I’m waiting to handover at night shift
I like a punchy handover
I’ve got to get home early as the chimney sweep is turning up at 8.30 am
I’m picking Nigel up in Chester this afternoon.
The Silent Nun
I usually get back home soon after nine am after the first long dog walk of the day
And I spied Mrs C standing by the kitchen wall seeing if I was about.
She wanted my “ professional “ thoughts on something so I left the dogs in the car and invited her in for tea.
Mrs C ‘s father is poorly in hospital. He has covid and is not expected to recover and Mrs C, who is in her early sixties wanted to know just what a syringe driver did and why fluids had been stopped on her father.
The nurse looking after him overnight had been attentive but silent and Mrs C felt as though her questions , of which there were many, could not be asked.
This sort of night nurse I always refer to as The Silent Nun . As death is approaching they glide around as if invisible , say little but always looking solemn and quietly supportive.
It’s as though death is something purely something to be an awe of.
Instead of something normal, albeit it often earth shattering .
I am often surprised just how few people have seen a death up close.
In these days of expert resus both at home and in hospitals many people are treatable over and above their normal life expectancies. The times where granny is gently fading away in a single bed in the corner of the living room seems more of a rarity as it was , and with our busy lives and fragmented families many moments of death are missed or sanitized or both .
The Silent Nun can compound this distancing by giving death a overwhelmingly devout miss en scene .
There has to be a balance of course.
But in my experience death and the process of dying has to be talked about and explained as a normal yet hugely significant undertaking.
I make it a point to ask if the relative has been in this position before. If they haven’t I tend to ask if they want me to be outline what to expect, and the answer invariably is yes.
Patterns of breathing, noisy secretions, agitation, all manner of scary things can be explained in layman’s terms and plans can be discussed for treatments to alleviate some of the symptoms seen.
The relative is brought into the treatment plans for their loved one, they can understand why something is being done ( or not) and by being part of that plan can feel less helpless within the situation.
I answered some of Mrs C ‘s main questions and encouraged her to clarify some others with the ward staff when she returned to the hospital this morning and as she drank her tea I remembered the words of a support worker who I worked with eons ago now. She must be long time dead herself . But she always brought into a family vigil a pot of tea, with a small jug of milk and a sugar bowl with spoons. Cups , coffee, saucers , biscuits on a plate
The works …
“ it always gives the family something to do” she explained “ sorting out the crockery and pouring the tea”
Autumn
Autumn is here.
There is a definite chill in the air.
I’ve been washing the spare bedroom bedding this morning and have hung it on the field gate to dry.
Leaves are whipping down the lane as if in a grey river and have started to heap in the gateways and livery stable fields and the ponies have started to wear their winter coats.
Roger has been galloping around the front garden, excited by the wind.
He remains a joy
A regular little gentleman.
Who has only just started to learn to cock his leg up against the shrubs and flowers like an adult.
Chic Eleanor has just messaged. We are meeting in the pub at 5.30
“ how naughty !” She texted
Nigel Returns
Nige’s last visit
Nigel “ I ‘ll be arriving on Friday afternoon , can you pick me up from Chester? “
Me “ Of Course , just let me know when…I’m looking forward to you coming it’s been over six years since your last visit !”
Nigel “ I know “
Me “ I’ll make sure everything is clean and tidy for your Visit”
Nigel ( scoffs) “Have you got a dozen cleaning ladies coming in ? “
He knows me so well
My friend Nige is coming to stay on Friday and I’m so glad I have a new kitchen and bathroom
He likes to be in control and has, to be fair, suffered a few horror visits in the long lost past when my cottage was more “ rustic” for his aseptic needs so to speak
“ I promise you can make dinner “ I told him last night on the phone
It sounds silly but I so want to impress him on his return
The Chicken Field
I found the painting behind the shelving until in my bedroom.
It was covered in dust, and had slipped down out of sight over a year ago now
It’s a painting of fifteen multicoloured chickens
I painted it 17 months ago now at the height of lockdown.
I think it’s important to remember the isolation of lockdown and not to forget it
My lifelong friend Nia in New South Wales messaged me with the suggestion we cooked together on zoom on day.
It was silly and frivolous and fun and sweet, and the conversation flowed easily in between the cracking of eggs and the mixing of sauces . Conversations you would have if you didn’t live alone
Conversations you could still participate in lockdown .
From cooking we evolved to painting
And the chicken field was born at the same time Nia swirled around blue abstract shapes on her canvass ten thousand six hundred miles away
This simple activity kept my head about water during lockdown , it really did
And yesterday I wrapped the duck painting in brown paper in preparation of sending it to Nia for Christmas.
She was there for me that day, with a smile and an inconsequential chatter and gossip about ordinary things and I will always be grateful to her for that.
Lovely Linda and The Meaty Farts
I’m not banging on about being busy
But I’m busy.
I’m on a two day training course and it’s college night tomorrow
I’ve just finished nights as well,
And they were busy too.
I got home all in a rush, and after dog walking, cat feeding and the like took a few minutes respite and let Dorothy give my feet a jolly good licking
It was Delightful!
Now when she’s on a good one, Dorothy can slobber over my bunions for a good half hour, during which she has a particularly odious habit of farting rather heavily.
I think it’s a kind of gastrocolic reflex, like a baby sucking a bottle will wind
And It’s only a small price to pay, to be sure
But today I wasn’t banking on the velvet voiced Linda knocking on the door wanting to organise a community council meeting just as Dorothy was in mid lickn’fart
I let Linda in before I realised that not only my feet were covered in slobber, but that the cottage smelled of the meatiest of farts….and boy are we talking meaty.!
I was mortified .
Blaming Dorothy seemed like the most obvious of ruses
So I said nothing and hoped she wouldn’t notice
Linda was as gracious and as smiley as always, she’s rather like Chic Eleanor in this respect
But I did notice that she didn’t stay very long at all
A Bee Vase
My nephew Pete has just gotten divorced.
He’s cheerful yet conflicted as many divorcees are but at fifty is moving into his own house, the first he can call just his own.
I took him round a card and a house warming gift and he laughed when he opened it today
It was a flower vase with bees on it.
I know it was a stereotype, but I bought him a gift I know many straight single men would never ever buy themselves and I think he was touched by it as he hugged me in the street as we said goodbye.
Memories
December 29th 2005 was a Thursday .
A suicide bomber killed himself, two Palestinian civilians and an Israeli soldier on the West Bank
Tony Blair was Prime Minister and Mariah Carey was doing well with “ Don’t forget about us”
There was little else of note to report that day, however it was the day I started to write Going Gently.
My first post was perfunctory
disaster thoughts
well my first blog........sounds rather like something Kenneth Williams would say.
I will be brief, and "set the scene" as it were.
I am 43, a nurse professionally, newly moved into the Welsh country side from Sheffield. I Am probably going through a mid life crisis.
Ideal for a place like this......................look forward to talk soon.
I will be brief, and "set the scene" as it were.
I am 43, a nurse professionally, newly moved into the Welsh country side from Sheffield. I Am probably going through a mid life crisis.
Ideal for a place like this......................look forward to talk soon.
I didn’t give much away did I? but the “ Midlife crisis “ quote was a bit of giveaway.
For I felt a bit…..aimless.
Lizzy asked about my move from Sheffield to a tiny village the size of Hillsborough Park and I’m trying to recall the lead up to it.
My husband certainly had itchy feet and had wanted to move to the country for a long time and we had been together five years in a city that had served us both very well. He was looking for promotion ,
I was looking to nest.
If children were on the cards then, I would have been an ideal time to adopt,
But we left my large three bedroom terrace on the steep Wynyard Road in Hillsborough with two old cats, Welsh terrier Finlay and grumpy Scottie Maddie and moved to Trelawnyd which was a village three miles ( and thirty years )different from my childhood home of Prestatyn.
The first year in the cottage seems a blur now.
There was a lot for me to organise as the inside had been reduced to a bland, 1980s shell by the previous owner and so I contracted a big shy bear of a carpenter to design a new staircase and handrail, Victorian looking glass fronted cabinets for either side of the inglenook fireplace and a bookcase and wardrobe for the bedroom.
New windows were replaced in the back of the cottage and a new garden dug from beneath the tarmac car park , an eyesore which was bordered with a new but traditional welsh limestone wall complete with an iron wrought gate made by my brother in law.
And never had much to do with the “ locals” until one moment when I was painting the living room ceiling one day I caught two old ladies peeping through the living room windows.
Both had matching cardigans on.
It was my first meeting with lifelong friends Gwyneth Jones and Olwena Hughes. Gwyneth had a penchant for tweed skirts and lived in the farm down the lane.
Olwena had no ankles and lived in one of the pensioner bungalows on Bron Haul.
Both ladies made a run for it when I saw me waving at them with my paint brush.
I caught them in the lane by the kitchen wall and invited them in for tea.
They admitted they wanted to see what we had “ done to the place”
The conversation is about a fellow villager who had hurt his face in a fall.
Both have long since passed away
Funny what you remember
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 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.
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.
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
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