Saturday 30th November - Thank heavens for that

Calendar page for November with a miniature of a nobleman returning from a hunt, from the Golf Book (Book of Hours, Use of Rome), - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/11/a-calendar-page-for-november-2013.html#sthash.SSWQvaxE.dpuf

The LAST DAY of NOVEMBER

so don't expect any more DAILY posts for another year!

It's been a bit of a slog this time round with quite a few fails.

There have been phases in my life when I have kept a written diary - sometimes for as long as a couple of months. In the end, though, life, and time, and events overtake me, and the daily duty gets set aside in favour of more important things, like sleep.


Calendar page for November with a bas-de-page scene of men on a hunt, from the Golf Book (Book of Hours, Use of Rome), - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/11/a-calendar-page-for-november-2013.html#sthash.SSWQvaxE.dpuf

These diaries of mine are in various notebooks and journals scattered all over the house. I came across an old one recently - probably dating back to 2005-ish - I can't remember the details exactly. The thing is, so much happens, so much goes on, that within even just a couple of days I will have forgotten most of what happened last week or yesterday, or even this morning.

I have spent an intense day, today, working with a colleague teaching 30 children aged 8 to 11 years improvisation and composition skills. It's been a good time, and the children managed really well, especially considering that some of the younger ones had only been learning their instrument since September. I got home an hour and a half ago, sat and had a coffee and a biscuit, and already today is a distant memory, shoved to the back of the head as I am down for teaching Sunday School tomorrow and playing the organ at the early service and we still haven't done the weekly shopping and I must remember to fill the car with petrol and put a load in the washing machine and iron three shirts and pay my Barclaycard bill and do a zillion and one things before bedtime tonight.........

The good thing about keeping a diary, I mean the journal sort, not the appointment sort, is that you get a chance to go through the events of the day and remember what happened and take stock. The bad thing is when it becomes some kind of obsessive duty that takes over your life and limits your freedom to career through the day. You choose.

Friday 22nd November - 5 stages of change

Oh HeAVENS tO bETtSY. iT IS SO infuriating when I go to the trouble of writing a post and then don't click on PUBLISH. And what's up with capslock? Oh ok I see. Fixed. false Alarm (Saturday 23rd November)  

An unexpectedly serious post today ...



And one of the bloggers I follow added "and whisky" to this cartoon!

If you have anything to do with Change Management in your working life, then you will be familiar with the following summary of the 5 phases that people faced with CHANGE go through;

1. Shock (Denial)

2. Emotion (Anger)

3. Bargaining (If I do this then I achieve that - a kind of personal horse-trading)

4. Grief at loss (It isn't fair)

5. Acceptance (in two parts; Intellectual AND Emotional)

By Change, I don't mean change that you have chosen - like an exciting job opportunity abroad, or new career direction, or having a baby. I mean Change that is forced upon you, without your consent, maybe even without any kind of warning.

These stages can be written in different ways, but that's what they basically boil down to. By change, I mean anything from a change in working practices (I've been through that), to being made redundant (I've been through that too) or the effects of serious illness (I face up to this every day).

And I can honestly say that the above 5 stages broadly represent what everyone facing Change has to deal with. All our family - the Offsprings, and Best Beloved - have had personal experience of Change, ranging from minor to catastrophic. Best Beloved's work over the past twenty years has been, in one way and another, one of Managing Change, and leading all kinds of people, some Very Senior, and some Very Junior, through these stages.  

I think that people these days have a greater understanding of the issues surrounding "life-changing events" than maybe was possible in the old traditional "stiff upper lip" era. These days, one can express one's feelings without being told to "Pull yourself together" and "Exercise Self-Control". The advantage is that one can progress through these stages with  more awareness of what is happening to yourself.

Most people get caught in one or other of these stages for a period of months, even years. Some people manage to recognise what is going on, and move through more quickly - it's still a struggle. There is no panacea, no magic pill, to get you through the process of accepting the consequences, emotional and intellectual, of The Change.

Arriving at "Acceptance" isn't the same as "giving up", or "giving in". It means arriving at the stage where you are able to work with what you have, rather than constantly fighting to restore the un-restorable.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine



Living and moving and working through Change is exhausting. It isn't a fun or nice or welcome experience. It is debilitating. It isn't easy. But it is a consequence of being alive, of being human, of having feelings.

The past year, living through the aftershocks of my mother's stroke have been like a copy-book exercise in Change Management for every member of the family.

Meanwhile, could you just pour me another glass of wine? (I don't care for whisky).

Sunday 28th April - the Lodore Falls

We stayed in the Lake District when I was about ten years old, and climbed Scafell in the late Easter snow,






and ate Kendal Mint Cake,



and visited the Lodore Falls.



I have a feeling it might have been raining n the day we went to the Lodore Falls - my memory is very indistinct. I have an impression of a dark, damp, thundery valley full of slippery boulders and drenching spray. I have a feeling we were actually able to climb up over the rocks back then; it would have been sometime in the 1960s.

This morning -  well, it started yesterday morning - I found myself in the Vale of Tears. Grief for everything has arrived - for hopes, for dreams, for the futures imagined but which will not be as I wanted for me and my family.

I knew it would come sooner or later. For the most part I have managed to be strong, to keep it together, to give and give and give, and find and replenish my own stores of resilience in order to give again.

I wanted to post about being in the Vale of Tears, and feeling like a human waterfall. I was looking for a suitable illustration, but I wanted a British waterfall, not some huge and grandiose African or American one. I Googled for waterfalls in the Lake District, and that's how I unearthed this memory f that holiday all those years ago.  

So now my personal waterfall has ceased, and I am replenishing my inner well of happiness ready for the next time with a reservoir of good things. Sunshine. Real Coffee. Happy Memories. Beautiful Scenery.

I've also discovered this poem by Robert Southey:
                   

"The Cataract of Lodore" is a poem written in 1820 by the English poet Robert Southey^[1] which describes the Lodore Falls on the Watendlath Beck just above Derwent Water in Cumbria, England. The poem is a masterpiece of onomatopoeia, employing some of the most clever and evocative language ever used to describe a natural feature. When seen in its entire form, the body of the poem does look like a waterfall.

"How does the water
Come down at Lodore?"
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And 'twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.

From its sources which well
In the tarn on the fell;
From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For a while, till it sleeps
In its own little lake.
And thence at departing,
Awakening and starting,
It runs through the reeds,
And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,
In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-skurry.
Here it comes sparkling,
And there it lies darkling;
Now smoking and frothing
Its tumult and wrath in,
Till, in this rapid race
On which it is bent,
It reaches the place
Of its steep descent.

The cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war waging
Its caverns and rocks among;
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound:
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.

Collecting, projecting,
Receding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining,
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring and roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and going,
And running and stunning,
And foaming and roaming,
And dinning and spinning,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And guggling and struggling,
And heaving and cleaving,
And moaning and groaning;

And glittering and frittering,
And gathering and feathering,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hurrying and skurrying,
And thundering and floundering;

Dividing and gliding and sliding,
And falling and brawling and sprawling,
And driving and riving and striving,
And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
And sounding and bounding and rounding,
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
And clattering and battering and shattering;

Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending
All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar, -
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

Saturday 13th April - The Weekend! On your Marks...

So, here's the program for today, Saturday:

8:30   Husband leaves to take daughter to the station - she has the chance of a morning's overtime
9:00   Husband continues into town to get his hair cut. Meanwhile I settle down at the lap-top to catch up with the lesson planning I need to get done for the new term
10:00 Husband reappears (with tidy hair-cut and neatly trimmed beard) and the pair of us zoom off to collect a shirt which has been repaired, find a suitable protective case for my new mp3 player (the local stores don't have any), try and find him a new pair of shoes as his weekend shoes have started squelching in wet weather), and buy the "marinated ham, about the size of a small fist", and some parma ham and Serrano ham, sold by Lidl which my mother has been after for several weeks now.

The location for dealing with all these errands is about an hour's drive away, which means that we get to spend some uninterrupted time in each other's company.

10:45 We arrive at the retail park on the edge of the city. It is raining, but we don't care - much. The first three shops fail to produce the mp3 cover, but the expedition to Lidl is successful - we hope.
11:10  We relocate to the theatre car park, pick up the shirt, check the shoes in that shop - no luck. Brisk walk through the drizzle and check out two more shoe shops in quick succession. I'm in danger of being arrested anti-social behaviour as my patience with other pedestrians is running dangerously low. Dodging pedestrians we circle past a brass band playing a James Bond medley in the rain and go to Maison Blanc. They have the best coffee eclairs, so in spite of the restless bustle inside the café, I am happy.
11:30  With around 30 minutes left before we need to be heading for home, we stride down East Street to a camera shop. The brass band has dissolved - it is nowhere to be seen. Just a tuba case propped up against a pillar of the Butter Cross. At the far end of the street, I get a suitable case for my mp3 player, he gets a wrist strap for his camera. It is still raining. We zig-zag through the quiet backstreets, blessedly deserted.
12:00  Back at the car park. Homeward bound.
12:15  Having agreed to collect daughter from place of work at 1:30, we have just enough time to divert through a business estate to check out a supplier of home care equipment. We find the place - it is huge, and probably has everything anyone could every need. It is also closed.
1:35  Collect daughter, return to home town
2:00  Park in home town, go to shopping centre. By ready meals for parents, socks for husband, have 2:45  Lunch - toasted sandwiches.
3:20  It is still raining. Head across town towards shop to buy wheelchair rain-poncho.
4:15  Arrive at parent's flat, for FIRST WHEELCHAIR OUTING WITH MY MOTHER! Maybe a damp, squelchy Saturday afternoon is not the best day, but for various reasons, today's the day!
(It is raining!). My Mother is being prepared for the trip by the carers; gloves, scarf, thick warm socks. "Where's my lipstick? Can't go out without putting on some lipstick!"

All five of us embark upon a complex adventure.

My Father manages to manoeuvre himself and my mother and the wheelchair into the tiny lift. The wheelchair only fits in with the foot-rests removed. We go down the stairs carrying the foot rests and the poncho and a couple of umbrellas.

We arrive all together at the bottom, and parents and wheelchair emerge. Daughter holds the heavily sprung door open, while my Father extricates the two ramps from the locked store cupboard and sets them up. I replace the footrests and arrange the poncho over my mother. We are deliberately not providing much help, as the idea is to discover how easy or difficult it is going to be for my Father to manage.

It's a success - we are all outside. Now the ramps have to be replaced in the cupboard so that the door can be closed, and finally we are on the move. For a first outing, we are happy to go round to the front of the flats, look at the lake and the daffodils, and then return. (Ramps out of the cupboard and placed in the door way, push wheelchair up, ramps back into the cupboard, remove footrests, manoeuvre into the lift), we trot up the stairs, Aaaargh - the front wheels of the wheelchair have lodged themselves into the gap between the lift compartment and the landing. There is no way for my father to come round to free the wheels. We could easily solve the problem from the landing, but it is important to find a way out which does not need our help. (Correction to original post here in blue: There is a moment of  agitation; my Husband quickly assists by supporting my Mother's foot and moving it clear of the lift doors, and lifting the front wheel clear by brute force. My father could not see the problem fully - next time, we will know that what he needs to do is to squeeze himself against the back wall of the lift in order to pull the wheelchair back a smidgeon and tilt the front wheels up and all will well. This is what the exercise today is all about - discovering the problems and working out solutions when there is plenty of time, and there are plenty of us around to help.)
5:15  We are back in the flat.
5:30   Glass of sustenance in hand, we review the exercise, and plan how we will manage better next time. The adventure is pronounced a success. Parents are tired out, but triumphant.

6:ish   Husband, daughter and self leave.  

Then it was Evening, and Night time, and the Next Day.

Sunday won't be a day of rest either!

Monday 25th March - Life in Flatland

A brief long update on how my mother is getting on, for friends and family.


Maybe it should be on "how we are all getting on" - it affects all of us in one way or another.

She came back to the flat in the beginning of February, with carers coming in four times a day, some one living in for the first ten days to provide cover at night and for some of the day time (a private arrangement), and visits by all kinds of people; social workers, district nurses, the doctor, audiologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and others too numerous to keep track of. My father's calendar became covered in post it notes as the appointments for one day over flowed into the next. Each day seemed to be a ceaseless round of telephone calls, and making arrangements for this that and the other, including getting out to do the shopping.
"The sight of your father with a garlic press - well, that is something to behold" commented my mother as he wrestled with producing delicious meals...

I went in whenever I could - before starting work, or in a lunchtime gap between schools, and at weekends. My brother drove down for a couple of days, or even just a day, most weeks. Our cousin came over from France for a long weekend.   

Night-times, to begin with, were very difficult. The various medications made my mother confused and also seemed to cause vivid and disturbing dreams; one night she managed to completely turn herself round in bed so that her head end was at the foot and and vice versa - how did she manage that, when she is unable to use her left arm and leg? And however did they manage to turn her round again? Every couple of days would bring a new problem which needed sorting.

Steadily, over the weeks, an enormous improvement has taken place. The physiotherapists have been brilliant, and arranged for the "string-em-up-in-a-hammock" style hoist to be replaced by one that eases the patient into a supported standing position. We have now been trained to use this hoist ourselves, or order to give my mother extra "standing up" practise between physiotherapy sessions. There is definite progress; last week in one session she was able to get from sitting in the wheelchair to standing, using the foot of the bed as a support. It took a fair bit of skill and effort from the physiotherapist - but whoopee - that's progress!

The first 6 weeks of "home" are over, and all the initial arrangements for care by the hospital have been replaced by the new "here's your budget, how will you spend it?" system. The new care team have been coming for five days now, and so far, so good. The physiotherapy exercises assigned for between visits are well underway too. It's a painful process; as well as the cramps that have plagued her since the very beginning, she is now gtting pins and needles, and burning sensations, and itching in the affected side of the body. This is good news in one way, as it means that the brain is trying to connect with the limbs. But it hurts!

The medications have been adjusted and the night times are less confused, and the overnight carer comes just once night a week to give my father a "night off". As my mother improves, he is able to become more relaxed - hopefully, he will be taking the opportunity to go out for a while when the carers are there in the morning - maybe shopping, maybe for a walk, maybe to just have a coffee and some time to "go offline". Meanwhile he is getting plenty of training in becoming a cook, under instruction from my mother. Roast lamb, roast chicken, home-made cottage pie  - and very occasionally the odd ready-meal!

I'm looking forward to warmer weather, when we can think about going out - squeezing the wheelchair into the lift the first few times will be a learning curve, because it is such an exact fit. Meanwhile my mother can watch the children running to and from school, keep an eye on the pigeons, birds and squirrels, and check out what the people in the flats opposite are doing (mostly ironing, or watching what their  neighbours are doing!)

Slowly, things are becoming more known, more understood, and, I can definitely say, better.

Friday 5th October - Autumnal Album Leaves



 I've played a number of piano pieces with names like "Album Leaves". I can think of one each by Schumann and Grieg for a start. They usually have a plaintive, nostalgic melody, in a minor key. I think of yellowed, faded photographs, days gone by, times past....




It's been very apposite just recently. Moving house means tripping over all sorts of photograph albums, ornaments, cups, clothes, that trigger memories that have been buried for many, many years.





Like this one, of me, and my grandmother, back in 1960 something.


 

Where was this, I wonder? I vaguely remember the day: I am wearing my "party dress"; grey Liberty silk, with little white daisies all over, and a little grey bow at the waist made from a couple of loops of grey and red silk. Everyone still wore gloves; I went to a convent prep school, and we all wore white gloves to school in summer (and straw hats, and blazers). I might be smiling for the camera, but inside, I was feeling mortified because I had spilt something on my dress.

Whose wedding was this? I remember a river nearby - the Thames? Was it in Henley? I have a picture of the bride and groom and best man and bridesmaids, but I have no idea who they are.





What should I do with the photographs? It seems rude to throw the bridal party into the bin, even though I don't know them. I wonder if they are still together, if they have been happy, these past forty or fifty years? 

Autumn leaves in the afternoon sunshine. The weather all last week was very kind to housemovers.

I have enjoyed looking through family photograph albums. There they all are, my parents, aunts and uncles, friends and family, at weddings, night clubs, parties... They all so look so incredibly glamorous, as though they are on the set of a James Bond film. "Oh, I remember that dress," says my mother. "It was beautiful, I loved that dress..."

Sunday 8th July - Fantasy project no 1 is now REAL!

As I posted earlier, my hours, from one of my various jobs, have been substantially reduced for the next school year. There are various reasons for this, most of which I know, many of which I accept, and some which make me speechless with fury, but - hey - that's how it is going to be, and so I have to "move on".

And "move on" is what I have done. I now have a "junk" samba kit, right beside me, cluttering up the space which is facetiously known as "the dining room". I can't remember when we last ate a meal at the table, but that;'s another story. There are enough "instruments" for over 30 people to have a thoroughly enjoyable time together playing authentic samba rhythms.

I am launching as a samba workshop provider NOW. The first school outing for the "junk" kit takes place tomorrow afternoon. There are surdo drums, home-made mallets (you can find instructions on how to do ANYTHING these days), tamborims, ganzas, claves, and even agogo bells all created from from bought and scavenged bits and pieces, and yards and yards of duct tape. I'm really pleased with the sound that the substitute instruments make. It's proof that all those weird looks I was getting while tapping and testing everything in garden centres, cookshops and junk shops all around the area were well worth it.

In due course I will buy a 15-player primary school kit, so that schools and groups have a chance to compare the sounds of the authentic and the "junk" instruments, and see how they could  make their own kits. I suspect that "junk" is where many samba bands started from originally; people searching for whatever would make a good sound, and joining together just for the joy of playing together.
 
Meanwhile, my "junk" kit is here - suitable for primary schools, youth groups, social groups (it's all light-weight) and church groups (let's give Psalm 150 a good work-out!)

Learning to play in a samba band is also a great way to focus on team-building and collaborative skills in business - no team-work, no samba....

So, if there is anyone out there in the West Sussex area (England!) who wants a samba workshop - contact me - leave a comment below, and I'll get back to you.

I'll launch formally on my music website www.themusicjungle.co.uk over the summer, but You heard it Here first!