" Oh William!"

Old dogs have accidents .

Old people do too. 

It's the way of the world as we all get older

I once skidded on a puddle of urine as I was rushing around a corner of a hospital ward and fell hard on the floor ripping  the backside out of my pants and I remember often finding malteezer sized balls of poo lurking like land mines around clinical areas after being warmed and shaped down pyjama trouser legs and around netty knicker incontinent pads.

Nurses on elderly wards always keep one eye fixed on the floor as they go about their business.

This morning the Prof sang out that William had "flooded "  another corner of the living room after being let in by Albert. and  with a sigh I grabbed the biological cleaner and kitchen roll.

5.30 am is not a time to be cleaning up pee.

This afternoon I caught him just about to wee in the same, newly laundered spot and after I yelled his name, he sort of "came to" and realised his mistake, hanging his head in the shame of being shouted at yet again

Yells of " oh William " seem to echo about the cottage at the moment.

I put down the bucket of ashes I was collecting from the fireplace  and scooped him up into my arms and we sat on the armchair together for a long long sweet moment.

Old dogs are just like old people. 

They don't mean accidents to happen

Fat Club!

There were more people queueing up for fat club than I expected yesterday morning.
As usual there was posters advertising just how effective the programme adorning the hall and on a table there was boxes and packets of diet cookies, cakes and anaemic looking pasta all ready to be bought.
I know the routine, I've been there before.
Most of the " clients" were women and most disappeared off to the toilets before joining the weigh in line in order to squeeze that last tiny bit of urine out of themselves before they jumped upon the scales. There was only one bloke in line and like me , he was the newbee.
He flashed me a sympathetic look.
The woman behind me had a handful of dogeared paperwork and told me that she had been coming to the meetings " for years" 
" They are my social life" she admitted " they gets me out of the house"
I asked her how well she was doing with her weight loss and she laughed
" I haven't lost anything since Christmas"  she confided "But I am on diuretics now so things may start moving" 
I nodded
" How long have you been big?" She asked me after a pause
I thought I'd be honest
" I was born big" I told her.

The Walking Dead Finale ( Spoilers! )

He never saw her coming ! 

The producers still had  a few tricks up their sleeves as The Walking Dead draw to a bloody climax tonight.
With the ambiguities very clear of who are the goodguys and who are the bad guys , " Team Family"  is effectively double crossed by the ill conceived junk yard group and find themselves again at the mercy of Negan and his band cut throats.
Nothing New there, especially as the audience could see Sasha's self sacrifice coming a mile away, but the  real satisfaction of this last episode comes from the sight of Carol leading the Kingdom's small band  of knights alongside Maggie and a rag tag band of brothers from Hilltop. Who turn up at the eleventh hour to save the day.
In actual fact, it is the remarkable CGI of Shiva, who steals the show, as she interrupts Carl's murder with a murderous attack of her own, dispatching Negan's men with  a crowd cheering munch!
In the end no more of the now united team family are killed, and Negan is driven off alongside Dwight who is clearly Rick's new cuckoo -in-the-nest .
Maggie's final voice over, as the leaders of the communities unite,  is strangely rather moving  and underlines the equalities of the sexes and just how far many of the characters have now come.
" People that once would pass each other in the street" are now family. she muses in her southern drawl.
I do hope baby Hershel survives in season 8!

The Sun On My Face

I've always made it my policy that if I see good clinical practice I let the person involved know what I think.
Last night I watched a young doctor deal with several complicated scenarios. These included a cardiac arrest, the admission of a desperately ill young man and several other knotty medical issues.
She competed her tasks with a cool and precise professionalism and in a brief lull in the proceedings I told her exactly what I thought of her.
I think she was surprised but pleased with the feedback.
It was a hard shift all told which she summed up beautifully to the tired group of nurses just before dawn
" I will be so grateful to feel the sun on my face in the morning" she said with feeling

Sunday

I was going to say it's a lazy day today, but already I have walked Mary in a power walk, ambled with the others, cleaned the cottage, prepared a roast lunch and cleared the ash from the woodburner.
It's fat club weigh in tomorrow and because we went out for a nice meal with friends last night where I had a baked Alaska to  myself, I need to keep activity levels up.
A farm lorry broke down on the school crossing this morning which caused a temporary gridlock in the village, a traffic jam only beaten by the moment Winnie decided to open her bowels on the zebra crossing at the end of school one summer's afternoon.
I stopped to say hello to Mrs Trellis who was on the way to church. She told me she was off to Spain on her holidays.t
Some new people were moving into ( or moving out of) one of the rented cottages on the main road, and I had to walk into the road with the dogs in order to pass their white van.
Short term lets do nothing for the village community. People come, they sleep, keep to themselves then go. It's a shame.
I spied Sandra C in her wellies as she ambled to her allotments behind Bonc terrace and Terry M who was out walking his dogs gave me the thumbs up when I called to him that the next Flower Show Meeting was due next week. Trelawnyd Val, who, comments here from time to time has agreed to join our committee though made it very clear that she doesn't DO scones! 
She will be a very welcome addition to our team of twelve.
Cameron the teenage boffin, is no longer the short geeky adolescent from last year, sporting longish studentish hair like Carl's  from The Walking Dead I caught him out jogging, a practise run for a half marathon he's doing to raise funds for his School's cricket pavilion.
I promised we would sponsor him , I think he's off to University this year!

The weather is warm and clear today, and all I can hear through the open cottage window is the crowing of the bachelor cockerels, the cheep cheep cheep of the sparrow flock on the stone wall and the dulcet tones of the Prof as he yells lustily at Winnie for accidently stepping on the tulips

3-0

I played the Professor at badminton yesterday

He was so competitive

I fucking won 3-0 

Not bad for a fat man

Retirement

" You're not old enough" 

" You'll be bored" 

"Really?" 

" What are you going to do with yourself?"

These are some of the reactions I have had from people when they hear that I am due to retire from nursing in August this year.

I've even had a lecture on just how the baby boomers should have paid more tax throughout their working lives from one person and a thinly veiled snort of disgust from another who equates retirement with waiting-to- die, old lady behaviours. 

Envy, resentment and irritation, I can understand, for many of the younger workforce coming through the system,  have to work until they are 65 before they can leave but the generalised negativity I have felt about Early retirement has surprised me.

I have worked since I was eighteen. Two years as a bank clerk, thirty five years as a nurse. I've trained four and a half years as a student nurse in mental health and general nursing and have spent another year specialist training in high dependency and spinal injury nursing. 

I have worked as a ward manager on an acute Spinal Injury Unit, facilitated good practice within sexual health care and like many of the specialised staff on rehabilitation units all over the world worked long unpaid hours providing extracurricular care to patients, many of which became firm friends.

I have also worked part of most weekends as an intensive care nurse for  over a decade.

I have mentoured, guided, disciplined and supported more staff than I care to remember and I have provided end of life care to patients and their families over a hundred times during long sad shifts.

I have been spat at, punched and slapped by patients and their family members.I have worked night shifts, Christmas days and most public holidays and have not had a pay rise for the past few years.

As a manager, I fought fires on a daily basis

And so I am looking forward to my retirement. 

I think I deserve it.

I hope to work occasionally, perhaps in the local hospice, a place which is more suited to my skills and experience, but retirement will ostensibly free up our weekends to do other things. 

Relatively soon we will move on from the village to pastures new. The Prof will blossom further up in his academic world and there are so many new things to do  learn, experience, travel to and enjoy.

I will also write my book, 

I may even have time to support Mary in some puppy care

It's time to move on.

Red Handed

Some of the stolen daffs! 

I was caught stealing this morning.

It all took place during a particularly heavy downpour which the old dogs and I got caught in after delivering a cheque to the trustees of the village hall. The cheque was a donation towards the Hall's decoration from the Flower Show committee, part of last year's donations ...and it was the only dry thing on me when Jean Smith opened her door to receive it. 

She offered me a spare coat, but I told her I was beyond caring, which was true. By the time we got back down the lane we all looked as though we had been thrown into a swimming pool. 

Now the piece of land behind our cottage has recently been sold. It is also covered in daffodils, survivors of the recent land clearance, so realizing that I couldn't get any wetter, the dogs  and I traipsed onto the plot and I helped myself to the flowers, something I have done for the past decade.

I had picked around two dozen daffs when the white van bounced through the gap in the wall and a middle aged guy sat in the drivers seat and frowned at me.

Red handed I decided to front it all out so I waved the flowers rather gaily at him and walked over as he got out of the van.

"Are You the new owner ? " I asked

" I am " he said

" I'm sorry but I've been stealing your daffs" I trilled lightly

" So I see" he answered without smiling.

It was all rather awkward for a moment until Winnie, who was sick to the back teeth of getting wet, pulled herself free of me and marched quicksticks off the plot into the direction of home with all of the grace of a pygmy hippo!

" She's a big girl" the man noted as she thundered past and as I agreed, I could see that the ice around the stolen flowers had suddenly been broken. 

A good job I thought later, upsetting neighbours is never a good idea.

 

Bollocks!

Sorrel gets somewhat nervous when negotiating trains home, so as the 10.04 virgin  train to London arrived three minutes early I got on with her to help locate her seat.
The fucking train left the station at 10.02!
The two elderly ladies sat across the aisle hooted with laughter when they realised, so much so that I nearly punched both hard in the face for their trouble.
I pressed the intercom to the driver which is located above the door but nothing happened. The train roared on, Sorrel looked more anxious and the two crones cackled harder with laughter.
Things got worse as after I disembarked at the next station, I missed the train back because, in the wet, as I was running down the steps of the pedestrian bridge, I lost a croc which slithered underneath the wooden decking.
A fat lady on an invalid scooter kindly lent me her crutch to fish the bloody thing out.

I'd left my coat in the car back at the original station and noted then that I had not bothered to buy a car park ticket before as I thought I 'd only be at the first station for a minute or so.

It then started to rain heavily!

Being Caught Unawares

In just a few days we have celebrated Mothering Sunday and Sorrel's birthday.
It's kind of " mother" overload, which is strange as my own mother died back in 2002.
Last night we all flopped in the living room to watch tv after a rather impressive meal out at the Chester  Grosvenor. The channel 4 documentary 24 Hours In A&E was on which proved to be somewhat of a busman's holiday for me and a rather gruesome spectacle for Sorrel.

One story featured a " before and after" moment with a prickly and somewhat lonely old lady called Wendy who had shattered her ankle after falling at home.

She was feisty, opinionated bordering on rude, brittle and at times incredibly vulnerable as we watched her negotiate the frightening world of being a patient.
Dovetailing the shots of her medical care, we got to glimpse the " real"  Wendy. Her hair brushed up and back, a neat little pullover covering thin shoulders, she talked about her previous two husbands with a mixture of righteous indignation and sad regret and tempered this with the brittle repartee so evident in her casualty clips.
It was clear that she had probably given the producers a run for their money.

It struck me that I was, in fact, looking at my mother, and immediately I told The Prof and Sorrel so for the similarity between Wendy and my mother was so striking that I was amused, and suddenly rather moved by it all.
I had literally seen a ghost and although I made light of the programme, and the similarities between Wendy and my mother, I found myself turning my head away from the rest of the living room............... with my eyes gently stinging.

" Beach Balled sized Lady Nuts"

Things are cranking up nicely towards next week's wartime finale as The Walking Dead's narrative underlines that no one is "mr nice guy" in this brave new world.
Oceanside is nearly on board with " Team Rick"
Sasha is down but not out
Rosita has brought Dwight back into Alexandria to help,
Eugene is an asswipe
And a ton of redshirts are being set up to die next week, which is a shame as new characters such as Oceanside's resident dyke Beatrice and Polynesian Cyndie are rather more interesting than some of the main characters like Aaron and the vapid Eric.

Cheap Date

Dipping crackers into cream cheese and leaving crumbs
Farting loudly in the bath and enjoying the increase of  the foam layer.
Sucking chocolate from a chocolate finger
Popping bubble wrap,
Sitting in the dark with a layer of thick face cream on
Burping after too much diet coke
Lying in your own field looking up at the sky,
Reading the news during a long bowel movement on the loo,
My queeny toy being watched very closely by an interested bulldog
Mushy peas on toast,
Realising that you are the only person in the cinema
Having your toes licked by a dog,
Tinned peaches and evaporated milk,
Sex
Clean sheets and cool pillowcases,
Singing,
Laughing at a private joke,
Lying in bed after a particularly horrendous night shift while your husband and mother in law are out shopping for the day


All nice things that cost next to nothing

Wandering Lonely as a cloud.

Sorrel amid the daffs

The meadows at Bodnant Gardens are filled nose- to- nipple with yellow daffodils, which is a stunning sight when viewed in situ so to speak.

It's A Knockout!

Between Winnie and Mary,  Sorrel has suffered the onslaught of cups of coffee knocked from hands, masturbation on slippers , giant paws bashing perfectly well coiffured outfits and food stolen from plates when her  back has been turned..
At various points in the day,loud  shrieks can be regularly heard as Welsh terrier gleefully ambushes old lady as she potters around at her ablutions.
It's great sport!
Sorrel is not really a dog lady

I shall leave you with this old blog post from a few years ago...I know it's lazy blogging but it made me laugh when I re read it....it kind of captures Sorrel so well
Enjoy

The Prof made himself comfortable as Sorrel and I had a chat about nothing....these "nothing"conversations drive him to distraction.......which makes them even more entertaining.
Sorrel " I love slices mango and melon"
John: " Do you?........I am a bit partial to pineapple chunks myself"
Sorrel: " Really?"
The Prof " harrumphs" at this point.
John " yes......especially tinned pineapples"
Sorrel" thats strange, I would have thought you'd go for fresh

Brief silence

Sorrel: " Do you like raspberries John?"
John " I've gone off them a bit "
Sorrel " hum"
John:" they are a bit bland, the ones from the supermarket"

Sorrel " What about strawberries?"
The Prof then sighs very loudly and shifts in his deck chair
John" Oh I love stawberries ! ........"
Sorrel " I love them too"
Prof ( under his breath ) " oh For fuck's sake"

Long silence

Sorrel " John......what Are your thoughts on passion fruit?"
The Prof screaming into the wind " OH MY GOD........I WAS ADOPTED!!!!!!"

Mother In Law " sitting"

Selfies on Llandudno Pier

A Wonderful World

The Prof is busy at work today and so I am entertaining the mother in law.

A Garden Centre, a trip to a vintage clothes store in an attempt to sell some of her Victorian clothes and lunch out at a rather nice restaurant is the order of the day.

I'll post a selfie of us later! 

In the meantime have a look at this video taken in the village hall recently.

It's a clip of Chelsea Cameron, the daughter of Sandra who is the Hall's caretaker and winner of the Best in Show at The Trelawnyd Flower Show.

Chelsea has a lovely voice and it a bit of a star in the village.

Given the bad news in London recently, the title of this song couldn't be better chosen.

Sit back and enjoy 

Xxxx

Operation Dog Snot Removal and Other Thoughts.

A week ago  I walked up from Westminster Pier and into the sunshine which bathed Big Ben. It was 2pm in the afternoon.

Oh for the grace of " something" go I!  

Today, London is back to business and that is how it should be. 

Today, we have spring sun here in Trelawnyd, and there are a few more people to be seen, which is nice. Trendy Carol, sprightly after a recent holiday , had a nice jacket on I noted and as we stopped for George to catch up with us after his mooch on the village green , I watched a woman cut her partner's toenails as they sat in a nearby conservatory! A surreal little moment of normality as I mused over the fact that over a dozen nationalities were caught up in The Westminster attack.

Today

" Operation Dog Snot Removal" is in full force .

Sorrel, the mother in law, comes to stay later today.

I was hanging her newly laundered duvet cover over the field gate to dry when Sailor John reminded me that I needed to organise the first of this year's Flower Show meeting. I had just received the invoice for the Church linens which some of the Flower Show's profits will be buying so it was on my mind anyway. We will be having the meetings in the Crown Pub this year, with all of us mourning Auntie Glad's kitchen table get togethers as we do so. 

Mrs Trellis was out in the sunshine as I fed corn to the bachelor bantams , we talked about yesterday's London attack and her response was the best I have heard over the last 24 hours.

With her oversized bobblehat bobbing from side to side, she summed up her thoughts thus

" Worrying about it is like sitting in a rocking chair all afternoon! .....it gives you something to do but it gets you nowhere!" 

Wise words.

Clean Sheets

Sometimes a patient just cannot rest.......it often happens when they are dying.
You have administered all the medications you can. You have turned them into a more comfortable position. You have talked to them, held their hand, Watered them , and soothed them but still their restlessness continues and that makes you frustrated and helpless and the family fraught and pained.

There is something that can be done at times like these, and I was reminded of this when a dear friend shared their observations on the subject this morning.
You wash your patient, and you change the bed sheets.
There is something fundamental in this simple act of care, as in some strange way, the simple feeling of clean skin, damp hair that is combed and brushed and crisp clean sheets under a tired body that transports you to Sunday childhood bedtimes after bath time.

Rest hopefully will come then, often when dawn is breaking.
The power of crisp clean sheets.

Women of The Walking Dead

Sasha and Rosita

At the start of The Walking Dead , the women's roles were generally supportive to the men. in that way the series mirrored The disaster movie formula of the 1970s where women were decorative, weak and in need of saving.
Now in series seven, the zombie apocalypse has seen a blossoming of woman power as the likes of Maggie takes the leadership role in  Hilltop and Jadis and the women of Oceanside effectively run the two other communities adjacent to the saviour stronghold.
Carol, now out of her fugue is effectively second in command in Kingdom , Michonne remains a born warrior and Rick's main support in Alexandria and Rosita, a sexy stereotype from the comics has now been given a more substantial backstory where she admits teaming up with men, not for protection they may offer but for the skills they could teach her in survival. " Sex was a bonus" she tells Sasha, underlining that any " using" was done by her and not by the men , now all deceased.
It's an interesting twist.
In team Rick the women now outnumber the men ( a fact that doesn't bode well for Sasha) and with Jesus coming out...we now have four gay characters in the storylines too!

The Boys are back in town

 The three bachelor bantams that I thought had a new home a few months ago have returned to the Ukranian Village after pissing off their new owners with a show of Drama queen behaviours.
Worthy of three Joan Crawfords at a cocktail party.
Older with their tiny bodies full of testosterone, each one has tested me with a miniature  show of I'm in charge but I was on nights again last night so I was in no mood for histrionics and each one got slapped down with a show of force when sharp little feathered feet started to tantrum.