New Year Review

No matter how old we are, we all are works in progress.

I’ve been changing the pages in my filofax and I’m very aware of how yin and yang this last year has been.

 

Covid restrictions being lifted should have meant everything in the garden was rosy but travel chaos, flight cancellations and rail bollocks has put paid to my trips to Rome and Barcelona and London whilst the recession, fuel crisis and financial crash has sobered us all up from our post-covid frivolities 

And so, let me get 2022 into some perspective 

Let’s look at the positives

I’m on the tentative journey towards a new career.

Not bad at 61  I think.

My family met up for a delightful and oh so necessary reunion in Sitges where we sat together into the small wee hours talking and talking and talking about family shit. 

Sadly my nephew divorced but we bonded more over something sad in common.

My love affair with London and with theatre blossomed again, not only, with my touchstone meets with Nu continuing but with catch ups with friends Alex and Jon and Janet of course, and visits to my “ second “ home of the Z hotel, which is tucked carefully behind Covent Garden. 

To Kill a Mocking Bird, Cabaret, The Corn Is Green, Six, The Royal Ballet and the dearest of them all Come From Away it’s been a fabulous year for theatre in London and at home.

London eventually meant meeting nephew Leo too whose absence has broken my heart a little more than I ever realised it would .

Zoom meets have dissolved into real meets , Jane in Manchester, Ruth in the wonderfully bizarre and welcoming Findhorn , The Northern Belle with Nu and in Sheffield with Mike and John and Katherine very soon

Dim witted but sweet Roger arrived chasing autumn leaves like a loon and with the thanks of a cheerful and tone deaf builder my new bathroom arrived with a wall mounted heated towel rail to go weak at the knees for . ( I had 232 comments on that blog when I finally unveiled the splendour) 

Blogging has provided a mini life line as it has always done and in 2022 I’ve had over 2.5 million hits on Going Gently  alone….go figure that one….contrary to some, I must be doing something right.

On a personal note , I will ask for an armistice on troll comments .seriously they do nothing but poison the air that we breathe and after all of the hard few years we’ve had  I really don’t need the bother……

Helping with the TCA Trelawnyd Community Association has given me some more direction and purpose and sense of community again and my part time status at work has given me more space for college and home. Both have been incredibly welcome .

It’s all still a work in progress, especially with some health problems lurking in the shadows. Shadows that can’t always be shaken with positivism and humour and which are always sadly there when you live alone. 

In the new fanatical crisis we have all found ourselves in, I , like everyone else need to reevaluate things but I’m lucky I have a family that loves me, friends that do the same and I live in a village that cares for me.

Thank you to them and to Trendy Carol and Ewan,…..without them I could never have kept my dogs. 

Their support will never be forgotten.

The news that my ex husband is getting married again slapped me across the face much harder than I expected it too but bra straps have to be hoisted  and I have to get on with things.

It was one of the last hurdles to face , come to think…

I find life lonely at times and I will not apologise for saying so.

“We feel what we feel “so says Carl Rogers 

But like all of us it’s one foot in front of another and don’t beat ourselves up when we get things a little Wrong.

Thank you dear readers , readers who keep coming again for snippets of everyday life of a sentimental gay bloke living in a Welsh Village. Your kindness, occasional sycophancy , good humour , and friendship means a great deal, especially when the shadows gather in an often unkind world

I’m rushing now, I’m covering a late shift at work and it’s already 1 pm 

I’m working tomorrow too but have just been invited to the luscious Velvent voiced Linda ( and Nick’s) for drinks later tonight, so that will be a first in decades

Going out New Year’s Eve…….

Bloody hell

Look at me ?

Chimes

 

An old friend sent me a wind chime at Christmas

I opened it today and hung it under the honeysuckle by the front door this morning.

I feel a bit flat today and after walking the dogs at 8 am I went back to bed in the spare room with Dorothy who licked my feet more out of duty than of want.

Roger had opened his bowels during his mad half hour runaround last night on my double bed

And the duvet cover is now drying on the field gate.

It’s blustery today.

Coldish

I’ve been sat on the sofa for over an hour, trying to get myself going

I had no idea it’s Friday.

I listened to the sporadic chimes, ringing gently through the letterbox and finally collected in the Christmas cards standing on the window ledge 

In my friend’s card he had written carefully “Hear the wind and think of me “ 

And so I did.

But Is It Art?

 IKEA is shite for its art 

So I’ve spent a while getting ideas for decorating my office on line 

These are my three finalists around which the office will be based on 

I’m wavering between the bottom two

IKEA

I’m in IKEA 

Not a good idea as it’s nose to nipple in here

I’ve driven a friend to a funeral outside Warrington and will pick them up after the “ do” after the service.

Now I’m eating Schnitzel 

IKEA does nice Schnitzel and coffee.

I’ve bought German sausages for the dogs , several house plants and a chair .

Not much else to report until I’m home

Tits in Your Milk

 

I have a new great nephew. He’s called Rew, after his grandfather, my late brother Andrew. 

 I thought today, that he wouldn’t see the phenomenon that was blue tits drinking the cream out of your milk bottle. 

Such activities are no more in our civilized society 

But how amazing was it that a bird that weighed no more than a piece of paper would learn to survive by drinking cows milk…go figure.

Things are always changing.

And like the milk bottle blue tits, there are things that have have gone from our world.

Overhead projectors, classified ads in the newspapers, dvds in supermarkets.

A road atlas in the car, working phone boxes and waiting a few days in order to collect 24 holiday snaps. oh and the lead pipe from cludo!

Nurses wearing paper hats, Pekinese dogs, sideburns, I could go on.

these things like the ghosts of life before us are only mildly interesting to a modern eye in passing.

I can live without the atlas, the phone boxes and the sideburns

but the blue tits and their extraordinary learning skills remains somewhat of a special loss

dont you think?

 

The Significance of touch

 Once, many moons ago now, I embarked on a short weekend retreat course in the Lake District.

I remember little about the event save for a few vague memories of group exercises which had more significance then than they could possibly have now, but most had to do with trust issues, self awareness, sharing , personal development and motivation. 

One I do remember though and that was an exercise that I think was called Walking The Hedge.

The “ hedge” as it turned out was made up of two lines of the group, an eclectic bunch of individuals made up of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, Occupational therapists, nurses and social workers.

The two lines faced each other and one by one volunteers from the group would be blindfolded and walked slowly down the line. The hedge would gently touch the volunteer ( I’m sure we were told to do so appropriately but with sensitivity) and at any one time the volunteer could be overwhelmed by hands which were described by the French leader as a “ Shower Of Cuddles” “ showerrr of cudd…elles”

I remember feeling dreadfully sceptical and somewhat threatened by the exercise but I participated reminding myself to place my had in non sexually ambiguous places.

It was a strange, incredibly powerful exercise for some

I remember one serious young medic who always seemed isolated from the group suddenly react to the touch “wave” with intense emotion and the more moved he became the more the hands of the hedge seemed to encircle and support him as the French leader slowed the pace of his walk.

It was incredibly moving to watch.

This happened several times with different group members.  

And not surprisingly I was not of them, as I had opted out of the Hedge Walk.

Which perhaps says a great deal about me at the time.

On a different level, I remember getting a gift from a patient from intensive care , who I looked after the day we woke her up from an induced coma. I washed her after she was extubated  and she confided in me later that it was the first time anyone had physically touched her for 17 years. 

The gift, surprisingly was two baby turkeys.

I touch people everyday at work. Even with covid at its highest I would hold hands and mop brows, and put my arm around a relative whose knees had started to buckle in grief.

Now that I’m older, I’ve become a serious hugger

I hugged Gorgeous Dave only yesterday when I bid him goodbye 

I think men are much better huggers than they ever used to be.

I wondered about the Hedge Walk and thought, today how wonderful it would be to walk the walk “ again”

Dust on the Candlesticks

 

I prepared cold Turkey slices and fried eggs for breakfast.

A treat as I listened to Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs , which, not surprisingly proved to be another treat.

I could listen to her all day long.  

I paused her interview to catch up with friends Ruth in Findhorn and Ben in Seoul on zoom and finished it after I came home later, after having a walk with Roger and Gorgeous Dave.

It’s just past 1pm , and already I feel as I’ve done a lot .

I sit at the kitchen table, my back to the window sipping coffee.

All I can hear is the wind, which has picked up from the East.

And notice that the candlesticks need dusting

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Christmas Morning

 I woke around 4 am.

Somewhat breathless .

I have a post covid cough which sometimes feels worse in the middle of the night.

I couldn’t sleep, so I’ve pottered around a quiet cottage. 

I showered and tidied up. 

I walked sleepy Welsh terriers and drank a smooth cup of coffee at the kitchen table

I cleaned the carpet where Albert christened with pee, a foot from his litter box

And I tried to read my book club book

My cough settled down and I moved to the living room where I sat sipping the cold coffee with the lounge window open. 

Listening to the rain.

Dorothy walked heavily from upstairs and stopped halfway to peep through the bannisters at me I told her I was coming back to bed soon and she returned to my bedroom with a snort.

Apart from when I’ve been working I’ve never been up at this time on Christmas Day since I was 10