Roger’s Stairs

 

After many weeks of trepidation and angst, Roger has now mastered the cottage staircase.

True he runs at it with all legs flaying,

Almost as if he was a over wound clockwork toy injected with Adrenalin 

And true he is still very much so an uncoordinated mass of red and tan curls, typical of a puppy half his age.

But hundreds of times a day, he can be found somewhere on or around the staircase,

Bouncing up it

And Falling and bouncing back down it.

A gleefully happy smile upon his daft face.

The Valeta and Other Stories

 

In yesterday’s comments Lizzy asked how such a quiet, clearly gauche young Welshman like me became a psychiatric nurse at the tender age of twenty.

The answer, is probably more complicated than I realised at the time, they always are, but the overwhelming reason was that I was looking for a career was that I hated my life as grade 2 bank clerk in the National Westminster Bank in Rhyl.

I wanted a job with kudos

Something I could be proud of 

Something my family would be proud of.

And my decision to be a nurse was thanks primarily to a woman by the name of Nerys Griffith 

Now Nerys was a student nurse at Wrexham Maelor hospital .She was and is,very Welsh, was a seriously committed General nurse and briefly was my second or third girlfriend ( I know it was a phase) I was also quite in awe of her general nurse tales of blood guts and gore so thought that I could be a nurse of sorts and psychiatric nursing seemed a logical move even though I knew absolutely nothing of what it would entail. 

Up to then my sole experience of mental illness was that I watched the film Ordinary People with Timothy Hutton in 1981

I hadn’t got a Scooby Doo!

And so I applied to three school’s of nursing .

The local psychiatric hospital in rural Denbigh.

The school of nursing based at the West Cheshire Hospital in Chester

And a dreadfully scary gothic looking hospital in Chesterfield of all places in Derbyshire 

I was accepted for both the English schools

Now my spoken welsh wasn’t good enough for the local hospital .

And so I chose Chester , a city I revisit weekly even now.

My nurse training was dominated by a camp,multifaceted Quaker tutor by the name of Leslie Brint. He opened my gauche, small town mind not only to mental illness and it’s treatments , but to different lifestyles, cultures, sexualities as well as to aspects of social injustice, pacifism and culture and literature

He was my Jean Brodie. 

A man of great charm

Safari suit jackets 

And a lover of the Valeta 

 

So , apart from the Valeta what did I learn from my three years at the West Cheshire hospital? 

I learned that fragments of human beings that were ravaged by mental illness were still people that required respect and care.

I learned to give physical contact to people before I even leaned to receive it for myself and

I realised that an unhappy childhood was a common experience of so many.

Policemen Stories

I have always had a healthy respect for the police.
I was stopped by one last night when taking the dogs for a walk .
Bluebell had just had her service and the bike rack which is always hanging from the boot had come loose
The policeman just wanted me to know that it was unsafe.
He was very good looking and reached through the window to stroke Roger who suddenly became all wags and smiles. 

I smiled like a fat boy in a cake factory 

And simpered like a schoolgirl 

Years ago, I was once part of a psychiatric nurse team who had to retrieve a sectioned patient from their house in the community. We were accompanied by four extremely large Yorkshire policemen and my job in the whole event was to look after the syringes of intramuscular chlorpromazine . Sedation which I had to inject into the patient's buttocks if all went tits up.

Then I was only 23 and rather slight in stature. I also wore a very unflattering thick woolly jumper which made me look like a presenter of a 1980s childrens' tv show. I couldn't have been less of an asset to such a venture if I'd put on a gingham dress and platted my hair, but there we go.

Nowadays the police have all sort of equipment and protocols to follow in such situations as I am sure psychiatric nurses now do. Then , I chose the biggest and most manly policeman and stood behind him.
" Are you the lad with the drugs? " the policeman asked me when I peeped around his biceps to see what was going on
" yes " I gulped weakly
" Keep behind me, don't get in the way and if you need to jab the guy, I'll call you" he instructed carefully. He sounded like Freddie Truman and looked like a Greek god.
I nodded, white faced and shivered helplessly when he added

" and prick me with that fucking needle and I'll fucking batter you senseless !"

Yorkshire Puds

 Sometimes I think I shouldn’t write in Going Gently every day.

Like for most us, ordinary days can be somewhat mundane here in Wales.

But write I do 

A habit such as a journal can’t be broken just because fuck all happens.

I’ve spent most of the day at home, what with Bluebell in the garage.

But I’ve been busy enough what with phone calls to three friends , two hours of study and college homework and baking Yorkshire Puddings for tomorrow’s supper.

Now I made a batch of Yorkshire’s rather than the customary big square one which was traditionally eaten as a starter or as a meal on its own filled with gravy and veg.

Bluebell passed her MOT and received her service as I fixed the washing machine, sprayed Roger’s ear cooked and felt smug with myself

The Repair Shop is on tonight. 

Apart from that and The Walking Dead , it’s the only thing I really watch on tv 

Ps I’m now watching Handmade, Britain’s best woodworker which is Bake off from a decade ago with Mel Giedroyc and the very sexy Tom Dyckhoff 

Pity the present day bake off has gone rather bland

Beauty and the Beast | Angela Lansbury Live Performance

I know my friend john Highfield will be heartbroken as I am 

Gawd bless you Mrs Potts 

Life

 Roger has a sore ear which he’s been scratching too much, (he’s presently asleep sat up on my lap)

I’m worried about money as a mortgage rise is on the cards 

I’ve put myself down for some extra shifts .

The new washing machine is playing up too and I fucking forgot to activate the warranty 

Bluebell has her MOT and service tomorrow 

On a positive note

I’ve cracked Google classroom.

I’ve got in two hours of study today and yesterday 

I’ve lost 5 lbs this week 

And the noise from effin Charley, the loud mouthed Yorkshire terrier from next door has suddenly been at a minimum recently.

I wonder if he’s passed away

Is it bad of me to say that I hope he has? 

A little bad

A little good 

Normal, boring life I guess 

Roger , collapsed as I watched a recorded bake off

The Little Pink Spot

 

“I’m deciding who will get what” 

My patient was a single woman in her early fifties, and she was making copious notes on a Basildon Bond writing pad.

Her answer was a reply to my finger pointing 

I sat down and waited for the rest of the story.

My patient was due to be discharged from hospital later that week. 

She had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer for a while now and this was to be her last admission for any medical treatment  . 

When she deteriorated further she had asked to be sent to St Lukes, which was Sheffield’s hospice at the time. 

I knew she lived in a large family house in Broomhill, which was the trendy and expensive suburb of the city, 

Her house, she told me , was filled with trendy objet d’art .

She was a popular woman too…who went to the Crucible more than I did 

It was her collections and belongings she was worried about .

She wanted the right thing to be given to the right person and was worried that her will , although completed was woefully inadequate for the job 

So she was making a list. 

I had an idea.

I rooted through the ward clerk’s cupboard and found several sheets of multicoloured coloured stickers 

“ Put a sticker under something you want to leave someone and leave your executor the key “;

She thought it was a fabulous idea so much so that she promised to leave me “ an item” for having the idea when she got home. 

By the end of my shift she had such a long list of bequeathed gifts , she had to enter various symbols and letters inside the sticker so that things could be allocated .

I never saw the patient again . I never heard from her executor either 

The pink sticker must have fallen off ……….

Post script 

In the top right hand drawer of my lovely new office desk, in the west wing of Bwthyn y Llan is a sheaf of multicoloured stickers . I bought them in 2009 from Woolworth’s in Prestatyn before they closed and

Someday in the future , I will take the day off ordinary chores and activities and I will amble around my cottage putting stickers on every last bloody thing 

There is some strange satisfaction at this simple thought

Time

 I’m sat in X-ray waiting for my appointment . 

I’m fifteen minutes early.

I’m early for everything I do.

I’m very seldom late.

I was musing about this fact only the other day. 

And now being early is a long term friendship joke.

When I’m off to the train out of London at say 7 am, Nu will often say that I’m catching the afternoon train home.

She knows me well.

I know myself very well too.

For this abhorrence for lateness comes from the constant and low level anxieties a child has when going to school.

As young twins, my sister and I were taken to school by my father, who was notoriously bad tempered in a morning. He was also slightly lazy and would not be hurried by school rules so every morning we suffered from anxieties bordering on abusive levels when trying not to chivvy him into snapping but balancing prudent silence against encouragement to get through the school gates on time. 

That constant, low level anxiety shaped a need to be always on time if not early.

It’s not rocket science 

I took the dogs down to the beach after the hospital visit, came home and prepared a Korean fish curried soup which is simmering on the stove . 

I’ve done laundry , moved half a hundred weight of kiln dried logs from the driveway into their store by the kitchen door and have had to sit down as my back is aching like a nun’s knee

Time to watch the latest Walking Dead on Disney….

What strange bedfellows

I Love BBC Radio 4

 If you can,  listen to this, either live  or on podcast.

It’s an often hilarious conversation between two bright Irish women. The author Marian Keyes and actress/ writer Tara Flynn

Simple, engaging, and warm 

Real autumn fodder Radio four does so well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09zgv36

Catch Up

 Not the best photo , but you get the gist .

Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, which was tasty and filling and the whisky cake was a bit of a winner especially as I cheated with squirty cream. 

We hadn’t got together since well before the Queen’s demise, so there were lots of opinions flying about

A Nice, relaxed evening

Charity Begins At Home

 I’ve been pottering around in the kitchen all day.

Nothing stressful , just all rather mindful 

Dinner is more or less ready. Just candles to put on the cake.

It was my sister in law’s birthday yesterday.

From the kitchen window, I could see Islwyn beavering away by the Church , so I took the dogs up the lane for a walk to see what he was up to. 

He had cleared the Church path of weeds and moss and had uncovered many of the old gravestones that had been lain flat in the 1980s. 

The covid snake stones, he had collected up neatly to be rearranged again, whilst another villager Mr Morgan finished varnishing the lytchgate. Mr Morgan Islwyn told me had financed the work himself.

I asked Islwyn why he working on the graveyard after the Church had been closed but I already sort of knew what his answer would be. 

“ I was a bad man my youth” Islwyn chucked “Now I’m earning myself some brownie points” 

Bunches of cyclamen planted by the Church gate by one of the members of the community association .

I haven’t got much else to do ( hence the blog entry) just wine glasses to polish, pudding to make.

Shit I’ve missed out an ingredient for the main course…time to sort it out

Buteo Buteo

 I was content to let the previous, rather lazy post suffice for the day.

Nothing has much happened, so there’s nothing to report.

But I’ve just been for a walk with Mary, who has been a little under the weather today, and I needed to share something, like you do when something quite profound, or beautiful or both has just happened.

We walked down the lane to Graham The Shepherd’s gate. His fields lead off to the West and the dusk sky was still clear against the silhouettes of the hawthorn hedges and trees and fences. 

It was cold and fresh and sat at the very top of the dead Ash tree , the one that always dominates the skyline sat a lone buzzard. 

He was crying out like buzzards do.

A strange mixture of cat call mew and squawk…a keey ya! 

Sharp and plaintive 

A lonely call in the darkening dusk.

I picked Mary up and she rested her feet on the top rung of the gate and she watched and listened as Welsh Terriers do and I could feel the thump of her heart against my chest as it raced to the cry of the buzzard as  it continued to call in the dark.

A moving rather  beautiful and simple little moment,

Caught by accident on a Friday evening

Rainy Day

 Dreadful weather today. Torrential rain 

Three dogs on the couch day 

Watched Amélie, Airport 77 and ate fish pie

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris

 

Towards the end of this movie the gentle hearted Mrs Harris ( Lesley Manville) turns to the finance director of the Dior fashion franchise ( Lucas Bravo) in the street and says “ We all need to dream , especially at this time” 

Suddenly we are not in a story set in 1957 Paris. 

Suddenly the titular Mrs Harris, a sixty something working class woman, is speaking for all of us in our post lockdown society of uncertainty, war and isolation. 

We all need a dream.

And this film celebrates dreams with gusto.

For Mrs Harris , it’s the dream prospect of owning a bespoke Dior  dress, and with a plucky positivism she wins over the elite Parisian fashion house staff in a rather sweet story about how easy it is to become invisible in later years. 

Lesley Manville breaks your heart as Mrs Harris and it’s nice to see her and Isabelle Huppert, as the Dior snobby manager taking the leads roles as women in their sixties. 

I can’t recommend the movie enough

It has a sweetness we all need so very much at the moment .

Normal Day

 Our corner of Trelawnyd seems a bit busier than on late. Three men, including the ubiquitous Islwyn  are working of the Church Gates. 

“They’re fixing the hinges” Mrs Trellis informed me as she and Blue trotted down the lane.

And by the look of the ladder, one of them is giving the Lytchgate a spruce up.

Sailor John is walking around my old field photographing wild flowers.

Mrs X rang me up and asked if I could vouch for her again regarding her shotgun licence.

I’ve bought some cheap solar lights and have lined the back garden path with them in readiness for Saturday night. Mr Poznân thinks that they are an excellent idea for stopping accidents 

He also told me my gate needed a lick of paint.

The yappy dogs are still at it next door. 

I’m playing radio 2 a bit louder than I should to compensate.

Depeche Mode Everything Counts 

Operation Dog Snot Removal

 

Typical of most families, mine tends to meet around the matriarch’s home for family meals , birthdays and Christmas . 

It’s what people do.

We congregate around the queen, sometimes the King.

For a change I’m having my sisters, their husbands and my sister in law to dinner on Saturday .My nephew is invited too but he has a social life busier than mine so we will see if he turns up

After covid and my divorce , it will be the first family meal that I’ve hosted 

So there’s a significance here that’s left mostly unsaid , but which screams of emotional importance.

I’m making it easy on myself and going simple 

Aioli and warm Spanish style bread, 

A one pot chicken, rice and chorizo bake, baby lamb chops, soaked in garlic yogurt before cooking , 

Glazed long green beans and “homemade” Spanish ice cream whisky cake

A typical Sitges meal.

Tomorrow I’m initiating Operation Dog Snot Removal like the exercise I used to indulge in , in the days I had in laws to stay.

Study Day

 

Tuesdays used to be choir days. 

For the next nine months they are now my study day.

Tonight until nine, I have my lectures.

Before that this afternoon, I’m having special help by the IT department in order to get my head around Google classroom. 

This morning and early afternoon , I’m studying.

I miss choir, but have solace in the understanding that I will be returning 

So it’s study day today, work tomorrow and Mrs Harris Goes To Paris on Thursday.

Saturday I’m cooking dinner for my family 

My first supper party for them for over four years.

The Storm of 2017

 

This is my favourite photograph taken by the boffin Cameron .

It’s a real stunner

It is of my Soay Ewe Irene during the harsh snowy winter five years ago.

She was hardly bothered by the weather.

Irene was a particularly difficult Ewe. After her mother Sylvia died ( and yes I did name both sheep after the flower show matriarchs ) Irene spent most of her days in the livery stables fields, shunning any attempt to be caught and moved, and there she lived with the horses until her peaceful death today 

Her face lying straight on the grass facing the ponies in the top field 

Don’t anyone say they are sorry. She wasn’t my ewe for nearly a decade, so I had no real investment in her care.

But I kind of respected her chutzpah at choosing where she was going to live.

Thank you to Rachel who runs the livery for allowing her to stay for so many years 

The final series

 

Apart from theatre tickets, oh and a new carpet washer, my only real indulgence  is my subscription to Disney +.

This will come to an end in eight weeks or so with the final airing of the last season of The Walking Dead.

I will be sad to see it go, but it’s time it did.

The last season has now morphed into a war film, with our multicultural and predominantly female “ family” set up as the French Resistance in WW2 

The zombies are only a side threat. Revolting set decorations. 

Halloween miss en scene 

I’ve followed the series from Frank Darabont’s seminal first episodes and carried on watching this morning with my bucket of coffee and Roger cocking his head at all of the zombie grunting

Like all good friends, I will stay to the end

A Face Only A Mother Could Love

 I didn’t have time to reply to yesterday’s post comments . 

It was past ten when I finally sat down after working all day.

I’d been on my feet most of that time and before bed, Dorothy gleefully licked my rancid feet until they shone like my chilblains used to when I was eleven and walking home in the snow.

Does anyone suffer from chilblains any more? 

With global warming I doubt it.

I was never cut out to be a buff hero

As a child I had chilblains, a mild stutter and warts on my left hand 

Later on I suffered from prickly heat , late diagnosed dyspraxia and vikings finger

Now I have the bladder of woman that might of borne a dozen children and the kidneys of  an old cat who has licked antifreeze

Oh….And stress psoriasis worthy of an exploded cereal packet in a confined space 

I’m not a catch for sure, but I’m writing this with a bucket of coffee 

At 5.45 am 

Before work on a Sunday morning

Ps I’m colourblind too