Bloomin' nuisance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  I just didn't know if I had the confidence to meet old schoolfriends, 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,..........

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?

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

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

Here's mud in your eye and another clue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.