2023 Lists

 

Woman's Hour on Radio 4 is still a quality magazine programme, even with the the cloying Anita Rani at the co rains. Yesterday it discussed the making of lists and made it clear ( through some spurious research) that women enjoyed list making whereas to men list making was purely functional.

no shit Sherlock!

On my break tonight, I started a list of to dos

after all we are entering the Autumn of 2023 and the year has shot past like the fucking Japanese Bullet train with little to show for a life fairly well spent

The objective of my list is to have something of note to do once a week. This is to balance out my full one day in University and my two days at work. 

That's 17 weeks to sort.

Now from the 12th of this month I return to choir on Tuesdays and so I'm not counting that because its on a Uni day but I am counting the three short On line film courses I booked way back in January

so to the list so far

Three film courses over 2 weeks

One Night at the Liverpool Philharmonic , an orchestral accompaniment to the film Psycho

An Evening with Lucy Worsley discussing Agatha Christie

An Evening with Grayson Perry

Fascinating Aida in Chester

Les Miserables at the Guilgud

Don Quixote at The Royal Ballet

The TCA Big Night Out,

Rome!!!

Backstairs Billy at the Duke of Yorks

The lantern and Light Christmas night at Chester Zoo!!! (Cheesy I know)
Giselle at Venue Cymru
Waiting (A play based in the May Blitz in Liverpool)
Any cinema visits will be extras…..,!

Baba Ganoush

 

It’s bank holiday here in Wales and I’m rostered for one night tonight

I’ve never quite “ got” the enjoyment of the odd bank holiday , as more often or not, I’ve worked them over the past 40 years or so, like I am tonight.

It’s sunny and quiet here. My sister is on the patio gardening and is surrounded by dogs all intent on a cuddle. They are polite and diffident but persistent .

I’ve been in the front room in the shade of the houseplants…reading for most of the morning but

made baba ganoush for brunch which I ate with toasted bagels as I had no pitas in.

My mobile rang twice but I’m not in a chatty mood so I haven’t checked it

I haven’t turned the radio on either

I fancied silence this morning.

The little art nouveau writing desk by the front door has captured the warmth of the sun through the honeysuckle and the living room feels cosy and friendly as I always wanted it to.

Things To Do

 It’s just past ten and already we have had a long walk and a trip to MacDonalds for a proper coffee.

Yesterday was a nothing day; the days after night shift usually are as by early morning you have already worked an 8 hour shift that day and after a few hours sleep…….that day is a bust

I knew I’d need something to do today.

It’s just figuring just what!

Sundays are a couple and family day. 

I get that and don’t usually encroach. 

But today my single friends are as rare as hen’s teeth 

Chic Eleanor is away. Colin has been unwell, there is nothing much on at the cinema, either art house or mainstream and even FACT over in Liverpool has little on that interests me.

I feel like company today

Sod’s law I haven’t any

Postscript ….

And that’s fine…after coffee, I set to returning all of my refugee clothing to my bedroom. It’s amazing how piles of t shirts accumulate in corners and how dollops of underpants show their gusset holes on top of Roger’s crate. So I’ve washed and folded and put away a whole shop’s worth of clothes and made room for books and bits and pieces on the bedroom bookshelves .

I’m glad I did for I found two precious belongings tucked away behind the paperbacks

The first was my grandmother’s bible 

It’s missing a cover and it looks pretty sad for itself , but tucked away in Samuel was the stalk of a button hole, the stain on long gone flower petals on the pages which pressed it.

It was my grandfather’s button hole from his wedding and is 100 years old 

It was lovely to visit it again.

And keeping it company was a rustic woollen ewe made by Ma Manley 

She made it from the wool I collected from Irene 

It’s the only thing I have now of the soay ewes after Roger decimated my woolly hat last year.

It was nice to see her too.

The bedroom now looks clean and ordered.

I washed the floorboards and opened the windows wide to blow away the cobwebs

This afternoon , I made meatballs from scratch and used tomatoes from the telephone box food bank ( I swapped for packets of stock cubes) to make a rich sauce. There were lots of spring onions in the bank too so I made garlic and spring onion mash too

Quite productive for a lonely day

Blogs

 

I mentioned in the previous blog that Gill , the patient  mentioned had made me an embroidered scene which I had framed and which I still keep ever since 1988. Jackie asked to see it. 

So here it is.

I’m a little saddened with some activity on blogland recently too …I’m not talking about trolls….their activity is absolutely of no consequence to me but I’ve seen Silly one sided fallings out by old friends on line that to me seem petty and pointless . 

Blogland , for some , is the bubble , certain people find themselves in when driving their car.

Road rage and comments are safe to throw out, nasty insults and fall outs can be verbalised on line where they would never be voiced in a month of Sundays to someone’s face.

I’m having an aperol spritzer tonight, the fire is lit, and I’m mellow watching Northern Soul at the Proms

Sister Anne

 I have just shared a story with a colleague at work.

There was a reason I did, but that’s not for here and now.

It was a moment of ironic level headedness that was as inspired as it was funny

And it showed absolute leadership and confidence.

I once had a ward manager in psychiatry called Anne. 

She was a massive lady, clinically incredibly obese and terribly unwell who was a stone’s throw away from a cardiac arrest, yet she ran her ward with all the intelligence and energy of a much younger woman in her prime.

One of our patients was a young woman called Gill. I cannot remember much about her except for the fact she ran circles around the more inexperienced nurses on the ward. She was histrionic and personal and would not only insult the nursing staff but would belittle them and shock them in equal measures. Sometimes using physical violence and intimidation .

She would also regularly self Harm by slicing her arms and legs with razor blades. 

When I was a new staff nurse, incredibly wet behind the ears, I was asked to come off the ward to attend a staff meeting. It was a teaching session too and a debrief that was designed to help staff cope with Gill and some of her behaviours and it was facilitated by Anne, who provided a tray of tea and a plate of biscuits for her staff. 

Just as we were getting started Gill opened the door to the office and ran in. Her mouth was held wide open, showing all the staff a mouthful of unswallowed paracemol tablets and she moved like a zombie to one staff member to another moaning loudly.

Not one person moved.

Everyone waited for Anne to react

And slowly and with dignity she did just that.

Without even looking at Gill she picked up the nearest cup of tea from the tray and handed it to the patient . Who in surprise took it.

And for the longest time no one moved a hair, until still holding her cup, Gill walked slowly out of the office , her mouth still gaping wide with tablets.

Anne kicked the door shut with her foot as Gill crossed the threshold 

And Anne quietly said 

“ As I was saying…..” with the tiniest of smiles on her face

And Just Like That

 

The series remains a fantasy, even to its last moments.

Carrie's "Last Supper" where she got together her nearest and dearest friends to say goodbye to her old apartment/life is something most of us would love to do at one period of our lives.

Friends are the family you choose and by having so many on screen (16 or so) is a testament of just how loved you are.

For Gawd's sake even Samantha almost turned up but due to a blip with British Airways found herself back in the taxi back to Chelsea.

AJLT  comes from a world that lasts in just 2 minute bursts. it would be lovely but exhausting to live that strange fantasy life for real. sex is always on satin sheets and last exactly four thrusts before intercutting with another friend bedding another man.....and poor Antony, almost forced into anal at his ripe age just because everyone has to be everything to everyone.

And Just Like That is rubbish

but its now a 50 something rubbish show that the fans have followed  so loyally over the years and we forgive the holes in the script for the little gems of sassy dialogue that occasionally remain.

Miranda now is being kind to her exes in a touching scene worthy of the 1998 production and the whole thing is left a little hanging so that season 3 can be commissioned, which it unsurprisingly has been 

I suspect season three will be the last we will see of the large ensemble cast of multicultural ladies. Good as the African American, Latina and Middle Eastern actors are, their characters are never more defined as the original three Caucasian ones, which is a shame

I also predict Samantha will return again.

Kim Cattrall always stole the show in the first place

Catching Leaves

 On my walk this morning I caught a leaf.

It was raining and the wind made heavy by the raindrops hit a patch of trees like a slap, letting several horse chestnut leaves spin, first up in the air and then downwards to where we stood.

Roger and Mary looked up and watched them and on impulse I caught the nearest one in my hand.

According to Sue Belfrage in her book Down to the River and Up To The Trees, there is an old British tradition that catching leaves is lucky.

Keep the leaf in your pocket, till dried out and fragile it crumbles, she suggests

I carried it home and left it on the dash board in Bluebell

It’s feel like autumn today

Shampoo and Gifts

 

Dorothy needs a shower today.

I’m gearing myself for it, because it ain’t going to be pretty.

Unlike the Welsh who adore a hot shower, the very mention of one will send Dorothy into a state of High dudgeon.

She will put on, what I can only describe as her I am just about to a terribly abused face and will make a run for the garden, where after a brief struggle she will go limp and will reluctantly be half dragged half carried to the bathroom

I’ve treated myself to a MacDonald’s coffee and hash brown  this morning in anticipation

The last time she was showered she had a dirty protest under the shower head and pooed on my IKEA stone effect shower mat.

I think she has already sussed the situation, for I’ve put her  baby shampoo on the table .

She is hiding in the front room under my desk.

The war will begin very soon.

Oh and I was given a delightful gift today. Margaret from London Road made me this beautiful felt seascape after I fell in love with the one she entered into the Flower Show arts class

I was rather moved by it

Ps……post shower

The bathroom looks as though a buffalo had been massacred in it 

Dorothy is presently sulking but smelling lovely.

She is lying on the couch with her head under the cushions

I am going to have a lie down in a darkened bedroom