Shingles

Two days after my return from Devon, I had booked an appointment with my GP surgery to have a shingles vaccine. The medics have been pestering me for years to have it done and I kept refusing, partly because I was getting enough jabs as it was with Covid and flu to keep my arm looking like a pin cushion. But another reason to avoid it was that a relative of mine had had the shingles jab a few years ago and gone down with shingles some three weeks later. The doctors had told her it was a huge coincidence, but a coincidence I did not particularly want. However, the nagging doubt that shingles itself would be far worse without the immunity, I decided to go ahead with it last week.

Shock number one was the condition it left me in! For five days afterwards, my arm was so painful, red and swollen I could not bear to lie on it in bed. Additionally I felt so tired, as if someone had pulled my plug. The day immediately after the injection, I woke as usual in the morning, had breakfast and was so exhausted I went back to bed and slept for an hour. Then I had lunch and went back to bed for a further two-hour nap. After supper, I returned to bed for an early night. I googled side effects of the vaccination and those symptoms I was having (swollen, red arm pain and extreme fatigue) were within the bounds of normal, so I just had to put up with it. Five days later I was beginning to return to some semblance of normal. However, in one of my  gym classes this week, which are manic at the best of times, it was all I could do to keep up and was sweating buckets, so much so my hair was as wet as if I'd just had come out of the shower.

Shock number two was that it is no longer a single vaccination but now in two parts, six months apart. I have the same to come (if not worse, as someone has knowledgeably told me) in November. Boy, am I looking forward to that!!

Torquay in Devon

When I was a young teenager, my parents and I used to holiday down in Torquay in Devon. I have not been back for 60 years, so when my best friend offered to go on holiday with me and asked where I fancied (given that she hates flying and not keen on train travel, so that cancels out somewhere abroad), I suggested Torquay. We were away for 5 days (4 nights) and stayed at the Hampton by Hilton hotel which was literally 30 seconds from the harbour. I went down by train changing at Exeter and arrived at the hotel on Tuesday afternoon. Amazingly, my friend, who had travelled separately by car from Hertfordshire, arrived by my side just as I was checking in.

Once we had unpacked in our separate rooms, we met up to wander around the immediate vicinity of the hotel - the harbour and promenade - and to get our bearings. I have to say Torquay had not changed much from my memory of it. Maybe a few different shops and a bit of modernisation, but it was still very much like it was in the 1960s. We were incredibly lucky with the weather - deep blue cloudless skies and a gentle sea breeze.

Torquay Harbour

Torquay Harbour

Torquay from the pier

The following day, we went to Buckfast Abbey - a monastery famous for its mead and tonic wine production. There are still 13 monks living there and I think I spotted two of them. The Abbey was only finished in 1932 on the site of the old abbey which was plundered and dissolved during Henry VIII's time when he broke with Rome. More of its history can be read here.  It has a mixture of styles - Byzantine, Norman and Gothic but with a modern twist. The grounds are enormous and you can wander through herbal gardens and sensory gardens, as well as lawns of immaculate grass.

Buckfast Abbey

A secluded garden at Buckfast

Buckfast grounds

The following day (which happened to be VE Day) we decided to visit the National Trust house that belonged to Agatha Christie. The house was amazing and crammed with artefacts and belongings - she was clearly a hoarder. It was her favourite place to stay. Again the grounds were spectacular with forest bits where the paths zig-zagged down to the River Dart and where her boat house was kept. An added bonus for me was that, because it was VE day, they had two people dressed as an RAF officer and Land Girl wandering around the grounds and at the end, I had my photo taken with them, as I had mentioned to the Land Girl that my mum was one. She was very interested to hear my story.

Agatha Christie's house at Greenway

View of the River Dart from her garden

Her garden

RAF officer and Land Girl in the grounds

The final full day was spent visiting Dartmouth via a steam train ride from Paignton to Kingswear and a short ferry ride across from Kingswear to Dartmouth. The houses are built in terraces up the hills bordering the river and are painted in yellows and pinks and pale blues, as well as white which make them look very attractive. Towering over it all is The Royal Naval College. We only had a few hours to wander around Dartmouth and grab a late lunch before catching the ferry back to Kingswear and the last (16.05) steam train back to Paignton.

Steam train to Dartmouth

Kingswear on East side of River Dart

The Boatfloat Dartmouth

mouth of the River Dart

Royal Naval College, Dartmouth

We checked out on Saturday to return home - my friend by car to Hertfordshire and me by train back to London Paddington. Of course, being Saturday, the timetables were not as easy as the outward trip and once in London, there were lots of cancellations on both the underground and overground because of engineering works, so my trip from Paddington to South London took almost as long as the trip from Devon to Paddington. Furthermore I had  changed trains or buses so many times and also lugged a heavy case with me up and down a lot of station staircases with not an escalator in sight! I arrived home shattered and very much in need of a holiday!!

Back from Devon

Sorry, my usual Sunday post is short this week. I've just returned from a much needed break in Devon. More of that in my weekly post next Sunday.

Communing with nature

I help out as a volunteer at our local park's Information Centre and have done so for about 20 years. The centre is only open for a couple of hours on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon. We sell notelets with pictures of the park, notepads and pens, tote bags, leaflets on trees or ducks and all kinds of food for feeding birds, squirrels or ducks. We also try to answer any questions from the public about a particular tree or duck or problem that has arisen. The park has an enormous lake and is home to about 30 or more herons, so we are an interesting case for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who every April come to visit with their cameras, telescopes and binoculars to view the herons nesting with their babies.

When we first moved to this area (see here), we visited the park frequently as a married couple just chilling from our busy jobs. I always find walking by water (be it the sea, a river or a lake) calming and I can empty out any worries I have. When Kay was born, we would take her to this park and she would enjoy seeing the ducks and geese  or playing on the swings and seesaws. Then as a dog-owner, I would visit every morning to give the dog a long walk off-lead and through that got to know many other dogwalkers, one of whom has become a close friend. When Greg was at the height of his alcoholic addiction, I found it a calming place to come to escape the nightmare. I still keep involved through the Information Centre and do a shift about once a month there.

When the Covid pandemic struck, the centre was closed for many many months and only gradually re-opened when it was safe to do so. But many volunteers were either shy to return in case they were exposed to Covid or just got complacent and stayed away, so the centre was still often closed for lack of staff. The result was that a lot of the public did not know the centre had reopened and were often surprised when they found it was. I have recently been involved in recruiting more volunteers by advertising on our local Facebook group and a good twenty people have come forward. I have been involved in the last few weeks in training them up to do the shifts.

Last week we officially opened our community garden - a patch of land alongside the centre which we are turning into a place where people can come and plant flowers or vegetables or just watch others doing so.  Amongst our newly-recruited volunteers have been a few men who have been very helpful in doing a lot of heavy lifting, sawing and clearing to make it possible. On Friday I was given permission to drive my car into the park at 5mph to transport loads of plants the Chairwoman had bought from a local chain nursery. She is unable to drive so needed help getting them there. There were all sorts of plants ranging from tomatoes, lettuce, bedding plants, perennials and small fruit trees. This weekend they will all be planted by the public who want to get involved.

With good weather and the summer finally approaching, I hope it will be a success in getting more people in the community involved in communing with nature.