Going Gently

Go Gently

It’s 6.20 and it’s my third 12 hour community shift

Coffee time…..the air is already humid and it feels like another hot one.

It’s a lazy post today

The nameless actor who spoke so eloquently about the Rainbow Bridge has posted another video, this time it’s the famous Dylan Thomas Go Gently speech .

It’s quite beautiful

I love the way some commentators missed my reason for posting the Rainbow video. It’s not the sentiment that intrigued or even pleased me ( I don’t believe in any afterlives)

But it’s about performance and passion.

I think this actor has that in bucket loads

Enjoy

Sat in My Undies

What a busy day….blisteringly hot on the Welsh Coast especially in full uniform in a tin can car , but how many community nurses have to drive around medieval castles every day? Not many….

I disrobed as soon as I walked through the door and got the old cheesy feet out of my crocks without dripping anything from a glass of Spanish Sherry which was in my hot little hand within seconds. Soon after Dorothy gleefully got to work as I sat steaming on the trendy blue sofa like a sweating bag of middle aged knackered nurse fat.

Mary joined in ( they must have been cheesy) and I had to open my legs wide to prevent a fight

Not the best looks when sat in your underpants

Omg anon is right…I’m writing rubbish lol

Nite nite

Homework

I “found” my anonymous “homework” from a palliative care study day I attended a bit ago.

It was read it out to a silent group of nurses and doctors on a wet morning before my birthday 2019

I didn’t read it

I remembered writing this yesterday

“ I have a fantasy about my own death.

I am lying on a clean bed, the bed I remember from Childhood with the yellow candlewick bedspread , the one with the bits pulled out by bored fat fingers

I am comfortable

The window is open and my garden lies ahead, neat and ordered. A breeze is on my face. I am wearing a white shirt that smells of starch

My dogs lie nearby, told off not to crush me .

The cat crushes me, he doesn’t give a sod.

Fingers comb my hair”

Community

Early morning long walk with dogs,

Off to work.

I’m working in the community for the next three days to cover

Lots of MacDonald’s coffee before work

And hill starts in the Welsh Countryside

A Man Called Otto

Saturday night,

A night in

Feeling a bit blue

I dug out this little gem to watch on the couch, covered in dogs

The delightful Mariana Trevinô

Hollywood seldom remakes foreign language films that well

It’s as though popularity automatically means success so let’s not work too hard in the translation .

A Man Called Otto is based on the Swedish hit A Man Called Ove,which is a story of a suicidal man who is encouraged to start living again by the interaction of friends and neighbours of his neighbourhood association . This was a gentle and amusing film with a big heart thanks to Rolf Lassgård, it’s leading man and the remake is amusing and warm too, but not thanks to its lead Tom Hanks , who remains slightly miss cast.

In Otto, the Hank’s character is one most of us know in one way or another. He’s a man of policy and process, a man who fights against injustice and the faceless corporations . He is a stickler for rules, is grouchy, mistrusted by neighbours and irritatingly bad tempered but when a Mexican family move in opposite , the garrulous, opinionated, heavily pregnant and big hearted mother Marisol ( a delightful Mariana Trevinò) slowly wins him over making him realising that suicide isn’t the answer to his long term depression.

Hanks as Otto and the wonderfully inept Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Marisol’s husband Tommy

The message that community heals depression and isolation is one dear to my own heart, and is one I totally identify with, and so when Otto slowly begins to thaw, I sobbed buckets .

Mariana Trevinô is the real heart of this movie, cumbersome and shrill yet exuding bucketfuls of affection and warmth , she is more than a match for Otto’s depression , literally pulling him back into the land of the living with some beautifully judged one liners and a genuinely infectious and tearful smile.

It’s a lovely, gentle film that says a great deal about community and love and genuine affection.

Want to feel good?

Watch it

My Marisol? There’s been a few

Trefor

I picked Trefor up around 10 am.

He’d forgotten I was coming but with a bit of mild panic , he donned a coat, and found his slippers and got into Bluebell with the minimum of supervision.

He’s 99 and looks well.

I brought him up to the TCA Coffee Morning where he could mix with the other grey hairs ( including myself) and chat….he did just that until lunchtime.

The coffee morning was full with a good sixty to seventy people there.

On the way back to his residential home he asked me about my work and college and told me of his days as an electronics technician for the civilian RAF and we gossiped about a neighbour we both have little regard for like old ladies so often do when they are feeling a bit snide.

“ Do you ever hear from your husband ? “ he asked me suddenly as we stopped the car and I told him “ No , not any more”

He patted my hand with his and smiled

“ You deserve a lot better” he said in his sing song Welsh accent

And raised his walking stick in a gesture of farewell