Awakenings

Ive got a hangover.
I've got a hangover only because we celebrated Nu's fantastic new kitchen with gin after getting home after having  a wonderful evening at the Royal Opera House's newly opened and rather beautiful Linbury theatre.
We went to see the National Welsh dance company in their new production Awakingings , which was an amazing piece of theatre

Stunning
I've had a lovely time
3 am this morning

Fish


Found this on the kitchen wall this morning
I'm off to London to see Nu
The Boffin has a spare key

Something Quite Beautiful



I love the fact that most of us are drawn towards things of beauty.
It's what makes us human
When I lived in South Yorkshire I would often go to Chatsworth house in Derbyshire on a weekend.
My favourite object of beauty in that great house was the veiled lady, a sculpture hidden away in a hall filled with objectes collected on the Duke's grand tour
I could stand and look at her all day

In the gallery at Theatre Clwyd I saw an oil painting which I thought was quite, quite  beautiful
It was a study of a tree in a Forrest and it reminded me of a watercolour I once had . A watercolour of a blue bell wood.

I have limited funds. I have too many bills to pay but on a whim I bought it, even though it was quite expensive
It's beauty is pleasing
And am so looking  forward in bringing it home after the exhibition is over ....

Busy

More postcards today!  Thank you....theatre tonight with my twin sister...a professional and solid bit of English Rep , the stage version of the Sidney Lumet's Paul Newman movie The Verdict
Last night was choir and the pub quiz

Thievery

Shame


After her emergency hysterectomy Winnie's sex drive, has thankfully more or less disappeared. Gone have the fragrant abuse of the "slippers of sex", the masturbatory marathons against my best Laura Ashley cushions and the eager looks of ecstasy when hairy toilet parts were lowered seductively onto a pair of passing brogues.
No she's a new old lady with just one passion in her head
She has an increased passion for food.
Now for the past few months Winnie has been on a much needed diet. I am sure, given the sweet ketone nature of her breath, she is a border line diabetic and like many ladies in their seventies she has become quite pear shaped. Her new diet has shed several kilos but it has made the old girl rather obsessed with food.
Yesterday was a case in point.
In the café on  the Promenade in Colwyn Bay she spied a woman who had parked a large stroller at a nearby table and in her usual lugubrious way took herself off to investigate. I called over to the woman my usual "The old bulldog likes babies is it ok?" and the woman smiled that it was fine
Winnie looked at the baby.
The baby looked at Winnie
Then with remarkable speed Winnie walked to the back of the stroller and thrust her head in the shopping tray underneath the baby's seat.
"Ere what are you doing?" the mother called out as Winnie grabbed something fist sized and brown coloured from a bag and trotted off quick sticks like a baby hippo to the other side of the outdoor café.
Several "oooohhhhhhs" came from a couple of patrons, sipping their coffees at other tables

After a bit of wrestling and after several apologies, I later found out that she had in fact stolen a caramel covered Iced donut from Lidl.
She had not only stolen and eaten one but had obviously damaged two others in her haste and the whole incident cost me the only money I had on me . One five pound note!!!!! which the woman was not embarrassed to take

But It's NOT Art!

It's a textured painting too! 

My elder Sister and I went to a sort of workshop on painting with acrylics this afternoon
I just sat there like a Chimpanzee with a brush and trowel and bashed away in silence
I quite enjoyed playing.
My sister brought me a scotch egg to have at tea break
  

The First Time I held A Man's Hand

Over the last few weeks I have been clearing out unwanted things from the cottage
Its been a therapeutic exercise as de-cluttering always is.
Last week I came across this old paperback book



Written in ink on the dedication page was a name
I shall share the name as James Kent
It wasn't the real name written in careful neat writing.

I remember James Kent well. A strapping and ruddy faced twenty something Yorkshireman who suffered a devastating mental health breakdown seemingly out of the blue' He was admitted to our Psychiatric ward acutely distressed and seemingly psychotic after becoming unwell whilst working in a family business event . The suddenness and severity of his condition suggested a potential drug cause for the symptoms we were seeing, but he responded well to medication which allowed him to rest ( both physically and mentally) and within a few days of hiding away under the covers of his side room bed, he suddenly seemed back to his "normal" self much to the relief of his parents and two younger sisters. He denied drug use vehemently  and seemed happy in going home a week after he was admitted.
James and I were roughly the same age, I was perhaps three years older and because we got on in friendly terms the ward manager suggested I continued to see James "for a supportive chat" every week or so after he was eventually discharged. In hindsight I now suspect that that she had an inkling something more was going on under the surface and that by seeing me, a junior and inexperienced but totally nonthreatening nurse, things may be unearthed.

and that's exactly what happened.

On his second or third visit James brought along a mental health self help book with him. He told me he was trying to understand what had happened to him but the book was written by a journalist and although pragmatic and "common sense" in nature the book proved to be of little help to a young man trying to make sense of something that seemed profoundly unreal and frightening for him.
He gave me the book as a gift when he left that session

James' next visit was the difficult one. He was sullen and quiet and tearful. A family party had ended badly for him and he had gotten into a fight with his mother who had suggested that he leave the family home to live with an uncle who also worked in the family firm.
It was this family spat that precipitated this crisis
I had no experience of the devastating effects childhood sexual abuse has on any individual, for I was but a junior nurse, but in front of me, this young man spilled his guts that his uncle had abused him for years from the age of seven or eight.
I was totally and utterly out of my depth, as I  had never heard such terrible things in my naïve 24 year old life, but I went with things and let him vomit away the pain for the very first time and as he did so I held his cold, thick wristed hand as my grandfather would have done if I had cried so deeply.
He cried for an absolute age

I saw James just once more after this meeting and it was when "I handed him over" to the psychologist who took over with his much needed therapy. James was pale but managed a smile and afterwards the ward manager debriefed me in her office where I said I was "just fine"
but this was the 1980s and I had absolutely no training in this area whatsoever

I remember walking home to my flat in Acomb from the central York hospital. I walked alongside the river Ouze for a while, next to the houses which had their flood gates locked against potential flooding.

and I had a long grown up cry


Albert Missing




Last night Albert didn't come home
He was missing this morning, and his food bowl was full at teatime when I called the dogs for supper.
The last and only time this happened was when he broke his leg in the lane and was collapsed in the garden.
Mary and I went to search for him before The Archers , with no result and so on the way back we popped into neighbour Trevor's house so I could give him his daily anticoagulant Injection.
I tied Mary to the stair banister and was just about to go into the living room to administer the meds when Albert shot out of Trevor's kitchen with a wide eyed look of " where the fuck have you been?"
He must of followed me into the house during yesterday's injection visit.
Trevor hadn't a flying clue he's just had a lodger
And Albert head butted each of the dogs in turn before he said hello to me