , especially at this time” 

Suddenly we are not in a story set in 1957 Paris. 

Suddenly the titular Mrs Harris, a sixty something working class woman, is speaking for all of us in our post lockdown society of uncertainty, war and isolation. 

We all need a dream.

And this film celebrates dreams with gusto.

For Mrs Harris , it’s the dream prospect of owning a bespoke Dior  dress, and with a plucky positivism she wins over the elite Parisian fashion house staff in a rather sweet story about how easy it is to become invisible in later years. 

Lesley Manville breaks your heart as Mrs Harris and it’s nice to see her and Isabelle Huppert, as the Dior snobby manager taking the leads roles as women in their sixties. 

I can’t recommend the movie enough

It has a sweetness we all need so very much at the moment .