Checking The Boundary

 I’m not sure what I’m all about today.

It’s a nothing day as I’m back on nights. This time doing my own and not a colleague’s who had been delayed in the beautiful looking Sicily. 

I’m mourning my cancelled trip to Italy and will organise one as soon as I can afford it .

I’m sat at the kitchen table and the almond milk in my bucket of coffee has curdled. 

The oven is purring and I’m going to be making soup soon

Butternut squash, bean and chilli 

I can hear pawsteps from the bathroom

Soon Roger will jog purposefully through the kitchen and into the garden. He will do a figure of eight around the paths, give a half woof at the gate, then will watch the blackbirds or a sparrow for a while, or the bantam cockerel who still lives in the gardens west of the Church before bouncing back to the kitchen. He will stop for a head rub before sitting in the sunny spot on the living room carpet with the others. 

An hour or so later he will be off on his rounds if I haven’t gathered the troops first. 

Checking each room upstairs , before walking through the cottage and garden.

He does his rounds checking the safely of his home.

I change the radio from a depressing talk radio to the relative cheerfulness of radio 2 ( Tom Chaplin Overshoot) and I add bulbs of garlic to the roasting butternut squash. I can see crumbs lurking defiantly on the work tops. Peeking out from behind knife blocks, underneath trivets, and my Italian Moka maker.

They tease me everyday even though I damp dust everywhere each day.

The home phone has just rung. It never rings anymore. 

A scam call from Microsoft. 

I asked the call handler if his mother was proud of what he did for a living

He hung up on me

I didn’t feel any better for my comment. 

I don’t feel sad today. Just a bit flat 

Do you know the flat place where your mind wanders like a fat bee on a buddliea bush.

I wonder what my ex husband is doing. I miss him.

Then I tell myself off for feeling lonely before adding stock cubes and more water to the simmering soup 

The cottage suddenly smells of food and Dorothy ambles in sucking her gums hopefully.

It’s almost two now. 

I chase the aforementioned crumbs with a damp cloth, 

Added the roasted squash to the soup and put it on slow simmer.

And fiercely washed my face at the kitchen sink using the Molton Brown handwash Nigel had given me

It smells so go I may use it in the shower later.

Roger has just trotted out into the garden again

His home is safe and he’s content it is with a satisfied snort 

Belinda Carlisle’s True Heaven Is A Place On Earth is playing on the radio.

I ladled the soup, which I thickened with udon noodles minutes ago

It was bloody , BLOODY lovely 

The Repair Shop

I adore The Repair Shop 

What’s not to like ? A motley group of sweet experts who fix people’s dreams by repairing their broken family pieces in a single swift effort to connect old grief to some sort of comfort.

It’s lovely

And a real sob fest

Today we had King Charles, publicising his passion for apprentice work in the bespoke arts and crafts and it was a joy to see Jay Blades chatting away to him as an old mate, hand on shoulder.

King Charles is a nice guy

With passions of worth 

 

Panto Season

Yesterday was a long day. I completed my counselling lecture on line from work before doing a night shift. I know the zoom protocol usually means that you need to check your background for incriminating articles, roving pets or underwear hanging on radiators .

One of my colleagues private messaged me it’s He’s Behind You ! message as we started 

Fangs

 Last night Gorgeous Dave and I went to the 100 year anniversary showing of the 1922 classic horror movie Nosferatu  over in Chester.

It was shown in its entirety with an improvised score by The Frame Ensemble who had been specially commissioned by the British film Institute to accompany Murnau’s seminal work. 

It was a really interesting night . And a different experience enhanced by the fact that it was improvised and a total one off. I studied it at university , and loved the revisit.

Dave and I giggled away when we agreed that we felt very intellectual in a very New York Woody Allen film character kind of way.

 

The Old Policeman

A beautiful ward at Bootham Park

This morning I’ve been balancing the books. 

It’s going to be a lean and tight month all told as I’m just getting to grips with my part time pay status and tax bills.

But I got most things sorted, and was presently surprised that I’m in credit to Northern Power by 800£

Happier than I was, I took Roger down the lane to some friends,  who live in the old mill. Here we chatted and drank coffee, whilst Roger galloped like a loon around their field in the faint hope of catching their beagle bitch. 

I’ve been meaning to go down since I got him for it’s important to socialise young dogs with more characters outside his home pack.

I enjoy the socialising too as one of my fiends is a retired policeman from Yorkshire with all the sensibilities and flat vowels that I’m used to

On my way home, I was reminded of an old Yorkshire Policeman called Ken, who I had nursed in York, and of the time he saved me and my friend Tracie from a bit of a beating.

Ken was approaching 80 when I first remembered him. He had been a beat policeman and then a Sargent during the 1930s and forties and had worked in the city of York all of his life. 

A city which was rough as a bears arse come the weekends where squaddies and locals would fight after a session up Micklegate.

Mental illness had left him incredibly quiet and withdrawn and he was admitted under section and was going through a course of ECT which it was hoped would kick start him from his near catatonic state, and longs days sat in a chair staring out at nothing.

I never heard his speak once.

The ward had two sitting rooms, both ornate and carpeted in expensive maroon carpets.One was upstairs where patients could smoke and watch tv  and the other downstairs, which was quieter and used for group meetings. Ken usually sat alone downstairs, in a small alcove overlooking the grounds. He was on general observation and was not deemed a danger to himself. 

Now I was still in my early twenties , back then, and still dressed like a children’s tv presenter ( thick colourful jumpers, loud pants) and I remember one day suddenly being embroiled into a physical encounter with another sectioned patient who WAS a danger to himself and to all around him. 

This schizophrenic patient had secreted a few snooker balls into his pocket from occupational therapy and with one in his hand , had hit me with it several times before I could call for help. 

A nurse by the name of Tracie Birkin came to my aid, she was fearless, and even though she always wore substantial heels and a tight skirt and bright red lipstick, she would get stuck in with the best of them if needed. 

A barrage of snooker balls , made her rethink her usual strategy and I remember we both ran into the downstairs sitting room in an effort to garnish more help. It was there that the patient caught us and the fight continued as another member of staff who had shut herself into the ward nursery with some mums and babies , sounded the hospital alarm bell.

Now even though we knew in a matter of a minute or so each of the seven wards in the hospital would send a runner to help us, we were losing our fight. 

That was until something clicked in Ken’s head and the old policeman resurfaced with a vengeance.

“Gi’Orrrrr! “ he shouted  ( Gi Orr is Yorkshire for GIVE OVER!) 

And after getting up from nowhere he swung and punched the violent patient once, very hard in the jaw , before helping him to lie down, unconscious on the carpet.

“ There’s no need for all that” he said simply helping Tracie who had lost both shoes to her feet and was sat down quietly in his chair before the runners from the wards breathlessly arrived in the doorway seconds later.

I can’t really remember if Ken ever recover properly following his ECT .

Too many patients and too many years have gone bye since he saved me and Tracie from a bit of a pounding

But I would like to think that the old guy did recover enough to go home 

You Are My Sunshine

 

Albert eventually settled down last night. 

He’s very stiff on his back leg and so I’m presuming his old injury is playing up again in the colder weather. I will ring the vet about painkillers. 

He won’t want Albert going to the surgery 

I haven’t anything planned today. 

I’ve just taken the dogs to Colwyn Bay and after walking them , sat on the wooden  promenade seating with a coffee. 

Further along, a scruffy looking woman was rocking a small dog in her arms as she sang You are my sunshine very gently to it like someone would sing to a baby.

It was so unexpectedly poignant a moment that I had to look away 

I walked the dogs all the way around to Rhos On sea, until Roger stopped pulling on his lead before we walked back and I knew the dogs were tired by then as they had stopped sniffing. We got back into Bluebell where they fell asleep and I sneaked another cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich from the Porth Eirias Cafe. 

I’ve been reading about Denmark recently mainly The Year Of Living Danishly by Helen Russell but as I was exploring what to see in Denmark on the net I came across a painting called The Drowned Fisherman by Michael Ancher which can be seen in the Danish National Gallery.

It takes your breath away, and I was captivated by its solemn beauty and the sensitivity of its subject matter.

It’s funny how much a single painting can move you and dominate your psychi. Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth still affects me in some strange guttural way now than it did when I last saw it at New York’s MOMA back in 2014

The beautiful Drowned Fisherman by Ancher

It’s damp and Autumnal today

The woman singing You are my Sunshine has given this Sunday a melancholy I wasn’t expecting

Albert’s Pissed

 

Angry Albert has spent the night on my shoulder tonight

He’s fucked off big style 

I’ve just gone with the flow

 

I dropped Nigel at the train station in Chester at lunchtime. He didn’t want me to make him breakfast so I bought him a bar of chocolate to eat on the way home . 

It was nice to have him visit after a six year hiatus. 

I’ve known nige over 32 years. We joke together in the short hand way only old friends can and we talk bollocks for hours at a time .

The dogs wound themselves up because of the visit, but Nigel understands their ways and calmed them down with it too much effort. 

We drank wine and ate pizza and talked more

And the cottage seems very quiet again this afternoon after he had gone.

I’m falling asleep watching and old episode of The Wire