Alcoholic Daze

Let them Eat Cake

2012-01-30T16:05:00.006Z

This afternoon, I popped into Sainsburys and Lidl to do my weekly shop. (I often make a point of doing a separate Lidl shop because I can fill up with all the things I miss from living in Germany and browse round their tempting non-food bargains too.) In both shops, the person in front of me at the till had difficulty paying.

In Sainsburys, it was a young woman with her child.The woman nervously fingered the change in her purse and then handed back a tin of baked beans as she did not have the full amount to cover the bill. In Lidl, there was a man in front of me. The cashier was quickly scanning the items through for the man to pack, but he was too busy searching in all his pockets for his debit card. More items went through, still he frantically searched through jacket pockets, then trousers, then even shirt pockets. With nearly all the goods scanned through, he then announced to the cashier that he could not find his card and would have to pay by cash. The trouble was, he did not have much cash either. The next 10 minutes was spent with him sorting out from the scanned and unscanned items, what was essential and what not. He kept the bread and cheese, but returned the fruit juice and sausage rolls. Then he swapped the cheese for some meat. Later he added the cheese back in. The poor cashier was furiously cancelling items on the scanner, then scanning new items, then even rescanning some of the items earlier rejected!

It got me thinking..........Here were two people in the space of an hour, both happened to be in front of me, both having trouble paying their bills and then there is Mr Hester at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Spot the deliberate mistake!

A record

2012-01-20T17:36:00.011Z

( picture from dooyoo.co.uk)

I went to my local Al-Anon meeting this week and it was a record turn-out - twice the usual number of attendees. Extra chairs were needed and the usually perfect circle became a somewhat bulging oval. There were a few newcomers, a few others I had not met before [I attend meetings irregularly, particularly when I am away for a week visiting my mother]. Proof positive that alcoholism is on the increase.

Newcomers invariably ask the same question that us old hands have once asked ourselves at our first meeting - what are the ways to help the alcoholic to stop drinking? Ha. If someone could bottle that answer (to pardon the pun), they would be a millionaire. The sad fact remains that there is nothing anyone can do to stop the alcoholic from drinking. Only the alcoholic him/herself can bring that about. If the alcoholic does not WANT to stop and will not TRY WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT to stop, there is no magic wand available in the cupboard. No amount of money, detox, rehab or medical intervention is going to bring that happy ending about. It can only come from intense effort by the alcoholic themselves to avoid the demon drop. I was once told that for every ten alcoholics, only one will succeed in becoming sober and staying sober: the other nine simply don't make it through and will lapse and relapse time after sober time into drinking or will kill themselves. It's a disease in all senses of the word.... one that neither the professionals, the alcoholic, nor certainly their loved ones can always cure. A lot of newcomers are also befuddled by their first Al-Anon meeting - I was. It's not about helping the alcoholic to stop drinking, but about the long climb to sanity for someone who has had to live with an alcoholic. It's about looking after ourselves not the alcoholic. It's a spiritual programme to heal ourselves and make us stronger to cope with the alcoholic. It's also knowing there are others out there like me, who have gone or are going through what I went through. To know you are not alone is a tremendous support. That doesn't always come across in the Al-Anon literature.

Earlier in the month a study said that people should have two alcohol-free days a week. That surprised me. My view is, we should rather be thinking more in terms of having only two alcohol-drinking days a week. Are we all drinking that much that we need to limit it to just two alcohol-free days? I grew up in a family where alcohol was only available at very special occasions like Christmas or birthdays with a zero in it. We couldn't afford it for one thing. No wonder people nowadays need benefits and large salaries to cope with their drinking habit, if they're downing alcohol on a daily basis. This rant, by the way, isn't about sobriety and prohibition. (I have the occasional little drink about once a month). But, until you have lived with alcoholism and watched a loved-one die from it, you cannot possibly understand what damage it does - to relationships, to health and ultimately to life. But once you have witnessed that, believe me, you would never want to drink again.

So far, 2012 is not good.

2012-01-04T16:34:00.004Z

Happy New Year! Or is it? Not in this neck of the woods. It has not been the best of starts. Nothing catastrophic of truly major proportions, but not exactly hunky dory either. Here is a litany of my woes......

January 1st - at about 11am- Kay and I take Snoopy for his first walk of the year around the block. See a middle-aged woman sitting on a wall outside our local vet, crying her eyes out. I ask if I can help. She tells me amid sobs and gulps with a mascara-streaked face that her dog is just being put down. Her husband is inside the vet's house, so she does not need any help, but thanks me anyway. I feel for her and spend the rest of the day thinking about her.

January 2nd - Kay wakes up with the beginnings of a cold and a huge ulcer in her cheek (her wisdom tooth had crumbled over Christmas. According to the dentist it was a naturally-weak and useless tooth) and had rubbed this huge hole in her cheek which was failing to heal.

January 3rd - Kay is due to get a train at 11 from Kings Cross back to uni up north. She wakes up feeling real awful with swollen neck glands, a swollen cheek, earache and a sore throat, not to mention pouring nose. She cannot swallow and feels sick. There follows a short debate as to whether she should go or stay, but I tell her that I have to get my mum back home (60 miles away) tomorrow, we have ordered a supermarket delivery for her on 4th and a new (digital) TV is being delivered to her on 6th. I therefore cannot be around to help Kay, if she decided to stay at home for any longer. Kay reluctantly agrees it is better for her to return north today.

We struggle on public transport and in heavy rain and winds with two heavy cases, a laptop and handbag to Kings Cross. We get there with half an hour to spare: things are looking good. Until we see the indicator board. Her 11:00 train has been cancelled along with her seat reservation. Great ! The next train is an hour later but with no guaranteed seat. In fact there will now be two train-loads of people trying to get the few random unreserved seats. There are hundreds of people in the station forecourt all in the same position, as several trains have been cancelled - not sure whether it is due to adverse weather, or signal failure somewhere in the midlands, or both. There is a film crew gleefully shoving a furry microphone on a pole thingymy in people's faces as they complain to the harrassed-looking station staff behind the information desk. Then we are told the 12:00 train has also been cancelled and we have to wait for the 13:00 one. THat's three train-loads all vying for non-reserved seats. Kay will only be guaranteed her passage (but still not the seat reservation on that one). If she fails to get that and wants to take a much later train (to guarantee a better chance of some more random free seats) she will have to pay £124. Kay breaks down in tears. Her neck glands and cheek are excruciatingly painful; she will doubtless miss the appointment with a doctor she had made to get some medication; she faces the prospect of a two-hour wait on the chilly station forecourt and (eventually, although who knows when) a three hour journey standing all the way with two suitcases. And a laptop. And a handbag. I relent. I tell her she can come home. I will cancel all the commitments. We stagger back in the opposite direction for home with the two suitcases, the laptop and the handbag. As we emerge from our local station, the heavens suddenly open. There are 60mph gales and a torrent of water that is like a wall of glass. We dash for my parked car and head the last half-mile home in a sea of water that even the fastest windscreen wipers cannot cope with. All I can see is oncoming headlights with no car attached to them - the wall of water has turned into a thick fog, the rain is so heavy. The road is covered in a 6-inch film of water, so driving at speed is out of the question. We get home and sit in the car for about 5 minutes as it is definitely too wet (and dangerous) to leave the safety of the car for the 6-foot walk to the front door at that moment).

Eventually we dash for the warmth and dry of the house and I set about frantically cancelling or rearranging all the deliveries to my mother over the next few days, or notifying everyone who I had told I was going to my mother's for a few days that I was now going to be home again after all. Then I take Kay to our local hospital walk-in clinic (as she is no longer registered with our local doctor). We wait nearly three hours to be seen and she has now thankfully been prescribed penicillin for her ulcer and throat pain. She has booked another train north for Saturday. I will take my mother home on Sunday and stay a few days with her, set up her new TV etc.

Tuesday 4th - I head off to the dentist to have a temporary filling as one of my large molar fillings fell out yesterday. When I get back, I discover Snoopy has somehow got hold of a packet of chocolate biscuits (Jaffa cakes) and eaten about 8 of them, smearing the melted chocolate on the cellophane wrapper all over the carpet. Watch this space.......Chocolate and dogs do not go together, so what comes out in due course will not be pleasant.

Happy New Year!!!

Seasons Greetings

2011-12-17T14:37:00.003Z

Kay is due back home tomorrow, I'm collecting my mum next Wednesday to bring her here and we are going to hunker down for a fortnight and eat, watch films, eat, chat, eat, sleep and eat. There may be the occasional foray into the cold outside to walk the dog or stock up on food or possibly even shop in the sales. I love the Christmas season and unashamedly fill the fridge and cupboards with all sorts of goodies. Our Christmas has always been a mixture of English and German tradition. We'll have turkey but with cooked red cabbage. Christmas cake AND stollen. There'll be Pfefferkuchen (chocolate gingerbread) and a box of Celebrations to graze on inbetween. This year I can even have a few drinks without feeling guilty that I am being hypocritical to Greg. I suspect I shall put on a few pounds, but hopefully not as much as I have lost in the last six months.

So, before I disappear to hibernate for the next few weeks, I should like to say to those reading this blog..... thank you very much for following me and putting up with me; for your advice and your concern.

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Cheers!

Don't get old, although the alternative doesn't bear thinking about

2011-12-12T09:43:00.001Z

There's been a lot of talk recently about how the elderly are treated in hospital, in care homes or even in their own homes. The news tends to focus on the neglect or abuse of old people. Often the excuse is lack of staff and lack of money, but surely lack of compassion has to feature somewhere on the list. Kay has recently been doing a work placement on an elderly ward in a hospital and what she has sadly witnessed in a few weeks could fill volumes alone.

It's true that a large proportion of elderly people who need care are suffering from one form of dementia or another and that can make compassionate treatment or care difficult. They are confused, unsure of why they need help in the first place, where they are, cannot feed themelves, cannot get to a toilet in time and sometimes can be violent or depressed. But inside every old person is a young person trying to get out. They were once 16; they were once newly married; they may have been heroes fighting in France or captured in Burma; they were parents; maybe held down responsible jobs; won Nobel prizes; and maybe were the trendsetters in their professions. You wouldn't think so to look at them now, either curled up in a hospital bed or limping down the street, leaning on a stick or zimmerframe with their silent friend - arthritis; wearing a mismatch of genuine vintage clothes from their wardrobe because their meagre pensions barely cover their living costs let alone stretch to new clothes. They complete their look with hearing aids and thick glasses, yet not out of choice - over the years their eyes and ears have seen so much and heard more than you'll ever know, but cruel old age has robbed them of their efficiency. How often have you got annoyed with an old codger in the car in front pootling about at 15mp. But if you had a bad back or couldn't turn your head quickly because of arthritis, you'd be exactly the same. You don't elect to get aches and pains, they just turn up unannounced, more's the pity. Having a car is their only hope of independence, however slow that might be. It is so easy to see the outside shell of an old person, even if you bother to look at that, but not consider what lies within.

My mum (doubled up with arthritis and scoliosis) always says "don't get old, although the alternative doesn't bear thinking about". She jokingly means the alternative would be suicide to avoid getting old. Getting old, God willing, is something that will happen to each and every one of us. Do we want the younger generation to treat us like imbeciles and nuisances one day? I am sixty-one now, but feel just as energetic and young as I did when I was twenty-five. I feel twenty-five on the inside and suspect I always will. (Thankfully, people compliment me that I look ten years younger than I actually am, but even so, the day will come when I don't.)

I'm currently reading Any Human Heart by William Boyd. I had not seen the TV series and my friend, who evidently had seen it, had bought me the book as a birthday present to make up for my serious lapse. I won't give anything away about the story, other than to say it is the lifetime journal of a fictitious twentieth century author, starting in 1906 and finishing in 1991, but yesterday I read the following:

October 1955. To the passport office to collect my new passport, valid for another ten years. ................ These ten-year chunks that are doled out to you in passports are a cruel form of momento mori. How many more new passports will I have? One (1965)? Two (1975)? Such a long way off, 1975, yet your passport life seems all too brief. How long did he live? Well, he managed to renew six passports.

I had never thought of passport renewal in that way before. I have certainly shuddered when I have compared the photo on the last one with the photo on the new one (a few too many laughter lines here, a bit too much grey hair there), but I had never given a single thought about whether I'd need another one, two or three passports to see me out. Measured in passports, our whole life is really quite short. A bit scary, really.

Baby, it's cold outside

2011-12-06T10:05:00.004Z

The temperatures have dropped drastically this week. We have had an incredibly mild autumn and winter so far with plants and wildlife definitely confused into thinking it's possibly spring already, but this week has seen the appearance of snow in the north and icy frosts here down south. My breakfast-time walk in the park with Snoopy has been very chilly with a biting wind to boot. Even my thermal gloves have been struggling to cope. My dog-walking companion has been urging me to wear a woolly hat, but hats and I just don't go together. I end up looking a bit like Benny from Crossroads. However today, I decided health and safety should take precedence over vanity. The look was not good and I felt distinctly uncomfortable, wishing the frozen ground would crack, open up and swallow me! In retrospect, I think the hat looks far better on Snoopy.

The difference

2011-12-01T18:09:00.004Z

In the last few years before Greg died, I used to do a lot of things on my own. He was not interested in doing anything anymore that did not involve drinking himself into oblivion. We did not eat together, watch TV together, sleep together, go out together (in fact he never went out at all in the end, as he could barely put one foot in front of the other and dressed like a tramp, did not shower and was totally anti-social). So I would go Christmas shopping alone and usually come home to show him what I had bought for other people especially for his side of the family. Most of the time he barely took any notice.

Since he has died, I still do things on my own..... eat, watch TV, sleep and go out, but now it is very different. Today I was doing some Christmas shopping in Oxford Street. It was lovely to see all the Christmas trees, street decorations, the hotels all done up ready for the onslaught of office Christmas parties during the month of December. I was quite successful with my shopping too. But the difference was, I came home to an empty house and had nobody to share my booty with. I don't say that in a "poor me" sort of way. Simply fact. Even though Greg was usually comotose for most of the time, at least he was something living in the house to show things to, however disinterested. Somehow showing the dog is not quite the same!

The Naked Truth

2011-11-25T09:42:00.004Z

Kay's home for the weekend to celebrate my forthcoming birthday. I haven't seen her since she started the new term in September. She's suddenly become so confident and self-assured in those few months. I think it must have something to do with the fact that she spends all day going up to strange people and asking them to take their clothes off. ( Do I hear gasps? ........ as part of her medical course, she's currently doing a clinical placement on an elderly ward in hospital, before you guess wrongly!) She came home very late last night and we chatted and laughed into the wee small hours. It's great!

Alterations in progress

2011-11-15T09:41:00.002Z

I have been thinking a lot recently about the amount of time that has passed since Greg died. It helps me perversely to get closer to him and to accept what has happened, how I have coped since he went etc. I usually do all these complicated calculations in my head and decided yesterday to succumb to the time ticker I have now installed on the right of this page. Up to now, I have been able to say that Greg died this year, then last year, but from 1 January, it will become "the year before last" and therefore more of a mouthful to say. The time ticker will be more accurate, although no less of a mouthful to say.

I wonder whether to change the blog design. I've had this one since I started back in May 2008, so I question whether a change is due. On the other hand my blog is so part of me now, it is like stepping into an old pair of pyjamas to watch TV. It wouldn't seem right watching TV in a ballgown. I am still undecided.

I have also been reading back through some of the archive to remind myself what the last years were like. The last twenty months have been much more peaceful and I needed reminding of how grim things had got in the years before Greg died. So now I have created a new page for my archives so I can dot back to them more easily. Not pleasant reading. A shudder passes through me when I recall those days. Greg really was a lovely person. So kind, thoughtful, sensitive, wouldn't-kill-a-fly type of guy. Intelligent, knowledgeable, in a high-flying career. You would not have thought so if you met him in the last five years of his life. That alcohol changed him into something else. A monster, a tramp, a depressive. He had a streak in him that didn't like being told what to do, but that amber liquid led him by the nose wherever it wanted him to go. It led him to a place where he could not fight it and it finally consumed him. It takes a lot to get my head round that.

Leaps and Bounds

2011-11-08T09:41:00.002Z

On the back of what I wrote last week, my confidence knows no bounds. Last Thursday I met my two best friends here for a long-due natter and yesterday I met some American friends who were passing briefly through London on their way home to San Fransisco. As I had not seen them since before Greg died, they invited me to lunch here. Like I said, no big deal for some people, but for me ..... it's gargantuan.

Anxiety

2011-10-27T10:58:00.003+01:00

Not many people know that when I was younger I suffered from intense anxiety and had a phobia.

It first started when I was about nineteen and in my first year at university. I had been "normal" all my life up to that point with no real problems other than what outfit to wear to the school disco or how to get rid of that spot that was erupting on the end of my nose. I sailed happily through that first year year at uni, but as we approached the end-of-year exams, I suddenly began to feel very tense. I started dabbling with smoking the occasional cigarette - there were vending machines in the hall of residence where I lived (can you imagine that these days?) and I had experimented to see if they would help me relax . Whether it was that or just stress of the exams, I don't know, but one day while I was out with a boyfriend having a meal in a pancake restaurant I suddenly had an anxiety attack. I had ordered the meal and we were chatting away, when the waiter brought my order to the table - an enormous apple and strawberry pancake with lashings of whipped cream. I took one look at it and my face began to feel very hot and I started to shake. My throat closed up and I could barely swallow. My stomach seemed in my throat and I felt I was going to vomit and/or faint at any minute. I felt everyone was looking at me (they weren't, of course). I just did not feel comfortable sitting there and whispered to my boyfriend that we should leave straight away. He was naturally unhappy about leaving the restaurant there and then. We were impoverished students and could barely afford a meal out in the first place. To leave before we had even eaten it naturally seemed to him a waste. I recall we sat there for quite some time with me feeling hotter and more faint before I had to make a dash out of the restaurant for fresh air. My pancake lay untouched on the table.

A few weeks after that, we were in a cinema and watching Anne of a Thousand Days about Anne Boleyn. We were just getting to the gripping bit of the film where she climbs the scaffold to be beheaded when again I felt the same familiar symptoms of anxiety washing over me. I had to push past people in the row I was sitting in to get to the aisle and ran to the toilets. I really thought I was going to throw up again, my heart was pounding and my stomach just seemed to stick in my throat. I remember a toilet attendant (there were such people in cinemas in those days) asking me if I were pregnant - just because I was a young student and felt sick! One thing is for sure, I never did get to see the end of that film!

After these two experiences, I seemed to feel queasy a lot of the time after that and any situation involving eating out with other people made me extremely nervous. I worried about being in situations where there were a lot of people and where I could not make a quick exit if I needed to. In no time at all, I grew to have a phobia about it which lasted well through my university days and into my twenties and thirties. To most people a good way of celebrating something or meeting new people is to have a good meal out, be pampered by waiters and eat things they would probably not eat at home. Weddings, birthdays, even funerals often come with meal invitations attached. Not a problem for most people, but for me it was a nightmare. Even my own wedding was a turmoil because I was terrified of eating at the wedding breakfast with all eyes on me. Not only that, but I had a job as a civil servant which involved being wined and dined by businessmen, who wanted to wheedle government money out of me for their commercial projects. They would invite me to the grandest lunches in the grandest venues and all I would be thinking about was what excuses I could use to turn them down. Funnily enough I did not mind stand-up buffets where I could pick and choose my food and walk around. It meant I always had a means of escape if I could not cope with the situation. For me the worst was sit-down meals, where you were rooted to the spot, sitting opposite other people with no means of escape other than one that would attract attention. I would feel wrongly or rightly that everyone in the restaurant was looking at me and the hot face, tight throat, pounding heart, nausea and shaking would start all over again.

In my late twenties, I was referred by my doctor to a psychiatrist who at our introductory appointment suggested using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy on me. The idea was to make me confront my fears by gradually coping with small things and over a course of time building up to large things. If, say, someone has a spider phobia, it would start with looking at photos of small spiders, then large spiders, then seeing one for real in a glass case and then having one placed on your hand. In my case it would mean starting on one end of the scale with eating , say, a sandwich with the therapist in a grotty cafe with my back to people and eventually ending up at the other end of the scale eating a four-course meal on my own facing other diners in a posh restaurant. Obviously with many gradations inbetween. It goes without saying that I was so terrified of the idea that I didn't even make it to the next session. However what I did learn from the consultation by retracing my past was what had more than likely triggered my phobia in the first place.

We traced it back to when I was eleven years old. I had just moved up to grammar school and I had been having a cooked school lunch around a table for six. I had taken some extra boiled potatoes, but by the end of the meal had no gravy left to accompany them and so had left the potatoes on my plate. The rules were that we had to then wait until the teacher on dinner duty gave us permission to take our used plates to the counter and collect our dessert. Our history teacher was on dinner duty that day. She had stood over me and insisted I eat up those dry potatoes making the whole table wait until I had finished before we could go up to the counter to collect our dessert. The dry potatoes stuck in my throat and made swallowing difficult and of course all impatient eyes were on me to hurry so they could get to the dessert. I often wonder if that teacher realised the damage she did that day as that experience of being unable to swallow the dry food and all eyes being on me was certainly the trigger to my phobia later in life.

By the time I got to my mid thirties, my phobia had also embraced not being able to sit in a cinema or theatre for fear I would have to run out in the middle of a performance and attract attention, just as had been the case in Anne of a Thousand Days. It was really beginning to ruin my life and I spent all my time making excuses to avoid anything that would involve eating out or having to sit in a cinema or theatre.

Then a promotion in my job meant I had to travel abroad a lot and meet up with diplomats and senior businessmen. My first reaction was to run a mile in the other direction and pack my bags full of biscuits to nibble in the quiet of my hotel room, but then something weird happened. Because I had no choice but to eat with other people, because I couldn't just hop on a plane to escape, I found I coped with it. I suddenly realised that the situations I feared were in fact not as bad as I had built them up to be in my imagination. I did not throw up, I did not faint, I did not die, I got through them. The fear of the situation beforehand was worse than the actual experience. What is more I actually began to enjoy them after a while. From then on I seemed to sail through any eating engagements with absolutely no problems, even dining with politicians in the House of Commons and with captains of industry in swish restaurants. I still had an element of anxiety, but experience taught me that I would cope with it. At that time I had also had some sessions with a physiotherapist who had taught me the correct way to breathe - from the pit of my stomach (if you have ever watched a cat or dog sleeping you will see they breathe like that) rather than from the upper chest. That all helped to relax me and control any anxiety that might pop up.

That was soon to change again shortly after I had Kay at the grand old age of 40. I became a stay-at-home mum and my confidence started to crash to the point where the old fears and anxieties came back. I did try to overcome it again, but I had to psyche myself up for it and it had to be on a day when I was feeling strong enough to cope. If I was having a bad day for any reason, then I could not do it. I seemed not to build on my successes and regarded them as one-offs, so that when I had to repeat the experience, it was like I was doing it for the first time all over again. I did make the occasional trip to a cinema to take Kay to the latest Disney film, as I did not want her to miss out because of my shortcomings, but it was not easy and I would have to have an aisle seat for a quick getaway should I ever need it (which thank goodness I never did).

Then Greg took early retirement seven years ago and our whole world turned upside down with his alcoholism. If I was scared before of drawing attention to myself, then one of those early incidents here sure did that. There were to be many more over the years where I had to cope with embarrassing situations and where I had to cope full-stop. Again I had no choice. The problems were there and had to be dealt with. As Greg disappeared more and more from our marriage into his own alcoholic world, as his health failed, with every hospitalisation, with every crisis, I had to cope. And I am pleased to say that my phobia had to take a back seat. A very back seat. (I am not speaking lightly here and dismissing anxiety as nothing, because it was hard to fight it, but when there is absolutely no choice, you can't afford to hide behind it.) Ironically, Greg's alcoholism has helped me to be a stronger person. When I was clearly the only one who could raise my daughter or go to a parent evening or take her on a much needed holiday or up and down the country looking at universities, not to mention eventually getting her up there, I had to be the one to do it. No other choice. There's a lot of truth in the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

The pinnacle of my success came two years ago in September 2009 on the weekend I first took Kay up to her university lodgings and helped her move her stuff into her room. At the end of the day, as it was late, I booked into a hotel room nearby for the night. The next morning I calmly entered a crowded breakfast room full of couples (so obviously, like me, dropping their sons or daughters off at the university too) and, sitting alone in full blatant view of the other hotel guests, I had a full cooked English breakfast (sausages, bacon, egg, tomatoes and mushrooms, followed by toast and jam and lashings of tea). I went back into my room afterwards and smiled a big smile. No big deal for most people, but for me.... it was as if I had just climbed Everest.

Millionairess

2011-10-20T10:33:00.006+01:00

I'm a millionairess! I've inherited millions, won millions and there are more parcels of money at Heathrow Airport waiting for me to collect. I shall of course donate some to my friends, some to my wider family, some to charity and have a life of leisure on the rest. Kay and I shall never want for anything...........yayyyy!

photo from www.123rf.com

Hang on a minute, before I put the champagne on ice, maybe there's a catch. For some weird reason, for the last three weeks, I have been inundated (and I mean inundated) with spam emails from Mr This and Mrs That (with Nigerian-sounding names ) congratulating me on my big wins, inheritance or whatever. I've had a few sob stories from complete strangers who are on the verge of dying and suddenly thought of little old me to pass their wealth to. I even got one from the FBI (as if). I am being ever so good and resisting the temptation (best leave the wealth of this world to others who need it more) and have been deleting the emails as fast as they come in, for the most part without even reading them, but for the life of me I don't understand why I have gone overnight from having no spam email EVER to at least ten a day now. With junk mail through your physical letterbox, there are organisations you can write to in order to get your address removed from mailing lists. Anyone know how to get these cyber idiots off my back and spambox?

The Time Traveller's Wife

2011-10-13T11:11:00.001+01:00

Greg was eighteen months older than me. I was always conscious of that, not that it is much in the grand scheme of things, but I always used to imagine him being on this planet eighteen months before me and therefore getting a sneak preview of life before I ever came along. (Not that I knew him at that age, of course. We only met when he was almost 22 and I was 20.)

It coloured a lot of our relationship. He was the older one, the wiser one and I therefore let him be the responsible one when it came to decision-making. He didn't lay down this arbitrary rule. I did. I made my feelings felt if I disagreed with him and often got my own way, but tacitly, he was the older one and therefore the one whose opinion I valued and trusted.

Greg died 6 weeks before his 61st birthday. I now stand 6 weeks before my 61st birthday. I have caught up with him. It seems a strange feeling. From now on, I shall be older than him, grow older than him. I may possibly grow to a very old age. He never will. He will be eternally locked in the age he was when he died. From now on, I shall get to experience or witness things that he will never see. The tables have been turned. I have already found it upsetting that he has missed major events of the last eighteen months. He was a radio journalist for all of his career and would have been intensely interested or excited about such things as the Lib-Con coalition, for example, the sweep of conflicts across North Africa, especially the Libyan war, the London riots, the demise of bin Laden,the financial recession, the euro -debate, to name a few. I can just hear his comments in my head on all of those things. Yet he will never experience them, and I have. I have become the older one. Perspectives have changed.

Problem solved

2011-10-06T11:08:00.001+01:00

I have had two problems over the last few months which have been driving me insane. In the grand scheme of things they are not life-shattering, but the sort of little niggles that worm around in your head at 3 o'clock in the morning and are still there when you finally get out of bed. They are still there when when you muse whilst waiting for the kettle to boil and kick you in the butt when you look out of the window. The only solutions are either very difficult to contemplate or downright impossible. The problems just stare you back in the face and refuse to be solved.

However I think I have a guardian angel or someone watching over me to help. It's as if they give me a while, a few months or so, to sort the problem on my own and when they can no longer watch my fumbling and dithering about,they decide to step in and solve the problem with a wave of their hand.

Problem One was that a eucalyptus tree close to the house in my neighbour's property has grown so tall (currently about 20 feet or more) that it is blocking all sunlight in my small garden and is as high as the second storey and heading for the third storey. It was planted by the previous neighbour about two years ago and was quite a small unassuming bush way back then. But over the past two years it has shot up in height and width, so as to completely block sun and view from my windows, let alone garden. It is also a wishy-washy grey-green colour which immediately dampens my spirits every time I see it. A more vibrant green would somehow be more cheerful. The neighbour who lives there now has only been there about 10 months and I did not want to cause trouble by moaning to her so soon about it. I hoped she might do something about it herself, but as it does not block her light (the sun actually shines on it most of the day!) she would probably not foresee any problem. I worrited about it so much, shared my headache with others but just did not have the heart to say anything to the neighbour. But all through this summer every time I went into my second-storey lounge and saw the monster looming at the window and ever upwards, my heart sank.

The other problem I had was that in decluttering and decorating all the rooms of the house, I have had a lot of things to throw away. Some have gone into the back of my car and been taken to the dump. Others have been taken to local charity shops. But there is one item that was giving me a headache.It was an old single mattress that had once been Kay's as a little girl. It was still in very good condition but lacked a fire safety regulations label on it, which meant that charity shops would not touch it with a barge pole. Not even the Salvation Army would have it for their homeless shelters. It had not been snapped up after I advertised it on ebay and was far too big and bulky to get into my car to take to the dump. It stood in the garage taking up far too much space and tripping me up every time I went in there.

As I say, not much in the grand scheme of things, but both problems kept worming away.Worm, worm, worm. Then suddenly, wave of hand, problems solved. A few weeks ago my neighbour asked me if I would mind if she cut down the eucalyptus tree between us as it was far too big, she was worried about the roots undermining the foundations as it is so close to the house etc etc. Would I mind? I tried to be as nonchalent as I could in my reply, affirming that I would have no objection in the slightest!!!!! (I am still waiting for it to happen, mind you, but at least the tree is not worrying me any more).

This morning another neighbour in our cul-de-sac knocked on the door to thank me for a favour I had done and asked if I had anything I needed taking to the dump. I laughed and jokingly said "a bed"? No sooner had I said it, then he had whipped the mattress out of my garage and into the back of his estate car. As I write it is probably now languishing in the dump.

Thank you, guardian angel I shall sleep easier tonight. Both problems well and truly solved. Isn't life funny?

Writers' block

2011-10-03T16:54:00.002+01:00

I have been away from home the last week - where else but at my mother's doing chores for her (the usual weeding of the triffids in her garden, for a start). She is also considering putting her house on the market in the new year to move closer to me, probably into a warden-assisted retirement flat half a mile away. She is getting increasingly unable to cope with a four-bedroomed house and all that entails. So we have been sorting and renovating in order to get ready for the sale and downsizing in the new year.

I got back yesterday and now face the pile of chores still to do in my house, plus weed through the post which came in my absence. I have kept in touch with your blogs and tried where possible to comment, but as for my own - I think I have writers' block. Can't think of a damn thing to say. So I'll keep schtumm for a while till something coherent jumps into the tired old brain. Bear with me.

More bad things

2011-09-20T15:32:00.005+01:00

Kay's back at uni and I am back home in London again from taking her there. I had a nice 4-day break with her, courtesy of a dogsitter who came to look after Snoopy in London for me, while I was away.

To add to my previous woes over the last 2 weeks (cut telephone wire, parking fine and theft of Kay's vital cards) I can add the death of Kay's laptop to the list. It finally gave up the ghost of pretending to be a laptop on Friday, although it had been threatening to go on strike for a few weeks before that. Both PC World and a little computer repair shop close to Kay's digs confirmed that it was either a virus or a major corruption of the registry (at least I think that's what they said - a lot of computerspeak goes over my head, to be honest). We asked the little computer repair shop to save whatever data they could (vital essays, music and photos) and set off to PC World on a mission to buy a new one. My eyes tend to glaze over when faced with rows and rows of shiny new laptops, because I am hard pushed to know the difference between them. At the end of the day, I choose one because I like the look or feel of it and the price of it. Blow how many RAMs and GBs and whistles it has. I was relieved to see that Kay, despite her far superior knowledge of computers than me, chose on the same criteria. The shop assistant was a jolly middle-aged Yorkshire woman and we got on like a house on fire. By the end of the transaction, we had swapped life stories, listed children and husbands and pregnancy stories. I felt I knew her intimately. We even parted with a hug and kiss. You don't get that in London shops!

On the way home, we called in to the repair shop to collect the data they had managed to save on the old laptop. The man told me almost gleefully that they had found 67 Trojan horses on it, yet Norton had been reassuring us we were fully protected and secure. Obviously the Trojan horses has stampeded in at night under cloak and dagger! We staggered home with the new shiny laptop and software bulging out of its plastic carrier bag, just as it began to rain. I put the umbrella up. Not for me or Kay, but to cover the £500 of technology that even Norton wouldn't be able to protect.

Once home, we decided to brave the rain again as we needed to do a big shop to tide Kay over the next few weeks as well as restock her cupboards with all the staples like jam, coffee, herbs and ketchup etc. We headed for the nearest bus into town and intended to get a taxi back with all our copious bags. On the way to the bus, the rain got heavier, the sky blacker and my mood lower. Suddenly we were accompanied by the sight and sound of thunder and lightning. And then, all hell broke loose. I can honestly say I have NEVER in my sixty years seen rain like it. It didn't just bucket down, it came in sheets and swirled round like in a vortex. I reckon it was the tail end of Hurricane Katie or whatever she's called. The buses and cars all shuddered to a halt in the main road as they could not possibly progress in such a downpour, the rain ran in rivers down the hill and a fog descended so you could not see across the road. Kay and I ran as fast as we could, given we were in the midst of a mini-tsunami, and ended up at a bus-stop shelter where one other woman was cowering. However the rain was being lashed from both directions of the shelter, so even though we had a roof for cover, we had no protection from the rain at both sides. My clothes were so wet, they couldn't have been any different if I had stepped into a bath fully clothed and stepped out again. And there we stood, waiting for the bus. Going home was not an option, as we would have got even more soaked and still needed to get to the shops. The bus arrived,we squelched onto it and stood in the aisle much to the amusement of other passengers who had obviously boarded the bus in drier times. We squelched off the bus at the supermarket and pushed our way through the hoards of customers who were cowering at the exit with their full trolleys, too scared to brave the rain. We shivered round the supermarket, almost dying of hypothermia in the chilled and freezer sections. We made friends with another customer - a man who was as soaked as we were and (I think) was trying to chat me up, although what attraction he could see in a drowned rat, I don't know. We aquaplaned into a taxi home with our 7 supermarkets bags and changed into warm dry clothing as soon as we could. It took several pairs of socks and chocolate bars to warm my feet and my shoes were still not dry two days later.

Now I am back from my adventure, the house seems awfully quiet. Just me, Snoopy, the cat and the ticking clock. Only another 14 weeks till Christmas.......

Bad things come in threes

2011-09-10T19:29:00.005+01:00

To the low-life scumbag who stole Kay's purse while she was out at a nightclub on Thursday night, I wish you all the worst that can happen. Not only has Kay had to go through all the rigmarole of cancelling her bank card (thankfully before you could use it) but she has now had to cancel her driving theory test in two days' time which she has been revising for, as she is required to show both parts of her driving licence for the test and you saw fit to steal that as well. (She had only taken it with her as a photo-and-age-ID for the nightclub). Another little problem you have caused is to take her 16-24 rail card and we are going to have the utmost problem convincing the train guard on her return north to uni this week that she genuinely booked the reduced price if we are unable to show the card. Both replacement driving licence and railcard cannot be issued in time for Monday and Thursday respectively. Bastard.

Good times, bad times.

2011-09-07T17:50:00.003+01:00

Kay did the last day of her summer job yesterday and I went to visit her at work. Embarrassing? Not really, she has been working here, so I played the tourist.

She has actually been on the bridge itself, working for a tourist photo company taking photos of tourists, digitally enhancing them on computer and then selling them as photos, fridge magnets, keyrings or mouse mats, when the tourists complete their visit. She has made a lot of new friends and enjoyed the variety and the stresslessness of the job. She also did a few shifts for the same company at the nearby Tower of London, but had to wait to get special security clearance in case she ran off with the Crown Jewels.

She's also been taking driving lessons, so there has not been much time to relax, but that's how she prefers it, otherwise she gets bored (like mother, like daughter!) She's off to uni again next week to start the third year of her medical course and will be spending four days of the week in hospital doing ward rounds and only one day a week in lectures. It'll be quite a change from what she has been doing all summer, but still having lots of people-contact, which she loves. I've loved having her home all these weeks, but am happy to see her pursuing her dreams, so I am OK with her leaving again.

This does not seem to be my week. I received a letter from the local council this morning fining me £110 for being "parked" in the High Street last week in a non-designated parking space. The truth of it was that having cleared out stuff from the cellar last week I had stopped the car for all of three minutes on double yellow lines while I delivered several heavy box-loads to a charity shop. The nearby parking bays in the High Street were all taken (they never seem to be free when I drive past) and the nearest proper car park was too far away to go back and forth with heavy boxes. All I did was just go from my car boot into the shop several times and then drove off. As I say, it took about three minutes. If I contest the fine and they still insist on me paying (and I go over the 28 days' payment deadline) I have to pay £165. What with the cut telephone wire last week, it has been an expensive week, with nothing to show for it!! Grrrrrr.

Bloomin' nuisance

2011-09-02T10:32:00.007+01:00

Last week I managed to finish decorating my bedroom, wall-papering the bedhead wall, and was quite pleased with the look I had achieved. Apart from a few finishing touches still to do, like new curtains and a new bed, I was happy that I was seeing real progress in the house.Only two more rooms to go and the house will be spick and span - well, more spick and span that it was a year ago. At least now I do not feel ashamed to invite people in to what was once nictotine-stained ceilings and cracks in the walls! Paintwork is bright, walls are clean and there are a few feminine touches here and there (Greg hated flowery patterns of any kind, so many of our furnishings were a geometric pattern or plain as a compromise).

The two bedrooms still to be done are not rooms I use regularly, so I was quite pleased that the house was relatively finished, so far as I was concerned. I could breathe a sigh of relief and take things a bit easier from now on . I mentioned in my last post that Kay and I would be clearing out the cellar this week, but apart from that nothing on the horizon for a while and my bank balance could recover from all the one-off expenses of new furniture or curtains or rugs.

At the start of the week, I asked Kay to hold on to the step-ladder outside for me, as it was balanced on uneven ground, while I precariously climbed to the very top step to prune a clematis montana. This clematis belongs to my neighbour and grows up the wall between her front door and my adjacent garage door. As anyone who has ever owned a clematis montana knows, these are prolific growers and mimic triffids. Great, if you want to cover a whole wall, but not great if you don't want a triffid. I had asked my neighbour's permission to prune it back hard, as it was growing into the brick tiles that cover the front of our house between the storeys. Once the tendrils get in behind the tiles, they can force the tiles to crash to smithereens on the ground. Apart from being irreplacable nowadays, the falling tiles could also kill someone as they have pointed edges, similar to the ones in this picture!

photo from www.periodliving.co.uk

The original neighbour who planted it had cut it back over the years but in one instance had failed to cut a rogue piece out of the tiling and it had taken on a life of its own. Without any roots in the soil,it seems it did not even need earth to grow in as it was sprouting a whole new independent bush of its own from the dark of the back of the tiles. With this in mind, I happily set about pruning the monster - there were tendrils everywhere, trying to attack me as I fought my way in. I tugged at the handfuls growing into my tiles and successfully managed to free them, either with brute force or with the aid of seceteurs. By the end of the operation, Kay was knee-deep in what I had cut back, but it was a mere fraction of what was still growing up the wall. And then, to my utter horror, I noticed a little thin wire coming down through the tiles from my bedroom window to the garage beneath, which was dangling in the breeze and clearly severed in two by the seceteurs. It had been obscured by the monster. My heart sank as I had a feeling I knew what this wire was for. The fact that I had not electrocuted myself in the process confirmed my fears..... I had cut off our telephone/broadband link. Rushing inside and testing the phones, I confirmed it further. Unprintable words were uttered at this stage.

To cut a long story (or clematis) short, I rang British Telecom and after two days without phone or internet (how ever did we manage before?), an engineer came round to fix it. He was with me for TWO HOURS, scratching his head and trying to work out where the wires came from and where they should go. In the end, he had to drill new holes in my bedroom window and lead the wires across newly painted walls and paintwork, stapling them with his little gun into my newly decorated bedroom. In order for him to do this, I aso had to move my furniture out of the way for him, so by the time he left everything looked like a bomb had hit it.

Now I have to touch up some of the paint work again and the worse is I have to pay BT a hefty bill (they quoted me £130 for the call-out charge alone, not to mention the two hours' work). What a bloomin' nuisance and an expensive clematis!

Shifting sands

2011-08-29T11:36:00.007+01:00

Summer is on the wane. I can sense it in the chill of the evenings (not to mention the chill of the wet days) and the mist I wipe from my car windows each early morning as I ride out with the dog to the park. The weeks are whizzing past and in less than three weeks I take Kay back north to start her third year at uni. It seems like yesterday she took her A-levels but so much has passed since - including Greg. These past two years have been like shifting sands with nothing staying constant for long.

First, my one and only chick left the nest and so did my husband all in a flash, leaving me to adjust to living in a large house on my own. True, I filled the long days with hectic activity, decorating everything in sight, partly because it badly needed doing after many years of drunken neglect (in fact far too many to contemplate) and partly to distract my solitude. Interspersed with that have been the drives to my mother's house some two hours away to do the same for her. Every day has had a schedule of things to do, so that I wake early and suddenly find it's bedtime again, with no chance to rest or or do me-things inbetween. Like a hamster on a wheel, I have pushed myself to do more and even more until there is nothing left to do for the day. There have been minor changes in all the rooms - mostly achievable with paint or the removal or introduction of a piece of furniture. Enough to make it different. And nicotine-clean for the first time in ages.

There is still loads to do in those weeks before Kay returns to uni... a lot involving her help in clearing the cellar. The height of the cellar is only about three feet, so you have to crawl on hands and knees and the area is about the size of our garage which is situated directly above it. This cellar is full from ceiling to roof with old toys, 20-year old cans of paint, boxes of newspapers and magazines, cat boxes, garden chairs, rusty electric heaters, and no doubt Lord Lucan and Shergar. Once I have fought my way (on hands and knees, remember) through the veils of cobwebs harbouring a thousand different spiders and have thrown out the relics of our past twenty years, I can make room for some of the stuff I have been clearing from other rooms but not wanted to part with, such as an old dolls house and all its furniture which my father made himself for Kay. Sentimentality still rules over ruthlessness at the end of the day but I try to be "out with the old, in with the new", whenever possible. As I say, it all a bit like shifting sands and it takes a bit of getting used to. Where I am heading now, I don't know. I just take a day at a time and let myself be washed around like a cork bobbing about in a great wide ocean.

Picture from familytraits.co.uk

Silent night

2011-08-15T09:28:00.000+01:00

All is calm, all is bright in London again (for the moment) and there is a definite increase of PC Plods on the streets, outside shops, in the parks, in fact everywhere, round here. Massively reassuring to some and intimidating to others. The temporary breakdown of law and order definitely had the feel of Lord of the Flies about it. I am relieved peace has returned once more for Kay's sake, as she is working at a very iconic tourist site in the heart of the city, earning a bit of extra cash to support her student loan. Even though she is twenty now, I shall never lose the ability to worry about her and pray she is safe. Which make it all the more amazing to hear how some parents just don't know (or care) what their kids are up to, or even where they are, at any given time and whether they are setting fire to someone's home or running someone over with a car.

The lunatics are running the asylum

2011-08-09T10:20:00.009+01:00

Woman jumps from burning building in London riots

It has been impossible to escape the terrible news unfolding on our television screens this last few days. London (and now other cities in England) are under siege. It is as much a mystery to me, as it is to the media, the police and the politicians, as to why the riots have suddenly sprung up all over the place and how to stop them. Living two miles south and east from two of the London locations on fire, I feel a little apprehensive that it could spread to my area too, yet I have faith that the people around me are decent, law-abiding folk and would be just as shocked as I am at what is happening. So why is at happening in other areas? Why, as the police are saying, are these events on this scale unprecedented in recent history?( Not since World War Two have there been so many fires at once in London.)

First, I think it is fair to say that most of the rioters and looters look little more than teenage kids. My supposition is that, with it being the school summer holidays, these so-called kids are fired up with drugs, drink and boredom and seeking extra kicks elsewhere. Lord knows, alcohol is readily available 24 hours round the clock and drugs can be bought easily, if you know the right places. So are drink and drugs the cause? Or are they fighting the establishment, their parents, anybody, just because they can? Is it because of the internet (with sites such as Twitter and Facebook) that has facilitated their assembly in strategic places and stirred them to man the barricades? Is it because they are poor and are making a stand?

It might be some or all of these things but I think the greatest reason is none of these. What makes us human, and differentiates us from other animals, is an ability to use our brains to work things out and to empathise with other people. When we don't have that ability we revert to being animals and I am afraid to say it, but that looks like what is happening here. These kids are feral and are part of a society that is feral, out of control and out for what they can get. No thought-processes about what they are doing to innocent people caught in the crossfire (setting fire to others' homes and livelihoods). The education system has let them fall through the net. Teachers are too jaded and scared to punish, if not bogged down by ridiculous politically-correct guidlelines; parents too busy to parent their children, so they don't even know what their little darlings are up to in the evenings or where they are.

I certainly don't have all the answers, although right now I could suggest a few, but I sure hope that once the Prime Minister has sat down to the emergency Cobra meeting this morning and sorted out the immediate problems, he gives some serious thought to some of the issues above. As a nation, we have been too lax with our laws (introducing some that clearly should never have seen the light of day); made decisions better not made (relaxing licensing hours for one); too soft with our children, we as their elders have not been allowed to show what is right and wrong for fear of being politically incorrect; and we have simply grown away from loving our neighbour. There is a sort of mentality of "If there is nothing in it for me, then why bother?" (I am by no means saying all young people are like this - I know only too well that Kay and millions like her have been brought up to consider other people.) It is time for change but back to old values. Sorry, but, for what it's worth, I happen to think New Labour got it entirely wrong and now we are paying a very high price.

Venice

2011-08-02T18:38:00.003+01:00

It seems a million years ago since I was in Venice, although it was just little over four weeks ago. On my return, I scooped up my mother who was suffering from a persisitent stomach bug and brought her back to London with me. She had been ill all the while we were away and her weak voice on the phone, when we rang from our hotel, sounded really bad, although she tried to convince us otherwise, so as not to worry us. Two weeks in the Alcoholic Daze household with meals brought to her bed or armchair had her leaping about like a frog on amphetamines! She is now back home again and coping well on her own. Of course, all the running around up and down my endless stairs to care for her, has left me exhausted and in need of another holiday!

I promised to write more about Venice, though, and I am so grateful to Kay for giving me the opportunity to see it. I really fell in love. I knew I would. I have been wanting to go there for so long and it did not disappoint. From the moment our plane circled over the lagoon to land and I saw the evening lights of Venice twinkling below me, I was as excited as a child in Disneyland. Our transfer from the airport had not been included in the package and I was a little apprehensive about two women arriving so late in a city we did not know, but picking up a bus from the airport to the heart of Venice was effortless (negotiated in my very pathetic Italian - I did study Latin to the age of 22, so it was somewhat similar) and at my first glimpse of the Grand Canal, I could have cried. Having done my homework beforehand, I knew what public transport to take to get to the hotel - a number 1 water bus whose route travels the whole length of the Grand Canal and back. The Grand Canal by night is beautiful with every building illuminated. It was magic. Our hotel was not right in the centre, but in the Dorsoduoro area - a ten-minute gentle stroll through medieval alleyways and squares littered with cafes, across bridges and quaysides. It took us past shops, cafes, famous churches and museums so it was never boring, nor was it menacing at night.

Along the canal by our hotel

A famous 500-year-old landmark near our hotel - the greengrocer boat

Over bridges

big and small

Through San Stefano Square

Past exquisite shops

As we were there for four days, we explored a different quarter of the city each day. It was quite manageable on foot and we only took a water bus to save our feet now and again. (It didn't save time as the water buses chugged round the bends in the canals, whereas we could take the quickest straight route on foot.) We saw magnificent churches, what seemed like hundreds of palaces lining the Grand Canal (every rich merchant worth his salt built a fabulous palace for his family in the grand old days) and shops to die for. We ate food we loved (what is not to like about Italian food?), listened to a Vivaldi concert in beautiful baroque surroundings and finished off each day with a tantalasing selection of ice cream.

Even the street buskers were in a class of their own.

The only negative side to the holiday was a) the ubiquitous crowds of tourists (in some places you could barely breathe out, it was so crowded) but then I was a tourist too, so I cannot really complain; and b) the £/Euro exchange rate was so bad that it really did seem very expensive, but then I am sure the locals do not pay the prices the tourists pay. The biggest shock was paying £30 for two coffees at the Florian Cafe on St Mark's Square. Even allowing for the £12 surcharge for the music, each cup of coffee was £9. Needless to say we took advantage and paid a visit to the loos there every time we passed by for the remainder of our stay in Venice.

This trip counts as one of the truly great holidays I have ever had: in truth I did not want to leave.

A gondolier who insisted on having his photo taken with me!

Amy Winehouse

2011-07-23T22:30:00.000+01:00

It was a shock to hear about the death of Amy Winehouse tonight. She was so young and the facts surrounding her death are still to come out, but yet another chilling reminder that alcohol abuse can kill. Unlike drugs, alcohol is a legal commodity, readily available 24 hours round the clock in all-night supermarkets and petrol stations. There are no cast-iron restrictions on its purchase and , unlike cigarettes, children can get hold of it, if they have a mind to. (Some adults even readily give it to their childen as a taster of fine things to come.) Yet alcohol abuse can do just as much harm, if not more, than drugs or cigarettes. It will ultimately lead to addiction, dependency and all kinds of physical internal damage, not least internal hemorrhaging, in which the addict bleeds to death. When is someone in the alcohol industry or the government going to take responsibility for allowing this to happen and take measures to prevent it?

Chickened out

2011-07-16T16:23:00.004+01:00

I'm feeling a bit cross with myself at the moment. This afternoon I was supposed to go to an annual summer meeting at my old secondary school. As it suggests, it is held every year for old girls and teachers. There is usually included a reunion for girls who left ten, twenty, thirty years ago and so on. This year was supposed to be a special occasion for those of my year-group who have all gradually turned 60 in the last twelve months. We were encouraged by the organiser to turn up no matter what. I seriously considered going. Honestly I did, even though I have not been back to the school more than twice in the last forty years, since I left.

My school was originally a grammar school with great historic connections going back to the Middle Ages. Its founder was a big name in the Medieval City - a sort of Lord Sugar in tights and a curly wig! The school in its heyday was a very good one and very hard to get into. It was a state school but with pretentions of being a private one and we all left with very good qualifications and passes onto greater things. Over recent years,the school was forced to turn into a comprehensive, but it still churns out good results. One of their recent girls is now a newsreader on national TV and the school (as a shining example to more poorly-performing schools) now takes on partnerships with other schools to bring them up to standard.

As I said, I did intend to go, but rather thought I would see how I felt on the day. This morning it was raining quite heavily in London and I decided that, if I did go, I would turn up wet and bedraggled, having negotiated a minimum 45-minute drive across busy parts of London to get there. Parking the car would be a problem and I would inevitably end up walking for the last part of the journey and arrive with hair all over the place and mud halfway up my legs. Seeing as I had not seen some of the potential guests for forty years, I did feel I owed my grand entrance to be rather more impressionable than that of a drowned rat. Maybe it also had something to do with the fact that I am a bit harrassed (I am looking after my sick mother who I have transported up to London to live with me for the last week since my return from Venice, as she has had a persistent stomach bug) and probably more to do with the fact that one of the other guests was going to be an (at the time) arch-rival of mine who is now Principal of a College in the West Country. I just didn't know if I had the confidence to meet them all, particularly in the wake of Greg's death.

I decided to stay at home instead. Of course, at the appointed hour of the meeting, the skies cleared, the sun came out and I have been kicking myself for being so stupid ever since. Maybe I'll go next year, but then it won't be a special occasion for my peers next year and they probably won't bother to turn up either. Ah well.

The answer, my friend,..........

2011-07-11T09:51:00.010+01:00

Well, did you guess correctly? Well done to Flowerpot, Doglover and Nota Bene for solving the clues. The clues were a bit obscure. The first three referred to Daphne du Maurier's book Don't Look Now from which a film was made in 1973 starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland about a little girl in a red mac who drowns in her garden pond. The father restores old churches and the plot is set in Venice for the most part, where the grief-stricken parents keep seeing little red macs all over the place. I won't spoil the plot for those who have never seen the film. The other clue was the Four Seasons written by Vivaldi who was born in Venice. So Venice was the anwer and that is where I have been!

I have always wanted to go there, but never managed it up until now. Other people all seemed to go, but it was never my turn. My parents went in the 1970s, calling in there on one of their cruises; my friends all went with respective spouses; even Kay went on a GCSE art trip there with her school about six years ago. (Boy, was I jealous!) Quite why I was so drawn to it, I'll never know. Some people told me it was dirty and smelly, but that seemed to attract me all the more. I don't want to see another version of my local high street all pristine and modern, when I go on holiday. I go to see something completely different. I'm also increasingly getting fed up with beach holidays - done that, got the T-shirt and the sunburn! Venice seemed to tick all the boxes.

And then, of course Greg died and I despaired of ever going on holiday ever again, let alone to Venice. However, for my 60th birthday, Kay gave me a small envelope with a very big twinkle in her eye and when I opened it, I nearly fainted with shock. Inside were British Airways tickets and a reservation for a week here in a fourteenth century hotel........ all paid for by money given to her by Greg. " It's from me AND Dad", she said. "He would have wanted you to go". It took quite a while for my vision to adjust with all the spent tears that evening, I can tell you!

Venice was not only great, it surpassed all I had expected. Kay and I made good use of our time there and explored every nook and cranny of the city, even going to the non-tourist parts, when we could. I'll write more later but meanwhile here are but a few of the 194 photos I took.... You can click on each picture to enlarge it.

Santa Maria della Salute Church on the Grand Canal from the Accademia Bridge

St Mark's Square, Basilica and Campanile

Florian Cafe on St Mark's Square where two coffees cost £30 (ouch!)

Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge

View from our hotel

Guessed right?

2011-07-05T15:10:00.003+01:00

Well, we are coming back home today, so I'll upload my photos in a while, so you can see whether you were right.................but meanwhile, the last clue to help you.......

Yet another clue

2011-07-03T10:19:00.001+01:00

OK. You must have some idea now. Does this tie in with your thinking?

Here's mud in your eye and another clue

2011-06-28T09:33:00.004+01:00

Kay came back from Glastonbury yesterday with another two washloads of clothes - this time caked in Glastonbury mud. She thoroughly enjoyed herself despite the pouring rain (including an all-night-shift in the rain -she was getting free entry for working three shifts including doing an all-night gate duty). She then ended up with sunburn on the last two days. About par for the course then. She is so smitten with Glastonbury and cannot see why she has never been before. Except of course they are not going to be doing it next year, just as she gets the bug to go!

Meanwhile, another clue for you to ponder .............

Church restoration.......hmmmmm.........

Meanwhile, I'm off to do my grape-stomping dance, as Kay's clothes are all currently soaking in the bath, to get off that Glastonbury mud. You never know the trend might catch on!

Clues

2011-06-24T11:24:00.000+01:00

Unwittingly I have intrigued some of you as to the whereabouts of my forthcoming holiday with Kay. I thought I'd drop a few clues. Add them up and you might come up with the right answer. If not, all will be revealed when I return with (hopefully) some decent photos.

Clue no 1 .......

Daphne du Maurier

Mother and daughter

2011-06-19T11:12:00.006+01:00

Kay came back home from uni yesterday for the summer vacation. Fourteen glorious weeks stretch ahead together. I shall savour them and soak up the good it will do me which will have to last me through her next absence until Christmas. With her home only 24 hours, I realise just how starved of human company I had been this last year with only the dog, cat , paintbrush and television to talk to!

I have already done three washloads of dirty washing (well, she was busy doing exams up until a few days ago,so had no time for the niceties of domestic chores) and we are off shopping today to get, amongst other things, a new pair of wellies, as she has got a job working at Glastonbury this coming week. Once she is back from that we are planning a short escape to a place I have always wanted to go all my life, but never managed. Bless her, she planned (and paid for it) for my 60th birthday last November and it is now an arm's length from becoming reality. I am so excited.

Last night we sat in bed and chatted and giggled until 2 am like a couple of five-year-olds on a sleepover. I am in seventh heaven.........

Home again

2011-06-06T13:18:00.005+01:00

Back home yesterday after a nice week with my mother enjoying the lovely sunshine, hence I have not written myself or visited anyone else's blogs. I made two personal visits to two friends while I was there - to one in Hastings and one in Brighton - so it was nice to sit and chat and not have a paintbrush in my hand. Having said that, on the other remaining days, I was painting a garden shed and planting summer bedding in my mother's garden! I also drove my mother around the local countryside, for which she was heartily thankful, as she barely leaves the house these days, her arthritis having the upper hand in the war of mobility.

As I write, I have two young men in my bedroom (sigh), putting in new wardrobe doors! As soon as they have gone, I shall have my trusty paintbrush in my hand again about to tackle the bedroom, before Kay returns next week from Uni for the summer vacation.

Catnaps

2011-05-23T10:38:00.002+01:00

Who needs a bed, when the stairs will do? My cat is very strange. When she was a kitten, I bought her a proper cat bed. She refused to sleep in it. Instead, she has chosen to sleep all over the house in different places, changing location every few weeks or so, as the fancy takes her. Sometimes she can be found in a chair; sometimes under the coffee table; sometimes on my bed; sometimes on the guest bed; sometimes on top of a handbag or a pair of shoes (she has a real shoe fetish); sometimes in the corner of a room; or sometimes on the stairs. I suppose she gets fed up with the same old view, when she wakes up or nods off, so just changes her location for a different outlook. If she has not been in the habit of sleeping on the stairs for a while, it can be a rude shock to my system, when I go down the stairs in the dark and suddenly find a hairy body draped on one step (usually the one below the top step)! One of these days, it'll be MY body lying at the bottom of the stairs, because I haven't seen her in time!

Liver and Bacon

2011-05-16T17:34:00.007+01:00

I don't know if anyone saw this story in the press last week, but it jumped out at me. A study by the British Liver Trust says that Britain is on course to be the European capital of liver disease because of the twin effects of alcohol and obesity. Our death rate from liver disease already exceeds that of France, Italy and Spain and will soon soar past Germany's. Britons are also dying a lot younger from liver diseases than they were 20 years ago, the average age being 59 compared with 79 from heart disease. Of course in my own experience, Greg died of liver disease and was 60, so no surprises there.

What is perhaps surprising is that the study suggests that obesity will be the main cause of liver disease in this country overtaking alcohol. Furthermore, we are the only major European country where deaths from liver disease are on the rise. Another statistic is that liver disease is the biggest cause of premature death for women and second only to heart attacks for men. A sobering thought (pardon the pun).

I am not a teetotaller. I enjoy the occasional drink as much as the next person, but I have never seen the sense in getting so hammered I am not in control of my actions or cannot remember what I did. I also enjoy my food but try to eat a balanced diet (no, not a bar of chocolate in each hand, silly) with the very occasional temptation of something oozing in pastry, sugar and cream. My Dad used to have a saying that all the best things in life were either illegal, immoral or fattening. True to a certain extent, but we owe it to ourselves to look after our bodies as best we can - life is not a rehearsal. I do so worry about what the young generation are doing to themselves (and of course the strain it will inevitably put on the NHS).

Thanks to our recent Labour government, the licensing laws were relaxed along the lines that if they can control their drinking in mainland Europe, then they can here. Sadly that has not been the case. Pubs now stay open a lot longer than ever before and young people barely out of nappies spill out of clubs and discos at 4 or 5 in the morning hardly able to stand, throwing up on the pavement or on some unsuspecting taxidriver's back seat. Alcohol can now be bought round the clock from supermarkets and petrol stations, as opposed to from off-licences which once upon a time used to only stay open for a few hours in the evening. Youngsters, determined to have a good time and get so plastered they cannot remember what they did the next day, will buy a bottle of spirits to drink at home before they go out, as it is cheaper than buying it once they are out at pubs and clubs. This new generation will graduate to supply the next lot of frightening statistics unless something is done to reverse the trend.

Thanks also to junk food, the post-war generation who sadly often have no idea what a vegetable looks like, are becoming exceedingly overweight. I only have to wander through my local shopping precinct to see bottoms as wide as barn doors (usually stuffed into too small leggings) and with various undulating rings of fat around their middles. The only exercise they get is moving their thumbs deftly over their mobile phone keypads. They often tend to push prams and drag small children behind them who themselves border on the size of miniature sumo wrestlers. Restaurant chains spring up in the high street based on American models with deep-fried salmonella and fries which seems to lure these youngsters in, as if hypnotised. I'm beginning to sound like a sad old crone (which I probably am) but it is worrying to think where it will all end. For all the bad publicity that alcohol and obesity gets, nobody seems to be doing anything productive about it except perhaps Jamie Oliver who at least is trying to make a stand and be a good role model......hopefully other leading celebrities and politicians will also see the light and do something positive to help arrest the trend.

Meanwhile Miss Goody Two-Shoes is off to make a salad and a glass of orange (Chateau Robinsons Low-Sugar) for her supper. Bye!

Off my trolley

2011-05-09T12:52:00.008+01:00

The rot has set in.........I had two most definite senior moments today and it's only lunchtime. OMG it's the slippery slope. I've turned sixty and morphed into a little old lady.

First I was at a garden centre and just returning my trolley to the trolley park, when an elderly man asked for my help. He had put a pound coin into the trolley to release it only to find he had put the coin into the wrong trolley (the one behind) and pulled out two joined together. I asked if he had another pound coin - I was going to suggest he insert this in the first trolley, separate the two trolleys and then return the second trolley. Just as he was looking to see if he had another coin, a woman walked past and threw over her shoulder " All you have to do is put both trolleys back, release the coin, then insert it in the first trolley." Derrr. Why didn't I think of that?

Second senior moment came when I called in at the supermarket on the way home. I loaded up the stuff onto the conveyor belt, packed and put the bags onto my supermarket trolley and then got into a complicated conversation with the cashier about school vouchers and how to reclaim some that had not been issued in the past. I then marched off with the trolley full of bags and was almost out of the door, when a very understanding store assistant caught up with me and reminded me I had not yet paid! Beetroot-faced doesn't describe it!

Both incidents involving trolleys...........which is nature's way of saying I am off mine!

Great Day

2011-04-29T22:52:00.000+01:00

Today was great for two reasons:

1. We put the "great" back in Great Britain, doing what we do best - selling the brand Britain to the world. Catherine looked elegant; William looked handsome and in love; the Middlestons looked every bit as good as their Royal inlaws (in fact better - what on earth was Beatrice wearing on her head? It looked like she had had a head-to head clash with a stag) ; and the pageantry was the best GB Ltd can deliver. Even the weather, forecast to be dire and thundery, tried its best to shine at the end of the ceremony.

2. I got through another of Greg's birthdays without him, admittedly helped by the distraction of the Royal wedding. He was here in spirit though - he would have been 62 today.

Busy

2011-04-19T10:54:00.003+01:00

I am still chasing my tail, trying to get two rooms decorated simultaneously (why oh why did I agree to have two ceilings painted at the same time?) It is not just the decorating per se that is urging me on like a thing possessed, but the desire to get rid of the chaos that ensues from having to empty the contents of two rooms elsewhere all over the house. I am seven-eighths of the way though finishing the kitchen/diner (I still have to scrub away at kitchen cupboard doors to eliminate any hint of tobacco) and hope to tackle the bedroom after Easter. Meanwhile, Kay and I are making a short trip to my mum for Easter. So in my attempts to tidy, reposition furniture and step over crates of belongings all over the place, my blog-reading and writing my own posts have been a bit wayward. Meanwhile a couple of photos..........

View from my lounge window

Waiting for............?

Happy Easter!

Comfortable slippers

2011-04-13T11:06:00.006+01:00

I met up with my two best friends yesterday - I have known them for 42 years. We met at university all those years ago. They were studying French and I German and we got on so well we have stayed in touch ever since. We have grown over the intervening years from impoverished students to wives, career women, (in two cases) mothers and (in two cases) widows. We only get to meet about once in six months because our lifestyles and geography of our homes - one in Brighton, one in Hertfordshire and me in London - dictate that, however even that is more often than in the past when busy jobs and growing children demanded more of our time. When we do meet up, it is like an old comfortable pair of slippers that has been missing from our lives. We never tire of things to talk about and slip into conversation as if we had never been apart. To me they are the sisters I never had.

One was 60 in 2009, I reached 60 in November 2010 and yesterday we were celebrating the 60th birthday of the one in Hertfordshire, my bridesmaid and Kay's godmother. We had lunch here - a treat paid for by her husband who was also present. We were wined and dined at this gorgeous venue and lunch lasted for well over two hours. Then we wandered around St Pancras International Station taking in all the changes that have been made here over recent years. It is of course getting ready to be the Gateway to the Olympic Games and here is a picture to prove it.

St Pancras Station is a really magnificent example of Victorian architecture and well worth a visit on its own, let alone the adjacent British Library which we also visited for late afternoon tea while we watched the commuters scrurrying home at end of their working day.

So thank you, my friends, for a truly wonderful day together. I throughly enjoyed it.

Mothers' Day

2011-04-04T10:41:00.000+01:00

Kay is 200 miles away revising for an end-of-term exam this week, so I had intended to spend Mothers' Day on my own just bumbling about doing whatever took my fancy. Maybe a long lie-in, followed by a special unusual breakfast, then maybe watching wall-to-wall TV (which is unusual for me), a long relaxing bath, a bit of TLC. But Fate had other plans.

Last week, I had shortlisted three painters to inspect my kitchen/diner and quote me a price for just painting the ceiling, obliterating the nicotine stains. To be honest, I was happy with the first one I saw but then felt I had to go through the charade of seeing the other two just in case they were even better than the first (but they weren't). So I rang the first one again on Saturday lunchtime to hire him. He knocked me off my stool by saying he would turn up on Tuesday. (When he had called to look at the job, I had stupidly mentioned to him that I might also want my bedroom ceiling doing too at some stage, although there was no urgency and some time after Easter would be fine for that). However, when I rang him to hire him, he said he would prefer to do both ceilings on Tuesday as opposed to having to allocate two half-days to do the two jobs separately. As I have been waiting since November for the job to be done by the guy that let me down last week, I did not want to let this opportunity go, so I feebly agreed.

Mothers' Day therefore saw me climbing up step ladders in both kitchen AND bedroom to get all the pictures down, ornaments off tops of cupboards and floor-length curtains down too. Because of the layout of my house, there is nowhere to put away all this stuff which doesn't involve carrying things up or down at least one flight of stairs, so it has been exhausting. These are the two rooms of the house I use the most, so there are more things to remove than in any other room and the disruption is huge. I also have to find somewhere else in the house to sleep while the bedroom is out of bounds.

So much for a quiet Mothers' Day. I did end up with a relaxing bath at the close of the day, simply because I looked a dirty miserable wretch by the end of it all. And to my horror, when I took all the pictures off, this was the state of the disgusting kitchen/diner wall as a result of years of Greg's heavy smoking. (I hate to think what my lungs look like on the inside), but hopefully within a few weeks, I shall get round to doing the walls myself and it will all look a lot different. My blog may be a little quiet for a while, but I'll try to get round to yours as and when I can!

Oh and by the way, it's Snoopy's 12th birthday today.

Workmen, anniversaries and alcohol

2011-03-31T11:50:00.002+01:00

The painter I mentioned in my last post has stood me up. He has been stringing me along since November promising he would come to paint my kitchen ceiling when he had a spare minute and now he has admitted he has too many big jobs on (he is subcontracted to someone else to fit kitchens, bathrooms and conservatories) and just cannot squeeze me in. So Tuesday saw me high and dry searching for someone else. I only stuck with him, because he came recommended by a neighbour, but really how much damage can someone do painting a ceiling? (I may regret saying that). So I have been searching through the local paper, local telephone directory ,Which Local and also something called mybuilder.com. I didn't have much expectation from the latter but within a few hours of my posting my project on the site, I had about 7 replies and they are still coming in, so well worth a try! I phoned quite few of those selected from the four sources above and one pleasant chap came to look at the job yesterday. I was very impressed and I may well hire him, as he can fit the job in next week. His prices were very reasonable too for an oil-based undercoat to cover the nicotine stains and three coats of emulsion over that. He does a lot of work for Harley Street and The University of London (apparently) so hopefully I have picked a good'un. Another painter quoted three times what he was asking.It pays to get several quotes.I've got another one turning up in a few minutes.

This week saw another painful first anniverary - that of Greg's funeral - so that is all the firsts out of the way now and I can get on with real life and hopefully more positive thoughts now. As time goes by, I find I am less angry about the whole situation and more saddened that Greg is missing out on Kay's successes and even major world news events such as in Japan and Libya (which of course was his job). I can often be heard muttering under my breath "Oh Greg, if only you could see this or hear that". I see others in my Al-Anon group a year or so in time behind what I was going though and I despair for what lies ahead for them too. But I am appreciating more and more that alcoholism is a mental illness, just like anorexia, where the sufferer has little or no control over it and where only a few can manage to pull away from it.

I feel I want to do something to make a difference, but I don't know yet what and how. I don't think higher alcohol prices are the answer. In Greg's case, he was clinically dependent on alcohol, so would buy it whatever the price. That is why he took out such huge loans before he died to fund it. Prohibition is not the answer, as real addicts would still find a way of obtaining it and it would not be fair on the majority who can sensibly limit their drinking. What about the idea of ID cards which you would need to show to buy a drink in a pub or a bottle in a shop. These could be removed and cancelled if alcohol got you into trouble with the police or you ended up in hospital with an obvious drink addiction, much like a driving licence if you transgress the law of the road or a doctor thinks you unfit to drive. But I suppose there would soon be people out there who would fake these documents. Possibly lobbying government to return to set licensing hours and stopping supermarkets selling alcohol might help, as I am sure the ease of obtaining alcohol is a major factor in the rise of alcoholism these days............ certainly in the case of younger people who go out on the lash till 4am or later.

What do you think?

Changes for the better and worst

2011-03-20T15:58:00.006Z

Following on from my last "poor me" post, I decided to keep busy by making headway with the decorating. My next job was to be the kitchen/diner which is at the very base of my Jacob's ladder of a staircase. The problem is, I have been waiting months for a painter to get the kitchen ceiling painted, before I paint the rest of the room. I hate painting ceilings with a passion. I think it has to do with putting your arms above your head and cricking your neck to see what you are doing. I love painting walls..... and woodwork...... all very therapeutic. But ceilings..........no, no, no. One of my neighbours recommended two fabulous painters who had done work for her. I approached them both back in September. One, a reputable family firm, took a month to send me a quote and when I said he could go ahead with the work, he then avoided all my calls and wouldn't give me a start date. I tried his mobile and home number several times over a period of two weeks and each time his wife insisted he would call or had called, but he never did get back to me and I decided I didn't want to play cat and mouse games with him any more. The second painter is a very nice chap - a bit of an odd jobs man who is good at many things. He painted the top landing with the long wall drops for me back in November. He also quoted me for the kitchen ceiling and some other carpentry jobs too. But he is also heavily subcontracted to put in kitchens, bathrooms, conservatories and double glazing for someone else, so his time for other "smaller jobs" is limited. He even works evenings and weekends too, so it is not that he is shirking work. He told me in December he would be back soon to do my kitchen ceiling. Of course, I am still waiting. I could get someone out of Yellow Pages or the local paper, but I prefer to get someone recommended rather than a cowboy.

As I could not yet proceed with the kitchen, I thought I would turn my thoughts to the lounge. The lounge is open-plan (has no door) and has a staircase going through it - a flight up and onwards to the bedrooms and a flight down and onwards to the front door and the kitchen beneath that. In decorating the stairway recently, I had passed through the lounge, keeping only to the stairs. The lounge now looked a little "sad" in comparison to the bright stairway paint. I fathomed that the ceiling still looked in good nick and I could get away with not painting that, so I pulled all the furniture into the middle of the room and set about mending any nail holes in the walls, then painting walls and woodwork. It only took two days - I started on Friday morning and finished last night. It looks good, even though I say so myself, and today I even cleaned the window glass and PVC frames to finish off the effect. Another room freshened up in my master plan of projects. Five more rooms to go!

This morning I rang my dog-walking companion (the one I mentioned here) to see how her dog is. We have been walking our dogs together in the park every morning for about the last eleven years. We have become firm friends and although our ages differ (she is at least 15 years older than me) we have a lot to talk about. Her dog took ill two weeks ago, the same time as Snoopy, and was displaying very similar symptoms- back legs not functioning, in pain, shaking. The only difference was her dog kept vomiting. We did wonder whether they had both eaten something poisonous in the park, but our respective vets discounted that. In the end, my vet thought Snoopy may have a combination of spinal arthritis mixed with a damaged liver (possibly tumour or fibrosis) and my friend's dog was diagnosed a few days ago with tumour of the spleen. Because both our dogs have been ill over the last few weeks, neither of us has been going to the park at all and so have been communicating by phone. I called at her house last Thursday to take a bunch of cheerful daffoldils for her and to give her dog some soothing pats. This morning my friend told me that the dog worsened over the last few days and was put down yesterday. My friend is naturally very upset. She has always had a dog (she even, in less politically-correct days gone by, used to take her dogs with her into the classroom all day when she was a primary school teacher and before the governors made her stop doing that). Instictively she feels she would like another dog straight away, but a lot of the local rescue homes now ban rehoming dogs to people over 70. The fact that she is fit, energetic and would give the dog a fantastic life (two long walks a day and agility classes once a week) is by the by. It seems our morning walks in the park may have come abruptly to an end. Snoopy meanwhile continues to chug along, although is definitely not 100%, and will need further blood tests in a few weeks to see if his liver is deteriorating.

LONESOME

2011-03-17T15:41:00.002Z

I've been away at my mother's for a few days, trying to recharge my batteries and at the same time doing chores for her, but am now back home again. I am pleased to say Kay is recovered from her tonsillitis; Snoopy is a little better thanks to the painkillers and antibiotics prescribed by the vet; and we got through Greg's first anniversary intact although, now that first year's milestone has been reached, Greg slips ever more from my reach. It was one thing to say he died a few months ago. Quite another to say it was a year ago. Soon it will be two years ago and so on. It is as if he were being consistently pulled away by a long rope and the gap between us getting greater and greater. I try hard with eyes shut tight to recall the sound of his voice, the contours of his face.

Because Snoopy has been ill, and at times very weak, I have stopped the early morning walks in the park where I usually meet up with other dogwalkers and have a good chat. The last two weeks,except for when I was at my mother's, I have taken him on short walks up and down our road and, although he trots on the outward run, he plods very slowly on the return. As a result, I have hardly seen a soul and certainly not spoken to anyone, so I am feeling a right recluse and a tad lonely. Somehow, I just wish Greg would join me in a detoxed form and all would be well again. I'm sure I'll bounce back. As an only child, I am used to my own company but right now I'm tired of the sound of my own voice!

Kick me when I'm down, why don't you?

2011-03-04T17:00:00.005Z

I have not been looking forward to this week: it is one year since Greg died. Each day of this last week I have been thinking...... a year ago he went into hospital, or was moved to intensive care, was intubated, extubated, intubated again and then died. I feel compelled to savour each detail, roll it around in my mind as a sort of morbid memorial, to make sense of it, otherwise it still does not seem real -almost as if this last year has been a dream.

As if this was not enough, this week has not been kind to me at all. Kay is ill with tonsillitis and, as often is the case when she is very ill, she has been very weepy when she calls me, overtired and inconsolable. With two hundred miles between us, my mothering instinct to nurse her has been impossible except for advice over the telephone. Thank goodness for penicillin and paracetamol. She is coming home for the weekend tonight (a long-standing arrangement and entirely her choice, as she insists on being with me on Sunday 6 March for the actual anniversary of Greg's death).

To put the icing on the cake of all that, Snoopy has not been well this week. No, that is an understatement - he has been seriously ill. It started on Sunday when I was woken at 5am to what seemed like an earthquake - the bed was shaking and the cause of it was Snoopy - lying on the foot of my bed shaking uncontrollably. The tremors went on for some while and in my half-sleep/half-wakefulness I felt him writhing in circles trying to get comfortable. I must admit to thinking it might be something dodgy he had eaten and snapped awake to the thought he might just empty the contents of his bowels over my bed, so I quickly ushered him onto his bed at the foot of mine. It was then that I realised he could not use his back legs at all - he was completely paralysed from the waist down. I immediately thought "stroke" and started to panic. In the wee small hours of the night, when I am alone and a problem manifests itself, it is all too easy to panic. I got a doggie painkiller and forced it down him. After two hours there seemed to be no change. Moreover he did not want to get off his bed (could not get off his bed), and no amount of biscuit inducements or bribes of "walkies" (that usually do the trick) would get him to stir. By 7am I was panicking more. There was no way I could get a large, heavy and lifeless Snoopy down three flights of stairs into my car to find an emergency vet open on a Sunday. My own vet had given me his mobile number some time ago in case I ever needed him in an emergency but so far I had never needed to use it, but weighed up the pros and cons of contacting him now. It was Sunday morning and still quite early. I did not want to disturb his one chance of a lie-in and I was also dreading what he might charge for a Sunday call out to my house.

I managed to hold out another hour until 8am but Snoopy was still clearly not well. I rang the vet and a sleepy voice answered at the other end. He told me he would come round. When he arrived, he thought it might be arthritis in the spine and gave a painkiller injection and asked me to ring him again if Snoopy showed no signs of getting better

To cut a very long story short, Snoopy did improve slightly and could at least use his legs again,but was producing weird coloured things from his back end and looked very morose. I ended up during the week having to take a urine sample (I bet the neighbours had a field day seeing me running behind the dog in the garden with a bowl) and Snoopy rather reluctantly provided a blood sample at the vet's surgery the following day.

The results came back yesterday and were not good. It would appear Snoopy's liver function tests show a damaged liver or pancreas. This could be caused by a tumour or fibrosis. The only way to tell what is causing it would be to do an ultrasound scan (which means shaving off his fur to put the scanner on the skin and this traumatises the dog)or open him up (ditto). That would show the cause of his pain but would not necessarily solve the problem as both cases would be advanced and for a 12-year-old dog that would be too much trauma for little gain. So it is bad news really. Poor old Snoops is old and wearing out. To get this news this week of all weeks is not on. We are in for a rocky ride.

Out clubbing

2011-02-23T16:36:00.000Z

Photo courtesy of emynd and bo bliz

"Out Clubbing" has taken on a whole new meaning. Kay has just contacted me to say she was out last night celebrating a friend's 21st birthday at a club. At one stage she looked down at her handbag slung over her shoulder and saw it was slightly open. Initially, she thought she might have not have shut it properly when she paid for drinks. It was only much later that she discovered she and two of her companions had been robbed of their mobile phones. The club was full to bursting so people were bumping into one another all the time... an ideal situation for the pickpockets. Not only that, but when she rang the mobile company today to alert them and freeze her account, she discovered £28-worth of international calls had been made shortly after it had been stolen. She has now reported the theft to the police and is on her way out to buy a new one, after all, someone who has used the phone to make international calls is hardly likely to hand it in. What a vile world we live in.

World Health and Alcoholism

2011-02-18T09:51:00.002Z

A World Health Organisation report issued today (see here) states that 1 in 15 men in the UK is an alcoholic. That's a pretty high number. Given there are about 29 million men in the UK that means there are about 1.9 million alcoholic men in the UK, not to mention women. Given too that about half of those will have absolutely no community conscience and will drink/drive to get more alcohol, that is about a million drunk drivers on the road. This can be at any time of day, after all the true alcoholic will need to get that fix as soon as he wakes , so will drive with alcohol still in his bloodstream from the day before. But of course the number of drunks on the roads will get progressively worse during the course of the day and evening. Greg always used to insist that he was a better driver drunk than most people were sober. Yeah, right. That's why he had scratches and dents at every corner of his car. That is why, towards the end, I got his supplies, as I did not want someone's death on my conscience.

Mind how you drive. You never know how many of them at any given moment will be driving in front of you, behind you or towards you!

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

The report also says that 4% of all deaths worldwide are attributed to alcohol, greater than deaths caused by HIV/Aids, tuberculosis or violence. When you consider what efforts have been spent on trying to eradicate Aids and TB, it is amazing how little is being done to stop the march of alcoholism.

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T09:04:00.006Z

This will be my first without Greg, but for all those love-struck couples out there, here is a little cartoon to warm your heart.

Based on the book "Love Monkey" by Edward Monkton

The worst day of my life

2011-02-01T12:40:00.024Z

Angel of Grief (courtesy of Valerio Sibio on flickr.com)

The day my father died - ten years ago to this very day - was arguably the worst day of my life. I remember it well and it certainly does not seem as long ago as ten years.

His death was a wrench in more ways than one. He and I were always very close. He was proud of me and I of him. As the only child, I always wanted to protect him, as he had suffered so much as a child and young man, as I wrote about here. We never argued about things and he meant the world to me.

While I was on my honeymoon with Greg in 1976, my father had a heart attack and I only found out when I got back home again. Greg and I were leaving England to start our married life in Germany and I had to leave my father in hospital, not knowing whether he would live or die. He survived but I spent many a restless night in Germany wondering whether I would get a phone call with bad news. Amazingly, he went on to live another twenty-five years and it was not his heart that eventually let him down in the end. He developed leukaemia about three years or so before he died and although that type (chronic lymphatic leukaemia) was not a killer, he went on a few years down the line to develop a second type which was aggressive (acute myeloid leukaemia). Up to that point I had no idea that there were so many types of leukaemia and that some were more dangerous than others. I remember well when the AML was first diagnosed. It was mid January 2001. My father had been feeling seriously unwell for a few weeks and the consultant haematologist was puzzled and decided to run some more tests. The news was not good. Not only had he now got a second type of leukaemia (it was rare to get two kinds) but it was fatal and he only had weeks or at most a few months to live.

As if this was not bad enough, I was faced with a major dilemma. Not only was I about to lose my beloved father but I had to have a hysterectomy and I was unhappy about the timing. I had a huge mass growing inside of me making me look slightly pregnant. My gynaecologist was pressing me to have an urgent operation as he was fairly confident the tumour was benign, but could not rule out the small chance it might not be, until he had cut me open. Also, because of its rapidly growing size, he did not want to delay. I was booked in to have the operation on 2 February 2001. A few days before, I visited my father sixty miles away, who had meanwhile been admitted to his local hospital for blood transfusions and general care as he was very weak. The prognosis was now that he was fading fast and would probably not live beyond a few weeks. Still my gynaecologist was pressing me to get my operation done as soon as possible, as time was of the essence for me too. Friends and relatives were urging me to see sense and not to delay my operation in favour of my father. Reluctantly I agreed to go ahead with my operation and then, with that at least behind me, concentrate on helping my dad through his last weeks.

On 1 February 2001, the day before my operation, I was at home packing my case and counting down to 6pm, the time when I was supposed to report to the gynaecological ward. At lunchtime, I was just about to run a bath when I received a very tearful call from my mother telling me that my father had just passed away. I was absolutely devastated: the most wonderful man in my life had gone. The last thing I wanted to do was proceed with my operation and I rang my gynaecologist to tell him I was cancelling. He said he could not force me to go ahead but he urged me to think about myself as there was nothing more I could do to save my father and there was still that slight doubt that I could have a cancerous tumour. I asked him to let me have more time to consider. By now friends and relatives were ringing me, as they too had heard the news about my father. When they heard that I might be cancelling my operation, they were horrified and begged me to reconsider. Greg pleaded with me to put myself first now. The rest of that day passed in a blur. All I remember is later that evening lying in an old Victorian-built ward of about 20 beds at about 8pm, as Greg kissed me goodnight and left for home again. I recall being in the midst of a busy, noisy ward full of people, yet I felt so alone and wretched. I was about to have my insides ripped out, but my heart was already crushed to a pulp.

Thankfully the operation on the next morning revealed that my tumour was indeed benign (a fibroid) although an extremely large one the size of a rugby ball. I lost half a stone in weight overnight! Two weeks later, clutching my stitches, I was able to cope with the sixty mile journey to my father's funeral. It was arguably the worst month of my life, even compared to the hand life was to deal me later.

All things bright and beautiful

2011-01-27T17:27:00.013Z

For the last twelve days I have slaved over a stepladder and a pot of paint, over-reaching here, turning into a contortionist there, painting four of the six levels of my hallway and stairs. Walls, ceilings, doors and other woodwork all needed at least two coats to cover the horrible brown nicotine gloop caused by Greg's chain-smoking over the years. I am cream-crackered (as they politely say here) but the end result is one beautifully decorated hall and stairways. Although I say so myself, I am rather proud of my efforts.

Before

(note the upright bannisters)

During

(Note no upright bannisters)

After

Next project is the kitchen/diner.

The contagious disease

2011-01-17T08:46:00.007Z

Picture from steadyhealth.com

Last week, I went to my local Al-Anon meeting for the first time since before Christmas. I have explained before that the Al-Anon philosophy is taking its time to have an effect on me (if any) and I am rather stuck on Step 3 which is handing my life over to a Higher Power. I have no idea what or who my Higher Power is and whilst stuck on Step 3, I have no real hope in hell of progressing through to the next stages and beyond. Maybe somewhere along the way, I have missed a vital link or important piece of information. I find writing my blog does me more good, to be honest,as I can get all the anger,frustration and despair off my chest. Writing it down just seems to be the help I need. Yet some people have been going to the group for over ten years and swear by its usefulness. I just go because I like to meet people who have been in a similar situation to me and who can empathise with me. Until you have lived with alcoholism, you really have no idea how horrific and life-changing it can be. The group members come from all walks of life, are all ages and have different faiths, but we all have one thing in common....we have lived with an alcoholic parent, partner or offspring. I enjoy the chat after the meeting rather than the meeting itself.

At last week's meeting, someone new turned up. A young girl in her late twenties together with her mother. Her brother is the alcoholic and is causing so much grief in the family. Like many people who first come to Al-Anon, they were at their wits' end and were looking for that magic wand to solve their problem. Sadly the only person who can wave that magic wand is the alcoholic themself. It is the alcoholic who must first recognise that they are an alcoholic and make the first move to stop drinking. Only they can agree to try detox (i.e. come off the alcohol under a medically-assisted programme) and then rehab (i.e.six-month long stay in a centre where the reason for drinking is analysed and coping mechanisms are learned.) Only the alcoholic can fight the demons and stay firm against temptation, for that is truly the hardest part. Relatives and friends can advise, support, cajole, beg, nag, plead, but it needs co-operation on the part of the alcoholic to bring about the change to sobriety. If the alcoholic won't see that they are addicted or refuse to do anything about it, that is unfortunately where you hit the brick wall.

I felt sorry for the newcomers at the meeting. They were clearly so desperate, like I had once been. The young girl sobbed uncontrollably as she unfolded her story. Her mother kept walking away from the group in tears as it was too much for her to hear, even though she lives with it every day. It made me so angry to hear of yet another victim of alcohol and their damage to those around them. It is often said that alcoholism is a contagious disease. Only one person is the alcoholic, but it affects everyone else in the family. All the people in my group are such lovely people. That is why I like to talk to them afterwards.They really do not deserve all this and certainly did not ask for it.

QUIET

2011-01-10T15:37:00.004Z

The house was full of laughter and chatter over the last few weeks as both Kay and my mother shared Christmas with me. Kay went back to uni last week and I have just returned from taking my mother back home replenishing her larder and fridge with food in case there is more snow on the way. My house now seems deathly quiet with only the sound of ticking clocks and Snoopy's rather snuffled breathing. No different from all the months before, but you can cut the contrast with the previous few weeks with a knife. I shall have to get used to being on my own again until Easter. Just as well I have plans to paint everything in sight, unless it moves or breathes!

Goodbye 2010. Hello 2011

2010-12-30T10:31:00.002Z

Greg 1949-2010

The end of another year and what a year! 2010 will forever be etched in my memory as one of those landmark years. A year ago I wrote this. As usual, I was full of optimism at the start of a new year but realistic enough to know that something bad had to happen, as the elastic of our living nightmare could not stretch any further.

Thank you for all your kind comments to each and every post I have written. I know some people answer every comment on their blogs, but I am usually rushing from one job to another in my attempts to keep busy busy busy, so I don't usually have time to comment to individuals. It does not mean I do not appreciate your comments, though, and when I have been a bit down your comments have truly helped.

Kay and my mother managed to get here for Christmas from different points on the compass, despite the threats of heavy snow keeping them away. We survived our first Christmas without Greg. Kay and I have always loved Christmas, so I wanted to decorate the house and the tree, as usual, putting a special star-shaped tag with a message to Greg in a prominent place on the tree. When we sat down to the big Christmas lunch, we began by raising our glasses to each other including Greg in the toast. We talked a lot about him - the films he would have liked on TV, the things he used to say or do. So although he was absent in person, he was there in spirit (though thankfully not the whisky kind!) It was a relaxing Christmas - no tensions or arguments like last year - and it seems strange to say it, but we enjoyed it.

Now, just like a year ago, I am gradually winding down to the last day of the year, waiting for the chimes of midnight and a new year emerging. I am again full of optimism, that Kay and I can finally shake off the last vestiges of the nightmare we have gone through and start to rebuild our lives.

I wish you and yours a happy New Year and may all your wishes come true.

My 60th -November 2010 - taken by my best friend.

Why?

2010-12-20T09:58:00.003Z

In the last few years of Greg's life, we did not have deep meaningful conversations any more, in fact for the most part we hardly spoke at all. We yelled at each other when alcohol made him impossible and his alcoholism made me angry in frustration, or we kept conversation purely to the functional, such as "what time is your hospital appointment?" or "I'm taking the dog for a walk". Otherwise we lived separate lives in silence. In any case, Greg's mind bordered on that of someone suffering from Alzheimer's. He was often very confused - a condition caused by the excessive alcohol. He would misread the clock and think it was a quarter past ten at night when it was really ten minutes to three in the early hours of the morning, so would ring me, if I was away from home at my mother's. Getting woken from a deep sleep by a phone call at that time of the night used to chill me to the bone, but I got used to it, as he did it so often... and not just to me. He would also confuse me with his mother and often phone her to ask her something that was clearly intended for me. He would phone up friends and talk for hours on the phone to them, and I could hear him often repeating the same sentences over and over again in the course of the call. It was like he was on a continuous loop. He even once rang a friend and in the course of the conversation asked how her partner was; the partner had died some six months previously and Greg had "forgotten" this. He once was a very intelligent man holding down a very stressful job with hourly deadlines. That all seemed to fade to nothing in the space of a few years once he had retired and turned to alcohol. So our conversations dwindled too.

I am now 9 months further on from Greg's death. The letters, emails and official practicalities arising from his death are beginning to finally wane. My last recent piece of action was to organise an entry for Greg in a book of remembrance at the local crematorium and to attend a small candle service last week which the local undertaker invited me to at their funeral parlour. With that done, Greg' death passes into history. I am facing the first Christmas without him, comparing this year with last. I still have not been able to cry. But the numbness following his death and the subsequent anger have passed into another phase. I have lots of questions to ask him and the one at the top of the list is "WHY?"

Why did he want to drink so much after he retired?

Why couldn't he have found some hobbies?

Why was he hellbent on killing himself?

Why was life so horrible that he wanted to leave it?

Why did he want to leave me on my own with so much life ahead of us?

Was it that he was so unhappy at work that it made him retire when he did, or was it really the ill-health he claimed as the reason? Was retirement such an anticlimax after such an exciting but stressful job? Was life at home with me so boring? I wonder whether I missed vital signs when he was younger. If only I could sit down with him now and ask him those questions and hear his answers, but all I am left with rolling around in my head is "Why?" It's a question which I think of when I wake and before I go to sleep and often in the middle of the night too. The sad thing is, I am never going to get those answers and sometimes the silence in reply to those questions is agonising.

Birthday Girl

2010-12-06T16:25:00.000Z

Belated picture of the Birthday Girl.......

The Club

2010-11-30T15:35:00.013Z

This week I joined a club. You don't have to pay membership subscriptions to become a member, in fact you are given money to join. Not everyone is eligible - you have to meet certain criteria - but most people don't really want to join in the first place. I am talking about the club of OAPs (Old Aged Pensioners). I have reached my 60th birthday (yikes, how did I get there?).

I must confess to dreading it beforehand - one foot in the grave, God's waiting room etc. "I'm too young to die", I thought. I don't feel sixty. Nearly everyone I know or meet, says I don't look sixty, more like forty. I am still energetic, have all my own teeth and marbles and am a dab hand with a mallet or a paintbrush. I don't wear furry hats which have flaps over my ears and I don't push bits of rubbish into the kerb with a walking stick. However, am I now supposed to push my decrepit way to the front of the bus queue waving my free bus-pass or hopping on a coach for a day-trip to Bournemouth? Am I destined to watching back-to-back editions of Flog it or Escape to the Country to fill up my days? The approach of my sixtieth birthday (particularly without Greg) did not fill me with enthusiasm.

My two best friends from University days came to the rescue. One couldn't be there at the beginning of my birthday, the other could not be there at the end, so between them they devised a plan. One with her husband arrived the day before, accompanied me to my favourite national heritage site here, then we spent a lovely evening together, with them staying over. She brought me breakfast in bed the next day on my birthday, then decorated the kitchen table with flowers, balloons and breakfast things. They treated me to a lovely lunch in a local Italian restaurant, then once home again, they broke open a bottle of champagne and, together with my other friend who by now had turned up, sang Happy Birthday while I cut a cake the second friend had brought. The first friend and her husband then had to leave mid-afternoon, but the second one carried on showering me with presents, her lovely company and photos of her recent holidays to Vienna and Prague. We chatted non-stop and didn't get to bed until nearly 1 am.

We woke up to the first snow this season in London. My second friend needed to get back before the snow made travelling to Brighton impossible, so I waved her off mid-morning. It went on to snow all day and we are now under a white fluffy blanket of about 6 inches. Thankfully, I am in the warm and truly thankful for wonderful friends, who not only helped me to get through my first birthday without Greg, but made my transition into OAP-dom thoroughly memorable. Is Escape to the Country on yet? No fear.... I might even start training for the next London Marathon! That is, when the snow melts.....

View from my window this morning

A Right Royal Celebration

2010-11-24T16:28:00.003Z

Prince William and Kate Middleton have chosen a fine day to get married next year. The 29th April 2011 would have been Greg's 62nd birthday, if he were still alive. I wonder if he'll be watching from his cloud with a raised glass of whisky to celebrate both occasions?

To rongs don mak a rigt

2010-11-19T09:57:00.005Z

When our desktop computer died around this time last year, Greg and I bought matching Advent Roma laptops. They were fairy cheap in price (but then we were buying two) and I liked the look and feel of it. However I quickly made a discovery which I should have known if I'd read the reviews of other customers beforehand. For some reason, whatever you type on the keyboard, the letters you read on screen don't bear any relation. It would appear that the keys do not engage with what is below to make an impact. So I end up with loads of typos and have to redo it over and over again. If there are double letters (such as letter or running) in a word only one gets typed. It is a real pain having to constantly correct what I have typed in a long paragraph. Even worse is when a password gets rejected because the wrong letters have been entered. Do that three times on some sites and you have to re-register! Arrgh! I keep Greg's one at my mother's house now, so I am never free from the problem. SoI do apologis to anyone who ets a coment from me on ther blog because I do not men to type int h wrong ting, honestly. It's this blimin keyboard.........

The dangers of alcohol

2010-11-08T11:32:00.002Z

You may have seen a news item earlier last week saying that alcohol was more harmful than heroin. Since then I have been scrutinising online debates in which a few medical experts give their sneering opinions on this.... more harmful than heroin - don't talk rubbish, kind of thing. In my humble experience the majority of medics completely underestimate what alcohol can do and, if they can be bothered to deal with it at all, they come up with unhelpful solutions with no real idea of the enormity of the problem. Unless it has touched their own lives, they really haven't a clue.

The trouble, as I see it, is that alcohol is more readily available in society than so-called dangerous drugs. It can be obtained 24 hours round the clock at supermarkets, petrol stations, bars and pubs. It is available at ridiculously low prices and, if they are clever, even children can lay their hands on it. It is socially acceptable to have a few drinks. It is an ice-breaker, a relaxant, a prize at the end of a hard day. You don't hear the average person saying that about heroin. So, unlike heroin, alcohol is welcomed in through the front door in most homes. It weedles its way in under the pretence of being harmless and waits to pick on someone vulnerable. In safe hands, it causes no problem. The odd tipple before bedtime or after church, the birthday celebration, a fine meal - these are socially and medically acceptable. I suspect in safe hands, the same can be said of heroin. But when the use of these substances turns into an addiction and then a dependency, that is when the argument that alcohol is less dangerous comes unstuck. The alcoholic has no problems getting their fix at any hour of the day and the shopkeepers are only too happy to keep on selling it. At least the drug pushers have to go underground and are not available on every street at every time of the day.

I have learned that alcoholism is an illness, possibly even a genetic mutation, just like cancer or cystic fibrosis. Some people have absolutely no control over their alcoholism, try as they might, because the genes have preprogrammed them to be like that. If that is the case, then having alcohol available on the streets 24 hours a day is tantamount to having heroin on sale at Superdrug or Sainsburys.

I don't know what the solution is, other than to push up prices and sell it only between set hours and only in a few locations. When pubs used to shut at 11pm, people went home to their beds. Now pubs and clubs stay open till the wee small hours and stay open all day. You read about young kids clubbing till all hours and throwing up on the pavements of London, Crete and Ibiza. The young are getting so used to alcohol in large quantities on a reguar basis that I fear, as they age, it will inevitably cause untold damage for them in the future. This is going to put even more stress on an already strained medical system.

I found a sheet of paper Greg had been given in the past, outlining what damage alcohol can do:

Brain: shrinkage, causing general motor and sensory impairment; anxiety; depression; neuroses; phobias; hallucinations.

Oesophagus: oesophageal varices occur as a result of increased pressure of the portal veins, causing localised varicose veins in the throat. These may rupture, resulting in an often fatal haemorrhage.

Liver: becomes enlarged with fat deposits and may be inflamed causing alcoholic hepatitis.

Reproductive area: in men, impotence; shrinkage of the testicles, loss of male sexual characteristics and possible feminisation in the development of breast tissue.

Mouth: increase risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and oesophagus.

Lungs: Reduced resistence to lung infections, colds, pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Heart: Fat is deposited in the heart muscle, impairing its function and precipitating heart attack.

Stomach: chronic gastritis; ulcers; vomiting; diarhoea; malnutrition.

Intestines: inflammation of the intestine wall inhibits absorption of vitamins and iron causing vitamin deficiency and anaemia; varices (varicose veins) which can rupture causing fatal haemorrhage.

Hands: Tremeulous hands; tingling numbness; loss of sensation in the fingers.

Toes: Numbness and tingling in the toes.

Not a very happy list of symptoms, is it? I know for one thing, Greg had nearly every damn one of those symptoms and alcohol took his life. Still unsure whether it's less dangerous than heroin?

Time waits for no man

2010-11-01T09:10:00.001Z

I was clearing out some drawers at the weekend and came across an envelope containing Greg's personal effects. It had been given to me by the hospital a few days after he died. I was vaguely aware of its contents, having briefly opened the envelope and looked in, but I had put it in a drawer to look though another time, when I felt a bit stronger. As the months went by, I would often go to the drawer for something else, see the envelope and decide against opening it, until the right moment came along. As I say, I was clearing out drawers over the weekend and came across it again. I sat down, took a deep breath and opened it.

Amongst things like his wallet and credit cards was his watch. Still working like, pardon the pun, clockwork and on wintertime too, so it was appropriate it should be found again this weekend, as the clocks had gone back one hour to wintertime again. It made a lump form in my throat and hot tears try to force their unsolicited way from my eyes. Greg has gone, but his watch lives on. How ironic.

Noah's Ark

2010-10-25T11:32:00.009+01:00

picture from

The Glory Site and Treasured Graphics

While I was at my mother's, I took the dog for a walk at a well-known beauty spot. Everywhere I went, it was like being on Noah's Ark. People were in twos....old, young, middle-aged. They walked hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, kissing, even arguing, enjoying a walk or admiring the view. I stood out a mile on my own (even if accompanied by my canine friend).

I know I was effectively on my own and doing things on my own for years before Greg died, but now psychologically it hits me even harder, when I see couples everywhere and I am self-consciously on my own. I suppose I always lived in the stupid hope that one day Greg would recover from his temporary madness, things would return to normal once more and we would ride out retirement into old age together. I am really not ready for another relationship yet (if at all) - Greg and I were together for nearly 40 years, so I would be totally out of touch with the whole dating thing all over again and furthermore I doubt whether I would ever want the risk of things going wrong again. I can even honestly say I am rather enjoying my own company and the calm I have so desperately needed this last few years. However, the thought of having to face couples everywhere I go until I am a wizened old lady also fills me with apprehension.

There are just some things I am not happy to do as a singleton. Going into a pub or a restaurant on my own is a no-no; a holiday or a day-trip somewhere new on my own holds no appeal. I feel as if my life has been put on hold for my remaining years. I don't mean this to sound as morbid as it comes across, because by and large I am coping with things and keeping manically busy, but, with a big milestone birthday coming up in the next few weeks, I already feel decades older than I really am and as if I am sitting on the shelf in God's waiting room.

Even more windows

2010-10-22T10:51:00.000+01:00

Back from my mum's and pleased to say that her window experience went a lot better than mine. Some before and after pictures....

Before

General state of windows

Bay window

Upstairs right

Upstairs left

AfterFinished job!!!

Since the photo, I've painted the front door; tidied up/weeded the front and back gardens for winter; chopped down some unsightly branches on a lime tree (which filled the entire back half of my hatchback car including the back seat on the way to the rubbish tip); washed every window in the house; washed every net curtain in the house and some of the over-curtains; hung them back up again; taken my mother to three appointments; done a big shop for her; walked the dog every day; and taken my mum out in the car for little treats. All in the space of ten days. Now I'm back home to resume work on my own house!!!!

Windows

2010-10-08T21:43:00.010+01:00

You wanted photos of the windows, so here they are - or at least some of them (I have three windows on the stairs and they all look the same as the one I've shown, so there was no point showing them all!!) I know you are going to think the study and the kitchen windows look pretty much the same before and after, but if you look closely the study window in the "before" had no handle and therefore did not shut at all and the kitchen window was looking pretty tired. In fact when the window fitters removed the old kitchen window, they said it had originally been placed on a rotting wood sill and the whole window would have collapsed in time if it had not been replaced when it was!!! You can click on each photo to get a larger picture.

I've spent yesterday undercoating and top-coating the sills inside. Today I have been ironing curtains and rehanging them, as well as putting things back in their places. I'm off to my mum's for a week to organise her window replacements, but just hope I don't have the same shenanigans with her windows as I did with mine!

Study before

Study after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Stairway before

Stairway during

Stairway after

Eureka

2010-10-06T20:35:00.005+01:00

The windows are finished. Not only did three men turn up today, two to do the patio window (which took them all day) and one to finish off all the other unfinished windows from last Wednesday, but the sun shone nearly the whole day despite torrential rain when I first woke up. My paintbrush comes out tomorrow to attack the areas around the windows. Meanwhile, I am celebrating a (finally) successful project in my new glassy surroundings with a glass of wine.

No-oooooooooo

2010-10-04T16:25:00.003+01:00

Well, guess what, the double-crossing (ahem, I mean double-glazing) men didn't turn up today either, nor did they ring me, so at 10 o'clock this morning I rang them. I felt rather sorry for the man who took my call. I sunk my proverbial teeth into him and would not let go. He said they couldn't send an installation team to me today as they were all out on jobs. "Oh good", I said, "at least someone's getting their windows installed today, but it's certainly not me."

They've promised me Wednesday now and they're sending two teams to make sure it's all done.Watch this space........................

The never-ending story of the double-glazing men

2010-10-02T17:08:00.012+01:00

When we first moved into this house two decades ago, the wooden windows were rotten and needed replacing, even though the house is not all that old. As we couldn't find anyone interested enough to replace them with wooden frames, we decided to replace them with UPVC ones. The small family firm we found had done many job in the locality and we were pleased with what they did for us.

Roll forward two decades to 2010. There are some windows on the side of the house (up the stairwell) and a few others that we did not have done at the time, but now need some attention, and, as the health and safety clowns these days insist on proper scaffolding towers in case their darling workmen have to climb the dizzy heights of more than 6 foot, painting has become ludicrously expensive. I therefore decided it would be an investment to get them double-glazed as well as a very large patio window. The family double-glazing firm still advertise in the local paper and are still very successful.

About two months ago I called them and they came round very promptly to see me. George (the son of the original owner and now the Chief Director) and Bob (who proudly told me he was Bob the Builder!) were both very nice and helpful and didn't try to push anything on me like you hear of in some gory double-glazing tales. In fact, quite the opposite. They let their reputation speak for itself. Within 24 hours,all the paperwork had been sent through to me, I had paid the deposit and a date for installation was set. The 29th September. Bear that date in mind, dear reader. I repeat the 29th September. I could have had the job done earlier, but I wanted to start the project well after Kay had gone back to uni. My mother also needed some windows replacing at the front of her house. The previous owners of her house had had the back and sides of the house double-glazed but had not done the front. Now after years of trying to nurture the wooden frames, they too were going rotten and so, yes, you've guesed it, I decided to get my trusty local double-glazing firm in to do her windows too. About a month ago, George and Bob paid a visit to her, while I was there, and again with no pressure my mum decided to press ahead with her order too. Her installation was agreed for mid-October to give me time to sort out my house after my window installation before turning my thoughts to mum's. Their surveyor turned up separately at my house and then weeks later at my mum's house to measure up precisely, noting to the exact millimetre every nook and cranny and angle.

As you are probably well aware, the 29th September was this week. Now they have had two months to prepare for this and I appreciate that they operate a "just in time" system, whereby they only make up the windows a day or so before they are needed. It means they don't have to store huge amounts of raw materials unnecessarily in their factory and it also helps cashflow just to make up something before it is needed. However a week before they were due to come I got the first sniff that something was not quite right. They rang me up and said my patio window would need to be installed on another day as they would not have the kit for it in time. Surely they could have planned two months earlier for the kit to arrive "just in time" before it was needed? Not wishing to be a party-pooper, I said of course I didn't mind the job not being done on the same day and agreed with them that the patio window could be installed separately two days later on Friday 1 October. A day or so beforehand, I scanned for weather reports and, as luck would have it, on both days, heavy rain was forecast with blustery gales on the Friday to boot.

On Wednesday 29 September, the installation team turned up - a man in his late thirties and a boy of about 17. They were there to install the five windows, remember, three of which are on the stairwell. The man was shaven-headed and had a whole poem tattooed on his upper arm. I didn't get the chance to read it, as it seemed rude to stare at his arm whenever I did get the chance to get up close. He seemed pleasant enough though and proceeded to knock out every window first, leaving gigantic big holes in the house, big enough for an elephant to step through. The rain rained and the wind blew and I put on an extra layer. The young lad tore protecive covering off the new windows, carted out old windows, even clambered onto the roof to guide out an old window over the top landing, swept up broken glass. I plied them with that good old British staple - numerous cups of tea and chocolate biscuits - and tried to keep myself (and the dog and cat) out of their way. However by lunchtime, there was a second hint that things were not boding too well. Mr Tattoo told me that two of the three stairwell windows were not the right measurements and he had just told head office that the surveyor obviously needed a new tape measure. The windows would have to be remade and he would fit them on Friday when he came back to do the patio window. Meanwhile he would temporarily fit the ones he had brought with him and "foam them up" so they would stay in place and be watertight. The surveyor would apparently bear the cost of his mistake. (It would have been so much cheaper to get a new tape measure!) Mr Tattoo said goodbye to me mid-afternoon on Wednesday, saying he had got as far as he could, although only one of the five windows were actually finished. Two were almost finished (quite why not completely, I don't know) and of course the other two would be replaced again on Friday along with the patio window.

Thursday was bright and sunny with blue skies. Unlike Friday. On Friday the autumn leaves were swirling in circular patterns, the trees were bending in half, the rain was pounding down and creating huge puddles on the patio. Oh joy. Up at the crack of dawn, I made sure the patio curtains were down, all furniture nearby removed, walls washed and scrubbed. Curtains were either put in my washing machine or taken to the launderette to put in the gigantic one there. By teatime, I would be the proud owner of new windows and clean curtains (with years of nictoine stains washed out and smelling sweetly). At 10 am I got a phone call from the firm's office. Mr Tattoo had called in sick, so there would be nobody coming that day. However, as a special one-off, they had twisted someone's arm in another team to finish off the other windows and install the patio window on Saturday intead. They apologised profusely. What could I say? It wasn't their fault someone had called in sick. It happens to the best of us. In fact, if anything, I was a teensy bit relieved that my fourth kitchen wall was not going to be bashed out and exposed to the heavens raging outside.

Before and After

And so here we are today. Saturday. Up at the crack of dawn. No weekend lie-in for me. Busy busy busy inspecting and making sure everything was ready. Cat and dog bowls removed, so no splintery glass would fall in amongst the chicken and rice kibble. And there I sat until midday, too afraid to start anything major in case they arrived. I rang the office at 11 and got an answermachine. Well, it is Saturday. I rang again at 12 and from somewhere a voice said I would take my custom elsewhere. It might have been me! I slammed the phone down. Half an hour later, a very apologetic installation manager rang back. He said he could not contact the relevant installation team as they were not answering their phone. He had no idea what had gone wrong. He said he was as disappointed as me, as he had been at the factory till after six last night checking the order through and loading the van ready for this morning.

He promises me they will come on Monday to sort everything out.

Remember, I have to repeat this experience down at my mum's. Lord help me.

Scars

2010-09-27T10:49:00.006+01:00

I haven't been to Al-Anon for about six weeks now, what with Kay at home over the summer, or visits to my mother, or last week's trip up north. I thought I'd better put in an appearance this week. It struck me for the first time, that at the moment I am really in a better place than most of the others there. Although, naturally, I would give the world to have Greg still here with me, the nightmare of my situation has gone. I can relax at last. The hamster wheel is turning much more slowly, I can breathe easily, turn the light off at night knowing all is calm in the house and buy what frugal things I need for myself without filling up the supermarket trolley with bottles and more bottles. I am my own master. I now make the decisions what to do or not, what to spend or save, without having to pass it by another person. (Not that Greg was dictatorial about those things, but in an equal partnership, we always chose to agree on things first rather than insist on our own way.)

The majority of others at Al-Anon are still in the midst of their nightmares, with their partners or parents or children still doing the drinking or at best undergoing yet another detox, which for now will bring sobriety but only for as long as the patient is physically locked up for ten days and on medication. Once the key is turned and the patient is out on the street again, they will more than likely be looking for their next drink yet again. When depends on how long their willpower will last out - a few hours, a few days, a few weeks.

Most at the Al-anon meetings are weary, crushed, even numb. That was me a year ago. Thankfully, my nightmare is over, although at a price. The alcoholism has gone, but so has Greg. I am a victim of the alcohol, although I did not drink it and it did not kill me. Although I am in a relatively good place at the moment, Greg's absence is a glaring big hole in my life, ever reminding me of that nightmare.

Whether I shall ever totally recover worries me. There are some people I have met at Al-Anon who have been parted from their alcoholic loved ones for decades, either through divorce, separation, death (or in the case of adult childen, marriage and moves away from home). But they still need the crutch of Al-Anon as they feel they are "damaged goods" or victims. Their confidence or self-esteem has been battered by long years of being in the alcoholic's shadow, of being physically or mentally worn away until only the outer shell of them now exists. They still weep at the memories that never go away. Years of having to pretend to the outside world that everything was fine, yet coming home to violence or aggression or arguments and shouting. Whatever the severity of the drinking, it takes its toll on other family members emotionally and sometimes sadly physically.

I have tried my utmost to be strong - both before Greg died and since. Goodness knows where I get it from, because up to now I have always been timid, shy, socially-anxious and withdrawing. Maybe that comes from being an only-child. But I am damned if I am going to let this beat me. That is why I have been so determined to keep busy and get on with life, to draw up decorating projects and to oscillate between my home and my mother's home to get all the chores done. But sometimes in the wee small hours of the morning, when I lie awake in an empty house and hear nothing but the clock ticking, I am worried. I worry about the slow-developing scar this alcoholic experience is leaving and will leave on Kay and me, long after the alcoholism has passed through our lives and gone.

All's well that ends well (I think)

2010-09-20T10:06:00.003+01:00

I'm back from the North having deposited daughter there for the start of her second year at uni. After all the problems relayed in my last post, we did manage to move in to the house (the German girls true to their word let us in) and we met up with my sister-in-law and her partner who had come up from Lincolnshire in a van with Kay's belongings which they had collected earlier in the week from us. We plodded up and down stairs taking said stuff up to Kay's room which is three floors up in an attic room. The house is in an area of town which is predominantly inhabited by students or immigrants. Streets and streets of back to back terraced houses. The housing is all right although hardly the luxury end of the market. I think once upon time the house may have been built for millworkers and their families. But by gum they must have had small feet in those days. The staircases are little more than glorified ladders! They are very very steep, very narrow and won't take a foot-tread front on. You sort of have to go up or down sideways like a crab, or risk falling down head over heels. Carrying heavy boxes and suitcases up the two steep flights was an acquired art. Afterwards, we were all in need of a stiff lunchtime drink and a sit-down in a local pub to recover.

Once my sister-in-law and her family had gone home, Kay unpacked her things and we started to make the room a little more like home, taking note of what little extras still needed to be bought. The three German girls (staying on for yet another week) were very friendly, apologised for the state of the kitchen, as they had been working hard to get their dissertation finished and had therefore had scant time to worry about washing up. I reckoned there must have been at least five days of washing-up in the sink alone, not to mention the piles of plates attracting flies on the work surfaces. True to typical German behaviour, instead of leaving towels on deckchairs, they had left jackets on backs of dining chairs and all their china/pans and food in the cupboards, so Kay could not put any of her food or china/pans away, but we managed to eat out a lot or bring sandwiches home, so that was no great problem.

Kay and I had a great last few days together, buying more household items for the room, doing a bit of sightseeing and having some nice meals out. The week was only marred by the not altogether unexpected news that the fifth girl (Danielle in my last post) had pulled out altogether. It meant that a fifth housemate needed to be found urgently or else the four other girls would need to cover the outstanding rent. Abigail, now back from Thailand, felt partially responsible for choosing Danielle in the first place and took it up herself to advertise the room in all the appropriate places. It paid off as about 8 people have responded to the ad, mainly Americans, Australians and a Spaniard, all of whom have just arrived in the UK this week as international freshers. Kay, as the only housemate to have arrived, had to show them the room and common areas of the house, while I made myself scarce. Hopefully one of them will be suitable.

With heavy heart, I hugged Kay goodbye on Friday evening and made the long train journey back to London, arriving home to an empty house (except for a very relieved Snoppy and cat). I am really happy Kay is settled with nice friends in a nice house. It'll be a long time until I see her at Christmas and a bit daunting on my own, if I am honest, but I have lots of decorating to do, new double-glazing arriving in a week and the same at my mother's house, so I am sure the time will go quickly. I might even sneak in another visit north, if I get the chance! A new chapter begins in both our lives.

The joys of student accommodation

2010-09-14T09:00:00.011+01:00

By the time this is published, I shall be speeding my way up North with Kay on the train to settle her into her new accommodation for the next year - a shared house with 4 other girls. I plan to stay up there for four days and return on Friday. Meanwhile, a dog-sitter is staying in my house to look after Snoopy and the cat.

We are half-expecting we might have to sleep on the pavement tonight. The house-let has not been without its problems. Kay and three of her friends (let's call them Abigail, Beth,and Clare) saw the house last December and told the agent (let's call them Disorganised Properties) they wanted to rent the house from July 2010 , the time that First Years come out of university acommodation in Halls of Residence and when the majority of private student house contracts run from. In actual fact, friend Abigail was already living in the house, sharing it with some German girls. The German girls however, wanted to keep the contract on until 31 August, so Kay, Beth and Choe were told they could not move in until 1 September. That seemed fine, as it would mean Kay did not have to pay rent over the summer, when her room would be unoccupied anyway and lectures do not in any case start until 20 September.

Disorganised Properties asked Kay for a £300 desposit (returnable when she moves out again, unless she wrecks the joint) and the first instalment of £280 to cover September's rent. In addition she had to pay £60 (in cash!!!?) for agents' fees. There are five bedrooms in the house, so the girls advertised for a fifth housemate and eventually Abigail (already in the house, remember) said she knew someone, unknown to the others (let's call her Danielle) and it seemed simpler for the others to agree to this, even though, there were other candidates in the offering. So far so good.

The summer vacation started, the girls all went their separate ways and some to far-flung places. Kay met up with Abigail for the exam a few weeks ago and Abigail let slip that the Germans wanted to stay a bit longer than 31 August and she had said that would be fine, as the other housemates would not want to move in to their rooms until 18 September. She had said this of course, without consulting the others. Had she have done so, she would have found out that one girl wanted to move her stuff in at the beginning of September and Kay wanted to move in around 12th September. However, Abigail, as I said already resident in the house, has taken it upon herself to agree to these and other things without consulting the others and without really thinking things through.

A few weeks ago, in my organised, ticking-off-list-of-what-to-do mode, I rang Disorganised Properties to enquire how and when we should pick up Kay's key when we arrive in town. The answer was not what I was expecting. It seemed only Kay and one other girl had completed and returned all their paperwork and paid their £640 up front, the other 3 girls had still not done so and until all the paperwork and money was finalised, nobody could move in at all. I needed to book train tickets for us well in advance, organise for a dog-sitter, plan for Kay's stuff to be collected and taken up by road etc and the agent would not accept my pleas that we had done our bit and paid up, therefore we should be entitled to move in on the 12th. Disorganised Properties then said Kay should chase everyone up, if she wanted to move in. Quite why Disorganised Properties had not already done this or intended to do it, escaped me. Beth was in Greece, but in any case was paid up and paperwork was done. Chloe was in Dubai and said she had not received any paperwork in the first place to return, but did return it quickly once another set had been sent to her. Abigail was in Thailand for a month and not responding to email or facebook or mobile messages; also she was the only one who could get in touch with the fifth girl Danielle, as none of the others personally knew her. To cut an even longer story short, Kay finally got through to Abigail and got Danielle's number and texted her about the problem, but Danielle was not responding to her mobile calls or texts. The agent just wiped his hands of the whole thing every time we phoned up and said we needed to get it sorted. It did cross my mind to ask why on earth were they charging £60 per girl for agent's fees if we were the ones doing all the administrative running around, but I decided to keep quiet for now and raise it some time later (mental note to contact Trading Standards). To cap it all, the agent then said they did not know the German girls were staying on beyond the 31st August and started to charge them, so they are getting rent from us AND the German girls for the same period (another mental note to Trading Standards).

Finally last week, after a long silence, Danielle got in touch and said she had been in hospital but would sort her paperwork out with the agent. Whoppeee. I made my plans, booked train reservations (although for 14th and not the date we originally wanted), arranged dog-sitter etc. Then a few days later Danielle dropped the bombshell that she cannot afford the rent and if the others would like to look for another fifth housemate she won't mind! Seven days before term starts!!!

As if that was not enough, there is another mess to sort out...when we should read gas and electricity meters, as strictly speaking it should be when the new tenancy starts (1 September ?) but the German girls will be using gas and electricity afte that date and before our arrival and are not moving out until 22 Sept. So when do they stop paying for utilities and the English girls start? Such a tangle...

So Kay and I are travelling up today, the German girls are letting us in (hopefully) and if anyone asks anything, we'll just claim squatters' rights. But I'm taking my sleeping bag and camping mattress just in case! Those pavements can be quite hard to sleep on.

Great news

2010-09-08T09:37:00.004+01:00

When Kay first went up to uni last year, she was told about the marking system. If you got grade E or F, you had failed by varying degrees. If you got a D you had just passed and it was OK. If you got a C, you could be very very pleased with yourself and so were the university pleased with you. If you got B, it was absolutely fantastic. Grade As were almost non-existent, as they were only awarded for truly exceptional work.

Yesterday Kay got the results of her exam that she did two weeks ago (the one she missed when Greg died in March.) She got a B. Of course I have been going around like a pigeon with a puffed up chest, proud as punch. Although she has missed out on the summer holidays because she has been revising so much, she can now rest assured that she is through to the second year of her course. (Sighs of relief). We now have just under a week to relax and pack for her return north early next week. I do so wish Greg could be here to share this good news.

Waste not, want not

2010-09-03T10:25:00.008+01:00

Following on from my post about the staircases, it does not strike me as at all odd that I have reached the ripe old age I am, without having achieved the perfect house. I was born in a post-war London (just inside the 1950s) when rationing was still very much de rigeur. My mother recently produced my ration book from the caverns of her wardrobe, although it is hard to think that at the time as a six-month-old I demanded my ration of whale meat or parachute lining!

I do remember as a small child that there was nowhere near the choice of shops on offer today. If you needed a dress, there were only one or two shops to choose from - and that was in a very busy quarter of London; not the overload of boutiques and chain stores there are now. Not only that but everything was still in short supply. What you needed, let alone wanted, was just not available. Furniture was bought on hire purchase- a sort of forerunner of credit cards - where you paid weekly instalments at the shop where the item was purchased. There was not much choice in furniture either, apart from can I afford it or not? To this day, my mother still has her utility sideboard in her dining room. Fridges or washing machines were relatively unheard of; there was only one channel on the television (BBC1), although ITV was just coming in and I used to go to a neighbour's house,whenever I wanted to watch Noddy on ITV, as we only had BBC; and phones and cars were for the very wealthy. Housing was in short supply too - the bombing had seen to that. My grandparents had moved about 6 times in the space of 4 years during the war, as each house was blown to smithereens. I remember bombed-out houses and gaping holes here and there in the terraced streets, where I played. (That was another thing - then, I played on the streets. Shock, horror, nowadays.)

People's expectations of life were a lot less and they were more accepting of their lot . My parents had lived apart for the first two years of their post-war marriage, as they had nowhere to live together and the only hope of getting somewhere was to get on the council housing list - and for that you had to be married!!! So they married and then lived with their respective parents on opposite sides of London about an hour's bus and undergound journey apart. They never did get that Council flat, by the way, although an offer did come in about 8 years' later by which time they had already put a deposit on their first mortgaged house.

Used to these wartime shortages, I grew up in a family where everything was kept and recycled if possible. Nothing was thown away - just in case. Certainly not furniture. That has definitely rubbed off onto me. Being a student helped too, having to live frugally in the late 1960s/ early 70s. Greg came from a similar background too. He and I were both horders. I wouldn't throw so much as a piece of string away, as it might come in handy and Greg would reuse nails or screws. Over the years we have squirreled away quite lot of stuff - just in case - until every drawer, cupboard or cellar space is now groaning. Last week, I replaced our fridge/freezer which had reached the grand old age of 22 years. It was a bit battered, but it still worked and I did not see the point of throwing it out. The salad drawers were held together with duct tape where they had cracked many years ago, the handles had come off and I could not find replacements, but the fridge still kept things cold. It was only because the seal on the door had recently gone, that I felt forced (yes, forced) to replace it. And I tell you, the new fridge-freezer is bigger in size than the old one, but it doesn't store as much. How I miss that old one, already.

I recall some years ago when I was at work, that a young single twenty-something was buying a flat for herself and she wanted it freshly-decorated, furnished with all the mod cons (washing machine, dishwasher, TV, telephone, fridge, the lot) all BEFORE she moved in. My parents' generation would have saved for years even decades, for such things, had they been available. My generation had to gradually amass them too, as and when we could afford them. The young generation of today take so much for granted.

There currently is a must-have culture that buys now and worries later. I am sure that's why there are so many house repossessions , as people just do not think beyond the present and cannot contemplate that interest rates might rise. When Greg and I first bought our current house in 1988, we started on 16% interest rates!!! It is a throw-away culture too. Watches and computers are past-it when they are only three years old. As for mobile phones - they HAVE to be replaced each year - so that you can flash the lastest gimmick around in the train. My Nokia 3410 is still going some three hundred years since I first got it. I get funny looks when I use it in public, as if I have just exposed myself. But it works beautifully. Why do I need to replace it? I managed before without photographing everything in sight or ruining my hearing with i-tunes. Why do I need to upgrade it (that wonderful little word which suggests you are missing out, if you don't!) People even seem to replace their furniture every five minutes too to match the wallpaper. What happens to the old stuff? Does it go to some big warehouse in the sky, get dumped on a rubbish tip or get handed down to some lesser mortal?

Times are changing:sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. I am not sure if all this hyperconsumerism is necessarily a good thing. Yes, we have more choices, but we are in danger of becoming greedy and complacent, particularly when half of the world has very little, including a roof over their head and something to eat. As I start to tackle some of the decorating projects, I shall naturally brighten and clean the house up, but I doubt whether I'll manage to upgrade furniture or de-clutter to the extent that it has that minamalist unlived-in look. It will pain me to throw things out - just in case. Anyway the cat and the dog won't stand for that either, I know.

Reading between the lines

2010-08-30T16:56:00.000+01:00

Kay has spent the last 5 days at the Reading Festival. Having got all her horrible exams and revision out of the way, she is at last able to let her hair down. I was more than happy to see her off with her friends at the crack of dawn on Thursday (5am) to get to Reading in time to get a good spot for the tent. I was only a tad worried - the day before, it had been raining cats and dogs, in fact, no, it had been sloshing lions and whatever the bigger version of dogs are. All day Wednesday the South of England had seen a monsoon. I could almost believe that a whole year's rainfall had come down in one day. So by Thursday morning, any normal grass was looking a bit waterlogged. Add to that 87,000 pairs of feet trekking across it with rucksacks and wellies and you had a swamp. Did anyone see those pictures of it on the national news? If not, here they are again.... Lots and lots of squelchy mud. But still, I didn't worry. After all, Kay and her friends are sensible.

I had told her not to bother ringing me frequently but to enjoy herself. Just the one call a day perhaps to let me know she was alive, which she dutifuly did on Thursday and Friday. I felt pleased she was having a good time. However, Saturday's late-night call alarmed me a lot. Earlier on, she and her friends had bagged a spot at the front centre stage at the main arena to watch some of the big groups including the Maccabes, the Cribs and the Libertines . But 87,000 teenagers and youngsters were all trying to do the same, pushin' shovin' and swayin' to the music. After some six hours in the same spot, Kay knew the crowd was growing, the pushing increasing and she was becoming trapped against the front metal barrier. There was no room to put a pin. She tried to fight the force by pushing back, but her arms had fallen below the level of the barrier and there was literally no room to lift them and place them on the barrier to push hard, such was the crush. She was stooped forward, arms down,with her ribs being crushed more and more against the metal bar. She said she could feel her last breath being squeezed out of her. It was then that she alerted a security guard to lift her over the barrier to safety. He was able to lift her free, she put her arms round his neck and was whisked into the air over the barrier, leaving the person behind her to take her place in the crush. In fact, she was not the first to be lifted over and her friends eventually followed her some 40 minutes later,when they too felt the life being squeezed out of them. Kay reasssured me she was fine, although definitely bruised. I did not sleep easy that night.

She has returned this morning safe, although definitely not sound. She still has big bruises on her ribcage to prove it and she was sick twice on the return journey. She said that the toilet facilities were pretty crude,stank to high heaven and there was nowhere to wash hands. What with all the mud sloshing about, hygiene was very difficult to maintain, even with the use of bacterial hand gel which the girls had been sensible enough to pack. Whether she has a gastric virus or has picked up food poisoning is up for debate, but from the symptoms and the probability, our money is on the virus! When kids are small, you worry they are going to fall over and hurt their knee. When they are bigger, you don't stop worrying. But apparently a great time was had by all.

A house is not a home

2010-08-23T09:05:00.004+01:00

Greg and I moved into our present house in January 1988. That was 22 and a half years ago. Although, it is a fairly modern house, it was in quite a delapidated state when we moved in. An old lady with Alzheimers had been the previous occupant and she had thrown things at the walls, was doubly- incontinent and had a string of carers living in, who had neither the time nor the inclination to do anything to the house. Greg and I were still relatively young, when we first moved in, mortgaged up to the hilt and keen to do some DIY ourselves, so we bought the house with much enthusiasm and many ideas about what we wanted to do with it. It was a blank canvas.

Initially, we quickly slapped fresh paint over all the walls and woodwork, just to clean it up, ripped out disgusting carpets and replaced them with new ones and decided that, after that, we would tackle all the rooms slowly one by one with more attention to detail and quality. But life got in the way. For a start we were busy building our careers, as we had recently returned to the UK after living abroad. Commuting in and out of London was tiring enough without stressful work during the day (Greg was often working night shifts too) and it left us shattered when we got home. Then I (elatedly) discovered I was pregnant and Kay came along. Our lives changed forever, as any parent will tell you, and DIY projects got put on hold.

Another teensy weensy problem was that Greg and I had different tastes on things and he had quite strong views on what he didn't want, which meant we could not always agree on the colour of walls and furnishings. Definitely nothing with a hint of floral and only certain colours. The conclusion was often to leave things alone and move on to something else. Greg was also a great procrastinator and would make all manner of excuses to avoid doing things - ie the weather was too hot or too cold; the time too late or too soon; the timing not right altogether; he was too tired or too busy; too this or too that.

After a while money was also a problem, as we paid for Kay to go to a private secondary school at the age of 11, so any savings after that were gobbled up. (Private education was not something we would have originally considered, but realistically our choice of secondary school was limited to one poorly-performing inner-city state comprehensive school half a mile away where much less than a quarter of pupils attained any qualifications of any significance and some even had police records; or the alternative was biting our lips and paying through the nose for a private school with excellent achievements. Kay was very bright and it was well worth the investment in the end, considering what she has achieved today.)

The long and the short of it was that the house ended up being neglected for a number of years. We lived like perpetual students with make-do mismatches of furniture, either hand-me downs or crudely-made by Greg to tide us over, with the occasional bought bargain piece, when we could afford it or agree on it. If I am honest, we were never ones for having an ostentatious lifestyle anyway. As long as we had something to sit on, eat off, the house was warm and the car got us from A to B, we were happy and did not hanker after 4x4s, Mercs, Audis, swish bathrooms and expensive holidays, like some people do. We placed greater importance on other things. However, we had high hopes that when Greg took early retirement and Kay was finished with school, we would at long last start to tackle those jobs together, buy decent furniture and for the first time have a house we could be proud of and enjoy in old age. Again, life got in the way. Greg became an alcoholic.

Apart from the money that Greg poured in the form of amber liquid down his throat or cigarettes he smoked, he was now too ill to do anything. I effectively became his carer and dashed between home and my mother, caring for them both, struggling to keep both houses and gardens vaguely ticking along, as well as bringing up Kay, walking the dog and generally keeping some semblance of normality for all concerned, between the dashes to Acccident and Emergency each time Greg's alcoholism peaked. The house once more got relegated to the back burner. After twenty years or so, since its christening, it was begining to look in desperate need of a coat of paint and some tender loving care.

Now roll forward to the present day....Greg's death has put me in a new, unusual but rather strangely welcoming position. I am now sole decision-maker/finance-juggler/action-planner. I do not have to clear my thoughts first with someone else. With alcohol and cigarettes no longer in the equation and with use of websites such as the one advertised by that delightful little meerkat, I am able to make some small financial savings and at last go ahead with what plans I have for bringing the house up to date. Nothing too dramatic, as I still have to watch the pennies, but neverthess for the first time, having a home (I hope) I shall be proud of.

Some jobs will involve getting experts in - there is no way, for example, I can tackle plumbing or electrics, although I guess, if I had more time, I would be willing to learn for the sheer satisfaction of saying I did it myself. I have also engaged a firm to put in some new double-glazed windows for me before the winter sets in, as some wooden windows badly need replacing. But otherwise I am more than happy to have a go myself in most other things. So far, I have ordered a (matching) flat-pack bedroom suite and assembled it on my own. One unit had 8 drawers in it, so I felt that was quite an achievement. I have recently put up three new fire alarms on the ceilings on various levels of the house. I have had a major tidy-up of the garage which was a complete mess and systematically put things into categories and ordered them accordingly or disposed of them.

Two weeks ago saw my biggest coup yet. Our banisters are horizontal, but when Kay was a baby, one of her baby-club toddler friends came to visit with his mother and promptly tried to abseil through the gaps between the horizontal planks. Greg decided that quick action was needed before Kay started to crawl and did the same, so he banged some rather crude wooden uprights all the way up our 6 flights of stairs. They were a bit of an eyesore but they did the trick. Once the danger was past (and certainly once Kay was a teenager) I was all for removing the uprights and returning the banisters to their former horizontal glory, but Greg opposed this idea - maybe because it would involve too much work. He suggested we paint them instead and they might look less hideous. However, he neither removed them nor painted them and so they stayed as they were for nigh on 18 years.

Two weeks ago, I equipped myself with hammer, screwdriver and crowbar and got rid of every one of those 70 or more uprights. It was hard work - each upright was fixed in three places either with three-inch screws (which took some unscrewing) or 3-inch nails (which were even more difficult to remove, hence the crowbar). The difficulty often arose because the uprights were wedged between the flight of stairs going up and the ones going down so there was little space to manoeuvre prising the nails out. Why Greg used nails in some places instead of screws I am not sure, but they were sure harder to get out. I got a great kick out of finishing the job (using brute force at times) and filling in all the holes with filler. It was very therapeutic. You can just see from the second picture where the uprights were and where I filled in holes. Painting them will be the next phase.

Before

After

Over the winter I am going to be doing lots of painting, including the staircases, and more clearing out. Slowly but surely the house will begin to take shape and meanwhile it's keeping me busy as well as distracting me from too many painful memories.

LAND GIRL

2010-08-16T09:00:00.009+01:00

My dear old mum is 87 today. I am off to visit her for the week while Kay heads off to do her delayed exam at uni. My mum is not in the best of health these days - one of her main problems is severe osteo-arthritis which has caused her spine to curve to one side (scoliosis - see here), and also damaged her knees and ankles. Because of this she can barely walk unaided, but even with a stick her balance is not good and she has in the past had several serious falls which landed her up in hospital with a broken nose and broken teeth! She is the sort of woman, however, who never complains about anything and even seems to apologise for her own shadow when in the presence of other people. She will put up with no end of pain without even saying anything, yet always wants to know how everyone else is doing.

She grew up in the Depression of the 1920s, living quite a poor childhood after her father was made redundant from his job at a bank. He had been at the bank before the First World War, subsequently lost an eye in the war and on his return to the bank could no longer see well enough with the one remaining eye to add up huge long columns of figures (in his head - no calculators then). There were no welfare benefits in those days and mum remembers eating nothing but mashed potato for days on end, as that is all they could afford.

When World War 2 broke out she was still a teenager, but was recruited at the age of 18 in 1941 into the Women's Land Army (WLA). It was designed for women to work the land and feed the nation, while the men were away fighting and particulalrly once merchant navy supplies could not get though enemy lines. Recent portrayal of the WLA in films either glamourises it or the girls are made to look as if they were oversexed. That really annoys mum. The reality was that the life was quite hard for most. A lot of young girls (like my mother coming from London) had never been up close to a farm animal before or had to dig trenches in fields. The physically demanding work made them too tired for much else!

In my mother's case, she was responsible for getting the cows from the fields to their stalls in the milking sheds, tying chains around their necks to hold them steady and feeling their hot breath on her face as they gazed at her through navy blue eyes with long lashes. She then milked them (by hand) and got them back out into the fields again. Returning to the sheds, she washed the walls down with lime, a job which made her hand red raw. How many 18-year-old city girls would cope with that these days?

When she wasn't doing that, she would work out on the fields in all inclement weathers, helping to pull down trees with tractors and chains and digging up the land to plant such things as potatoes and cabbages. In the autumn, they would pull up the potatoes or thresh corn. It was back-breaking work and she reckons that has contributed to the scoliosis she suffers from now. But it was not all bad. It was while she was doing this sort of work that she met my father, in her shyness tripping over his tractor chain. He was a German refugee sent to work on the land too (see here). When she actually got a weekend off, she would run down the dark London streets avoiding air raids to get home to the Anderson shelter, where her parents were waiting for her. She still finds the sound of an air-aid siren sends shivers down her spine. The only recognition or thanks she got for it all was a badge which she had to wait over 60 years for and finally got through the post last year from DEFRA. For some strange reason, the WLA are rarely if ever mentioned alongside the other Forces at Remembrance Sunday or other special days and yet their contribution to the war effort - to supply food to the nation and especially the army - were arguably what won the war, as the UK would have not been able to keep going against Hitler for as long as it did.

Here is a picture of my mum (the one in the centre) meeting the late Duchess of Gloucester who visited them on one of her official tours.

Happy Birthday Mum x

Another reason to be angry

2010-08-10T21:02:00.005+01:00

As if Greg did not do enough damage when he was alive, he is still wreaking it after he has died. I try not to let it get to me too much, but when it concerns Kay, I adopt my mad mother cow mode and bellow.

Back in March when Greg was rushed into hospital , Kay hurried the two hundred miles or so down from university to be there. Things were looking grim and Greg did in fact die a week later. Not only did Kay miss two weeks of lectures at that time (including the week following Greg's death) but she also missed a very important exam. She did this with the university's permission and they were good enough to say that she could take the exam in August instead, when those who had meanwhile failed it did their re-sits. The exam is next week.

So instead of having a nice long summer vacation to get over what has been a strenuous academic year (let nobody say medicine is an easy course to study) as well as a very difficult year on an emotional level, Kay has had to stick her nose in a book and study hard. The fact that one-third of her fellow course students failed that March exam and are having to do re-sits does not fill her with confidence as to its simplicity: she is worried sick she will fail too. Her old school friends in London have been inviting her out for days out here or there, or suggesting all-night clubbing or trips to the cinema. Kay has gone out to some, just to keep sane, but has also had to decline a lot for fear she will not get all her revision done in time. What is also worrying is that, if she fails the exam, there will not be enough time for her to resit the exam before start of the next academic year in September and she will therefore have to repeat the whole of the first year again instead. A whole lot rests on this exam. So no pressure then.

I feel so sorry for her and wish I could wave a magic wand. She is physically and mentally exhausted, seems to be getting one cold or ear infection after the other and is very run down. If Greg had not died, when he did and the way he did, she would have taken the exam in March and would be having a whale of a rest now. And once again, my anger is slowly rising. He's done it again.

All's well that ends well

2010-08-04T15:03:00.016+01:00

I am pleased to say Snoopy recovered and Kay and I managed to get to the party in Northumberland after all..........

The drip to replace Snoopy's lost fluids did the trick and when we collected him on Saturday morning from the vet, he was a different dog, apart from a hole in his leg where the drip had been. He could walk again and his rear end had stopped exploding! Unfortunately my bank balance is slightly wobbly now instead as the vet's bill came to £587. Now I am hoping the pet insurance will kindly pay for most of it. The claim form goes off today. Wish me luck.

Kay and I did all our packing for the big trip North late on Saturday, after we were reassured that Snoopy was better and had started to digest the prescription food we had been given by the vet. We felt confident the live-in dog-sitter we had hired for three days would be able to cope and would not be saddled with a leaking dog! (I wouldn't have been happy leaving him in that state either - in fact I had prepared myself for the fact I would have to stay behind.)

Thus on Sunday Kay and I left for Northumberland on an early train and were met at lunchtime at Newcastle station by Greg's sister Jill and her family, who had themselves travelled up from Lincolnshire the day before and were renting a cottage for the week. A lot of Greg's family originally come from that area (many are still there) and, on the way out of Newcastle, we first set off in search of Kirkheaton where one deceased aunt used to live. We found her old cottage, chatted to some inquisitive neighbours and found her gravestone in the village churchyard. Kay and her cousin Rhianna had a day of piecing together the family history and we made further trips to Belsay to discover other houses and cottages in the family folklore. Inbetween that we managed to walk Jill's dog (which made me miss Snoopy even more) along bits of Hadrian's Wall.

I finally saw the rented cottage near the village of Wark late on Sunday. It was at the end of a very long dirt-track off a fairly small road and just what the doctor ordered. It was so remote, it did not even have a mobile phone signal (so I could not ring the dog-sitter for reassurance until we were out of the cottage and amongst larger habitable areas). It was in need of modernisation but it had charm (meathooks hung in the ceiling so we guessed it had been an outhouse for a nearby farm) and we were warm and comfortable, even if the shower was not up to the 21st century.

The 90th birthday party for Greg's elderly aunt was held at Whitley Bay on Monday. The clan all gathered there at lunchtime to celebrate and it was good to catch up with so many relatives- some I had not seen since the aunt's 80th birthday ten years before. Inevitably the conversation turned to Greg and it was at times difficult thinking Greg would have so enjoyed seeing his family again and yet was missing all this. I was there to represent him, but nevertheless his absence left a big hole.

We came home yesterday after a day touring the gorgeous countryside along the A69. We lunched in Corbridge and explored the the quaint shops and buildings around, before walking along the river. Then we only had time to drive quickly through Hexham (Greg's father's home town) before catching a late afternoon train for London at Newcastle. Snoopy was fine on our very late evening return and was so pleased to see us again. The dog-sitter had been very reliable.

It was a very relaxing/entertaining/ happy few days away. It did Kay and me some good to get away and breathe country air. I leave you with the view from the cottage bathroom window. Imagine sitting on the throne and seeing this..........

Pawly

2010-07-30T20:31:00.006+01:00

Snoopy is poorly or pawly to be precise. It started yesterday when (the world fell out of his bottom) the bottom of his world fell out, if you get my drift. After several hours of pure runny brown liquid ejecting from his rear end, I decided not to let him sleep in my bedroom, as is his wont (I have beige carpets - enough said), but to settle him down on the kitchen tile floor. I slept near him all night on the floor too. How's that for (stupidity) total dedication?

By this morning, he was still producing enough brown liquid to sink the Titanic let alone the bed he was sleeping on and was now unable to use his back legs to support himself. He just lay in his mess too weak to roll over. I rang the vet and we were in the surgery by 8am. The vet's verdict was that Snoopy was very dehydrated and needed painkillers to ease his gut and antibiotics as a precaution. We were instructed to try to get him to drink fluids - not easy when a dog does not want to drink. On getting home, Snoopy did not want to leave the car and could not use his legs at all. So Kay and I had to carry him out into the house on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket. As the day progressed the antibiotics and painkillers made some difference, but he was still passing copious amounts of brown liquid all over every fresh bit of bedding I could muster. Our washing machine was working flat out and as soon as I had hung one load up, I was washing/disinfecting another, not to mention floors carpets and all. I was exhausted! The vet had told me to ring him back at 4pm to see how he was doing and, when I told him he was still reluctant to use his legs, he told me to bring him in again.

Kay I managed to get him into the car, but when we arrived at the vet's, we could not get him out of the car. He had no strength to stand up. Again Kay and I resorted to the blanket to carry him out, taking two corners each. We struggled to manoevre him out of the car and onto the pavement and, as I slammed the car door shut, I realised a split-second later that I had locked my car keys and handbag inside!! Not only that, but I had parked on double yellow lines. To add insult to injury, Snoopy took one look at our pathetic situation and strolled nonchalently from the confines of the blanket to the surgery. It was rapidly turning into a farce. With no time to dally, we decided to get Snoopy inside and deal with the car later.

To cut a very long story short, the vet has kept Snoopy in overnight to put on a drip to replace lost fluids. Snoopy hates to be parted from me so the vet will sedate him too. I think I'll need some sedation too after a day like today. The Automobile Association came to the rescue and got my car unlocked again (I have a spare car key - in the house - but my house keys were .... inside the car in my bag and Kay had not brought hers.) My neighbour has my spare house keys - but they are away on holiday! A lesson is to be learned from all this and I think it is that I shall leave a spare set of house and car keys with a local friend who never goes away anywhere.

We await to see how Snoopy will be in the morning, but it is all very worrying as Kay and I have been invited to Greg's aunt's 90th birthday party which is being held in Northumberland (north of Newcastle) on Monday and we are travelling up by train early on Sunday morning. All Greg's wider family will be there and we have been arranging it for months. I had organised for someone to dog-sit Snoopy in the house for three days, while we are away. So you can imagine how I am panicking, if he does not make a full recovery by tomorrow, I shall not want to leave him, yet I do not want to miss the party either. I shall definitely need that sedation tonight. A nice bottle of wine would not go amiss, methinks.

Forgiving

2010-07-19T11:46:00.002+01:00

Kay turned 19 last week. For the first time in 19 years, I did not have to arrange a party and pay for it agonising for weeks on what food to get, where to hold the party etc etc.. She just went up to the town centre with her friends to a club, just turned up at the venue and they all paid for themselves, got themselves home again on the night bus etc. Easy peasy! I stayed at home and put my feet up, watching my favourite soaps on TV.

She and I had gone out for a celebratory meal together the night before on her actual birthday. There is an old Italian restaurant, she ,Greg and I always used to go to, when we were celebrating something special. This time, Kay and I felt we would change the venue and go to a new Italian restaurant that has just opened, but as luck would have it (or not) the new place was so crowded and they were queuing out the door waiting for tables. Kay declared it was in any case tradition to go to the old place and we decided to head for that after all, but we ended up queuing to get in there too. For a Wednesday night, all our local restaurants seemed very busy!

I found it hard. Being in our special restaurant without Greg. Looking at the menu and just knowing what he would have chosen, as he always chose the same thing when we went there. It was hard too that I was the one doing the ordering, when he always ordered. It was hard that I paid the bill, when he always paid. The table was set for two, when it was always set for three. When Kay was very little, Greg would order chocolate fudge cake for dessert and ask them to cut it into one third for Kay and two-thirds for him, as she could not eat a whole piece by herself. Kay ordered a whole piece for herself this time. A year ago, Greg had celebrated with us, although admittedly he was so drunk before we even got there, that it was embarrassing. He kept standing up to go out for a cigarette and his trousers kept falling down. He was also uncharacteristically very rude to the waiters. So many memories sparked by every stage of the meal. At times, I felt as if Greg was watching over us from above.

Up to now I have been consumed by such anger about what Greg did over the last five years: the money he wasted on alcohol and cigarettes (about £600 a month, making quite a hole in our already reduced income); the mental stress he caused Kay and me; the damage he did to his own health and ultimately his life; the ruined plans for retirement together. In many ways, my anger and the events of the last five years had blocked out any feelings I had for him. But for the first time since Greg died, since the funeral and since scattering the ashes last week, I actually felt sorry for him for missing out on Kay's birthday. Just like he'll miss out on every other milestone from now on - her graduation, her marriage, the grandchildren, every birthday and Christmas, not to mention other milestones in my life and those of his sister and her family. And in his. He's missed out already on things like the general election and the Lib/Con Coalition, the World Cup and there'll be more things to come.

I went to one of my local Al-Anon meetings last week. We were talking about Forgiveness. Someone said "Forgiving does not mean you have to forget; it just means you get rid of the hurt, because storing up resentment doesn't help you to move forward." Another spoke of alcoholism being like a mental illness and not something the alcoholic can help. Suddenly it all made sense. Greg's drinking was like a form of mental illness. He could not help it. It was too big for him to deal with - like anorexia or depression can be. Being angry with him was pointless, inasmuch as telling someone who is depressed to pull themselves together is pointless. Being angry does not help me move on either. I can't forget what happened; I can't pretend it never happened; but Kay and I have to forgive him to find peace of mind and move on.

How to Celebrate a Wedding Anniversary

2010-07-11T10:53:00.003+01:00

Although Greg died and was cremated in March, we had not yet scattered his ashes. It was his wish to return to his home town in Lincolnshire and end up there. He never considered London to be his real home and certainly not his final resting place. The reason for the delay is that I had been waiting for his niece, Rhianna, to return from a year's stay in New Zealand. She was so upset she could not be there for the funeral, despite trying her might to get back. The expense and tortuous journey involved in getting back to the UK at short notice from the other side of the world proved all too impossible and Rhianna was distraught. I therefore promised her we would hold off scattering the ashes until her return.

But life is never that simple. Trying to find a date that would be suitable for several parties involved started to be worse than trying to fit in a meeting between the Queen and Barack Obama. Rhianna was dotting about here and there meeting up with her German boyfriend; then her brother also wanted to be at the scattering and he had meanwhile gone abroad; we were trying to avoid a time that clashed with Kay's exams and her forthcoming birthday; Greg's best friend from schooldays also wanted to be there too; and it had to be at the weekend, because Greg' sister would otherwise have to take time off work (and she had already taken quite a bit off to help me when Greg was dying, so I wanted to avoid that at all costs).

There were in fact very few dates that fitted the bill this side of doomsday and eventually someone suggested that Saturday 10 July might be the best date for everyone concerned. I pondered long and hard over this. It was not that I had anything else pressing to do, but the tenth of July is our wedding anniversary... thirty-four years to the day since we married. Did I want to spend it scattering Greg's ashes? Then I thought about it and I smiled. It was rather symbolic really. The day we officially got hitched would be the day we would technically part. It would be perfect.

That day was yesterday. I had collected Greg' ashes from the undertakers the day before. A strange bundle to show for a life - ashes in a sealed plastic bag inside a plastic urn, inside a plastic carrier bag inside a cardboard bag. Yesterday, as Kay and I left home, I patted the bag and told Greg we were leaving the house to go back to his home town. Every step of the journey, I was telling him where we were. I joked that it was the first time he had been on the Underground for years. At Kings Cross we caught an early train up to Lincolnshire, where Greg's sister Jill met us and drove us to the spot we had chosen. We met up with Jill's family and Greg's best friend Ross and his wife.

It was an idyllic scene The sun was beating down from a clear blue sky, the air was very warm, the river sparkled and the townsfolk wandered slowly in the heat to their destinations. The town skyline looked magnificent, the spires and towers of the many churches reaching for the sky and the crumpled uneven rooftops of the ancient houses settling down for a nap in the heat. The town Greg loved and never left mentally. There were eight of us all together. All there for one purpose - to find Greg his final resting place. We walked away from the town into the quiet of the surounding countryside across the land Greg had walked as a boy with a dog as his companion. It is common public land, where other people now walk their dogs or rest to admire the beautiful view of the town.

We found the ideal spot, under the shade of a spreading tree. I read a poem and then a few of us took turns to scatter the ashes. It was an emotional moment. We took photos to record the spot. Later we ended up at a cafe for a refreshing drink and headed back to Jill's for lunch.

A while ago, I had lent Ross Greg's old cine films as he knows how to transfer them to DVD and edit them with music and titles etc. He had transfered to DVD and edited a 30-minute film of our wedding and honeymoon,which we viewed after lunch. It was strangely comforting to see Greg as a young man again and so happy and free from the struggles of recent years.

All in all it was a wonderful day and when Kay and I got back to London in the extremely humid evening, we were exhausted but happy. Greg was now at rest in his favourite place. Happy Anniversary!

Bugs, Football and Rattles

2010-06-28T17:42:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm back in London after a rather manic ten days, dropping off the dog at my mother's, racing up north to visit Kay, sightseeing, then helping her pack up and come back to London, collecting the dog etc. Then for some extra punishment I went down with a gastric bug - I'll spare the gory details, except to say I had a temperature and spent several days rushing into a small room! The good news is that with that and the sweltering weather we have been having, I have lost twelve pounds and don't even remotely fancy food at the moment, so may resemble a stick insect by the end of the week (well, there's ALWAYS hope!)

Greg's sister, Jill, brought Kay's stuff down from Lincolnshire on Saturday. She had to come as far as Stansted anyway to drop her daughter (Rhianna) off at the airport. Rhianna was flying off to meet up with her German boyfriend. She ended up on Sunday watching the England match in Nuremberg of all places! I would imagine she had to keep her own nationality a bit of a secret!! Anyway, Jill carried on down the motorway to me, bless her, and brought all Kay' stuff safely home. She spent the weekend with us, though I was miserable company as I was still hatching my gastric bug and Kay was brewing a cold.

We three women watched the football on Sunday. The result was to be expected. Even I (with absolutely no experience in football) could see our boys weren't up to it. It beats me why we pay so much money to keep these football primmadonnas and their hangers-on (WAGS, managers and coaches) in a manner to which they have become accustomed. Why not just pay them a modest wage like the rest of us have to survive on and only give them hefty bonuses if they actually win a game? That should apply to all the national as well as European or World Cup games. That would give them an incentive to try to win at least. As it is, they earn ridiculously big money for doing badly. And can someone please explain to me why we have non-English managers,who apparently can barely speak English, managing British clubs when there must be plenty of indigenous folk up for the job? After all, surely an England team should be managed by, errrr, an Englishman; a German team by a German, a Russian team by a Russian. Or am I being too simplistic? Who's to say they are not spying on the team they're manging and giving the trade secrets away to their own country's team? How can they remain unbiased? Anyway, the best team won and that is what the World Cup is ultimately about. A shame, but England was so obviously not the best team. While we were watching, Kay came up with a great name for the German WAGS. HUFS = Hausfrauen und Freundinnen. Maybe it'll catch on.

Before Jill left, we rounded up a few things for her to take back with her. They were old items belonging to her mother, which had been given to Greg some years ago, but he had never used and which I thought now rightfully belonged with Jill. One was an old music centre (turntable/cassette/radio deck) which comes complete with loudspeakers. Greg had kept his mum's music centre in his bedroom alongside his bed, although, as I say, he never used it. Or so I thought. As Kay was carrying one of the speakers and I carried the other downstairs, Kay's one made a funny rattling sound. We thought it was about to fall apart and that its innards had come loose. Whatever was wrong with it? Once at the foot of the stairs, Kay found her speaker's front side came apart and inside she found the amplifier......... and two small empty bottles of whisky! Are we never going to stop finding them.. and in the strangest of places?

Driving me crazy.

2010-06-16T11:03:00.006+01:00

I'm dropping off Snoopy at my mother's tomorrow ( a mere 120-mile round trip), the neighbours are briefed to look after the cat,then I am heading up North to spend a long weekend with Kay. This will be a new experience for Snoopy as Greg always used to look after him when I had to go away from home. The reason I am going away? Kay did her last exam of the season last week and so I am going up to see her, have a wander around her new environment, and help her pack up for the summer vacation. She now has to move out of the Hall of Residence, as the rooms are for first year students only, but she cannot move into the rented house she is going to share with her medic friends next term, until September. On Sunday we shall therefore have to bring all her clothes, bedding and kitchen equipment back to London for the summer.

I may have mentioned before that I HATE motorways and will not drive on them myself . My fear comes from an accident Greg and I came upon many years ago when we were driving along a motorway one dark foggy November night in Germany at the start of our marriage. We saw a dark space ahead of us and cars stopped on all lanes far in the distance with lights flashing. What we did not realise, as we slowed down to join the queue of cars ahead, was that in the dark void between us was a dead horse minus its head. We managed to avoid it at the last minute and swerved onto the hard shoulder of the motorway. Greg then proceeded to run up the motorway the way we had come along, carrying a warning triangle and a lit torch to try to get the traffic we had long overtaken to slow down and stop. He was worried they might not see the horse in time and there would be a multiple pile-up of mangled metal and bodies. I was left in the car with the body of the headless horse close by. It was like something out of The Godfather and of course I was worried sick Greg would get run over in the dark. All ended well (apart from the poor horse)and I later discovered the horse had run out of a field after its foal who had strayed onto the motorway. We later saw the foal alive further on down the motorway, being restrained by the motorists of the cars with flashing lights. But this scene has never left me and now makes me a nervous wreck on the motorway. I hate the speed and the way lorry drivers suddenly pull out in front of you or other cars dart and weave. Even as a passenger I hate motorways. I dread going on them. I certainly would never attempt to drive on them myself. I'd sooner do a thousand-mile detour!!

Greg's sister is kindly coming up from Lincolnshire to meet us on Sunday, bring Kay's stuff back as far as Lincolnshire and then on to London the following weekend. I am so grateful to her and apologise a thousand times for being such a wimp. I did not start to drive until I was 45, so I admit defeat on this one. It is a miracle I drive at all. Thank goodness for Greg's sister though. Kay informs me she is going to take driving lessons this summer and may be able to do the drive in future. Think I am going to lie down in a dark room with some smelling salts!!!!!!

The maybe's and perhaps'es

2010-06-10T13:26:00.001+01:00

I suppose I should have remembered that my blog had its second anniversary a couple of weeks ago. Maybe, because the whole reason for starting this blog has now disappeared, my temporary memory lapse is a sign that the blog is going nowhere right now and doesn't need to be remembered.

When I nervously published that first post on 22 May 2008, I had no idea that two years down the line, I would be a widow. I knew things were not well, I knew Greg had a lot of health problems and I knew that death was distinctly on the cards if he carried on drinking. But just as you also know lung cancer is on the cards if you carry on smoking, you always think you are going to be the lucky one. So with Greg, I hoped he might see the error of his ways, manage to come off the drink permanently and we'd both sail into the golden sunset of retirement together. After all, it was not as if he had been a heavy drinker all his life, only in the last five years. I imagined he could stop as easily as he had started. I suppose I was in denial. The brutal facts are that only 1 in 10 alcoholics ever recover totally from their addiction and even then it is a tortured existence when faced with invites to family occasions, boys' or girls' nights out, or a walk past a pub on a bad day, at a vulnerable moment. So why I thought Greg would be the one in ten to survive and rise above this awful disease, I don't know. After all, that would be the same Greg, who spent most of his whole life trying to stop smoking even when he knew it was causing vascular problems in his legs and together with his diabetes making walking more difficult. So I guess addiction was in his veins.

Still, there was always a part of me that hoped (or maybe fantasised or just wasn't thinking realistically) that he would get over this. He certainly wanted to lick alcoholism into submission, but somehow the faint determination to do it got arm-wrestled into defeat by the enormous big bully cravings to carry on. Even a few days before he ended up on what was to be the final stay in hospital he was talking about getting help...... again. The trouble is that detox alone is not enough. He had had plenty of those either in a detox clinic or on numerous occasions when he was in a hospital bed and enforced not to drink . Detoxes just get the alcohol out of your system in a reduced slow way with the help of prescription drugs so that you don't experience the withdrawal symptoms. What you then need after that is rehab - a (usually) six-month-long stay in an institution to get to the bottom of WHY you drink and how best you can avoid it.... I suppose with a lot of soul-searching. Greg always refused to go to rehab. He did not like the idea of being away from home at all, let alone sharing a room with a stranger for six months (rooms are inevitably shared to help the process), nor the idea of possibly mixing with drug addicts and hard criminals. He always turned down that lifeline. Whether ultimately rehab might have kept him on the straight and narrow I do not know, but in turning it down, simply because he did not want to be away from home, he ended up in the situation of not coming home at all - ever - except in a wooden casket.

When he was admitted to hospital, bleeding internally in several places, his last words to me, before he fell unconscious, were that he hoped they could do something to help him "if I ever get out of here." I had to leave him at that point, as the hospital were barring visitors to contain the winter vomiting bug that was doing its rounds and I was only there to visit in the first place, because Greg was on the critical list. He must have realised how low his health had sunk. Did he perhaps know this was the last chance? "If I ever get out of here" keeps going through my mind over and over again. Perhaps he already knew then he had lost the battle.

Exam stress

2010-06-07T15:23:00.004+01:00

Just back from a week at my mother's, so have not had a chance to catch up with other blogs and continue mine. Meanwhile as it is the exam season here in the UK at the moment, I thought I would publish this list of genuine errors which have appeared in past papers.....

Monotony means being married to the same person for all your life.

Use the word "judicious" in a sentence to show you understand its meaning..
Hands that judicious can be as soft as your face...

How important are elections to a democratic society?
Sex can only happen when a male gets an election.

What is a turbine?
Something an Arab wears on his head.

What is Britain's highest award for valour in war?
Nelson's Column.

Who was it that didn't like the return of the prodigal son?
The fatted calf.

What's a Hindu?
It lays eggs.

Name the four seasons.
Salt, mustard, pepper and vinegar.

What changes happen to your body as you age?
When you get old, so do your bowels and you get inter-continental.

What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
They'll insist you're well endowed if you are buying a house.

What is a co-operative?
It's a kind of shop that is not as dear as places like Marks and Spencer.

What are steroids?
Things for keeping the carpet on the stairs.

A major disease associated with smoking is premature death.

The equator is a menagerie lion running around the earth through Africa.

Christians go on a pilgrimage to Lord's.

I've said goodbye to boyhood, now I'm looking forward to adultery.

Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.

The process of flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.

Cows produce large amounts of methane, so the problem could be solved by fitting them with catalytic converters.

The moon is a planet just like the earth, only it is even deader.

Dew is formed on the leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire.

A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.

Mushrooms always grow in damp places and so they always look like umbrellas.

Rhubarb: a sort of celery gone bloodshot.

The body consists of three parts - the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowels of which there are five - a,e,i,o,and u.

To remove dust from the eye: pull the eye down over the nose.

For a nosebleed: put the nose much lower than the body until the heart stops.

For drowning: climb on top of the person and move up and down to make artificial perspiration.

For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.

To prevent conception, wear a condominium.

For head cold: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.

The pistol of the flower is its only protection against insects.

To keep milk from turning sour, keep it in the cow.

Wild for the city

2010-05-25T11:16:00.011+01:00

I live in London and, despite the fact that it is one of the biggest cities in the world,there is a lot of wild-life here, that you might not expect to see. Foxes are quite common - we have a family living at the foot of our garden and they often come out to play on our lawn, much to Snoopy's annoyance. I can recall our niece coming down from her home in the Lincolnshire countryside to stay with us and being surprised at seeing her first fox close up.... in London of all places. She said she never sees them in the countryside. People around here often deliberately leave food out for them and they become quite tame. One used to come to our garden gate every night, when I put out dogfood for it, but we stopped doing it as it seemed unfair to mess with their natural routine of hunting. It's quite usual to see them trotting across the road at night, or standing on the pavements, watching and listening. We have seen a badger walking across the road late at night - only one, mind, but nevertheless, proof that they live here. We are inundated with grey squirrels, so that we don't even look up if one comes into the garden. Snoopy has great fun in the park chasing them back up the tree trunks,if they dare to come down foraging for food. They often sit on our garden fence and taunt him, daring him to chase them, which of course he can't, because a patio window divides them.

Over the last ten years or so, we have had an ever-growing population of exotic parakeets. It is said they escaped during filming of the African Queen here in 1951. They hang out in our local park and can be seen squawking in the treetops or flying around in search of food. They often visit my neighbour's garden to peck at wild cherries on their tree or snatch a nut or two from the bird-feeder. There is a down-side to all this in that a lot of familiar species like sparrows and blackbirds seem to have disappeared from our gardens, where once they were in flocks, but it is lovely to see the colourful parakeets in the heart of the big city. In warm weather, you can almost imagine you are somewhere exotic. They, for their part, don't seem to mind the cold and snow in the winter!

When Greg was quite ill towards the end, he used to sit in the kitchen/diner (bottom level right - see my previous post) and watch the wild-life as it came to our garden. It was the only distraction he really had, apart from the television or looking into the bottom of his whisky glass. He always used to sit on the same dining chair from morning till night - sometimes all through the night. It was HIS chair - close to the television, close to the garden, so that he could go out for a cigarette. Kay and I have not felt like sitting in that chair since he has gone. There is not a day that has gone past when I don't come into the kitchen and half expect him to be still sitting in that chair. I sometimes pat it when I walk past and ask him why he became an alcoholic and why he left us.

About a week after Greg died, I came down one morning to the kitchen and lying on Greg's chair was a green parakeet feather. It had not been there the night before and we had not even had one in the house anywhere. I tried to rationalise that maybe the cat somehow had brought it in, but she has never even brought in so much as a mouse or dead bird before, let alone a feather and why leave it on that chair? Furthermore, I have NEVER seen a green feather lying about outside for as long as the parakeets have been here. The cat would surely be unable to wrestle killing such a large bird and if so, where was the rest of the bird? I am not a believer in the paranormal, so I tried to dismiss it with logic, but it did spook me a little. I kept the feather - it is rather pretty - and put it on a shelf in the kitchen.Then, after the funeral, Kay and I took my mother home at Easter. When Kay and I got back home again, the feather was back on the chair. Now, I don't know about you, but I have absolutely no explanation for that.

Home sweet home

2010-05-18T20:39:00.008+01:00

From what I have said in the past about living in a six-storey house, I can imagine some of you think I either live in a lighthouse or a windmill or a huge mansion or am just telling lies. Just to reassure you on all those points, my house is in a terrace of modern houses right in the suburbs of London. It's what is commonly known here as a townhouse. From the back or front it looks like a three-storey house, but the bottom level of the back and front are not aligned, so there are six half-levels. The staircase zigzags through the middle of the house. It looks a bit like this from the side.

The bottom right is the kitchen
The bottom left is the entrance hall, WC and garage.

The middle right is the lounge.
The middle left is the main bedroom and bathroom.

The top right are two smaller bedrooms, one of which is the study.
The top left is Kay's bedroom and another bathroom.

If you forget to take something to the top of the house with you, you have a long way to go to fetch it and vice versa if you forget to take something down with you. It certainly keeps me fit. Now imagine just how much more exercise I get clearing out the chaos in the study on level 5 to take things down to the garage on level 2. Up/down/up/down/up/down. Today I have been working like a navvy, breaking up some old furniture to arrange a different lay-out in the study and hopefully make more room. I've also taken several crates of old magazines, waste paper and general rubbish to the local dump. The study is beginning to change from Cinderella to the beautiful princess. Moreover, I'll sleep well tonight after all that hard work.

Suddenly, my whole life flashed before me

2010-05-14T22:38:00.002+01:00

At the moment I am keeping busy, partly through choice, partly because the daily post brings mountains of paperwork which needs dealing with. Much needs to be done in the house too. Over the last few years as Greg's health declined, he did not feel like doing any DIY which he had always loved doing before as a means of switching off from the stresses of his job. Nor did we have the funds to get someone else in to do it, as he drank and smoked our spare money away. So now, I am going through each room of our house very slowly, sorting though stuff in cupboards, clearing out rubbish, being ruthless about things I don't need any more and either taking it bit by bit to charity shops, the refuse dump, or selling it on ebay. It is a big job, because we have a house on six levels (a tall thin house with a room on each level) with 4 bedrooms, a cellar and a garage. It is not made easy by the fact that in the past we both were afraid to throw things away because of their sentimental value or in case they might come in handy one day. Once the clearing out is done, I intend to decorate the rooms - either doing the repairing and painting myself or in worst case scenarios getting someone else in to do it. I plan it will take a couple of years but it will keep me busy and therefore help me over the initial bereavement period. Apart from all that, I still intend to visit my mother frequently who lives sixty miles away and do the same in her house.

This week saw me making a start on what I grandiosely call "the study" - the fourth bedroom crammed from ceiling to floor with bookcases, his and hers desks, laptops and their now-defunct predecessor desk-top computers. Not to mention other stuff that has been dumped unceremoniously on the floor as there is nowhere else to dump it - such as Kay's old board games/jigsaws etc intended for sale on ebay so kept close to the computers as an aide memoire when I get around to writing the adverts. Yesterday, I tackled the five-drawer unit that stands alongside our desks. I very much doubt we have gone through the drawers since we moved into this house 22 years ago. Every time, in the past, that I have opened the drawers with the intention of tidying them, I have shut them again quickly, as the task looked too impossible. But there is one positive thing that Greg's death has done and that is to impress upon me that I must go through this process if only to spare Kay the job of doing it, if anything should ultimately happen to me. So yesterday, I attempted the impossible, opened those drawers and my whole life flashed before me. I had no idea what was in those drawers and what I would find. I found Greg's university dissertation written forty years ago; countless university membership cards with photos of him as a fresh-faced 19-year-old on them; all sorts of bits and bobs that had a story connected to them from different stages of our marriage; old batteries; paperclips of all sorts,shapes and sizes; home-made anniversary cards we had sent one another; the odd foreign coin from a range of countries: super 8 cine films of 1980s holidays; index cards or notebooks with his writing scribbled on them; business cards with contacts from his early days as a journalist; an instruction manual for something long gone. It reminded me of a sketch from the British comedian Michael McIntyre entitled "The Man Drawer" (see the end of this post). In a few hours, having emptied out the contents of the drawers either onto the desk in piles of subject matter or into the waste bin, I had wandered through 40 years of our life together. It was most unexpected and a strange feeling.

Running with the Baton

2010-05-07T17:06:00.006+01:00

Before he took early retirement six years ago, Greg was a journalist by profession, an international radio journalist, and was always watching news, devouring elections and enlivened by international and national politics. He would have been in his element this last few weeks, glued to the TV set, watching the first ever televised debates between the three main UK political contenders. He'd have been up all night last night watching every agonised constituency result come through. He would have been over the moon to hear about the electoral reform that clearly now seems on the cards. He was always a staunch supporter of Proportional Representation. He'd be jumping for joy. But he's not, because he isn't here and he doesn't know and he never will and he's missed it all by two months.

Me? I hate politics, I can't stand the all-night swingometers and I'd sooner have a decent night's sleep than watch the same drab line-ups awaiting their fate as the results in a constituency somewhere near you are read out. I'm just not that kind of person. I don't mind reading about it once all the fuss is over. I just can't stand the boring chewing of the cud. But this time,what have I done? I've watched it all (the debates/swingometers, the lot) and agonised and wondered at what's going to happen to us all in this ridiculous Hung Parliament situation we are now in. Because I've got to do it for Greg. He wouldn't otherwise know. How weird is that?

Pounds lighter

2010-05-01T19:29:00.003+01:00

I'm nearly three hundred pounds lighter today and I don't mean of the weight variety but of the wallet kind. Before you go imagining a big ostentatious piece of jewellery or even a boring state of the art washing machine, think again. It was spent on Snoopy's visit to the vet. Whilst at my mum's, he became very subdued, morose-looking (if you could say a dog looked as if he was about to slit his wrists - he looked it), slept all day on the bed upstairs, would not be sociable at all and would not eat a morsel for three days. Finally I noticed, when he did put in an appearance, that he kept pawing his face or rubbing his left cheek along the floor. Putting two and two together (the fact that he did not want to eat and rubbing his face) it did not need a detective to come up with toothache or something similar. A visit yesterday to a local vet confirmed my suspicions. Snoopy had a temperature and appeared to have a swelling like an abscess on one of his teeth. The vet decided an operation today under general anaesthetic was the only way to examine what the extent of the problem was and possibly extract the tooth. So after a worrying night (for me - Snoopy didn't have the foggiest idea) I took Snoopy along first thing this morning, held his paw while the pre-med injection took effect and until he was led off mildly-protesting to the operating theatre! It was rather comical seeing him desperately fighting the pre-med - his body wanted to collapse onto the floor, but his brain was telling him to try to stay upright. The result was a lot of wobbling and sinking of his back end, followed by rigid attempts to stand upright again. It was hard leaving him, but I knew it was for his own good and would make him better in the long run.

I telephoned the surgery after lunch to find out how the patient was doing and was told to collect him mid-afternoon. To my utter surprise, I was told there was no abscess at all but an enormous lump of sharp wood wedged between two back teeth and a pointed bit jammed into the roof of his mouth. Ouch. I was given said lump of blood-stained wood in a plastic bag as proof and a memento to frame, so Snoopy could tell his descendants in the future all about his war wounds. The vet thought I had been throwing sticks for Snoopy and warned me against doing this. I had to correct him that Snoopy just helps himself to twigs as they lie around in the park or woods and chomps through them (and even swallows them). No matter how hard I try to get them off him, he runs away, thinking it's a great game of chase. "It's my stick, you find your own", he seems to say. The only way to stop him eating the twigs would be to have him on the lead all the time, which, as any serious dogwalker knows, is not ideal exercise for the dog.

Anyway, the removal of said bit of wood (the consultation, pre-op blood tests, pre-med, anaesthetic, antibiotics et al) came to a few pounds short of three hundred pounds. I could have got a nice day or two at a health farm for that! But, as they say in the l'Oreal advert, ...... he's worth it.

Greg's Birthday

2010-04-26T13:48:00.012+01:00

It would have been Greg's 61st birthday this week. I did not fancy the prospect of spending the day agonising over what might have been and, as one of my two close friends is holidaying in Cuba and the other is otherwise engaged taking her mother to a hospital appointment, I decided to distract myself by visiting my mother for a week, as it is high time I got on with her gardening and other chores. All this early hot weather we have been enjoying has made the plants and shrubs go berserk. Mine are doing this at the moment.......

The weather has been glorious this last couple of weeks and has lifted my spirits; so too has a steady stream of people visiting me. Apart from the ex-neighbours who came the previous weekend, I had a surprise visitor midweek from a friend whose son used to play with Kay when she was about 3 to 7. They would run around the garden, playing in fancy dress or slide down slides or swing or swings. Now Kay is training to be a doctor and he is a promising rockstar with waist-length hair and a bandana. I can remember him singing his heart out at the kindergarten nativity play! How the years roll by. Yesterday my best friend (the one who is not in Cuba) and her husband came to see me. We had a marvellous day together and I was sorry to wave them off again. I'm off now for a week to visit my mum, so until then...............

Home Alone

2010-04-18T20:32:00.004+01:00

Many thanks for all your supportive comments over the last few weeks. They have buoyed me up and kept me going. I am in a strange transition at the moment. For the first time since Greg died six weeks ago, I am officially on my own; alone; widow of this parish; a singleton, for Kay went back to university up North this morning. I took her and her three cases of clothes, work, more clothes, laptop and more clothes to the station and put her on the Inter-City train. We decided to get a taxi across London to avoid having to lug the heavy cases up and down into the Underground. The taxi driver took us along the scenic route in today's glorious spring sunshine - past Buckingham Palace just as they were Changing the Guard;

past Horse Guards Parade;

across Trafalgar Square;

past the various theatres, pubs and specialist bookshops in Charing Cross Road ;

across Oxford Street;

into Bloomsbury and past the British Museum.

There's no better place than London in all its glory in the sunshine. It made my parting with Kay extra special and cheered an otherwise emotional moment. St Pancras Station was heaving with people trying to grab the last seats on the Eurostar train back to Paris or Brussels, as air travel is still disrupted by the cloud of ash spewing out of Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano. Fortunately Kay had booked a seat on her train up to Yorkshire, so we could take our time getting there. All too soon, I was waving her off and making my return journey home alone. I won't pretend it didn't seem strange, opening the front door and knowing there was nobody else inside. Even stranger was to cook a meal just for myself and sit down alone to eat it. Fortunately Snoopy more than made up for it, by bouncing around to greet me and putting in the occasional wolf howl for extra effect. Then, just when I wondered what I might do to while away a few hours in the afternoon, there was a knock at the door and there stood a woman and her husband who used to live next door to me thirty years ago and whom I have not seen in almost as long. We do however still stay in Christmas card contact and I had written to her to tell her about Greg's death. They came bearing a bunch of flowers too.It was lovely to chat and catch up on thirty years' news. It is amazing how a lot of good has come from Greg 's death. So many people we had almost lost contact with have rallied round to support me. My somewhat shaky faith in human nature has been restored.

As I write, it is growing darker and I have been putting lights on all over the house. It will seem strange that when I turn them out, there will only be Snoopy (and maybe the cat) to wish goodnight to. It's going to take some getting used to.

The stages of grief and stages of life.

2010-04-09T23:32:00.006+01:00

I have not written anything in a while because I have not felt like writing.....that and I have been too busy. But if I am honest, I felt too down to write. I felt everyone would already be sick of my regular moaning and whinging, so it was probably best I write nothing at all. But the longer I left it, the less I wanted to write. I sometimes wonder whether I should just stop the blog altogether. After all, my reason for starting it in the first place has now really gone.

Five weeks ago, to the very evening, I watched Greg die. It does not seem five weeks in some ways; in other ways it seems a lifetime. We were together for forty years: thirty-four of those as a married couple. What is five weeks of widowhood compared to forty years as a couple? A mere drop in the ocean and yet already I am getting used to the feel of saying "I am a widow". Already I am becoming a dab hand at filling in the ubiquitous forms, registering my status as "widowed". On Kay's student finance form which we filled in again this week for the forthcoming academic year, I am now the sole parent. Overnight, years and accustomed years of being "married" are replaced with the dowdy label of "widowed". I suddenly feel like I have concrete restraints around my feet, pulling me downwards into a place where nobody will give me a second glance. I feel I should maybe be dressed in black wearing a black net veil or should sit amongst the cobwebs Miss Havisham-like. With the change of status, I feel a tremendous change in my very being. I suddenly feel a hundred and two years old with one foot in the grave. Greg's suffering may be over. Mine seems to just be beginning.

They say there are various stages of grief. They are:

Shock/Denial

Anger/Bargaining

Pain/Guilt

Depression/Loneliness

The Upturn

Reconstruction

Acceptance/Hope

Some stages last a few weeks, others many years or decades. I think I have gone through a fair number of those stages in the last few weeks alone! I certainly have gone through denial - imagining that Greg is still in hospital, as he was there so regularly in the past five years. Sometimes the reality hits me that this time he will not be coming back. I have often felt anger. Why me? Why did he let this happen? Why did he start drinking and let it get so far? Why could we not have looked forward to a long retirement together? Then there is the guilt. I should have not said some of the nasty things I said when my frustration flared up and overspilled into venom. I should not have bought the whisky for him, when he was too drunk to drive to get it himself. I should have done more to bully the medics into doing something to stop him. I have already seen glimpses of the depression I know will definitely hit me, once Kay has left for university again and I am alone with my thoughts and an empty house full of too many memories, good and bad. I don't tell her this, of course. I am putting on my brave I-can-cope-with anything mask for her. But in the last week or so, she has been out twice with friends and slept over at their house, giving me a taste of what is like to turn out the light at night and just hear the sound of my own breathing for company. Those different stages of grief are coming one after the other in quick succession like a roller-coaster at the moment.

On a more positive note, the funeral was beautiful. So many people came up to me afterwards and said how much they had "enjoyed" it. Over about sixty people were there. About a quarter were family; about a quarter were work colleagues; a quarter were friends from the past; the rest were neighbours, close friends of mine and close friends of Kay's. Two (quite separate) people even turned up all the way from Scotland - one, an old work colleague, whom we had not seen for thirty years! The actual chapel service was put together by Kay and myself. We carefully chose the readings, the hymns and the music on a theme of his life in different stages and culminated in the Joni Mitchell song "The Circle Game". I wrote the history of his life which the clergyman read out. The funeral director was extremely helpful and friendly. The Order of Service, designed and printed by Kay, had photos of Greg in different stages of his life too, so it all seemed to fit. A work of art. Greg would have been proud of us. Afterwards we gathered for refreshments at a local club and everyone said wonderful things about Greg. It certainly helped get me through the otherwise difficult day. Greg would have so enjoyed it. Who knows? Perhaps he did.

The lump

2010-03-26T09:23:00.010Z

A hard aching lump is nestled about 4 inches from my throat somewhere in the middle of my chest. It refuses to budge, to rise upwards and outwards, to erupt into a cry. Instead it stays fixed inside, forcing a smile on my face, pushing me ever on to do all the million and one things that are asked of me at the moment. Officialdom, paperwork, decisions, insistent phone calls.

A few people commented on my previous post what is blindingly obvious, when you think about it. Greg didn't die a few weeks ago: he died five years ago. I lost him to something else a good while ago. Not another woman, but something more dangerous, more subtle. The person he used to be, the one I fell in love with, disappeared off the radar eons ago. I have been on my own, dealing with the minutiae of everyday problems, making decisions, bringing up Kay, socialising on my own for some considerable time. Nothing in the last three weeks has changed in that sense. The only difference is when I come down to the kitchen each morning I am no longer met with the smell of cigarette smoke before I enter the room; no longer faced with the image of him sitting at the breakfast table with his half-empty whisky glass; no longer forced to watch when he later slumbers half-on, half-off the sofa or on the floor. No more watching him retch first thing, before he takes a drink to still his rebellious stomach. No more whisky runs at the supermarket. No more emergency dashes to the hospital. How can I miss these? But the kind-hearted individual, husband and father that he once was is long gone. I grieved for him in my tears by the bucketload over the last five years.

The funeral is next Monday. Family, friends old and new, and many work colleagues will be there. They have been phoning, writing and emailing about what a wonderful man he was, how proud he was of Kay and me, what a difference he made to them. A man they still remember as he was. They did not see the Greg that was left behind once the whisky had done with him. They did not know what a slave to alcohol he had become and how it sucked him in and spat him out on an intensive care bed.

I see my mother and my daughter watch me like hawks. They try to protect or to hover when a subject comes up that might make me waiver. They look for a wobble in my voice or tears in my eyes, but that aching lump stays firm in my chest and refuses to budge. I just cannot cry.

Tributes and tribulations

2010-03-16T22:44:00.010Z

Thank you so much for all the wonderful comments you left on my last post. I have dipped in to read them, though it's been a hectic ten days since I last wrote. I never knew there was so much to do to arrange a funeral and notify people. Every day of the last ten days has been spent either at bank interviews, or on the telephone, or writing countless letters or emails informing friends, family, utilities and all and sundry about Greg's death. I have had to make endless decisions ranging from what to dress Greg in to what the funeral service should contain, from what accounts to close and what to announce in the local paper. I've also deliberated long and hard what to tell people about how he died and why he died. Some got the full truth, some got a potted version, depending on how I thought they might react. The phone has not stopped ringing. Overall I have been amazed at the lovely things people have said about him. About the Greg he ceased to be about five years ago. Work colleagues on the other side of the world have written beautiful letters about him, some have sent money for flowers, some have said they will attend the funeral even though they have not seen Greg in many years and live a few hundred miles away. Flowers have arrived for me from all corners of the globe. Ten of Kay's old school friends clubbed together and sent the most enormous bouquet of lilies imaginable. I have received more sympathy cards so far than I usually get Christmas cards, some from people I barely know. The volume of goodwill and heartfelt emotion has uplifted us and amazed us.

In reality, Kay and I are one of the few unable to cry. I have not shed a single tear since it happened. Kay is finding it hard too. I think we have built such a high wall around ourselves in order to cope with the last few years in particular, that we are finding it difficult to knock the wall down. It almost seems like it is someone else's husband who has died. I am going through the motions. When people say they are sorry, I nod and don't know what to say. The funeral is in another two weeks' time. I suspect it will probably hit me when the dust has settled and the last person has gone home. Then I'll cry.

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

If anyone needed to be convinced of the horrors of alcoholism, they should have seen Greg during the last five days of his life. I almost felt like taking a photograph and sending it to all the national newspapers. It was harrowing to watch a grown man disintegrate before your eyes. Quite literally. When Greg was first moved to Intensive Care all he had to worry about was the pneumonia he had picked up in hospital. Because he was slipping into a coma, they needed to move him and intubate him quickly. He was heavily sedated so did not know that we (his sister, Jill, Kay and I) were there. But as the days wore on, it became clear his body was becoming riddled with all kinds of problems connected either with the alcohol or by diabetes or both. First we were told the liver was now irreversibly damaged and was causing toxins to build up in his body. It was also causing more internal bleeding anywhere from his throat through to his intestines. The doctors tried to stem the bleeding where they could and then new sites would emerge. Then we were told the kidneys had ceased to function. Fluid started to build up, so that he looked as if he has been blown up like a balloon. His skin on his arms and legs was so taut with the build-up of fluid that it started to split and ooze. He had always looked as if he were expecting quadruplets, because the liver was so distended; now he looked as if he were expecting octuplets. The pneumonia continued to take a firm hold and the antibiotics were doing a poor job.

The staff at the hospital were marvellous. I could not fault them. Each and every one of the nurses and doctors were saints. It did not matter to them that Greg was an alcoholic or had brought all this on himself. They left no stone unturned. They did all sorts of corrective procedures to try to halt or reverse what was happening to Greg. If it had not been the NHS, I dread to think what we would have had to pay for such treatment. Because he was in Intensive Care, Greg got a nurse all to himself on 12-hour shifts. They were wonderful. I watched as they injected, took blood samples, administered drugs, bathed, hung bags of saline or blood. Nobody told them what to do: they just got on quietly with it. Let nobody say a single word against the NHS: they were fantastic.

On the day before Greg died, it was clear to us and the doctors that Greg was being kept alive by machines only. With damaged liver, non-functioning kidneys, lungs full of pneumonia and a labouring heart, Greg was unlikely to survive and even if he had, the quality of his life would have been considerably compromised. He would have needed dialysis at best and would spend the rest of his life in a lot of pain unable to smoke or drink ever again. He would also face the prospect of one day bleeding to death. The doctors decided with our agreement to switch off Greg's life-support and let him sink or swim, although we all knew Greg would slowly slip away. At teatime on Friday 5th March, they took out his tubes and switched off the machine. They offered Jill, Kay and me a relatives' room on the ward, which comprised two single beds and an ensuite bathroom.We managed in turns to grab an hour or so's sleep that evening. But by 9pm we sat by Greg's bed and held his hand all through the night. The night shift came on and did all they could to make him and us comfortable. They gave him liquid food and painkillers - just for the comfort factor. Everything to make him comfortable, even though he was unconscious the entire time. They offered to order us a chinese takeaway at midnight (though we declined as we were not in the least hungry - our stomachs seemed in our throats). They plied us with cups of tea all through the night. At breakfast-time, they brought us platefuls of buttered toast and jam to eat at Greg's bedside. On Saturday 6th March, shortly after the day shift came on, Greg's blood pressure began to fall and fall until it was 29 over 25. His heart rate started to reduce, oxygen saturation levels fell rapidly and suddenly his fight against alcohol was over. My Greg was dead.

2010-03-06T21:27:00.004Z

Greg

29 April 1949 - 6 March 2010

Greg finally lost his struggle with alcoholism this morning. I cannot write more for now.

Intensive Care Unit

2010-03-02T17:26:00.004Z

I was called yesterday evening to visit the hospital, as Greg's condition has worsened and he had been moved to Intensive Care. They told me he was unable to breathe on his own and would almost certainly die if they did not intubate him. I rushed in to visit him, although he was unconscious and medical staff were pulling him about.He is now wired up to a bank of machines and fighting for his life. He is so weak from the pneumonia and has so many things wrong with him besides. Kay left Yorkshire at 5am this morning and was with me by 9am. Greg's sister drove down from Lincolnshire and arrived at 9.30am. Together we drove to the hospital this morning and put on a united front but our feelings go from pity to anger and all the emotions inbetween. The next 24-48 hours are crucial. Please pray for us.

Medical Bulletin

2010-03-01T15:07:00.008Z

Buckingham Palace used to put up medical bulletins when one of the Royal Family was ill, so what is good enough for them.........

The doctors did an endoscopy on Greg on Friday morning and found the cause of the bleed .....a varices (varicose vein brought on by excess drinking) in the lower intestine. They have dealt with that (I assume in the absence of any doctors to talk to that they cauterised it) and his blood pressure is back to normal. They are also giving him sedatives to cope with alcohol withdrawal. However he has now somehow contracted pneumonia and is on an oxygen mask as well as antibiotics and can barely talk or breathe. I was phoned just after breakfast and given permission to visit him this morning, even though the hospital is closed to visitors because of the winter vomiting virus, because he is on the critical list. He is as weak as a kitten and has not even mentioned cigarettes or whisky.......yet. Give him time......

It just gets better

2010-02-26T10:18:00.008Z

Greg's health has been deteriorating even further over the last month. His legs and feet are a dreadful purple colour and covered in scabs (how he gets them I just don't know but they don't heal quickly when he gets sores or scratches). It is largely caused by the diabetes. Since I returned from my mother his mobility has taken a turn for the worst. Again the diabetes/smoking is the problem as well as poor circulation. Instead of being unable to walk just a few yards unaided, he is now unable to walk a few steps unaided and finds climbing all our stairs almost impossible. He has spent the last few weeks sleeping solely on the sofa as he cannot get up to the bedroom. He has barely eaten and has not taken his medication regularly. The only thing he has continued with gusto is the drinking. He is 60 going on 120 by the look of him. Even my 86-year-old mother is in better condition (and that is saying something).

This last week in particular has seen a big change: he needed my help both to sit upright from lying down and to stand up from sitting. He seemed incapable of doing it himself. He walked holding on to furniture. He felt so ill and so fed up with the state he was in that he agreed something drastic needed to be done. .. he agreed to make an appointment with our GP for Wednesday and with some local alcoholic counsellors today to get the ball rolling for a detox.

We saw the GP on Wednesday and Greg pleaded with her to allow him a detox at home. He does not like being holed up with strangers and institutionalised regimes. She refused a home detox as it would require high levels of drugs to wean him off the alcohol and 24-hour medical supervision which he could only get in a proper detox centre. He begged, she continued to refuse, saying she would get into trouble if she even entertained the idea. She encouraged him to keep the appointment with the counsellors today to get their help for a proper detox, as they were the best people to approach. There is usually a long-waiting list for this kind of help, so our hearts sank.

Yesterday, Greg seemed a lot worse and was barely moving at all. He had had no sleep the night before as he could not get comfortable on the sofa, so tried to sleep during the morning while I crept quietly around the house, keepng out of his way. He woke at lunchtime and slowly went from sofa to kitchen chair to toilet to sofa, having to negotiate stairs at every move. I was upstairs in the late afternoon when I heard him call for the umpteenth time, probably to help him sit up or stand. What I found was him collapsed on the kitchen floor and unable to stand. I tried to heave him up but he was a dead weight. After several attempts to get him up, his next remark completely floored me: "Call for an ambulance. I feel so wretched". Long-term readers of this blog know that he hates hospitals, ambulances, any fuss, so you can imagine how surprised I was. To cut a very long story short, the paramedics arrived and took him to hospital, where he is now. I followed on behind by car.

The bottom line is that they are very concerned about his extremely low blood pressure (71 over 56 and at one stage 70 over 35) and have detected internal bleeding. Now they need to find where the bleed is coming from, but high contenders are the intestine, stomach or liver. I am not allowed to visit him as the hospital wards are closed to visitors because of an outbreak of winter vomiting virus. At least he'll get the detox he so badly needs. Sometimes God moves in mysterious ways. The hamster wheel still turns but now on a different axle.