The Daffodils of Sheffield

 

Small hangover this morning.

Not a huge one…..I don’t do them any more, but one big enough to warrant my best filter coffee and not a coffee bag this morning.

When I was a singleton in Sheffield I was a big drinker.

Thursday nights were always “ Nurse” nights at The Ledmill where taxies home were only a fiver and cheesy chips could still be bought on Hillsborough corner before locking up.

Monday night was always a pub quiz in Walkley. Then Walkley was a cross between an up-and-coming and a down-in-heel residential village perched on one of Sheffield’s seven hills. 

It was full of terraced houses, mostly filled by nurses and University Staff who couldn’t afford Crooks and Broomhill and often on my drunken walks home to Hillsborough , down in the valley, I would help myself to flowers growing in the tiny front gardens, no bigger than an average coffin.

( as you may realise my relationship with cut flowers stems many years)

One day, after a rather heavy lock in post quiz , I remember waking up to hundreds of daffodils , all crammed in a plethora of containers , cups, vases, saucepans, milk bottles, The KETTLE ! 

There were hundreds of them all over the house 

Several hundred in fact……

And perched, pride of place, inside my Charlotte Rhead vase was a single, and obviously much prized, black tulip

God knows where I got that from

Hic

 The last time I went to Linda & Nick’s lovely cosy cottage for an unofficial TCA (Trelawnyd Community Association) catch up I turned into Helen Keller by 10 pm and had to feel my way home, given the amount of gin I consumed. 

Tonight I was better behaved but still had a small stagger when I slid into Well Street after dark.

Linda’s argument is that we do our best brainstorming after a gin and bitter lemon.

And fellow trustees Bridget and  I couldn’t disagree with her.

The object of our conversation was centred about the Christmas Fayre and I was quite proud of my suggestion of getting the school children to make a lantern each in school to parade to the pond with their parents and other villagers to leave the lanterns there ready for a pond open day the next week. 

Before my third gin, we had dispensed  with official brainstorming and just sat around their kitchen table gossiping and laughing . 

It was nice to hear about Boffin Cameron having a new girlfriend ( amongst other stories), and how good the food swap was doing in the telephone kiosk.

That’s the only bit of gossip I can share here, lol.

I love going around to Linda and Nick’s for they, like Bridget and the other members of the TCA are bright, caring people who value their community, and who do that caring with a smile and with good nature. 

Hic

It took me an age to find my front door keyhole in the dark when I got home 

Potting up

 I drove to Llandudno with the leaving cards for two staff nurses. I get a little irritated by the usual practice of a sad envelope left on the side of a noticeboard which is often filled by the flotsam of change in pockets and purses. I favour a proper collection with someone “ in charge”

And so I’ve had to put my money where my mouth is .

And I’ve collected the monies personally.

I stopped on the way home and had a coffee at Parisella’s new cafe but didn’t stop long as the place was descended upon by four sets of helicopter parents and a gaggle of Toby’s and Lilly’s 

The children were fine, but the noise from the parents as they frantically ran around “ organising juices” and seeing if little Archie wanted a panini ! was dreadful.

This afternoon, I’ve spent most of my day repotting Chinese Money Plants 

Informal catch up TCA meeting tonight at the velvet voiced Linda’s  

She’ll have the gin cooled 

 

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