Bugs, Football and Rattles

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

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

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

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

Driving me crazy.

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

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

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

The maybe's and perhaps'es

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



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



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

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

Exam stress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's a Hindu?
It lays eggs.

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

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

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

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

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

A major disease associated with smoking is premature death.

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

Christians go on a pilgrimage to Lord's.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rhubarb: a sort of celery gone bloodshot.

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

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

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

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

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

To prevent conception, wear a condominium.

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

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

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

Wild for the city

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

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

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

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

Home sweet home

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


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

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

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


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

Suddenly, my whole life flashed before me

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



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

Running with the Baton

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

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

Pounds lighter

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

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

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

Greg's Birthday

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




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

Home Alone

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

past Horse Guards Parade;

across Trafalgar Square;

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

across Oxford Street;

into Bloomsbury and past the British Museum.

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

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

The stages of grief and stages of life.

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

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

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

Shock/Denial

Anger/Bargaining

Pain/Guilt

Depression/Loneliness

The Upturn

Reconstruction

Acceptance/Hope

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

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

The lump

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

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

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

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

Tributes and tribulations

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


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

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

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

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

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

Greg

29 April 1949 - 6 March 2010

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

Intensive Care Unit

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

Medical Bulletin

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

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

It just gets better

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

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

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

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

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

The Hamster-Wheel

Be honest. When you think of an alcoholic or drunk, what do you think of? A down-and-out tramp lying in the gutter? A menacing teenage hoodie skulking behind a wall with his umpteenth can of lager? Twenty-somethings getting plastered on a Saturday night and stumbling to the ground outside a nightclub? We all have our own idea and prejudices.

What do you think of when you see someone in front of you at the supermarket check-out with three bottles of wine on the conveyor belt? If it's tucked among fresh vegetables or salad and a lump of steak, you probably think they are going to have a nice romantic meal in, or a pleasant evening with friends. What if they had three bottles of whisky or vodka instead? Would that change your opinion? I often wonder what people think of Greg and indirectly of me. I worry anyway about what people generally think and how they judge, not to mention the whole alcohol issue. Welcome to my world.

Greg is clinically dependent on alcohol (in other words, if he does not get that regular fix of alcohol, he will get the shakes and hallucinations at best, or go into a coma or have a seizure at worst). Any attempts to come off alcohol would have to be done slowly and under medical supervision such as in hospital or at a detox centre. This is something Greg has gone through several times in the past five years but always inevitably lapsed back to drinking again. Greg WANTS to stop drinking, but the reality is that the drinking does not want to stop him. When he is in the grip of his addiction, it costs too much effort to even think about stopping, too much effort to reduce even by one glass. The addiction is like a continual loop. Drink-sleep-drink-sleep-drink-sleep. With every waking, the fear of withdrawal is the only motivation that drives him to keep on drinking. He is like the proverbial hamster on the wheel. He finds it hard to jump off. He needs that fix.

I have explained before that I have become the procurer of Greg's poison. I enable his drinking. That doesn't sit easy with some people. Or with me for that matter. What? I moan about him drinking yet I buy it for him? What? Hide it around the house when I go away? Organisations like Al-Anon would say that it is best left for him to make his own mistakes. But real life does not always fit into perfect rules and patterns. Greg's health was already bad when his drinking started to spiral out of control six years ago. With heart trouble, poor blood and nerve supply in his legs and diabetes to name but a few complaints, he is now no longer able to walk more than a few yards unaided. Stairs (of which we have a lot in our house) defeat him. Up until fairly recently, he did used to drink/drive but recently his conscience finally got through to him. That and the recent discovery of a consultant at one of his hospital appointments that he was inebriated and driving a car at 10.30 in the morning. His car was temporarily impounded in the hospital car park: he has not driven since. Without me to drive him anywhere he is housebound. Remember, he cannot walk even to the front gate let alone to the nearest shop half a mile away as an alternative. So what am supposed to do ? Do I refuse to buy it for him, watch him go into a coma or hold his hand while he hallucinates? He is terrified of the thought of it and so am I. Supervised detoxes have already been attempted several times and failed. Medics and professionals throw up their hands and throw in the towel. They don't want to know any more. Who can blame them? Alcoholism is a drain on limited NHS resources. We are on our own with this problem and sometimes you have to take the least line of resistence to cope with it.

And so I find myself as much affected by the alcohol as Greg. Each day I too am on that hamster wheel. I have to ensure there are adequate supplies to fuel his addiction. I am ashamed of what I do. It does not sit easy with me. I am enabling him to drink. But the fact of the matter is that he cannot get it himself and he cannot forego it without dire consequences. Because Greg drinks a bottle of whisky a day, I usually buy two or three bottles at a time, several times a week. If I go away to my mother for a week or two, I buy 7 or 14 bottles at a time. Consequently, you can imagine, I stand out a mile from other shoppers and particularly if I were to keep on using the same shop week in, week out. So, each time I go out to get supplies, I consciously try to vary the supermarket or shop I get it from, so that I do not frequent the same place and become conspicuous. Even so, I can't bear the looks from people in the queue in front of me and behind me. I can feel their stares boring through my head. "look at all that whisky she's buying. I bet she's a right bored housewife." I feel myself like the traveller nonchalently walking through Customs with nothing to declare but feeling guilty as sin anyway. I feel the compulsion to let the check-out girl somehow know that I am sober, in control of my money, not slurring my words and can push a trolley in a straight line! The fact is I hate the whisky runs and want to curl up and die. Sometimes I try to put a brave face on it. How do they know that I am not making a wedding cake and am using the whisky to soak the dried fruit? How do they know I am not living abroad in some far-flung outpost and am taking a year's supply out with me? How do they know I am not running a small hotel and the whisky is for the guests? I try to be blase about it and pretend that buying three bottles of whisky in one go is a perfectly normal thing to do. Only I know that I shall be doing the same thing again two or three days later.

This morning. Greg asked me to bring some whisky back with me, when I went out. At the supermarket, I gingerly put three bottles on the conveyor belt. To be honest I was not in one of my confident moods today. I was flicking glances as usual behind me to make sure there were no neighbours or people I know in the vicinity. As the check-out woman started to run the items through the laser-reader, she picked up the second of the three bottles and said jokingly "Oh my goodness, things aren't THAT bad are they?" I froze like a rabbit caught in the headlights. All I could think of as a lame reply was "oh yes they are!" She thought I was joking. She was not to know I was not! Would she have commented if I had had three tins of beans or three packets of orange juice? I scrabbled together my shopping, paid the bill and rushed out of the supermarket, choking back the tears. I really do not want to do this any more. I really don't. This hamster has had more than enough.

I Just Called To Say I Love You

Forget me not

I heard some shocking news on my dog-walk in the park yesterday. Two weeks ago, a local girl deliberately jumped in front of a commuter train and killed herself. She was 18 years old and had been in the same kindergarten class as Kay. Although Kay changed at the age of 5 to another school for her infant and junior years, we would occasionally bump into this girl around the locality and swap news. Her mother walked her dog in the same park as me and, when our arrivals coincided on rare occasions, we would stop and chat about our girls - both only-children, both bright and clever, both our pride and joy. The story goes that the girl was being bullied at her London university and had just been dumped by her boyfriend. The results of the inquest are still to come.

I hate to think she had nobody to turn to and was so desperate. She was still living at home too. The news is haunting me. It keeps rolling around in large technicolour pictures in my mind, when I make a cup of tea, sit at the computer or walk the dog. The thoughts won't go away. They remind me how tenuous life can be and why we should never stop telling our children (even when they tower above us, however old and grey they get, and despite all the daily chores that pre-occupy us) that we are always there for them in times of trouble and love them very much, no matter what they do or don't do.

To BT or not to BT

Well, I am back again from my "holiday", though things did not go entirely according to plan. At my mother's, I was supposed to i) get broadband set up, ii) meet up with my best friends for a reunion and iii) have a relaxing time (well relatively) away from Alcoholic Daze Towers. Well how many of those do you think I achieved successfully?


Let's take i) to get broadband set up. I had decided that, given the infrequency and varying duration of my visits to my mother, setting up a permanent broadband hub was not worth the monthly cost and I decided/was advised that a pay-as-you-go dongle was a better option. As our home broadband is provided by British Telecom, I decided to get the dongle from them too, but dealing with a large company is never straightforward.


Since Christmas we had already been having problems with BT, as they also supply our freeview TV channel system (BT Vision). The TV had been playing up and and we had arranged for a BT engineer to call. The appointment was made a whole week in advance but the engineer did not turn up. We rang BT and were told the order for him to visit had not gone through to the right department. We were promised the order would now definitely go through but we had to wait another week. When that appointment was due the engineer again did not turn up (surprise, surprise)and again we were told the order had not gone through to the right department (yawn). What is it with these large orgnisations? Is there some huge switchboard centre somewhere just swallowing up orders or throwing them in the virtual waste bin? Anyway, third time lucky an engineer did come eventually and sort out the TV problem.


When I subsequently decided to get a BT dongle, I was slightly apprehensive. Well, I was more than that, but I always live in hope! I was told there would be an 8-day wait and I was assured several times that the dongle would be sent to my mother's address. Suffice to say, the appointed day for delivery came and went. No dongle. Then Greg phoned me to say that a BT parcel had come to our home address. When he opened it, it was not a dongle but an unsolicited hub phone (we are still not sure why that was sent to us and even what we are supposed to do with it, but hey ho BT have since told us we can keep it, as it was their mistake!) They then promised they would deliver the dongle to my mother's address the following day and I am pleased to say that it DID finally come and I was able to access broadband for at least the second week of my holiday.


ii) As for meeting up with my two close friends from university days, that went pear-shaped too. The day before we were due to meet up, the one went down with a nasty cold and, as the other has to avoid exposure to such viruses wherever possible, the reunion weekend was cancelled, literally at the last minute. Such a shame, as were all so looking foward to it. All dressed up and nowhere to go.


iii) As for relaxing, I did manage to have a lovely time with my mum and help her around the house into the bargain, but the fortnight was unfortunately marred by Snoopy falling sick. He had a personality change while he was down there, became very morose and hang-dog-looking, was pooing for England with what looked more like cow-pats than anything else and lay lifeless on the bed, not even lifting his head when anyone came into the room. Definitely not his usual self. I sought out a vet nearby and Snoopy was diagnosed with colitis. Over the week, he got gradually better with antibiotics, steroids,painkillers and special diet; I got gradually poorer because of the vet's bill (to the tune of £110, as there were two consultations and all the medication.) I am pleased to say Snoopy's now fully recovered and glad to be home to chase the cat and ruck up rugs. Phew. Was definitely very worried about him for a few days.

On my return I have decided to have a bit of a personality change and am going to rename myself Addy. Rosiero was not my real name anyway and people were calling me all sorts - Rosario, Roseiro, Ros to name but a few - all very confusing, so I decided to play on the Alcoholic Daze (AD) and it morphed into Addy. Hope this will be easier to identify me with the blog title in future. I feel like a new woman..... as John Terry might have said !!

In memory of my Dad

I am off for two weeks to be with my mum again. You'll be pleased to know that I am taking Snoopy with me this time, as I am going by car. Now I have a laptop at long last, I can take it with me too and hope to keep in touch with the blogging world and emails rather than having to wait till I get back and plough through what I have missed. I hope to set up broadband at my mother's, so it will be a bit of a luxury for me. I am going for a number of reasons: to do a lot of household chores for my mum; to take her out and about; to get away from the alcoholic daze madhouse; to spend some time with my two bestest friends (we are having a long-needed reunion weekend nearby); and to be with my mum for "a very important reason".


The 1st February is a very important date in our family calendar. It is the date my dearly loved father was ripped from our midst nine years ago. I have not always been able to be with my mother at this time, as in the past I had other commitments, but this year, thankfully, I have the freedom to do as I choose. My father was (to me) a very special man who almost didn't make it past the age of 14 let alone the age he reached. His life was remarkable. I wrote about him before here. Not a day goes by when I don't look at a huge photo of him by my bedside. He is sorely missed by me and my mother who still sheds bucketloads of tears for him - they were soulmates. Dad was instrumental in giving Kay her love for medicine (see here). He would be so proud of her and so upset to see what has become of Greg and me. I sometimes "talk" to him and ask him for his advice. I like to think he is listening. I still miss him so very much. It does not seem possible that it is already the ninth anniversary.

Bacherlor daze

I have just returned from a few days away at my mother's as she had a few hospital/optician's appointments to attend. I did not take the car with me this time, as the weather forecasts had predicted more snow and ice. I did not want to be stranded anywhere en route, so I took the train instead. Because of that, Snoopy could not come with me as I could not lug all his belongings (bed/bowls etc) as well as mine.

Number of days away from home to help my mother: 4
Number of days enjoying myself : 4
Number of days Greg and the animals were left to fend for themselves: 4
Number of essential medical pills consumed by Greg: 0
Amount of food taken from the fridge/freezer in my absence: 0
Number of times Greg got dressed in my absence: 0
Amount of walks Snoopy had in my absence : 0
Number of times Snoopy and the cat were fed: not known
Tax forms which he insisted he was going to complete this week: 0
Number of bottles of whisky consumed: 5*

* hidden around the house before my departure as Greg is clinically dependent on them, but cannot drive or walk to get them himself! Once a day he rang me to ask where the next bottle could be found.

more photos

Is supper ready yet?

Someone tell Mum that Twelfth Night is over.

Please!


Did you want something........?


...otherwise I'll go back to sleep.

My favourite picture

Dulwich Divorcee has kindly nominated me for a meme to display my favourite photo and say why. It has certainly challenged me because there are any number of different types of photo I could put up, but to chose one to be the all-time favourite is another matter.

If sheer quantity of photos were the deciding factor, it would have to be one of Kay. I have thousands of photos of Kay. Her godfather once joked that when his own daughter was a baby, he took thousands of photos in the first few weeks and had them developed in the one-hour processing service. Then when the child was a toddler, he took hundreds of photos and had them developed in the 24-hour service. By the time the child was a teenager, there were only a few photos here and there which were sent off annually to the developers and returned a week or so later. We found this story amusing at the time, but oh so true now. There are several albums of when Kay was a small baby and perhaps one as a toddler and one to cover the entire teenage years. However, it is not to Kay that I look for the source of my photo, as our anonymity is paramount to my blog story.

I then look through all my holiday snaps and there are indeed places which have delighted me and conjured up all sorts of memories when I look at them. Some are of the places where I lived abroad and others where I just passed through. But trying to choose one over the other is difficult. They are all special in their own different ways.

The one I have finally chosen is of Snoopy, our loveable dog, as much a member of our family as any human. Let me tell you why I love this photo and the background to it.........

When Kay was a toddler, we decided to go on a camping trip. She loved it so much, we went lots of times after that. Our favourite place for a weekend escape was in the New Forest and, if you have never stayed there, it is well worth a visit as the wild horses roam all over the roads and forests and even in and out of the designated campsites. We have seen many a pony stick its head inside a tent if it smells food. But one year, when Kay was about three, we camped on a sheep farm up in Yorkshire for a change. During our summer evening stroll round the farmyard, Kay was attacked by one of the farmer's border collie sheepdogs. It wasn't a vicious attack, thank goodness, as the dog was chained up and could only reach so far, but it did manage to grab Kay by her trouser leg. It was a close call. Fortunately Greg was able to give the dog a hefty kick and it released its grip. We were later told by the farmer that the dog had been taunted by the farmer's grandchildren earlier that day and the dog was obviously getting its own back on the nearest child to come near it, which just happened to be Kay.

To say Kay was traumatised by that event is an understatement. She would cower whenever she saw a dog coming towards her and refuse to pat a dog despite our reassurances or those of the owner that no harm would come to her. By the time she was seven, it was beginning to take on phobia proportions and, because Greg and I love dogs and had both had dogs as family pets when we were children, we decided it was important to get Kay over this fear as soon as possible. We were going to get Kay a dog.

Kay was OK about the idea but less so about the practical reality. On our first visit to Battersea Dogs Home, she was fine looking at the dogs as long as they were behind the bars of their cages, but when she excitedly chose a black labrador cross breed called Charlie to inspect more intimately, she later backed in utter terror against a wall of the room we had been shown to, as soon as the dog was brought in to get to know us. Sadly we did not take Charlie home that day and even had a complete rethink about getting a dog at all. We returned to Battersea several times after that, as well as other rescue centres in the area, but always with the same result. Kay was terrified close up to any dog. Eventually we accepted that Kay would only be happy with anything with a leg at each corner, as long as it was a cat or a hamster or a gerbil. I remember Greg saying with vehemence that we were not having a rodent in OUR house, as the little critter might get loose and we would never find it again in our house with all the stairs and hiding places. So we settled on cats and ended up chosing two kittens at a rescue centre not far from us. As they were not ready to leave their mother yet, we had to wait a while and visited them once or twice to see their progress before the handover. On one such visit, I mentioned that we would have really liked to get a dog and the kennel maid didn't need telling twice. She dragged Kay and me over to an enclosure where there were two puppies remaining from a litter of six. They were a cross between a Manchester Terrier and a German Shepherd. The Manchester Terrier gave them the colouring; the German Shepherd contributed to their size. Of the two puppies, Snoopy was the runt of the litter, very submissive and therefore much more suitable for a little girl, particularly one who was nervous of dogs. Snoopy also needed some tender loving care and therefore a quiet home with a little girl and lots of love was a perfect match for him too. We went into his enclosure and he rolled on his back and widdled in the air. It was love at first sight.....for him, for Kay, for Greg and for me. We signed on the dotted line straight away.

A week later, once all the innoculations and paperwork had been done, we were the proud owners of two kittens and a puppy. It was bedlem toilet-training all three of them, working out the general care for them and coping with their anxieties at being abandoned overnight. I can remember Greg sleeping on the kitchen floor in a sleeping bag to keep all three company for the first few nights. (They were the happy days before Greg became an alcoholic.) Kay was delighted with this new menagerie and would invite all her friends over to see them and pet them.

To cut a very long story short, Snoopy did the trick. He got Kay over her fear in a flash. As she grew, so did he, so she was not at all afraid by the time he reached full adult height. Because of his size and colouring, many people think he is a doberman. If I had a pound for every time I have been asked if he is a doberman, I would be a millionairess, but his head is a different shape for a start. He looks as if he ought to tear your arm out and he can be quite an alarming sight when he rushes to greet callers at the front door, but in reality he is such a soft, gentle animal who would more than likely lick you to death. He has his own pet passport and has travelled abroad many times in the car with us. Because of his sensitive nature, he does not like to be left alone, so we always make a point of taking him with us, where at all possible, rather than leave him on his own in the house. He still does not like to be left alone at night and because we are rather soft in that department, we have allowed him to sleep with us in the bedrooms and (shock, horror) even on our beds. Fortunately he is not a smelly dog, in fact he has the most amazingly comforting aroma about him, which makes you want to nuzzle into him, and he does not drool either like some dogs do.

And so to THE PHOTO...... I have chosen this particular one of Snoopy because it shows such detail. If you click on it, you will even see his lips. I love all the little whiskers round his mouth too. Those lovely brown eyes can just make you melt and give in to him. They follow you around until you are forced to put on your boots and take him for a long walk in the park. I have this photo on my laptop desktop. We shall certainly miss him when he goes to that big kennel in the sky: not something we like to think about too often, particularly as he is nearly eleven. He has not only served his original purpose but has enriched our lives with his love and devotion.

Rather than nominate anyone to do this meme, I shall open it up to the first five to comment. Meanwhile, here is that picture of Snoopy..........................