There are some pieces of music that just capture your heart
And piano solos can do that, sometimes almost without trying
This is my all time favourite.
Halvorsens adaptation of Handel’s Passacaglia
A flowing piece of beauty.
I’d like to add this cover of Barbara Pravi’s Eurovision hit Voila which in itself couldn’t be more French if it was wrapped in a baguette, covered in Fromage and buried in a pair of Edith Piaf’s knickers
Sometimes it’s about drugs, or procedures or conditions or biochemistry
Mostly it’s all about being human.
I had a patient who was in their 80s.
He was single, worked hard all of his life and was very much a part of the community in which he grew up in.
He had visitors twice a day. Many the same ones
Many different .
Most his age and younger.
All concerned and interested and sometimes emotional.
Some stoic and grey faced
Others hopeful with arms full of flowers
All had respect for him, several from childhood.
“ I never married John” he shared once “ I never had a long term relationship “
And I nodded, accepting the regret in his voice and the sadness in his words
Then I remembered his visitors .
The long line of friends that came every day without fail.
“I know what you mean”, I told him “ But you are kind of wrong when you say you haven’t had a long term relationship”
He stopped short and blinked at me like a mole in a searchlight.
“ As far as I can see you’ve had scores of long term relationships” I said, “your friends from home , and work and Church and school, you have kept and nurtured them for years and years.
You’ve had a good dozen of them”
And I was right, and he knew it, and I was right and it was a surprise to me too until that moment.
We may say that we’ve been unsuccessful in a continuous romantic relationship . But if we have lifelong friends, we have been successful in a whole series of long term relationships.
Any one that features when the chips are finally down and the fat lady is singing.
I got to Liverpool just around 5 pm and got the phone call that Grayson Perry had cancelled his performance due to a bad throat soon after.
I thought fuck it , and met my friend Colin anyway at Mowgli for yogurt chat bombs and lamb chops. The night will be rescheduled and fingers crossed I will be off .
I’m sat at the kitchen table , setting up zoom
I have a lecture with city lit at 10.30 about Philip Marlow and Sherlock Holmes as they are portrayed in cinema. Then I can have a cheeky sleep before my fourth night ( and final one) of the week
We have a postman who is a bit of hunk and he’s just knocked with a package ( fannar fannar) He made a banal joke about bending over to get under my honeysuckle and I laughed like a drain.
I’m very embarrassing .
Note to self, stop making a dick out of yourself when postie calls
The package was a delightfully wrapped two books from Gemma’s Person
Humours of Village Life ( Tales from Yorkshire) by J.Fairfax- Blakeborough ( 1932)
and The Valley Of Animals by Elma M Williams ( 1963)
I will start reading them tonight
I am constantly reminded of how kind people are, emails, cards, gifts , books and best wishes regularly arrive from blog readers and I’m always grateful for them
I will leave you with this incredibly moving piece of physical art by Yoann Bourgeois depicting the journey of life
I think I will resurrect the International Novelty fruit& Veg Competition in next years Trelawnyd Flower Show.
What do you think?
Speaking of nipples
Anyhow, my favourite " nipple" story hails from 1986. I was a very new Registered Psychiatric staff nurse on a " mother and baby" unit in York and was attending one my very first staff meetings in the day room which led off the main entrance . The ward sister was a phenomenally calm and obese woman who never raised her voice even in the most fraught of situations and I remember that right in the middle of discussing a particularly knotty nursing problem , she stopped and raised her hand.
" now I don't want anyone to turn around, or to react in any way" she murmured quietly " but some unfortunate lady is trying to push her nipples under the sash window"
I used to ask it a lot of my mother and grandparents and always received a robust reply
Last night I was asked by a patient
How was your lockdown ?
I think she was referring to work and PPE and end of life care.
But a whole kaleidoscope of memories came flooding back, most funny a few poignant.
All I could think of were zooms with friends , and 80 ribald gay men each with their own window , of Lyndi’s Charlie and miming at Choir, of kind volunteers leaving shopping on the kitchen wall and of Winifred’s bravura death with her rubber chicken.
Lockdown was a lonely , awful black time much of it during winter where all I would experience at night working was death and those linked to it, but outside this I’m recognising the humour that lifted many of us singletons through, when we’re we’re home, alone.
Choir continued every week , which is impossible on zoom as you can’t effectively sing together properly.but sing we did, and the tradition of sitting at the laptop looking into each other’s homes grew more and more important than the singing itself. Pets started to infiltrate the cameras with tenor Lydi enjoying our pantomime calls of “ We can see your Charlie!!!!!” When her old lurcher wandered into view.
I still tear up everytime I hear I raise You Up , the song that we adopted as our LOCKDOWN anthem
We sang it every week at the end of choir , and waved merrily at each other afterwards in order to keep the spirits up.
The Big Gay Quiz was on zoom every Friday evening, and at its height had well over a hundred queens from all over the world logging in to groan and bicker and chatter and laugh over a pub quiz that was run on military lines by an leather queer with control issues.
This clip was from winter 2021
“ Face washed ( tick)
Hair brushed ( tick)
Clean shirt checked for food stains ( check) - there was only one small splash of pot noodle..no one would notice ...tee hee
Background looking interesting behind me ( double check )
I was ready.
I squirted myself with a blast of Clinique Happy as a gay moral booster, as if it mattered”
Lockdown meant painting and cooking alongside my old friend Nia in Sydney and clandestine meetings with Chic Eleanor in McDonald’s car park , where we sat, each in our own cars , chatting a distance chat over coffee
This morning I drove up to McDonald’s to meet Chic Eleanor in the carpark for coffee.
The weather was atrocious but she looked fresh faced and as smiley as ever
“ Darling John..it’s almost like a tryst “ she admitted almost guiltily, pulling a green cashmere scarf tighter around her neck. “ Chin chin “
We raised our coffee cups from our respective driver’s seats, our breaths steaming in the cold air
She reminds me of the actress Lee Remick.“
Velvet Voiced Linda galvanised the village volunteer group and things never felt as bad or as lonely in the Village after that
My family zoomed and Sheffield folk I “saw” every week but I do recall one moment that hurt more than anything else and which reminded me I was, very much alone
When Winnie died, chomping on a rubber chicken with all of the gusto of a Viking chewing a ham, I left her valiant body with Albert and said chicken for an age. She had collapsed behind the kitchen door and I couldn’t get though so had to go around the cottage to move her.
That is, at ten pm that night
I couldn’t move her
She was just too big, too dead a weight for me to carry
So I knocked on next door and asked Sailor John if he could help
Lockdown meant he shouldn’t come into contact with me,
But it was something I couldn’t do alone and looking at my red blotchy face and snotty nose he smiled kindly and nodded……
I’m sat I’m my underpants eating baked beans out of the tin.
It’s just after 2 pm and I will be returning to bed shortly after the dogs have had a run and a wee.
It’s a lazy blog today,I’m sure you won’t mind, but( in my view) it’s an interesting one because it’s not all about me…lol
Mr Lu posts regularly on tiktok.
He’s a serious young Chinese man who lives in the sticks.
His simple videos are all about his life renovating an old Chinese farmhouse and a construction of a lagoon and traditional summerhouse in its grounds.
It’s an unhurried fascinating watch into a time sort of long gone and I’ve followed him for months now as the house has been transformed into a rustic, homemade piece of art.
Slept yesterday until 3pm then got up walked dogs and made pad Thai noodles with crispy chicken and ate them with chopsticks as each of the dogs had their own plate of noodles mixed with an egg.
Mary eats hers very delicately and oh so bloody slowly and has to be given her portion in the living room.
I met Gorgeous Dave in Prestatyn at 7pm and we went to the AI drama The Creator which is a romp of a movie ….think Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Aliens, District 9 ,Star Wars all mixed up with some of the most beautiful and impressive “ special effects” I’ve seen in recent years
It was interesting as it took a huge swipe at America’s Vietnam involvement even though it was set on Earth 40 years in the future .
Great to see the wonderful Alison Janney as a damaged, bitch of a GI Jane…how’s there’s a change in direction
I need a post-mortem about the movie and didn’t have time to pin Dave down last night
Some films just need being talked about and examined .
It’s 5.30am when I’m writing this , like I said my internal clock is fucked
I’ve made the Mexican based Huevos Rancheros for breakfast for a change
Egg and tortilla with lime, avocado, black beans and feta
I’ve bought a slightly milder Sriracha sauce to go with it from Marks and Spencer
Tasty but still phew!!!
I will be farting like an old lady after bran flakes during lectures
huevos Rancheros is the sort of breakfast you keep on standby if you want to impress a shag
Perhaps not
If only
Hey ho
Eating it in the dark didn’t make me feel remotely Mexican
Off to University for the whole day then back to walk the dogs from Trendy Carol’s at 4 pm then off to work on night shift smelling of sriracha
Facebook, as I’ve said before, reminds you of times, and memories long passed by.
This morning they reminded me of this photo
A sleeping ginger and white cat and a Welsh terrier reaching out his paw.
The memory was so very different.
This was Joan, my first cat.
One of two sisters ( her quieter and more reticent twin was called Betty) she ruled the roost in my homes in Sheffield after turning up as a kitten at my back door demanding to be let in during a rainstorm .
Loud, vocal and a typical Sheffield working class matriarch in so much she stood no messing from anything and anyone, Joan provided a backdrop of my salad days as a young nurse and when we moved to the country, whereas Betty faded and died, the old Gal Joan, found a new lease of life wandering my field and raising her face to the sun .
She was nearly twenty when the above photo was taken and only a few days later, she took herself off to bed where she died peacefully on a gloomy afternoon.
The first photo shows William watching her carefully before she died. Note the position of his paw, so typical of a Welsh terrier.
His paw lay on her for an age, just touching her tail, something she would never have allowed him do when she was well.x
