Out of Routine

For seven-eighths of the year, I live on my own (well I suppose not exactly alone if you include the cat and the dog). I have a set routine, getting up at 7am on weekdays to walk the dog in the park before the mothers and their small children arrive (Snoopy likes to chase squirrels which is not always a good idea when young children are around). At weekends I treat myself to a lie-in until the giddy time of 9 am. I always ring my mother every morning to see how she is and give her some quality time, then I do my various house projects, tackling a room or tidying the garden, or spend some time in the study reading blogs, doing household accounts, opening post. I watch a bit of television in the evenings. I'm usually in bed by about 11 pm and either read a novel for a while or do the cryptic crossword.

When Kay is home from uni for the remaining eighth of the year, my routine sails completely out of the window. Like her father and unlike me, she comes alive at night and is more like a dormouse in the morning. Consequently at 10 pm, when I am flagging and looking forward to crashing out in my bed, she wants to stay up and watch a DVD with me there beside her. There is no way I can jump out of bed the next morning at 7am, so Snoopy's walks are all over the place, which in turn confuses him. Kay will on a whim fancy a trip into the nearest shopping centre and I will offer to run her in or collect her in the car. I have also noticed that this summer she is getting together much more with her old school friends, so I am never certain whether she will be home for lunch or supper on any given day. As I buy the food in for a week at a time, I buy two of everything but may end up only using one. She also has a part-time waitressing job (with unsociable hours) and is taking driving lessons. I look forward to her being home with me for the company, but lately I feel as if I am spinning in a revolving door as she whizzes in and out past me.

It is nice though to have her company, when I can grab it, and it means I am talking less to the cat and dog! It also means I am not reading or commenting on your blogs regularly (although I like to try and catch up when I get a spare minute). Normal service will be resumed in September!

Putting on the Ritz

Kay has had a rather elongated 21st birthday which has lasted nearly two weeks. It started on the actual day itself (14 July) when we celebrated quietly with my mother, going for an Italian meal and finishing off with seeing Les Miserables. Then a week later she celebrated in more flamboyant style with her uni and school friends (as also reported here). Yesterday was one last little celebration for just her and me - a special something to remember for all time for the both of us. I feel, in the absence of Greg, as if I have had to be both mother and father to Kay at this momentous stage of her life and wanted to make up for the lack of Greg in her life right now.

We went here.....




....and took afternoon tea at 5.30pm.

It was exquisite and well worth the money. Something we will both remember for a very long time.

Afterwards we waddled with glucose-laden tummies down Piccadilly, looked at the new Bomber Command memorial

and on past Buckingham Palace, where the usual policemen on the beat were carrying machine guns. All a bit menacing but meant to protect us in the run-up to the Olympics which open tomorrow.

London's Burning

A year ago, parts of London were being torched and looted by kids. That was a Bad Thing. This week, parts of London are seeing a torch again but that is a Good Thing! How things can change!

As the Olympic Torch was less than half a mile away from my house yesterday morning, Kay, her friend and I went to wave enthusiastically. It was quite a carnival atmosphere, even well before the torch arrived.

Then the torch came....

The weather miraculously complied too. Perfect!

Nuts and earplugs.

Kay and I had a lovely day on her 21st. After she had opened her presents, we went out locally for a lovely Italian lunch, taking my mother too who was staying with me for a couple of weeks. Much hilarity ensued in the restaurant when my mother (who is nearly 89 and a bit hard of hearing) said in rather loud voice "I can't find my nuts. What are my nuts called?" She was of course referring to the pistacchio dessert she had ordered.

We rounded off the day going to the West End to see Les Miserables, one of Kay's favourite musicals which her school had bravely put on many years ago. Although we knew all the music off by heart (and Kay plays some of it on the piano), it was still a joy to hear the beautiful voices of the cast. The stage play and scene changes were absolutely ingenious and mesmerising too.

Snoopy's mouth continues to improve and he has bounded back from his anaesthetic with no problems. For a dog getting on for 14, he really is a wonder at times.

I have a house full of 21-year-olds this coming weekend, as Kay's friends from uni come down to celebrate belatedly with her. They're going to be clubbing on Friday night and returning to my house in the wee small hours of Saturday morning. Time for some earplugs, I think.

Key of the Door

My baby is 21 years old today. It seems like only yesterday when she was born. Where DID those 21 years go? I was pregnant with my first and only baby at 40, had a model pregnancy and a model birth, making it to the hospital with only 90 minutes to spare! Having waited so long to get pregnant in the first place,  she was a sheer miracle and we were more than ecstatic when she arrived. Now, 21 years on, she is a beautiful, intelligent, kind and caring adult with her whole life before her. Happy Birthday, darling x

Dog-tooth check

Snoopy has been looking hang-dog recently, as if he wanted to slit his wrists. He lies around all day sleeping on the sofa, only occasionally rearing his head, when he can be bothered. He has ongoing gastro-intestinal problems which the vet thinks is probably due to a tumour on the liver or pancreas (but which the vet intends to leave undisturbed as Snoopy is 13.5 years old and not up to operations or being pulled about for little gain). He also has very bad arthritis, but on some days he jogs round the park chasing squirrels and on others he plods slowly sniffing every blade of grass.

Recently though he has had very bad breath which I put down to whatever was going on in his stomach, but the other day he started rubbing his mouth along the sofa cushion and when I looked his gums were bright scarlet and some of his teeth very decayed looking. A trip to the vet revealed he has gingivitis and so Snoopy is going back to the vet this morning for a general anaesthetic for a scale and polish to his teeth. He'll then get a course of antibiotics to deal with the gingivitis.

I'm a litttle nervous what with him being so old and  it being Friday 13th and all. Fingers crossed.

Update at 10pm - collected him from vet this afternoon and he came out tail wagging and with a spring in his step. The dental treatment included claw-clipping too (they had got enormously long) and it has made a new dog of him. He was a little groggy tonight but starving hungry and I was instructed to only feed him a third of his supper to avoid him throwing up. I think he was a tad disappointed he could not have the other two-thirds!

Money for Old Rope

Kay's been back with me for 4 days, as I helped her move back home on Thursday for the summer vacation. She got the news this morning that the new student house she moved into last week has already been burgled. The front door (which didn't have a proper door lock on it and about which Kay had complained to the agent when she moved in) was kicked in but fortunately the alarm scared them off and nothing was taken.  Kay rang the agent to see about getting a new "proper" lock fixed immediately and the agent didn't seem too fussed about it, claiming they were too busy to send someone out to do it, yet they are fussed enough to rake in £1800 every month for the six-room house. It's a scandal.

*****

Oh, and it would have been my 36th wedding anniversary today (10th) and two years since Greg's ashes were scattered.  A fine week it's turning out to be.

Lofty conversations

Miracle of miracles. I actually got a cold caller to hang up on me today.
Having been inundated this last few months by the same jolly jolly automated-voice call feigning surprise that I had not rushed to grab taken up their horrendously expensive  bargain offer of loft insulation, I was annoyed to receive yet another one. Instead of banging down the receiver and yelling expletives, as is my normal wont, I decided to "press one" to speak to an adviser. With absolutely not even an infinitesimal time delay at all, a cheery adviser (obviously already working out her fat commission from a potential sale) sprang into action and proceeded to say she wanted to ask me a few questions first.

"No," I screamed, "I want to ask YOU a question first. Why do I keep on getting inundated with these calls about....." The line went dead. She had hung up on me and all before I could tell her I don't even have a loft. I've got a flat roof, you see.

picture courtesy of thisismoney.co.uk

Halfway there

Today is Kay's last day of her third year at medical school and she's halfway to becoming a doctor. It's a five-year course but she has opted to do what a lot of medical schools offer and take a year out doing intercalation.  (Bristol sums up intercalation thus - although Kay is not at Bristol, but it is pretty much the same all over the country.) It is basically a year out in the middle of a medical or dental degree to study another (relevant to medicine) subject to BSc degree level, get a paper published, a BSc degree in one year and acquire brownie points which will help when eventually seeking a job.  She'll continue with year 4 of Medicine at the end of the intercalated year. This means she has a six-year slog altogether and is thus now halfway through.

picture courtesy of "Ask a Dropout"

She is also moving house this weekend. Up to now she has shared with 4 other medics but some are moving into their own (parent-bought) flats* as they are sick of student accommodation, one is moving in with a boyfriend, and Kay and another are moving out to another student house share. They all have to move out of their old house by 30 June but cannot move in to the new house until 1 July which means she is homeless for 24 hours. She has solved the problem by arranging to move her stuff (including some small furniture) into a friend's new flat* for 24 hours until she can move into the new house, but I questioned what others would do if they did not have a friend's flat to move into and that the agents should relent and let her move in a day earlier to avoid complication (the new house is already empty so that wouldn't have been a problem). Kay's reply was that there are thousands in the same boat this weekend, so expect to see a lot of young people wandering around with their homes on their back on Saturday night!

Rule Britannia

I had to pop along to Soho this morning and went via Oxford Street and Regent Street. What with all the fervour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the European 2012 football and the forthoming London Olympic Games, THIS is what I call bunting!

Another one bites the dust

Yesterday I took Snoopy for an early-morning walk around the block and on my way back along the main road I saw an elderly neighbour and his wife walking very slowly arm in arm towards me on the other side of the road. Because of the wide road and traffic between us, no words were exchanged, but we waved at each other (although the wife stared fixedly at the ground) and he did a thumbs-down sign at me. My heart sank. Their grown-up daughter is an alcoholic, has been in and out of hospital like Greg. Last week she was given days to live. Her liver and kidneys had failed and her heart was labouring. She was on life-support. I deduce the thumbs-down sign meant she had lost her battle. She leaves an 18-year-old son to fend for himself. Alcohol has claimed yet another victim. Such a bloody awful disease. Such a bloody awful shame.

Midsummer in England

It's June, ten days to Midsummer's Day to be precise, and I've just put the central heating on again!!!  Oh to be in England.

Long to reign over us

seen on Friday click here for details

I couldn't let this weekend go by without wishing Her Majesty happy 60th Jubilee celebrations. To all those anti-monarchists out there - go suck a lemon! Would you rather have a Mubarek or a Gadaffi?  A Hitler perhaps or a Pol Pot? Good luck to you with your dreams, but I'm happy with the smiling, never-complaining, good-to-her-subjects Queen we have. Have a good day ma'am, even if your reign is somewhat marred by the rain.

Happy Birthday

No, you haven't come to the wrong site. It's still me.... Addy, with a new look.

I thought it high time for a makeover.  My Blog is four years old today.  In some ways it seems I have been writing down my thoughts a lot longer than that, in other ways it seems like only yesterday, when I first ventured nervously into the blogosphere to bare my soul.

When I think back to what spurred me on to join the blogging community in the first place, it was the utter frustration with the situation I found myself in... living with a 24/7 end-stage alcoholic with no idea how to cope, how to make him stop drinking, how to get someone to listen to our cries for help or how to return to normality ever again. I felt as if I was in a nightmare where I was being chased by a faceless monster wielding a big club and where I was unable to run away as my feet were set in thick concrete. Except it was reality and I was not asleep. Fighting alcoholism is not just difficult for the alcoholic but it affects the whole family around them. It is very much like bashing your head against a brick wall, for all that you manage to achieve successfully.

Four years on from that very first post, my life is so different now. I have peace of mind. I can sleep easy. I have control of my life again and do not have to answer to anyone but myself. I can go to bed calmly in the knowledge that the house will not burn down from a fallen cigarette or that I will not stumble over an intoxicated body in the kitchen (or worst, find his corpse). Financial worries are a thing of the past. (When £600 is going out of the house each month on whisky and cigarettes alone, it is very easy to worry.) When I  read some of the entries from that early period, it is hard to think I was actually involved in it. The nasty episodes are withdrawing farther and farther away in the recesses of my memory. It is only when I read other alcoholic blogs or listen to others' stories at Al-Anon, that I get a glimpse of what  I once went through. It makes me shudder. Admittedly I am on my own now and don't have the lovelier version of Greg by my side, the one I married and made plans with, but I doubt I could have gone on much longer with the way he was as a full-time alcoholic. 

At the moment, the blog still serves as a concrete reminder for me and I hope it will also help others going through similar situations or inform those who have absolutely no idea what it is really like to live with alcoholism. It may even make an alcoholic in the making think twice about what will befall them and their family if they continue downwards on the slippery slope they follow. However, I've decided my four-year-old needs some new clothes and have attempted a makeover. It is still a work in progress but for the moment I leave you with what I have managed so far.

Her Majesty

The Queen was in my neck of the woods today. It seemed rude not to go along and say hello. Click on the photo and zoom in. It is her, I assure you!

It's a Dog's Life

I've been giving my Snoopy extra cuddles and pats this weekend. He always gets a lot anyway but this weekend even more so. He may not have won Britain's Got Talent, but he is still very special to me.

The Apprentice?

It's funny what can keep you awake in the night. Sometimes it's not always the difficult problems of life but the stupid and unimportant. Something has been bothering me for the last few nights and I know it's stupid to worry about it in the grand scheme of things, but it has really got to me.....



This last few weeks I have been having a mad push on ebay to get rid of some of the clutter in my home. Kay and I had recently unearthed about 5 large boxes full of baby/toddler clothes in our cellar and I wanted to clear them out of the way before I tackle another room to decorate in the house. I know I could go to a charity shop with them (and I do donate quite a lot) but my philososphy on ebay is to sell good things cheaply so that someone else can get the pleasure from things and hopefully someone with not a lot of money to throw around. It just gives me a good fairy godmother  feeling if I imagine a hard-up family somewhere struggling to pay bills who have got something nice for little expense. (I don't mean that to sound pompous or sanctimonious).




Just one of the many lots

Anyway, I had advertised about 27 items or job-lots on ebay last week. Some of the clothes were really expensive in their day with hand-embroidered motifs or lace collars, others were more run-of-the-mill things from Mothercare or Woolworths, but all in excellent condition and still full of life to give. I don't charge much for the reason given above - 99p here or at most £2 there,  plus postage, of course, which since 30 April costs an arm and a leg to post a bulky feather let alone anything heavier. So I offered to combine postage wherever possible if someone ordered more than one item. I was surprised to see that one person had bid for about eight of the items or lots and out of curiosity I looked up her ebay profile to gain a bit of information about her. To my dismay I gathered she likes collecting children's clothes to sell on again to make a huge profit. Looking at items she has for sale, she sells at incredibly high prices. To cut a long story short, she bought eleven items from me in total from  4 job-lots costing her the princely sum of £4.78.  I was almost selling at a loss, once I had paid the ebay and paypal fees. She even had the gall to ask me if I would combine the postage, as I had advertised. I felt very annoyed, that this woman had used me and would make a financial gain for herself whilst even squeezing postal costs and every last penny out of me. You could argue that I should have not been so naive and put the items on for higher prices, but in the long run, I did want to get rid of them and lower prices tempt buyers more than high ones.




THAT dress!

 There were a few other lots that she had bid for on the following day and I found myself wishing that someone else would bid higher. One was for a toddler's dress that I knew had cost me £30 back in 1990 and she was going to get it for £2.  It is awful to say, but I felt sick at the thought of this woman getting that too and was so relieved when someone else bid higher at the very last few seconds and won it. I was actually jumping up and down with joy that fate had intervened and her darstardly plan had not succeeded. Was it worth getting in a tiswas over? I think not, but a little bit of me is very pleased at the outcome nevertheless. I don't think I'm really cut out for the cut-and-thrust of the business world. Lord Sugar would drop me at the first hurdle.

Book Worm

Inspired by Don't Panic 's post about books, I got to thinking about why and how people read the books they do. What makes them take a book off the shelf at the bookshop or library? Is is because it is a bestseller, a classic, a hobby, a passion? Do they buy it regardless, because they must have it, or do they study the cover, the first page, to see whether it is readable, in tune with what they want to read, or has big-enough print?

In my own case, I have a love-hate relationship with books. Up until the age of sixteen, I read as much as the average teenager, devouring some of the classics like Little Women and Jane Eyre, as well as teen girl magazines. However, once I got sucked into A-levels, when I studied three languages and dissected some of their literature, I had little time for reading anything else.

When I then went on to university to study German in more depth, my life was filled with reading shelves of German literature from the medieval (eg Parzival, Siegfried und Brunhilde) right up to the modern day (Kafka, Mann, Boell and Brecht) with plenty of Schiller, Goethe and Nietzsche thrown in as well. We didn't just have to read the books of course but analyse what the author was getting at, why this character did that, why that character said this. With Kafka, it was a nightmare (quite literally, as his books were based on dreams where all the characters are extensions of the central character and all the actions were symbolic as in dreams.) I still have reams of notes I took at lectures, all analysing, scruitinising, estimating, reviewing, deliberating. In the end it took the fun out of reading, so that I couldn't read a single book without it taking me half an hour on each page, asking myself why did the author say that, what was he trying to say with this etc., what was the purpose of that character etc.

Once I had left university I could not read a single book at all. It was too much like hard work and reminded me of the years of painful study. I almost got a phobia about them. I would happily read a newspaper or magazine - something I could dip in and out of - but it was three decades before I could look at another book again. Greg was quite an avid reader, but nothing could tempt me to pick up a book and lose myself in its pages. Quite by accident, a German friend came to stay and gave me the latest book off the shelves in German bookshops at the time. I liked the cover, enjoyed reading the first page and found myself being drawn into the story until, before I knew it,  I'd finished it within about a week.

Since then, I have slowly returned to reading books once more. It tends to be in the evening in bed before I go to sleep. I may only read a chapter at a time, but I slowly plod through until I can tick another book off my list of must-reads. When I select a book it us usually because I like the cover and what I read in the first page, or I may randomly pick a page some twenty pages into the book and see whether I like what I see there. Sometimes Kay recomends a book she has read (we have similar tastes) so I know if she has liked something, I shall too. What is absolutely essential is that I like the font and size of print. If it is too small and too many lines to a page, it doesn't get selected. Psychologically I like to be able to whizz through the pages to give me the feeling I am getting through the book faster.

I am a great one for new technologies and people praise me for my ability to  do things on the computer or digital camera that they cannot do, but I shan't be buying a Kindle any time soon. I like to touch and feel the book in my hand, physically turn the pages and then place the books on a shelf where I can see them. What about you?

Like a Candle in the Wind

I've just returned from a few days with my mother again, this time to attend a funeral. It seems to be, as you get older, that funerals are more frequent than ever before, as gradually your circle of family and friends gets smaller.

This time, however, the death was the least expected. It was my mother's cousin who had been more like a sister to my mum than a cousin. They telephoned one another at least once a week and occasionally the cousin visited my mother and took her out to lunch somewhere. They had been chatting on the phone only the day before she died and been out to lunch together only a fortnight before. The cousin had not been seriously ill and had only gone down with a mere cold a few days before. It is true to say she was painfully thin (and we often suspected she was verging on the anorexic), so maybe this did not help her general health. On Good Friday afternoon, she had gone out shopping with her husband, but was feeling unwell with the cold and went to bed early on Good Friday evening. The next morning at 5am, her husband discovered her lifeless body beside him. The post-mortem revealed she had died of broncho-pneumonia. Her sister rang me a few hours later to break the news to me and it was the hardest news to take in. Even now, none of us can really believe it. She was 71. For her it was the best way to go - to go to sleep and not wake up, but for her husband, sons, grandchildren and wider family, it just doesn't seem possible.  The funeral was held last Friday in sunny Hastings. The weirdest thing was eating a piece of Simnel cake at the funeral reception that she herself had made for Easter.

Always tell your loved ones you love them: you never know what the next day may (or may not) bring.

BRIGHT SPARKS

Is it just me or do you need a PhD to buy a lightbulb these days?

I had recently looked in my garage cupboard where I keep the spare lightbulbs to discover I was right out of bayonet fitting/common-or-garden lightbulbs to replace the one in the hall ceiling light that had just died. When I subsequently did my supermarket shop, I browsed the shelves for a replacement. Now this was an ordinary supermarket, not a specialist shop, and yet there were so many to chose from, my eyes started to glaze over. Another (significantly younger woman) was on all fours combing the bottom shelf for signs of bulbs that looked remotely like she needed and we both ended up becoming lifetime buddies in our unity against the plethora of choice. Having discarded the options of spot bulbs, candle bulbs, halogen bulbs, with even further variations of bayonet fittings, screw fittings and small screw fittings, I was then faced with even more choices of environmentally-correct ones that promise to give out as much light as required without flogging the poor little dears to death and without running up an electricity bill that would make Greece's debt look tame. However my experience of these super-dooper eco-lightbulbs with vast claims to save the planet are that they take about half an hour to warm up, by which time I have given up and gone to bed! Or tripped over the cat in the gloom.

I finally found something that looked like a pig-normal lightbulb and had a bayonet fitting, but it showed two wattage amounts of 43 or 55 and I was looking for a 60W bulb. Hell, when was buying a lightbulb so complicated?

Excesses, ears and eggs

Thank you for all your useful comments on my last post. It was pretty clear that you thought availability was not the best solution to the problem of alcoholism. It is such a complex problem and the reasons that lead someone to drink in excess are varied and complicated just as are the things that make someone more prone to depression. In fact I consider alcoholism to be a form of depression and, once sucked in and under, it is very difficult to emerge intact again.

Certainly on the practical side, I would like to see three main prongs of attack to deal with the surge of binge drinking and alcohol dependency.

• 
  
  More education, particularly to the young, on the dangers of alcohol. Perhaps along the same lines as anti-smoking, adverts and warning labels on bottles could warn that alcohol kills. A few choice pictures of someone bleeding to death or a diseased liver thrown in for good measure. I accept that, like with many things, the young will think they are immune from disease and death. It's a long way off and won't effect them, but, of course it will. How you get that across, I don't know. But it's worth a try.



• 
  
  Availability - reducing dratically the number of outlets that sell alcohol, the hours they can sell it and the number of bottles that can be bought at any one time - a bit like paracetamol, you can only buy two packets of 16 at one time. (Yes,you can go into several chemists or supermarkets over the course of a day and buy 100 paracetamol, if you have your mind set on suicide, but at least it is not made easy for you). Sorry - to the "sensible" drinkers - but it's all for the common good.



• 
  
  Reducing prices will help a little but not as much as the first two.

In addition to all that, we still need the medical profession to understand alcoholism better, as my experience with Greg was that, like a hot potato, they could not wait to get him out of the building and off their hands. There was little money for rehab or detox and so there were too many waiting too long in the queue (usually at least a year) to get into a rehab programme, by which time, the person was too ill to be admitted or dead. Given the numbers turning to alcohol on a large scale nowadays, we could do with far more approachable counsellors or GPs trained to deal with alcoholism in their area, so that they can advise alcoholics and their families how to cope/go about solving the problem. I always found there was relatively nowhere to turn to that could offer real help. If it's like that in a big city like London, then how much more of a problem is it anywhere else?

As I said, it's a complex issue and needs far more thought and money thrown at it, more than little me can suggest, if we are to overcome the enormous problems that loom on the horizon. I do hope Ministers and professionals are working hard at it, or else I dread to think what the future holds.

Meanwhile, on a more cheerful note, Kay is home from uni for two weeks' Easter holiday and it is fantastic having her company again. To coincide with Kay's arrival, the cat has picked up some sort of skin allergy on her ears, with tufts of fur falling out so she looks very odd with two bald ears either side of the furry crown of her head (not a little dissimilar from Dobbie in Harry Potter). A visit to the vet yeterday left me £48 poorer but at least with a diagnosis and some oily antibiotic medication to smear on her ears. Here she is in her latest choice of resting place of the month - my desk!

We're off soon to visit my mum for a few days, so a Happy Easter in the meantime and don't eat too much chocolate, although I can't see Kay and me sticking to that!

Alcoholic fog

Yet again, the powers that be seem to be totally blind to the problem of alcoholism. The latest brainwave is to increase the price of alcohol per unit to prevent binge-drinking. When will they ever learn? Do they not know that a true alcoholic would sooner go without food than alcohol, so increasing the price of alcohol will just reduce their available income for food and thus make them even more drunk. In the absence of food, the alcohol will do even more damage to their liver. As for teenagers and students, they will still get their vodka somehow before they go out for the weekend. Raising the price alone is about as useful as a hedgehog helping out in a balloon factory.


I shall say it loudly and maybe someone will actually hear.... IT IS NOT THE PRICE OF THE ALCOHOL THAT IS THE PROBLEM BUT ITS AVAILABILITY. SOME SUPERMARKETS ARE OPEN 24 HOURS ROUND THE CLOCK AS ARE PETROL STATIONS, SO ALCOHOL CAN BE PURCHASED 24 HOURS ROUND THE CLOCK. IF IT WEREN'T SO EASILY AVAILABLE, IT MIGHT JUST DETER PEOPLE FROM HAVING TO GO AND LOOK FOR IT.

Imagine someone suggesting just raising the price of drugs to stop people taking them. Imagine too heroin being on sale 24 hours round the clock in supermarkets, clubs and petrol stations. There'd be an outcry. Yet alcohol can cause just as much damage as heroin to your brain, your health, your life. I watched my husband dying a slow and horrible death, going from normal to dead within 6 years of his alcohol addiction starting. Unlike drugs, alcohol is legally available any time of the day or night and obtainable from a corner shop near you.
New Labour introduced 24-hour drinking to this country during their last term but they failed to appreciate that as a nation we cannot handle our booze and don't always know when enough is enough. I am not prohibitionist or anti-alcohol. I admit I love the occasional glass of wine or even on high days and holidays the occasional Baileys or vermouth, but when I think about it, why? It is not to quench my thirst because water or fruit juice would make a far better job of that. It has become the norm for people to drink wine with meals, but again, why? Does it seriously make a difference to the food? Did Mr Caveman suffer by not drinking wine with his food? Have we conned ourselves into thinking water with food would just not be acceptable? The trouble is, once it becomes the norm, one glass of wine or beer is not enough. I have even heard some people drink a glass of wine while they are cooking the food and of course go on to drink more with the meal. Before you know it, you have finished one or two bottles every day. Once your drinking escalates, it is not easy to stop or get out of the habit and all too soon you are addicted. With the addiction comes damage to liver and the brain, not to mention internal bleeding. So even these silent drinkers (ie not the official binge-drinkers we see on the streets) are aided in their drinking by alcohol being too readily available. In the supermarket? Then gather essentials.... milk, bread, fruit, meat. Oh and how about a bottle of wine? Getting petrol? That'll be twenty litres of unleaded and a bottle of whisky. Not only is the nation facing a problem of obesity (currently one in four are obese and soon will be one in three) but we are creating a whole new young generation of alcoholics with liver disease deaths rising faster than heart disease or cancer. Surely a sobering thought , not to mention the pressure on already stretched NHS resources..

Whilst the debate continues ( it may now seem that imposing a minimum price on a unit of alcoholic drinks is illegal under EU competition law), I would like to see the return of sensible licensing laws with pubs and clubs shutting, like they used to, at 11pm or midnight. Anyone drinking too much would be refused a drink by the landlord. I would like to see supermarkets and petrol stations banned from selling alcohol at all and I would welcome the return of off-licences open only for a few hours in the evening. I appreciate the counter-argument that it would make life difficult for the "sensible drinker", but isn't that a small price to pay to stop the drunken louts on our streets and to deter Aunty Mabel from succumbing to the daily bottle of gin behind her lounge curtains, certain of a slow and painful death if she continues? We managed with stringent laws like that in the past. Why not again?

Win Some, Lose Some

I have blogged before about the fact that I occasionally sell stuff on ebay. My relationship with ebay started off by accident when I offered to buy something rare for a friend who did not have a computer. It then progressed into selling when Kay was going on a school World Challenge trip to Latin-America. World Challenge stipulated that part of the challenge was that she had to fund the trip by her own means and I stretched that condition loosely into selling off some old toys and clothes for her on ebay to provide extra funds. I got quite good at judging the kind of things that would sell and the level of pricing (not too high to scare people off and not too low to secure a bit of profit). The purchase of a cheap digital weighing scale for my study meant I could weigh things exactly and accurately calculate the correct postage in advance before I typed the advert. I quite enjoyed doing this. I think it appealed to the hidden entrepreneurial spirit in me. I also used to love helping out on the Christmas Gift Stall at Kay's old school and always felt extremely bereft when the end of the Fete came and my sales help was over for another year. Selling was obviously in my blood.

Recently I have been sorting through/clearing out storage boxes in the cellar and unearthed loads of Kay's abandonned toys.... enough Polly Pocket houses to construct a whole street; a whole classroom of Barbie dolls; more Barbie clothes than at London Fashion Week; toddler games that would make the whole 2-week Olympic Games look boring. You name it.... she must have been the most spoilt child in the world (although every time she had a birthday party under the age of 8, she used to invite nearly the whole class, so ended up with a lot of small presents from that era!)

My ebay sales (£3 here and £5 there) soon added up. Now I know many of you are going to say that it would be easier just to give it all away to charity shops and I do give a lot away, but, as I say, I enjoy the thrill of watching things sell, the price mount at the auction, the wrapping up and the knowledge that they are going to a good home. I imagine the Barbies in their new home in Cardiff or my mother's vintage crocodile handbag in Chester or the jigsaw puzzle in Southampton or the board game in the Highlands of Scotland. I've even recently sent an item to China and another to Russia. I know they are going to be useful to someone specific as opposed to a nameless person at a charity shop.

This last fortnight I managed to make about £80. I was feeling so pleased with myself and had been musing what luxury to spend my little fortune on. All sorts of ideas sprang to mind and it was a struggle to decide which one was best. Then two days ago, the dog and I jumped into the car to drive to our nearest park for a walk. I turned the key in the ignition. The car coughed and spluttered and made a sort of death rattle sound. I tried again. This time just a squeak and a sigh. To be honest, I think the sigh might have come from me: from the car there was absolutely nothing, nada, zilch. To cut a long story short, one AA man (Automobile Association not Alcoholics Anonymous!!) arrived later to confirm my worst fears - the battery was as dead as a dodo. He managed to get the ignition started for me and I limped over to my nearest car part supplier who put in a new battery for me. The price? £82.

That was the bad news. The good news? The battery was the original one that the car manufacturer had put in 13 years ago when it was made. Both the AA man and the car part shop were amazed the battery had lasted so long. With any luck, this new one will see out the car for as long as I need it. Otherwise I'm going to have to start selling a heck of a lot more on ebay!

Greg

29 April 1949 - 6 March 2010

Two years and counting.........

It's coming up to the second anniversary of Greg's death and I'm surprised at how my feelings keep changing. All part of the grieving process, I know, but nevertheless strange to experience it for oneself. Two years ago, I'd just come through six years of hell, living with a full-time, non-functioning alcoholic. Six years of us both shouting, weeping, frequent trips to A&E, doctors, detox, counselling clinics, queuing at supermarkets with cratefuls of whisky, cleaning up toilet accidents on the carpet, because he could not make it in time. Not to mention the sleepless nights worrying whether I'd wake up at all the next morning, because he might forget in a drunken stupor to put out his cigarette and burn the house down. In addition there was the shame and embarrassment of being seen out with him, as he never washed, cleaned his teeth or changed his clothes and had lost all sense of social propriety.

The climax of these six years was the final week of his life up to 6 March 2010. Looking back now to his final visit to A&E at the very end of February 2010, I was annoyed that yet again here we were wasting doctors' time over something that was in his power to stop and that his many promises over the previous years never to get in that state again had been broken. He was admitted to a ward and I was forbidden to visit him, as there was an outbreak of the winter-vomiting bug and visitors were not allowed. I was furious with him and stormed out of that casualty department, both soul-destroyed by yet another broken promise, yet elated that I was going to have a night or two on my own where I could sleep peacefully for a change in a smoke and alcohol-free zone. An oasis of respite in a desert of despair.

A few days later, I was to be tested on the principle of "be careful what you wish for......." as he was moved to Intensive Care for the last 5 days of his life. It was only then that the hospital allowed me to visit him, but by then he was already unconscious. Watching him die was harrowing. Physically he no longer looked like my husband. The alcohol had ravaged his face, his hair and his body. Gradually bit by bit his body was delivered over to the toxins. His lungs were full of water, his kidneys started to fail and his liver was diseased beyond help. He was bleeding internally and because of the kidney failure he was swelling up like a sumo wrestler, but his skin could not cope with this sudden increase in size and was bursting all over, oozing liquid or blood. I could no longer converse with him as he had been sedated to the extent he was unconscious. The only sound in the room was that of the life-support machine. I didn't even get to say goodbye, although I whispered it to his lifeless body.

My life changed drastically from then on. I heaved a sigh of relief with thoughts that the living nightmare was finally over and I could dare to breathe freely again. I picked myself up and started to deal with the many practicalities that came steam-rollering in. People to tell, a funeral to arrange, letters to write, bills to pay and accounts to close. Once the hurly burly had stopped, my daughter had returned to university and I was alone, I threw myself into house projects to distract me. The house had been badly neglected as Greg had had neither the health nor sanity to do it himself any more and all our spare money had gone on his cigarettes and whisky addictions, so there was no possibility to get a professional in to do it. It was a case of killing two birds with one stone - a much-needed refurbished house and a distraction for me. Whenever I thought of Greg, I was still angry for what he had done to himself and to us. That anger inside me was hard to shift. I couldn't cry at the funeral or in the weeks and months afterwards, even when I tried as hard as I might to think back to the more distant happier times.

Then came a period when I mellowed a bit. I thought how sad it was that he was missing out on things...such as Kay's progress at uni and her placements at hospitals. He was missing out on important world issues too, as he used to work as an international journalist. Things like the demise of Gaddafi and bin Laden, the Euro crisis, the London Olympics, the Middle East problems to name but a few would have had him working extra shifts when he could still work and had him sitting on the edge of his seat shouting at the television news in his retirement. Now, he would never know these things and I felt a certain sadness that he wouldn't know them.

Next week is the second anniversary of his death and I find my anger is subsiding even more. Possibly it is due to the fact that the passing months have helped to erase the nightmare. It is true that when I read some of the archive to this blog, I have to pinch myself that things were actually as bad as that. On the other hand, everywhere I turn there are constant reminders. Programmes on TV highlight the escalation of binge-drinking, SOS buses, fly-on-the-wall documentaries featuring doctors dealing with alcoholism. Even some of the soaps carry alcoholic storylines. Kay is being confronted with it too in the line of her hospital placement. She recently examined a 57-year old man who was an alcoholic in the final stages. To cap it all, I heard Alistair Campbell say on a recent Panorama programme that maybe Labour got it wrong introducing a 24-hour drinking culture to this country. Tell me about it! What have I been saying all this time?

Two years on, I miss Greg like crazy. Selfishly, I wish we still had our golden years together to explore the world and see a bit more of life or just muck around at home together. I wish he were here to potter as he wished, switch on the radio or TV and soak up all the current news. I wish he were here to see Kay as she grows into a beautiful independent young woman and I wish he were here to grow old disgracefully with me. I do appreciate better now that he had an illness he could not fight, a sort of depression that can physically kill. He would not have wanted to cause suffering to his family. He did not want to die. The illness dictated it. His broken promises did not just let me and Kay down, they hurt him too, because he believed he could fight this disease. His last words to me in that A&E bed were "the drinking stops now, I promise".

I am no longer angry with him (although I am angry with a society that could allow it to happen and turn a blind eye to our repeated pleas for help.). I am no longer sad. Instead I ponder; I question; I yearn. But I still cannot cry. Maybe that phase is still to come.