All Of Us Strangers

Intriguing and emotional films, should in my mind, be seen with someone else in tow. 

Post Mortem’s need to be sat through. Points of view need discussion and raw nerves need to be soothed

As All of Us Strangers finished Chic Eleanor wiped her cheeks and tearfully lisped “Darling that was beautiful “ 

And she is right, it is….it’s a lovely film.

It’s a four handed drama that centres around a forty something gay scriptwriter (Andrew Scott)  , his tentative romance with a lonely brittle neighbour ( Paul Mescal) and his unexpected reunion with the  “ghosts” of his dead parents, ( Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) who died together in a car accident in the 1980s 

I will not explain it any more than that, as this hypnotic, beautifully shot and incredibly acted study of grief, childhood damage, and redemption through love can be viewed in a score of different ways. 

Suffice to say , that Scott’s painful memories of being a gay child in the 1980s are beautifully and from my perspective painfully portrayed as his loving but slightly clueless parents grapple with the “ reality” of how their 1980s parenting helped and didn’t help him through

It’s an intensely personal and heart wrenching study by director Andrew Haigh. Andrew Scott is magnificent in the lead role, he wears  a sad smile which could literally  break your heart, as he plays opposite his “ parents “ and one scene in particular when his dad realises that he has let his son down is a wonderfully powerful piece of cinema , made so much better by Jamie Bell’s subtle depiction of a kind man just out of his depth. 

Is it a ghost story? Or a love story ? Or a metaphor for therapy and forgiveness ? 

It doesn’t matter

As All of us Strangers is all of these things and more.

It’s a great piece of cinema.

Roseanne: DAD'S DEAD!

Nurses are taught to say “ Died” not gone, or passed or anything else

I loved this bit of tv gold

Lovely quiet day today. I met my sister Ann, her husband and my late brother’s wife for lunch at the Dinorban Arms https://www.brunningandprice.co.uk/dinorbenarms/homepage/

I scrubbed up and enjoyed lovely food but average service 

Tomorrow, Chic Eleanor and I are off to see All of Us Strangers 

ABBA The Visitors - Under Attack

I went to Sainsbury’s for lunch.

Their filter coffee is nice and the bustle of the cafe reminds me I’m not feeling lonely today.

A chap started talking to me on scruff which is a chatting/ dating app. He seemed interesting and chatty and talked about choirs and theatre and cinema that was until he asked to see of Photo of me . I sent him one of me and Dorothy in profile and he asked if he could view a “ lower one” 

I sent him a photo of my shoes prefixed by the word, sigh , then blocked him.

I had bangers and mash for lunch and had a small bout of road rage on the way home when a man stopped dead behind tome minor flooding causing several cars to shriek to a halt . The man refused to move on, for an age and I called out in my best Les Dawson voice You Big Girl’s Blouse ! 

Incongruously he waved what looked like a large feather duster at me

So much for learning all about being non judgemental in college yesterday

I played my ABBA LP When I got home 

Who was the favourite?

 Who was your favourite patient ?

It was a question a more junior nurse asked me a few days ago. She punctuated the question with the word ever! 

Thus making the answer all rather difficult.

Forty one years of patients

You’d think they would merge into one.

They don’t! 

Former medic Should Fish More will, I think agree with me here

Certain patients will capture your heart, head, humour , conscience, memory and psychi for all different reasons, and will remain close by like memories of a lovely holiday or a particularly sad family funeral.

Favourite isn’t the right word to use here, it can’t be.

A chic Italian interpreter who wanted to dance with me before she died ( we danced)

A lost, and handsome  North Yorkshire man, shaken by mental illness wanting to hold my hand when he saw me out shopping in central York in 1987

An Iraqi boy of eleven, paralysed in the war careering around the spinal unit, cackling like a loon, with my first dog Finlay tied to the front of his wheelchair.

Indumati, a bad tempered, irascible Hindu lady who could hit me with a piece of fruit at ten feet even though she was blind as a bat.

Being the birthing partner of a Sheffield teenager giving birth to her first baby who she called Harley Davidson 

The wife of a man with a lacerated liver who begged me to save his life as he bled to death.

The jovial schizophrenic lady to annoyed the pious chaplain of Chester’s Deva hospital by peeing on the chapel’s floor during Church service.

And the Welsh farmer’s wife who gave me a pair of Turkey poults after I had looked after her on intensive care.

I could go on….. I’m on a roll.

Self Care

 I’ve got skills practice in an hour. 

This is a recorded zoom meeting between me and my colleague Donna .

It will last an hour with each one of us playing the therapist for thirty minutes each.

Our tutor will assess the video sometime this week.

Yesterday I set up zoom and got everything set up.

In between times I called friends for chats, 

It’s amazing how much the cottage feels alive with the sound of chatter in it.

I’m working nights tonight so made a big brunch.

Soda bread toasted with garlic topped with Greek yogurt, salmon and avocado , topped with a left over spoon of mushy peas…

Bloody lovely.

I won’t eat again until this evening 

Eating special meals has always been important to me, and it’s a skill I have indulged myself in since I was single. 

In counselling , it would be termed self care 

Respect and care for myself in a time which isn’t always as nurturing as it could be.

Or perhaps I just like my food 

The Zone Of Interest

Domestic Holocaust

Jonathon Taylor’s adaptation of the novel by Martin Amis is a cold affair. Cold, chilling and hard work.

Filmed as if it was a fly on the wall documentary we follow the everyday life of Hedwig Hoss ( Sandra Hüller) the wife of Auschwitz Commander Rudolph( Christian Friedel) who runs her household of five children, maids and gardeners in a well appointed modern town house, feet from the concentration camp wall. Her house and particularly her garden is her pride and joy, and it is soon apparent that the war and her marriage has elevated her in rank and privilege to become the self proclaimed “Queen of Auschwitz “

We see very little of the camp itself , save for the fire in the sky chimneys of the crematoria, casting light and noise in the night like something from Tolkien .

But we hear it.

The factory hum of machinery and traffic, the constant shootings and occasional screams , this is the backdrop to a horror ignored by Hedwig who raises her family in the Hitler Way, with good food, exercise, fresh air and country pursuits .

The negative effects of living such a life is lost on the adults but we glimpse how the children have reacted. One sleep walks nightly, another collects human teeth, two others swim in the river and are covered in human remains and have to scrubbed in the kitchen sink whilst another boy, rather heartbreakingly listens passively as a prisoner is drowned by guards for not following orders. 

Only one person is shown to acknowledge the horror of the Hoss’ new life and that is Hedwig’s mother who leaves the family home in the middle of  the night to escape the world beyond the garden wall.

This is a hard watch. The actors are given little to soften their characters and the sounds of the camp never leave the narrative and wear you down by the end the film. 

“ Audrey “

 Years ago I had a conversation with a visitor to the graveyard. I had an enamel bowl filled with dirty duck eggs, she had been putting flowers on a grave. 

I remember it, only because it was the first time I’d ever seen her remotely chatty.

Usually Audrey was a shy old lady who would nod nervously when approached . She was single and lived in her parents bungalow along London road, 

I remember her once making me a custard tart for my allotment open days tea tent and how difficult she found it to knock on my door to deliver it .

Years ago now she left the village to live in a nursing home and only yesterday I heard she had died, with her cremation taking place today. 

I remembered my conversation with her at the Churchyard fence and how happy she seemed to be when talking about joining her parents in the family grave when her time came.

Her voice was full of affection for parents long gone 

Her face animated and her voice suddenly strong .

Like I said, 

I had never seen her so chatty.

Yesterday, I was told that she had recently died. The news spreading on the back of Trefor’s death and that of Hubert Evans who used to be the village baker. 

The news of Audrey’s cremation was one of the by the way news 

But it stung

As I remembered her wish to be buried with her parents 

Apparently Audrey had run out of money and the council had to fund her funeral 

And cremations are always cheaper

How sad

But on a brighter note , here are two videos that made my day so much better

The lisping Madrid National Choir ( I wish I was a part of so many lovely looking old bears ) and the delightfully “in the moment” Gwendoline Christie at the Maisonette Margiela fashion show

Enjoy both

News Osmosis

 

One of my strengths is being able to deal with families that are going through trauma, loss and stress.

It would be a poor showing, that after 41 years of nursing , that I didn’t know what my strengths and weaknesses were.

I had a hard night at work last night.one with much emotion and I knew that only for the fact I fell asleep, and deeply asleep on the couch when I returned home. Luckily I had set my phone alarm for eleven , for that was the time I’d promised to take a neighbour to the dentist , but I was so deeply asleep, it took me an age to even react to the alarm tinkle let alone get my arse off the couch.

Sleep, and heavy REM asleep , it has been shown , is the major panacea to stress and trauma, and for me, it’s something I can access pretty effectively, if I have to.

At 1 pm there was a call over the kitchen wall. It was old Trefor’s niece. 

Trefor had died yesterday after being taken ill suddenly.

Moments later Animal Helper Pat, called over the wall with the same news.

Osmosis of information in a small village.

Effective and insidious.

Pat had more news too with two more deaths of Trelawnyd residents to report.

Both I knew but not as well as Trefor.

It feels a grey day

There is no food in the house, so I’m off out to shop

I’m making beef stew for supper, 

With dumplings, I need dumplings today

This photo of the village was taken around 1925

Trefor is the baby being carried behind the bus