Flex Them Muscles!

The Prof has just gone to the gym for a 1:1 session with the fitness coach.
No doubt his mentor is a buff 22 year old called Luke who has thighs like tree trunks.
I 'm not jealous of a gym bunny no older than a pair of my socks.
I've got staying power.

Without the Prof around for an hour the cottage is quiet. The radio has been turned off and the windows opened to the sunshine and the crows bickering in the Church trees.
I've got my coffee, the dogs have been walked and fed and it's time to sit and think.

I spoke to a guy this morning who lost his wife suddenly. She had been ill for sure, and I suspect was expected to die at some point but he lost her when he and I expect she was not ready.
He knows I am a nurse and asked me questions I was in no way in a position to answer but what I could share was the simple fact that younger people compensate for their disease or their condition when they are poorly, so often deteriorate quickly and drastically when their reserves fail them.
Sometimes, no mater what is done nothing can change the final outcome.

The man shook my hand firmly after our conversation. I don't know if it was my words that helped or just the chance for him to ask the question that gave him some comfort.
Grief needs an outlet me thinks.

When he drove off, I realised that I didn't even know his name.

As I type this Bulldog and Welsh terrier bitch, 

Share a place in the sun

She's Home!

I knew things were going to be alright when I walked into the vets at teatime tonight.
Winnie was holding court behind the reception desk with the office staff and vets alike.
She was lapping up the attention like Bette Davis at a cocktail party!
" She has quite a fan club here" the Sweet receptionist told me
"And one around the world too!" I told her explaining Going Gently
" A dog on a blog" one of the vets chirped up.

Winnie saw me and sashayed over to say hello,moments later she led me to the exit with an impressively powerful pull. She wanted to go home.


And home we came.

Getting Picked Last For Games.

We need a change of subject today.....it's all been a bit too much....an emotional vet based jacuzzi .
I will post " Winnie News" later but for now we shall talk about the knotty subject of being picked last for games!
When I posted the amazing photo of the " clay people" two days ago, a senior nurse from my hospital tagged it with the byline " staff of ITU waiting for the allocation"
It got me thinking.
At every shift handover the ten nursing staff coming on to duty will stand in a rough line at the end of the ward. The nurse in charge will then allocate each member of staff to their respective patient taking into account skill mix, experience, continuity and request.
It sounds slightly old fashioned but it works in this context.
Being a very part time member of the team I am often the last to be allocated.
The ritual always reminds me of being picked for games when I was eleven.

I was never picked last for games as a kind but I was down there with the fat kids for sure. It's a memory of shame that still resonates some forty years later!
Hopeless at football and rugby I was always picked third or fourth boy or so from last. Only two obese lads and a skinny boy with gross coordination problems were left slumped, shamed and sad against the external wall of the sports hall when the sporty , tall boy leaders picked their teams in a ritual full of misery for the untalented and unpopular.
I was always grateful for not being last but miserable that I was as good as! So to speak.

I doubt schools continue with this ritual anymore. I do hope that they don't -for the negativity of allocation does remain with you into adulthood despite being ably camoflagued by humour and " confidence" .

News

I popped in to Tescos this morning and when I was perusing the cheese counter a woman I didn't know tapped me on the shoulder and asked " Is Winnie ok?"
Such is the power of bulldogs.

The vet rang me at 2.30 to tell me that Winnie had pulled through the operation and the anaesthetic.
" Are you happy with her" I asked
" Yes, she's still breathing" was the pragmatic reply.
The sweet receptionist was more effusive " She's blew me a kiss" she told me in full giggly mode.

Hey ho 

Field For The British Isles

I had a messy split from an abusive relationship in the late 1990s.
For many reasons it was a very bad time.
Friends like Bel Ami, who often comments here, got me through the days.

I remember one particular miserable morning, a dark, dank, typically wet South Yorkshire morning, where I found myself in town. I was aimless and fed up and not even a mooch around Cole Brothers could lift my mood, so I eventually ambled up West Street to the University bookshops, then took myself to Weston Park where I found myself at the  Park's Museum.
Antony Gormley's instillation piece Field For The British Isles was advertised as being on show so on impulse I went to see it.

In one vast room 40, 000 little humanoid figures stood on the floor and looked at me with little blank eyes.
The effect was instantaneous and unexpectedly profound .
It was an amazing experience.
I cannot quite explain just why it warmed my heart.
Perhaps the instillation had something powerful to say about solidarity, or just simple humanity..but even though the figures were just , in essence , little morphs in human form they had the power to lift the spirits and to create a smile.

Now THAT was ART

  

http://www.antonygormley.com/resources/essay-item/id/108

Update

Blog something and an animal will always prove you to be a liar.
Winnie deteriorated late morning and has been admitted to the surgery to be " physically optimised" before theatre tomorrow.
She was incredibly sanguine about the whole situation and checked each one of her fellow surgical patients before bedding down herself with a heavy sigh.
She was making tired moo moo eyes at the sweet receptionist as I left.

Badders

I can hardly move my hips.
My knees feel like shit too!

But it was worth it!
During my Sheffield days I used to play badminton a couple of times a week. My partner, a diminutive Yorkshireman called Mike (who was built like a Staffordshire Bull terrier ) then worked for British Telicom in the city centre so I used to play at Pond's Forge sport's centre, one of the "White Elephant"  sports facilities developed for the World Student Games in 1990.
I used to be a fair player

Now I have piled on the weight, developed a dodgy knee and have not played for fourteen years or so, so it was with a heavy heart that I pulled on my elasticated joggers and new trainers and dug out my old racket.
I was convinced I was going to make a real tit of myself

The Prof goes to the University gym every day, and is physically so much fitter than me so as we squared up on the badminton court he was all buff and confident and I looked like a jellyfish wrapped up in muslin.
Thank goodness for muscle memory for I may have sweated like a hot pig and sounded like an asthmatic buffalo but I had not forgotten how to play the game and despite everything I kind of beat the Prof into the ground!
I enjoyed myself.
A great panacea to the ills of the day!

******************************************************

Postscript. I finally spoke to the Irish Vet this morning and we shall work towards Winnie getting Spayed at some point. Obviously there are many ifs and buts before that point, and I am fully aware that any operation may well finish the old gal off, but I feel that I owe it to her to try one last time.
Things I know can change very quickly, that is the way of infections, but at the moment, although sleepy, she is eating and drinking and taking her antibiotics without complaint. 

Ta Muchly

Well I've bloody well missed the vet again tonight.
Played badminton with the Prof at teatime for the first time in a decade (and thought I would drop dead there and then on the court) and missed the soddin call! By the time I had rung her back, she'd left the surgery .....tomorrow I shall pin her down for sure!
Having said this, the patient in the kitchen,apart from looking mighty bored with her life, looks more or less like her normal self.
I've cooked her chicken for tea and have told her just how well loved she is! (Not many welsh bulldogs have such a fan club as she I whispered. ) she listened to what I had to say but continued to scoff down her fillets with one eye on the cat flap in case Albert should appear.

I do love the old girl so very much.

In the great scheme of things the fate of a geriatric sex obsessed bulldog shouldn't be high up on the agenda.....but I am touched just how many people have checked up on the old slag!
Thank you.

Best Laid Plans

The vet didn't get back to me.
Apparently there was an emergency and she was called out.
The receptionist fielded my annoyance as deftly as I have done with relatives at work.
Time to take a deep breath .
" I 'll pass your message on" the receptionist told me.
I bit my lip.
I'm juggling things today, Mary is at the groomers, I've just  given a neighbour a lift to the doctor and I have to find blooming daffodils from fucking somewhere as I have promised to plant out some tubs at The Prof's University this afternoon ( its St David's day tomorrow!) .
Meanwhile Winnie remains confined to the kitchen.
Second day of antibiotics
And she's just eaten a chicken dinner.

Pyometra

I've just hand fed her some roast lamb

Winnie has pyometra, which is a serious life threatening uterine infection.
I am presently waiting for the junior vet to call me after she discusses the case with her senior.
I hate waiting for phonecalls!
Winnie has already been pumped full of antibiotics and is presently asleep on a bed in the kitchen.
The condition has made her incontinent. A thing that upsets her so. She is also passing large amounts of pus PV. This is messy but more positive than retention. Retaining pus leads to sepsis
I know that much from ITU

I knew that one day this condition may of reared it's ugly head. Spaying older bulldogs is fraught with it's own difficulties but if we had successfully got Winnie through such surgery earlier, then she would not be in trouble today.
It was a difficult call.

Winnie has a few  premorbidities which the vets have to review. Her age , her size are the most significant as well as her breed's well known problems with airway control during anaesthesia but I was careful to underline just how well she is for her age at the same time as being fully aware of the reality of the situation.

As I paid the bill, Winnie wandered around the waiting room and greeted each dog and owner in turn.
She was slow and careful and the sweet receptionist who admitted her gave me one of those " be brave" looks as she handed me the antibiotics

Who Do You Think You Are?

Winnie isn't well.

Her usual post " in season" accidents looked suspicious on the kitchen floor this morning and after dipsticking a " wee" stain it is clear to me she has some sort of heavy vaginal infection.
The vets are all out on their country calls this morning so I shall take her to the surgery at lunchtime..so watch this space.....I'm a little worried.

Anyhow must fly to catch the bus now in order to collect the car......my sister has just rang...she has the results of our family DNA tests
We are officially 36 % Irish, 20% Scandinavian, 12% British 15% or so West European and 7 % Spanish!
How interesting is that?

Must fly...will update about Winnie a bit later


. 

Pie Drama

The whole village, indeed the whole valley lost it's power last night.
The Prof  wasn't best pleased as I had just put in a mince pie in the oven which he was looking forward to greatly.
He stropped around the cottage like Bette Davis as I dug out candles and a torch so I went to check on Old Trevor, Pat the animal helper and two other elderly neighbours.
I need not have worried, for everyone over fifty lived through the power cuts of The Three Day Week, so all would have had a  candle at the ready when all the lights went out

For those that dont know The Three Day Week was a government initiative to conserve electricity due to the 1973 oil crisis and British Coal Strike.  The general population had to deal with prolonged and regular  power cuts over that winter and even tv stations were forced to end their broadcasting early in an attempt to conserve power! 

I was eleven during the January Winter of 1974 so I vaguely remember those quiet drab evenings sat with a duvet in the living room surrounded by candles. I also sort of remember the pungent smell of the primus stove as my mother made tea and the worry that the tropical fish, their tank all wrapped up in an old sleeping bag would make it through the night.
No one seemed to complain much as I remember, they just got one with it.
Nowadays everyone would be apoplectic with rage and would be flinging themselves around in hysterical abandon searching for someone to rant at.
Then my mother just bought an extra flask and made sure she was up to date with her library books!

It was nice taking the dogs around a deserted and dark village. Almost every house had small pools of candle light illuminating their windows and the place looked as it would have done in the 1930s before mains electricity visited  the population.
As we walked around I spied another torch flicking to and fro and bumped into Cameron the teenage boffin, who was checking if anyone needed assistance. He too was enjoying the drama and the peace  of a dark village.

Ward Nite Out

Late last night I found myself waiting for a lift home from the back entrance of a somewhat " lively" establishment in a nearby town.
I was enjoying standing in the cold with the light rain on my face
The place was filled with rowdy, good-natured drinkers , most of them looking for anything between a snog and a shag. Many of the revellers were robustly drunk.
I was sober having sipped my pint of beer for an hour or so and half finishing a coffee martini cocktail which was a gift from a sweet friend.
I am out of practice with ward night outs!
It's not that I am antisocial, I am not! but I find the banging music, raucous laughter, skirts the size of   face flannels that would barely cover Sharon Stone's muff and the general scrum for the bar all a bit hard work.
It was nice to go to say goodbye to the four junior staff nurses who now have moved on to different work lives.
But I was glad to get home to bed to sleep and snore alongside an already comatose husband and a Welsh terrier who was dreaming Welsh terrier dreams .

Coffin Talk

I missed Gay Gordon's funeral service.
I fell asleep on the couch and woke up in my uniform with a pair of surgical forceps poking into my nether regions.
I was annoyed at missing it, for I suspect it would have been an interesting bun fight.

I have only been to one funeral service that could have been described as entertaining. It was the funeral service of a nursing colleague which had been choreographed by a talented humanist speaker who knew just how to balance pathos with mirth. He had the congregation eating out of his hand.
Most of the other fifty or so services I have attended have promoted feelings which have been a mixture of profound sadness, dissatisfaction and disappointment ( I shall explain this in a bit) and of duty and respect.
A few have been somewhat surprising ( for all of the wrong reasons ) one, I remember was gut wrenching and overwhelmingly emotional and one ice cold memorial featured just two mourners ( including myself) and three crematorium staff.
I have given eulogies at three funerals and was slightly drunk at one other after too many nips from a friend's hip flask. I have been present when in a family funeral car we were sideswiped by a lorry a minute from the church and I have walked into the wrong service at a crematorium in Sheffield  which ran two ceremonies at the same time.
Abide with me has, I think, been the most common of hymns sung.
The funniest piece of music played, I remember hearing was the theme from The Benny Hill Show and at one funeral of a long term psychiatric patient I once nursed, the order of service was almost halted by strangled laughter after another patient kept yelling  IS HE DEAD? continually through the prayer section.
The worst funerals, I always think, are those that fail to capture the essence of the deceased. I often blame sub standard clergy for this one, vicars that fail to do their homework before opening their gobs.
One Priest, who looked as if he was doing the congregation a favour, said of a long standing and successful nurse I once knew that her life " was full and interesting because she enjoyed the archaeological tv show " Time Team" and crossword puzzles!" 
I could have bust him in the mouth for that one.

Doris

Doris has turned out to be a bit of a bitch.
The electricity has been off a couple of times and in the Churchyard one of the trees splint almost in half and has crashed to the ground.
Winnie took one look at the horizontal rain and promptly ran back into the kitchen to have a piss on a rug.
Her expression said it all
" you've got to be fucking kidding" 

Hollow Smile

She smiled with her mouth but not with her eyes.
I've noticed the fact several times now when I've met her.
I think I know why she seems a little sad.
Moving into a small village can be isolating especially when you have a new baby to look after.

I saw her yesterday, when I was fixing the light over the back door. She was pushing the baby down the lane to feed the sheep, mother and child, she reports miss the hens and geese dreadfully.
I asked her if she felt a bit isolated ( isolated felt a better word to use than the more stark lonely) and immediately I know I'd touched a nerve.
She looked as though she could have cried then and there.

It may not be a panacea to all of her ills but I thought that I will ask her to join the Flower Show Committee. We are due a meeting in the spring.

It's 7.15 am and I'm nursing a coffee whilst listening to John Hurt's " Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell"  monologue on BBC . It's going to be a busy few days, me thinks for not only have I two back to back night shifts to deal with ( a favour for a friend with child care problems ) but I'm taking neighbour Trevor to his outpatients appoinment this morning (a sixty mile round trip) and have to fit in a leaving party for five intensive care staff who have moved onto bigger and better things as well as squeezing in Gay Gordon's funeral which takes place on Friday morning!

And storm Doris  is all set to strike on Thursday morning!



It's all go!

Pastures New

This morning I recieved an email from a smallholder from Gwynedd . He told me that Camilla Parker Bowles and her " sisters" were doing very well indeed.
The email was a welcomed one, but it did twang the heart strings just a little.

Several weeks ago the geese left the Ukrainian village for pastures new.
I didn't blog about this fact , for it was rather a sad time.

It was a hard decision to make, but with the hens' removal to the safety of barn life and under the shadow of avian flu I finally made the decision that the geese had to be found a new home.
And I wanted total control over this change.
This year I retire from work. The Prof's work could and probably will change to pastures new and we also have the opportunity to travel a little more, and so I wanted the girls on a farm with care 24/7.
I " interviewed" several interested parties and eventually chose a small holder from the back-and-beyond in deepest Wales. He is an interesting character as he is good with animals and fairly poor with people.
He was also as poor as a church mouse,as it was evident that his income went on animal care and not designer clothing!
It was this quiet dedication that allowed me to make that final decision.
Now Camilla has the space to fly without risks of crash landing on the nearest bin lorry. The group now have a safe haven with a pond and a new owner who only leaves the farm to to the weeks' shopping.

I still miss the geese but I am so happy they are settled in their new home.
Was it actually seven years ago when they arrived?

The Walking Dead Season 7 Eps10

Relationships don't last too long in The Walking Dead ask Maggie, Sasha and Rosita if you don't believe me! Rick has been with Michonne just one series now and the " boys" Aaron and Eric seem to be hanging on in there but everyone else seems to be suffering from Walking Dead Widow syndrome.
Everyone but Carol and Daryl.
These fractured characters have been friends since the close of season 1, and it was an absolute joy for the series audience to see them reunited in tonight's episode.
Carol and Daryl are the heart of team Rick. They are both victims of  domestic abuse, but have blossomed in this dangerous new world and although still very much  damaged goods, their vulnerabilities have propelled them into two of the most cherished characters in the entire show
Tonight when Daryl, the borderline Aspergers warns off Richard with the words
 " if she ever gets hurt...she dies....she catches a fever....gets taken out by a walker....gets hit by lightening...anything...anything....happens to her...and I'll kill you."
It brought a lump to my throat!
The Walking Dead needs such characters.
Without them, it's just a gore fest.

Looking Like Shite

I do so try to explain to the Prof about the toll shift work takes on a soul
Yesterday was a case in point.
I finished a night shift (7.30 pm to 8.15 am ) then came home..slept from 9 am to midday then was woken up by a bowl of fish pie! ( which was bloody lovely btw) I then took the dogs out then went to Conwy for a drink and a read of the papers in a lovely real ale pub we found recently......the Prof had a few pints of real ale.....I had two strong coffees and Mary had a packet of crisps!  Great to find a dog friendly pub........as we sat in the snug with a group of Liverpudlian hikers , I tried to explain that If I woke the Prof up at 1am and took him out to a night club , he too would feel and look like this....
He just doesnt get it!
Fucking rough! ......roll on retirement

She loves me so

Shit Bags

Tom will like this....
It's about dog shit.

I don't feel neighbourly today. I'm tired.
Sure I was  friendly to Rowenna when she complained that the church bin had not been emptied,,( but she is so sweet that it didnt take much effort) but when a certain hatchet face old prune screamed at me when winnie was mid dump on an expense of badly kept lawn outside her council owned property I was ready for a fight albeit a velvet glove sort of fight.
I was just about to scoop the offending turd up into a bag when the old fart yelled out
" get that dog off that grass!" 
Now..I know it was more out of devilment rather than maliciousness  but I turned to the woman, smiled a sweet smile and said in a polite yet firm tone
"NO!" 
This kind of attitude drives em bananas! 
As I tied up the 2 lb poo and plonked it into my pocket, she started again, though there was noticeably less aggression in her voice
" I'll ring the council!" She called
I smiled again
" You do that!" I trilled sweetly
"I will " she shouted 
" Good" I replied.
Yes it was all rather juvenile but I couldn't help myself.
" and when your at it, get them to cut your grass"
The woman " harrumphed" as we moved on watching me carefully over folded arms.
I could have then kissed George with a big sloppy Scottish terrier kiss,
For as he  jauntily trotted up behind us ( he is off his lead at this particular part of our constitutional) he  stopped briefly at a stone animal which decorated this woman's path and without prompting loudly pissed on it!