Seasons Greetings

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

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

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

Cheers!

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

Baby, it's cold outside

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

The difference

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

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

The Naked Truth

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

Alterations in progress

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

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

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

Leaps and Bounds

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

Anxiety

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Millionairess

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

photo from www.123rf.com

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

The Time Traveller's Wife

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

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

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

Problem solved

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writers' block

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

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

More bad things

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

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

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

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

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

Bad things come in threes

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

Good times, bad times.

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

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

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

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

Bloomin' nuisance

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?