In the nick of time

I swear I've got another few grey hairs overnight.   Selling my mother's house and buying her a retirement flat near to me was in theory easy peasy with only three of us in the chain (a cash buyer, us and a lady going into a home), but even so, it has taken since early July when offers were made until today when contracts were finally exchanged. Only in the nick of time, mind.  I won't bore you with the details about how the cash buyer turned out to be in reality a mortgage-buyer and the inevitable wait for surveys and reports to be done, shortfalls of money offered and solicitors working at snail's pace etc. 

Mum's buyer (MH) was off to the USA for a long-planned month's holiday this afternoon which meant if the contracts did not get exchanged today, it would be another month before we could do so. The vendor of the flat was getting impatient and threatening, if contracts were not exchanged by today, to pull out and sell to someone else (not that they had someone else in the frame). So with us in the middle being squeezed and dictated to by both sides, there was a lot of histrionics and nail-biting over the last few weeks trying to chivvy surveyors and solicitors to extract their digits and earn the fortune we are paying them. Contracts were exchanged at 1044 hours this morning and MH left for Heathrow at 1200 hours. Just an hour's difference between elation and utter despair.

We've got a month to sort out the removals and a million other things connected with it, but for now I'm just off to pour a glass of wine and find the hair dye.

Ten green bottles

I know nothing about the programme that is going to be on ITV at 9pm tonight (Living with Paul Gascoigne), but am hoping it might give those of you who have never lived with alcoholism an insight into what it is like to live with an alcoholic.

Probably living on cloud cuckoo-land, Gascoigne may either not admit he has a  problem (denial) or think he can beat it (denial). He'll more than likely end up on a mortuary slab as another statistic (most probable outcome).  Alcoholics always seem to think they are going to lick this awful disease, but 90% never manage it. As one falls there is always another in denial to take their place.

This programme will be worth watching if only because (for me) it'll be like picking at a scab to relive the nightmare.

Ashamed

I took a tram into Croydon this morning. There's one shop there which I don't have in my local neighbourhood, so I like to browse around there occasionally. I like travelling on the tram. It appeals to my sense of loss of not living anymore in Germany where trams are the norm and gives me just a small sense of feeling I am living somewhere foreign, which is not entirely deluded. 

The tram is full of all kinds of nationalities, creeds and persuasions.  The streets reflect the same. Glancing out of the window there are Latvian shops, Polish supermarkets, Jamaican cafes.  There's even a tramstop called Lebanon Road, where you could easily be, if you happen to count the number of burkahs walking along the road. Croydon has the potential to be one big melting pot, although the people don't always "melt" ......the recent tensions in the London riots a couple of years ago showed this. I suspect people do tend to get on well with one another, if given the chance, but Croydon has turned into a rather drab poverty-stricken area, where even the very fabric of the buildings shrieks for improvement and some TLC.

Across the aisle from me on the tram sat a very young black mother. A girl in her early twenties with a small toddler of about 2 years, if that, next to her.  At first, the child sat glued to the window (just like me), looking at all the interesting things going by on a sunny Monday morning. Not so his mother. She sat, face down less than six inches away from her mobile phone, texting. The child babbled turning excitedly to point out things to her, but still she texted. On and on she texted, as the tram went from stop to stop, never lifting her head once to glance at her son. The boy began to fidget and lost his shoe, trying to crawl under the seat to get it, but he was not able to reach it. He tried to get his mother's attention, but she was too busy texting and dragged him roughly back onto his seat. He sat there dangling one foot in a sock, the other with a shoe, looking under the seat at his lost shoe and by now his mother was distracted by something else - she was scrolling down to find something on the internet. The little fellow then got off the seat again and onto his knees, still trying to retrieve his shoe. At this point the mother, who remember had her mobile phone in one hand, whacked him in the chest with her free hand and dragged him forcefully by the scruff of his clothes back to his seat.  As she did so, she caught his head against the hard base of the seat which caused him to break out into howls and screams. To stop him getting off the seat again, she used her large handbag to pin him down and carried on staring into her mobile phone again, completely ignoring him. The boy howled and howled. The noise was deafening.  People stared into their laps or at the ceiling. Anywhere but at the boy. The woman opposite me began to tutt in disgust and I muttered as loudly as I could that the mother had had her head in the mobile phone for the entire journey. No reaction from the mother or anyone else. The howling went on until eventually it subsided into a few sobs and then quiet. Still the mum went on texting.

I am ashamed to say that NOBODY (me included) did or said a single damn thing. Going through my head was all the things I wanted to say to that mother. The poor kid was starved of attention or stimulation. The mother looked no more than a kid herself. Kids having kids. But did I say anything? Sure as hell, no.  And I'm ashamed of myself. I've spent the entire morning worrying about that little kid. Worrying about what slap he's getting now and what he's going to grow up like. And when the girl and her son got off the tram, everyone was glad they could stop looking in their lap. Shame on us all.

Museum Piece

I told you my mum hoards things and can't bear to throw them away. If proof be needed, two items have been accepted by the local museum. 

One is a brown Bakelite electric hairdryer pretty much identical to this one 
in its own carry-case complete with mirror estimated to have been manufactured in about the 1940s or possibly even 1930s. It first belonged to my grandmother and I used to use it as a child.









The other is a set of kitchen weighing scales complete with weights similar to this one. 









I can't help having a big smile on my face that my mum's home is part of a museum!

My whole life flashed before me - in a carrier bag

I'm convinced my mother has a carrier bag fetish. I've just spent the last ten days at her house clearing out cupboards and drawers of stuff that she'll have no room for when she moves out of her 4-bedroom house into the 1-bedroom retirement flat to be closer to me. Moving day is drawing ever closer as the solicitors and agents do their searches and wotnot so I have been cranking up our clearing out and preparations too.

My mother doesn't just keep a few things out of sentimentality. She hoards them. Not only that but she then wraps them in plastic carrier bags. The plastic bags are then put in groups inside larger plastic bags. Each bag is tied with a tight knot (presumably not only to stop things falling out but to keep them airtight too.) Sorting through her possessions has resulted in me tying to unpick knots from plastic bags, find more plastic bags (also knotted) within and eventual finding the contents - birthday cards going back decades, receipts of furniture bought in the 1950s, hospital appointment letters going back decades, a cocktail stirrer from a cruise, letters from relatives, restaurant bills, picture Kay drew as a child, pictures I drew as a child. They are all carefully put back in their envelopes (the stamps alone tell the history of the rise in postage over the last few decades).

Sorting through her wardrobes has also been an eye-opener. Birthday or Christmas presents carefully inserted back into the original wrapping paper lie unused (she would hate to insult the giver by using the present and ruining it!).  We have enough unopened bath foam to open a shop. As she's moving to a flat with a walk-in shower we may need to! In one of the bags in her wardrobe, I found two of my old school hats and a primary school blazer. She even asked me if I wanted to keep them. I mean, I am sixty-two.... would I still fit into them? Needless to say they were relegated to the textile recycling at the local dump. In the kitchen cupboards were at least twenty empty glass jars, just in case the urge to make jam or chutney descended upon her, as well as countless gadgets hardly used.

In ten days I have filled a huge packing box with hundreds of discarded plastic carrier bags (to keep just in case...); made several visits to the refuse tip with discarded paper, cards, and irrelevant items; humped countless bags full of stuff in reasonable condition to charity shops and filled my car to the roof on my return journey with stuff I might possibly be able to sell on ebay or keep myself (perish the thought that I am turning into my mother and Kay will be doing all this for me in a few years' time).

I have left her to fend for herself over the next few weeks (her cracked ribs are now nicely healed and she can cope on her own again). She is under strict instruction to wade through another 6 large containers of letters or documents inside bags inside bags and  be RUTHLESS. She is only to keep the very precious things to a minimum. What are the chances when I get back there, she's put them all back again in a knotted bag within a knotted bag?

You take the high road and I'll take the low road

I hate motorways. Not just an "I prefer other roads if I can help it" sort of hate, but a full blown "I'm never going to go on another one ever again" sort of hate. I NEVER go on one as a driver and I avoid where at all possible going on them as a passenger. I think I'm a reject from another era and deep down prefer horse and carts to fast speeds.

I can pinpoint exactly where my hatred of motorways stems from. When I was newly married to Greg, I lived in Germany and used to bomb up and down the autobahns to explore other places. I confess to being a bit nervous even then of the lack of speed limits and the sinking feelings when someone came bombing even faster up behind expecting you to pull over even though it would mean swerving into a ten-ton truck you were overtaking, just so they could get past. But the big moment came one early evening in October 1978.

Greg and I had been out visiting another town that day and were on our way back home. It had been a real autumnal sort of day and now it was 6pm, dark, foggy and crisp. The roads were relatively busy and we had overtaken a fair few lorries and other traffic when we came up over a rise and the dark autobahn stretched ahead of us.  In the middle distance there were no cars and everything was swathed in darkness, but in the far distance we picked out a few cars that that seemed to be stationary with their flashers blinking. Greg slowed down as we drove into the dark middle ground between us and them , anticipating there may be trouble ahead. Suddenly Greg slammed on his brakes and swerved to the hard shoulder. There before us, in the dark empty space was the dead body of a horse, lying between the two lanes (this particular motorway only had two lanes as a lot of German motorways do/did). It became apparent very quickly that the horse had been decapitated.

Greg knew that we had overtaken a lot of bunched-up traffic and that they were probably less than a minute away from coming along this bit of road too, so he was fearful of a multiple pile-up. He jumped out of the car, ordering me to stay put, while he took the obligatory emergency triangle out of the boot and headed off on foot back down the motorway in the direction we had come, waving the emergency triangle at passing cars as he went. Fortunately he was wearing his favourite clothing which nearly always included a white Aran sweater, so he hoped to be spotted in people's headlights.

Meanwhile I sat in the car on the hard shoulder, dark fields to my right and a headless horse to my left which was beginning to steam in the cold of the evening. I was terrified Greg would be run over as he tried to do his good deed. What seemed like an eternity passed and Greg returned to the car having eventually got the traffic to slow and stop, aided soon after by the police doing the same. As we eventually set off again gingerly along the slow lane, we soon pieced together what had happened, because there in the throng of cars  we had seen ahead with their lights flashing, were a few people restraining a foal. It would seem the foal had run out onto the motorway from a field, its mother had followed and a car had hit the mother. It was a very sad way to end what had been a lovely day out for us.

After that I started to get very nervous on motorways and hated the speed, the way lorries would pull out, often without indicating and spent the entire journey digging my fingernails into my palms. Journeys between home in Germany and relatives in England would involve at least 8 hours on motorways and I hated them. Once we returned to England, any holidays in Britain began and ended with a nightmare journey for me.  Since Greg has died, I have studiously avoided motorways altogether and if I have had to travel long distances, I have opted for the train.

So it was with great pride and utter terror that I waved Kay off on Saturday to return to uni. She had passed her driving test a few months ago and we had bought a car about a month ago. Because she had been in Borneo she had little chance to drive it or practice in it. Greg's sister volunteered (without any prompting from me) to  come down from Lincolnshire and sit as a passenger with Kay while she drove it ooop north. My heart was in my mouth at the thought of my only-born hurling herself into the mayhem of the M25, then M11 and A1(M) northwards. To start on the M25 as your first ever motorway experience was more than a little brave, I thought.  To crown it all, the weather was typical Bank Holiday weather and the heavens opened with rain like stair-rods from morning to night. The whole world and its granny was on the move too, so that in places motorway speeds were reduced to 20mph or crawling. However, Kay also managed to get up to 70 mph (she said rather too gleefully) and even managed to overtake things too. They broke the journey in Lincolnshire, so Greg's sister could collect her own car and then do the second half of the journey on Sunday with Kay driving in her car behind, thus giving Kay the experience to cope with the drive entirely on her own, albeit following her aunty's car.

When Kay rang me on Sunday afternoon to say she had arrived at the other end safely, I was heartily relieved. She's made of sterner stuff than me. I am indebted to Greg's sister for doing the run with her. I do so wish Greg was still alive as I am sure he would be very proud of them both too.

Savages

I've had one of those revolving door weeks - when Kay returned from a trip to the Far East, was home for a few days, sprinkled her belongings liberally throughout the house turning it into a tip, dumped her laundry and was back out again to the V-Fest music festival weekend.

She'd had a great time in Borneo, once known for its head-hunters. Far from being savages, she found the Malaysians very friendly, eager to help and not too keen on trying to sell you something you didn't really want. They didn't push their tourism on you but were full of suggestions when you needed them. She spent three days in the jungle under her own steam and visited this wonderful place, taking thousands of photos of macaques, proboscis monkeys, orang-utans, toucans, crocodiles and much much more. Although I bit my fingers down to the knuckles as I anticipated her flying from place to place by air or taking 7-hour bus rides and being dumped in the middle of the jungle on a quiet country road, she survived and came home to tell the tale and give me her dirty laundry!

The music festival was less successful. For a start, it had cost half the amount it had cost for a one-way ticket to Borneo. She'd staggered up there with not only her own luggage but our 8-man tent to house her and some of her mates. The main attraction on Saturday (let's just call it a woman with a name like B*****e) was rubbish, keeping them waiting for half an hour before she deigned to put in an appearance and then disappearing for copious costume-changes. Whilst standing shoulder to jammed shoulder in the throng, Kay had had some stranger's urine thrown over her from afar. On returning to the tent on Sunday evening, the girls found someone had decided to trash their tent - they'd jumped on it, bent the poles, made a large hole in the canvas and vomited on it for good measure. The tent was one of our best tents, but it's now been binned.

Now, tell me who the savages are.

Ninety years young

My gorgeous mum is 90 years old today.  She doesn't want to be and is clinging on to her 80s with all her might.

As an 18-month old child in 1925, she saw off double pneumonia and whooping cough , which she and her two sisters all caught at the same time.  It resulted in her younger and older sister dying within a few days of one another and it left Mum considerably weaker.

She saw off a poor childhood during the Depression,  often having nothing to eat for a meal except mashed potato.

She saw off the Germans during the Second World War, although ended up marrying one who was a refugee here. He conquered her heart while they worked together on the land (she as a Land Army Girl and he driving tractors).

She saw off a happy 54-year-old marriage, when my Dad bravely fought leukaemia and lost the battle.

She fought (and often lost) against the crippling pain of arthritis and scoliosis which has curved her spine beyond all recognition.

She has even recently fought and survived cracked ribs.

However, time waits for no man and, despite her not wanting to celebrate her ninetieth, because she does not feel old enough, I give you my gorgeous mum at ninety...........

POSTCARDS

I've always loved receiving postcards and have kept them from as long as I can remember in an old chocolate box. I didn't consciously start to do that, but it seemed such a shame to throw them away when someone had taken the trouble to send me one and the pictures transported me to places I had never seen, so I liked to look at them from time to time. I can remember in the Fifties when I was a little girl getting postcards from a great uncle and aunt who had ventured as far afield as Spain (that was a long way to travel in those days) and they sent me several postcards with flamenco dancers depicted on the front with real material tiered dresses. Whether the postcards were from within the UK or abroad, I still liked to keep them. Over the years, I must have gathered hundreds

Recently I got to thinking that people don't seem to send postcards any more.  With email and wifi, we seem to be more into electronic contact these days. Kay, just for example although not to single her out, will text or email or Skype from wherever she is, but she doesn't send a postcard. It's a real shame as a postcard is a visual reminder of what happened whilst away and can still be looked at in 20 or 40 years time, where an email or text most probably won't stand the test of time. Also, I know I can google an image of the place someone is visiting to get an idea of what the place looks like, but it is not the same as that postcard dropping on my doormat, having come hundreds and often thousands of miles to get to me.

Busy as a bee, busy as can be

I'm up to my eyes at the moment and a little bit miffed that I cannot enjoy all the hot weather we have been having. I shouldn't grumble really, because despite being on a treadmill, I am rather enjoying it!  I think I must naturally thrive on being busy.

For those that asked, my mother is now over the cracked rib pain. It took her 12 weeks in all to recover (double the normal healing time for fractures) but given her age and the fact she has osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, it is not surprising. She is still staying with me and luxuriating in the TLC and three good meals a day which often come complete with room service! Running up and down the stairs is good for me and gives me that excuse to have another chocolate bar to keep up my energy levels. (Ahem)

Fourteen-year-old Snoopy continues to wag his tail and slowly mince along the path on his daily walks. He is happy to stop frequently and sniff at every blade of grass on the way, even if it does take ten times as long to do the walk as it used to and even though I annoyingly tap my watch at him, it brings no quickening of his pace. He is still weeing for England (mainly on his bedding and on the sofa covers which I wash on a daily basis), but otherwise he is in reasonable health. I can't really put him down just for that reason alone, so we soldier on together, with him mainly sleeping through the day to gather enough strength to eat a meal or climb the stairs to bed at night! It's a dog's life!

Kay is currently in Borneo and, as I write, communing with orang-utans. She apparently came within a few feet of a 19-stone alpha male yesterday (and I am not talking about a fellow-student at the hostel!) She is doing a combination of trekking and sightseeing. I shan't rest until she is back home again, although she assures me it is all very civilised. She tells me via Skype that the locals are fascinated by the whiteness of her skin and colour of her red hair and complete strangers wave at her. Not sure whether that is a good sign or a bad one.

To distract me, I am knee-deep in solicitors' letters and questionnaires connected with my mother's house move. Am I taking the bath? As if! Am I taking the taps?  Errr, well I'm no plumber! Am I taking the curtains? The garden furniture? The list goes on and on and on. Does a neighbour's drain cross our land? How the *%*^£@ do I know? So far, in the space of 4 weeks, I have accumulated about 4 inches of paperwork with detailed searches, questionnaires and the like just from our solicitor, let alone theirs. It is such a long time since I bought or sold a house, I had not realised how intricate it has become. I am sure solicitors mention every little stone or twig lying around in case we should trip over them and say we never got told they were there and sue them, however it means they flag up just about every little thing of no importance. Current projections are that the move will happen some time in September, so it is full steam ahead to prepare and pack up or dispose of 6 decades of home-making, as we condense a spacious 4-bedroom house into a miniscule 1-bedroom retirement flat.

My mother celebrates her 90th birthday in two weeks' time and I am wracking my brain what to give her.  Bear in mind she is elderly (hence the 90th birthday!), disabled ,housebound, can't see very well and is down-sizing to a small flat, it does narrow things down a bit. I'm working on a photo album - a sort of "This is Your Life" theme to it and have been busy scanning old black and white photos of when she was a toddler or a wee young girl in Land Army Uniform right through to the present day. Apart from that, I haven't a clue. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Meanwhile the sun shines its head off and helps to slow me down a bit, but not enough to go outside and sit in it. Maybe by December I'll get some free time..... but, oh, wait a minute, it'll be Christmas and there'll be presents  and food to get in. There's never a dull moment.

Dying for a drink

It was so sad to read that Paul Gascoigne is back on the drink again so soon after his recent rehab in the USA. With rehab, there is always the hope that this is going to be the one miracle cure that works to stop the alcoholic drinking ever again. I'm not entirely sure what the exact statistics are, but I read somewhere that only one in ten alcoholics ever kick the habit completely. It looks like Paul is going to be one of those other statistics - the number of liver failure deaths - along with the likes of George Best, my Greg and countless others.

Another shocking story this weekend was of the Alsatian who had to be carried out of a car, having been left in the searing heat for an hour. When will the dumbhead owners finally understand? YOU CANNOT LEAVE AN ANIMAL OR CHILD IN A CAR IN THE SUN OR EVEN IN CLOUD IN HIGH TEMPEATURES FOR EVEN FIVE MINUTES LET ALONE AN HOUR. You know what it is like to return to a car that has been left in the sun for a while to know how hot it can get. To leave a child or dog in there for over an hour is unforgivable and totally beyond my comprehension.

Always something there to remind me

Last week was our wedding anniversary. It would have been our 37th. We married in that other heatwave year of 1976. I often wonder how much longer I am going to be looking backwards rather than forwards every time there is an anniversary, birthday or other occasion. I do try to look forwards, but life sometimes has a very forceful way of reminding me of the past.

Kay is off shortly to the other side of the world for a 3-week holiday and when she gets back to the UK she is going to a music festival. She wanted me to dig out our 8-man tent, which has not been used for at least 5 years, so that she and her friends can all share one tent at the festival. Not sure where it was and where its components (poles, sleeping compartments, pegs) were, we decided yesterday to a) find it; b) put it up to see what, if anything, was missing; and c) waterproof it in preparation for when she would need it in a few weeks.

Greg and I were avid campers and we used to take Kay on many a camping holiday when she was growing up. Over the years we have accumulated 4 different-sized tents, so it was essential I find the right tent and the right poles and the right sleeping compartments. It meant digging deep into an old tea chest we keep in the garage with such things in.  I have not needed to go there since Greg died. To my horror,

 

this

 

is what I found

 

tucked in amongst the tent poles.....

 

 

10 bottles of whisky!

Just when I feel I am getting on top of things, something comes along to kick me in the sides and remind me!

Senior Apprentice

What a week, and I'm not just talking about the marvellous news about Andy Murray's exhausting great win or the sight of Abu Qatada leaving English soil!

It started last weekend, when I drove down with Kay to my mother's house. My mother has not been surviving at all well on her own since I took her back home three weeks ago. She had been in too much pain to cook or even eat, so I was on a mission to bring her to London again for some more intensive care with me. (I had only taken her home in the first place because she needed to be at an appointment, but she had insisted she could cope alone, so I had left her there). While I was with her this week, in less than twelve hours I managed to sell her house on the coast (without the use of an agent), buy her a retirement flat close to me and buy Kay a first car. Each single transaction was loaded with research, paperwork and a great deal of talking. Not bad results for a day's work. So, move over, Lord Sugar. Here's one senior apprentice, who's apparently still got the business savvy in her!

In all fairness, I did involve an estate agent in the end, as I had two very keen people fighting over mum's house and I could see it was getting a bit difficult to untangle the web. If all goes smoothly (what house purchase ever does), fingers crossed, my mother could be permanently living near me within about 8 weeks. There are no chains either side of the deal, so fingers crossed.

Kay drove her newly acquired first car (a ten-year-old Corsa which was beautifully valeted and serviced to within an inch of its life) behind me and managed the 60-mile drive back to London effortlessly, including sheep wandering all over the road in the Ashdown Forest and a tramp wandering down the middle of the road somewhere in deepest Kent.  She had some good news to celebrate too. She got a First for her dissertation at the end of her intercalated year and a 2:1 for her science-degree-all-in-a-year. One very proud mum here!

On Saturday, we went to the New Designers exhibition at Islington to see my nephew (who has just graduated from uni with a Product Design degree). He was exhibiting his idea to adapt a car to take a wheelchair as the driving seat. It was very interesting to see so many varied designers of the future there with their prototypes on display.

I looked out for Lord Sugar to snap me up, but I didn't see him. Shame.... he doesn't know what he's missing.

Wild at Heart (of London)

This mother and her cubs have been playing in my garden over the last few weeks. You would never guess you are in the heart of London. In fact, my niece who lives in the countryside of Lincolnshire saw her first fox ever when she visited me in London a few years ago.

Living the High Life

One of my patients has been discharged from my care - I took my mother home a few days ago. She is not completely better, but had to return home for a long-standing appointment and wanted to try to fend for herself once more. I suspect she is not eating as well and has returned to taking the easy option of drinking a glass of Complan rather than even micro-waving a ready meal. I still have the canine patient, but he's chugging along.

On Saturday, Kay and I managed to escape for a bit of mother and daughter time and shared the company of Elizabeth McGovern, better known as Cora, Lady Grantham, of Downton Abbey fame. Actually she was playing the guitar and singing at the Taste of London, a food festival which has been in London's Regent Park over the last four days.

There was a lot to see, do and sample.

This attractive display of carved fruit and vegetables caught our eye, particularly the carved marrow and water melons.

Thai dancers entertaining in the Thai food section.

The Baker Brothers showing off a new arrival to their family, hopefully not part of the ingredients for their recipe demonstrations!

  

Antonio Carluccio discussing gnocchi with fellow chef Gennaro Contaldo

  Elizabeth McGovern strutting her stuff. You can hear her here.

We  staggered home with lots of free samples and tummies full of several celebrity-chef taster lunches, including some beautiful Thai signature dishes. It certainly made up for the weeks of hard slog, caring for my patients.

Kay passed her driving test a couple of months ago and also sat the Pass Plus test a few weeks ago, getting a bit of practice on motorways. At 22, she is certainly not as young as she could be and, as a medical student, has her head screwed on, so it was with some degree of shock that we started to hunt for a  first car for her.  Nothing too expensive. Just a reasonable run-around to practice and perfect her driving skills, yet nothing too cheap, as she would need to travel between London and The North with it, as well as regularly travel to medical placements within a 30-mile radius of her uni.

Finding a car itself is no problem. There are quite a few to be had within our chosen price bracket of £3,000 - £4,000. But typing in the number plates of those on the short-list to find out the insurance premiums is another matter.  These, for example, are the options for annual cover on a nine-year-old Vauxhall Corsa.

What 18-year-old would pay £12,693 per year to cover a geriatric Corsa worth about £3,000? It defies belief. (Apparently it reduces a bit if she adds me as a named driver on her policy, even if I don't ever set foot in it.)  Maybe Lady Grantham can lend us her chauffeur. At those prices, it would be almost as cheap.

Crying Wolf

picture courtesy of www.firstpeople.us

 

Thank you so much for all your comments and well wishes. I wish I could thank you individually but I have been seriously chasing my tail over these last few weeks. Both my patients continue to require 150% of my time and, as you know that is nigh impossible, unless you run yourself flat into the ground, which is pretty much what I am doing.

My mother has been with me for five weeks now and it is  six weeks since she had the fall. Sadly she is still in a lot of pain. I have taken her twice to our local Accident and Emergency Department (once at the three-week stage and again at the five-week stage)  to see if anything else had been overlooked, but each time they confirmed that all else seemed to be in order  and that she "just" has cracked ribs which will take many weeks to heal, especially at her age. The trouble is she has also had a flare-up of gastric trouble, because of all the painkillers she is taking, and is not eating, feels nauseous and has terrible indigestion. I did wonder at one point whether some vital abdominal organ had been punctured by a jagged rib, but with six x-rays on her spine/ribs and a further two x-rays on her abdomen, as well as an ultrasound scan, nothing alarming  was found, although the utterly charming Italian doctor said to my 90-year-old mum "we are just looking for babies"!  She has now been put on the very strong painkiller Tramadol which is helping to blot out the pain by rendering her comatose most of the time. Meanwhile, I run up and down the stairs in my lighthouse-like domicile with cups of tea, meals, snippets of news, a plump of the pillow and the drugs trolley. At least it's keeping me slim!

My other patient, Snoopy the dog, has been on the critical list. In fact on Bank Holiday Monday, when Kay was home for the long weekend, we were 95% on the way to the vet to have him put down. He was not eating, not drinking (which considering he now has kidney failure to add to his woes, it is essential he drinks), he was lying listless on his bed and occasionally trembling, we presumed in pain. The vet had very kindly left his mobile number on his surgery answer-machine - strictly for emergencies - so we texted him for advice and he agreed to come out to  the practice to do the deed. However, as one very last resort, I gave Snoopy a canine painkiller and within a hour or so, he had completely rallied round and was looking lively and full of geriatric zest. Since then it has been a bit of a roller-coaster, resembling a Whitehall farce.  Because of his incontinence, I have washed his bedding and sofa covers almost on a twice-daily basis, bought toddler nappies  for him to wear at night, but having to cut holes in them to accommodate his tail has meant wads of disintegrating nappy lining blowing around the room like tumbleweed in the morning. He has thrown up on carpets, come in from weeing in the garden and then, only once safely inside,  absent-mindedly pooed on the kitchen floor and looked so endearingly at me that I could not possible contemplate euthanasia. Talk about crying wolf!

My mother has my bedroom, as it has an en suite bathroom all on one level which she can manage comfortably. She sits in my lounge chair as it is the only one she can get in and out of without too much pain. The dog wees on all the others. I sit and sleep where I can - at one stage on a 1" camping mattress on the kitchen floor so that Snoopy, who has separation anxiety and always has to be in glancing distance of me, had quick access to the garden at night, when he was at his lowest point.  I felt like Cinderella sharing quarters with Little Red Riding Hood's wolf. And so you see how enriched my life is, right now, and why I haven't been blogging. Hope things are better in your neck of the woods.

Nurse Addy

If my blog dries up over the next few weeks or my comments on yours seem less frequent, please forgive me. I have my nurse's uniform on. Before you go getting all overheated and excited, I am talking metaphorically of course. I currently have two patients in my charge.

The first patient is my elderly mother who has still not recovered from her fall and three weeks on is in fact in tremendous pain. I collected her at the beginning of the week and brought her back to my house to care for her. She has cracked her ribs and so, according to most websites, the healing process usually takes 4-6 weeks. She's pretty much bedbound at the moment, so I am getting lots of exercise running up and down all the many stairs (4 flights) twixt kitchen and her bedroom with every cup of tea let alone trays of meals.

The other patient is Snoopy, the dog. At fourteen years old, he is in reasonable condition, bar the chronic gastric problem he has, but he has now added excessive drinking and incontinence to his symptoms. He cannot control his output either on his bed at night or on the sofa during the day, despite hourly visits to the garden. This morning found me running around behind him in the garden to collect a urine specimen (bet the neighbours thought I was one crazy lady) and then taking him to the vet. The vet has ruled out diabetes but the shortlist is that he has either a bladder infection or (more likely) the beginnings of kidney failure. An antibiotic injection has dealt with the possibility of an infection, but if it is kidney failure, my washing machine is going to have to man up and cope with the daily sofa cover and dogbed cover washing!

At the moment, I am less like this

and more like this

Bridge over troubled waters (or in this case a railway)

I had to take my car for an MOT test today, so left it at the garage and walked about a mile or so home to wait for the call to collect it again. Near where I live is a little hump-back bridge over the railway. It is often the scene of many a road rage scene. The road narrows just before the bridge on either side so that the road over the bridge is just one-car width. There is a road sign denoting who has priority to cross, should two cars arrive at once from opposite directions. However because of the rise of the hump, it is often quite difficult to see who is coming from the opposite direction.

However, some people don't put their brain into gear when they approach that bridge and use the priority arrow to mean carte blanche for them to go across the bridge without using any other consideration for anyone else. Even if someone from the red-arrow direction is three quarters of the way across the bridge before white arrow car comes hurtling along at great speed, white arrow car will more often than not force red-arrow car backwards three-quarters over the Bridge to their original start point!

 

At peak times, such as rush-hour or school-run times, it can get quite hairy, as people just don't use their heads. There are often arguments, gestures and I have even seen the occasional physical fight. Confrontations have happened to me in my car several times (quite recently I was red-arrow car going happily across the bridge with nothing in sight at all on the other side, when white-arrow car came hurtling along well over the 30 mph he should have been travelling at, in a souped-up, open-top Porsche and forced me three-quarters of the way backwards. My comments were unprintable!) If I had more time I would sit it out or even call the police, as in fact I did once before when Greg was still alive and sat beside me for moral support.  (The police's view by the way is that people should use common sense when approaching the bridge and not take the sign too literally).

 

It happened again today, as I walked over that bridge on my way back from the garage. A young woman in a VW Golf was white-arrow car trying to force some middle-aged man in red-arrow car three-quarters of the way backwards over the bridge. He remained cool, got out of his car, still three-quarters over (and blocking) the bridge, strode purposefully towards her car and said something to her. I was out of earshot so could not hear what he said, but behind each of the two opposing cars  a line of other cars was forming, tooting and honking their horns. The man then threw up his arms in mock horror, returned to his car and decided to back up over the bridge (as did all the cars following him), while white-arrow woman revved her engine and then proceeded to sail ceremoniously past him with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. I felt the sudden urge to tap my forehead with my finger at her as she passed me, to indicate what I thought of her. I don't wish her any harm, but can only hope that in the meantime a big pothole has swallowed her up.

 

Yes, the sign indicates who has priority if you both reach the bridge at the same time and there is any doubt about it, but it does not require you  to leave your brain behind and force backwards someone who is already three-quarters of the way across, just because you technically have priority and arrived well after them. I despair of the human race sometimes.

 

Oh yeah.... my aged car passed it's MOT for another year. Put the flags out!

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

When the Beatles first sang this song in 1967, I was a mere teenager of 17 years old. I couldn't imagine being 64. It seemed so ancient and so far away. Even when I married Greg just under 10 years later, the thought of us reaching 64 seemed out of this world. I always suspected we would still need one another and feed one another, when we did reach that milestone, as we were deeply in love. The years went by, sometimes too fast to hold on to. We lived in Germany, we returned to the UK, we climbed the first rung of the housing ladder, we coped with new and ever-demanding jobs and we had Kay. And still that deadline seemed far off.

Last week saw the date that would have been Greg's 64th birthday. "Will you still need me, will you still feed me?"   Now at long last I sadly know the answer.

Things that go bump in the night

I've been away from home for nearly two weeks, staying with my Mother  It's been a hectic two weeks. We were finally at the point where we could put her house on the market to start the long process of her moving back to London to be closer to me. I've been doing all sorts of jobs like weeding the garden for the umpteenth hundredth time, creosoting the fence and shed, washing net curtains, washing down paintwork, getting three agents to value the house and then picking one to proceed with the sale. Then we had to engage a firm to do the necessary Energy Performance Rating. So it's been one long round of hard work, organisation, paying out money and waiting for people to arrive. The house sale went online last Friday, will be in the local newspapers later this week and is already being sent out to prospective buyers in leaflet format. We had our first viewers visit on Sunday. There came a time in both our minds when we wondered if we were doing the right thing. My mother will be ninety this summer, so I do worry that this comes a bit late in her life to cope with a big move, selling a 4-bedroom house and massively downsizing to a warden-assisted one-bedroom retirement flat, thus having to dispose of extraneous furniture and a lifetime of memories. Even though I promised to do as much if not everything I could to take the load off her.

As if fate were reassuring us, albeit in a rather drastic fashion, I was awoken from a very heavy deep sleep (all this physical work has exhausted me at the end of each day) at 2am on Sunday night by my mother calling out to me. I staggered out of bed to find her slumped on the floor in the hallway splattered with blood. It appeared she had turned over in her sleep, was too close to the edge anyway and she had fallen out of bed onto the floor. In the process, she had bashed her face on the corner of the bedside table and couldn't get up again, because she has scoliosis - a back deformed by arthritis. She had shuffled on her bottom across her bedroom and out onto the landing to get to my room. Blood from her gashed face dripped down her nightdress. I  fetched a stool and managed to haul her into a sitting position up onto that and then to stand her up and assist her back to bed.  I got her to lie in the very middle of her double bed and surrounded her with a wall of pillows to stop her falling out again. We both slept fitfully in our separate rooms after that. I was due to return home on Monday but agreed to stay a few more days as, although nothing seemed broken, she was now in even more back pain than usual. She has never fallen out of bed in her life and cannot fathom why she has now, but I guess maybe the stress of the move had made her sleep in more turmoil than usual. However, one thing is clear, the move makes even more sense now. If anything happens in the future, she would be living 5 minutes away from me,  as opposed to the 2 hours she does now, with a warden on call if she fell.  A strange thing is fate.

One L of a Girl

Today is noteworthy of a celebration. Kay has just passed her driving test today - first time too. She's been learning on and off for the last two years... mainly off as she has had little time in-between her time-demanding university studies and raging social life to fit in lessons. Occasionally she and I have been out together with her at the wheel  (all those warnings of not teaching a relative to drive are true - we nearly murdered one another). She took the theory test just under two years ago, so the pressure was on to take the practical test before that two years was up, or else she had to resit the theory test - thus costing more time and ever more money over and above the arm and a leg it has already cost. One driving instructor down here in London, used to get Kay to drive to the part of London where the instructor lived and nip in and fetch things from the house. Not quite sure that was kosher, but never mind. The instructor who has been teaching her up north seems a bit more on the ball.  This week she's been juggling her driving test with finishing her dissertion and revising for end of year exams. She seems to thrive on pressure. She's just got to do the pass plus test now to get her up to speed, so to speak, with motorway driving and then I suppose I've got to conjure up a car with car insurance!!!  Now where's my magic wand?

Trouble in the Playground

It must be difficult when you look as if you have only just grown out of short trousers and you probably want to look a bit more macho if you are playing at being a leader of a nation, but Kim Jong-un is playing a very dangerous game. All this posturing would deserve an Oscar or Bafta, if it were purely for entertainment value, but this game is for real and people could get seriously hurt. Boys will be boys and I suspect he just wants to show off to everyone how big his conkers are (bet it's all talk). If he's not careful, he could end up in the headmaster's office. So someone should put him in the naughty corner NOW, before things get too out of hand.

Lest we forget

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day and London Daily Photo had posted a picture of the statue erected at London's Liverpool Street Station to commemorate the arrivals of the Kindertransport - a rescue mission to ship Jewish children from all over Europe to the UK to escape Nazi oppression.

photo by John Goodall

 

I have mentioned in the past that my father (aged 14) and his brother(aged 17) were two of these children.  Although their mother (my grandmother) had come from a Jewish family,  the family were not practising Jews and my grandmother had never even been in a synagogue in her life. She married my grandfather who was a Protestant Lutheran and raised their children as Lutherans.  In their early years they lived in Berlin, then later moved to a town near Dresden where the children grew up. Both were christened and confirmed.  However this was not enough to appease the strict Aryan codes of the Nazis and my father and his brother were excluded from partaking in anything their friends were expected to do, such as the Hitler Youth.  It became very apparent they were being side-lined.

 

Things came to a head in late 1938 when the Nazis came one evening and "arrested" my uncle. They took him to Buchenwald concentration camp where he spent three months. "Before and after photos" of him showed such a striking difference: in the "after photos", not only was he much thinner, but the fear in his eyes was palpable.  I was told he used to have to watch hangings and bury the dead. In that short time he also had a number tattooed on his arm, which I can still remember seeing as a small girl.

 

My German grandparents were middle class and had some standing in the community as well as wealth. They turned to the Lutheran church for help but their cries fell on deaf ears.  My grandfather somehow found out about the Quakers in England and the work they were doing to help Jewish children get over here. With connections and money he was able to "buy" my uncle out of Buchenwald on the understanding the family would leave Germany forever and never ever return. He set about organising the boys' passage to England in March 1939 with the Kindertransport.  When the boys arrived at Liverpool Street station, my 17-year-old  uncle was sent in one direction, my 14-year-old father in another, having to board a train to West Mersea in Essex. He was billeted on a farm to do light agricultural work. He spoke no English and the farmers were a Scottish family who only spoke Gaelic! He earned a few pence by doing extra work such as scrubbing out the stables, so he could afford  a few necessary things like toothpaste. He must have been so frightened. Months later my grandparents were able to get across to England as well, so the whole family were safely over here, when war was declared on Germany in September 1939. 

 

Eventually my father met a Land Girl, married and I was born five years after war ended, growing up as an English woman, studying German and even living in Germany both as a student and also when newly married to Greg. Ironically I have a good many German friends there now with whom I stay in contact.  As time passes, it would be easy to forget what happened all those years ago, but I shall always remember.... I owe it to my father and to the wider family on his side who were not so lucky to  escape the death camps.

Recoiled Spring

Looking out of my window for nine days out of ten, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we were not in the first throes of Spring, it having officially started on 20 March. It has been wall-to-wall grey skies punctuated with rain, rain, rain, or snow, snow, snow for weeks on end, nay,  months on end. Once in a very seldom blue moon, we have seen a strange yellow thing up in the sky, but it hasn't stuck around for long, preferring to hide behind the clouds for another few weeks or so. The thermometer seems to be stuck on single figures, mainly below 5 Centigrade and sometimes below zero.  This last weekend has seen non-stop snow. With the wind-chill factor, these last few days have even seen icicles on the trees in my garden.

It may not be Spring outside, but I decided it was high time I did something about it: I treated myself to a bunch of flowers. Something I never do, normally.  Now every time I enter the room, my spirits soar. It can do what it likes outside now. See if I care?

Here is The News

Felt kinda sad seeing the BBC lunchtime television news today. They were broadcasting for the first time from their super duper new newsroom, which incorporates BBC domestic radio news, BBC domestic TV news and BBC World Service. It now boasts to be the largest newsroom in the world housing 2,500 journalists under one roof with all the latest state of the art technology.

It's been a long time coming. It was first mooted  a good ten years ago when Greg was still working there. He could have been in that newsroom now, if he had opted to do the occasional shift after retirement, as a lot of journalists do. I used to visit him at work in the old World Service newsroom at Bush House (and that was pretty impressive) but this new one looks even more jaw-droppingly amazing, like a  giant satellite, and must be a real Tower of Babel, as all the foreign language services are there in the same room now.

Just another milestone he's missed out on. Along with many more.