Saturday 26th July - Be Warned!

We've been trying to sort out the affairs of a member of the family who has reached the point of being unable to live at their home any more.

It probably all started in a very small way - a heap of papers on the sideboard waiting to be sorted, a packet of biscuits that never quite made it into the biscuit tin, just dropping your hat and scarf and gloves on the chair that you never sit in...

The dining room and the sideboard

Not needing the dining room table for eating at, so it is demoted to being a "useful surface". (But why all the empty cardboard cups and half-eaten packets of cake and biscuits on and under the chairs?). Now, of course, you reach the stage of being unable to prepare food for your meals, and anyway you have lost the tin-opener;

The drawers in the chest of drawers in the bedrooms being too full to get anything else into, nowhere to put those books/magazines, (but why all those bus tickets, and heaps of timetables, and more biscuits and sweets and cakes?)

It is desperately sad for someone's life to reach this state, when you find it is better to go out every day and shut the door on the chaos of your house, and eat sandwiches and soup in cafes, and drink take-away hot chocolates and bottled water, and then at home, just to open another packet of biscuits or have a Kipling cake. She used to travel around on the buses, first to various interesting towns and tourist attractions, latterly to the same place, like a long-distance commuter going to work on a regular timetable.

What could we have done, if we had known, or guessed this was happening? She lives "across the water", a day of driving and a night of ferry travel away. Things had to come to a point, and then burst, to reach the right time for events to take over. Over the years we have suggested, nudged, encouraged her to think of moving "to a nice, comfortable flat", somewhere "easy to heat and look after", but have met with outrage at the very idea. The big, draughty, old-fashioned three-bedroom semi was her home, her nest, her haven.

She is now settled in an excellent care home, clean, cared-for, the desperate, over-whelming worries of food, heating, home maintenance, housework, personal cleanliness, laundry, all taken cake of. What was "eccentricity" and "dottiness" has tipped over into dementia, and she needs full-time care. We no longer need worry about her health, her well-being, and her safety.

This house will be cleared and eventually sold. We have rescued the things that she asked for - some pictures, some clothes, a lot of her photographs (there were thousands upon thousands, stuffed into drawers and cupboards). We have salvaged some family possessions - more pictures, family documents, "treasures" remembered from childhood for our own memories.

It has all been a fierce warning to me - regular readers will know of my own battle with clutter and tidiness, the "state of the dining room table", and the New Year's Resolution to take two bags to the charity shop every month. De-cluttering, and tidying, and clearing-up have all taken on a new priority in the face of what can happen if it gets totally out of control. Starting with our own dining-room table... (which isn't looking too bad at the moment, I'm pleased to say).

Friday 18th July - Retirement

Today is one of those days that demonstrates what "retirement" is all about

sharing household chores (I hoovered the bedroom which is a beast of a job - the carpet has gone to holes and so there are four rugs covering the floor-board bits, which each try and throttle the vacuum cleaner in turn, and he hoovered the rest of the house, which is all hard surfaces except for the rug by the settee. I loaded and emptied the washing machine, he emptied and reloaded the dishwasher)

sharing peace and quiet (an hour or so sat in the shade under the low branches of the apple tree, reading, having a cold drink, eating cake,)

time just pottering about (I am now halfway through hemming the borders of the quilt I started at the back on of last year, he was doing this and that and the other, here and there, upstairs and downstairs)

lunch together

shopping in town together (more drinks, more cake, watching the passers-by, feeling that we had earned this treat after the heavy work of the morning)

It's afternoon now, on the hottest day of the year so far. In twenty minutes my last piano pupil of term will arrive and play Debussy and Beethoven to me for half an hour.

La cathédrale engloutie

Sonata Pathétique,

We have to seize these moments, and write them into the memory, to have and to hold against the busy-ness that awaits us over the next couple of weeks. We will be cleaning and clearing a close family relative's house, sorting through things that she has been storing up over the last thirty or so years. Hunting for family treasures, rescuing things that may be important for her, choosing what can be saved, and what must be discarded. We will need to take everything; tools, cleaning materials, as we have no idea what state the house will be in.

Preparing for the expedition 

So, today is a day to remember, to write into my diary, not for anything special, not for some grand event. It's very ordinariness is what I want to keep, to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, as long as we both shall live.

Monday 14th July - like serving spaghetti

It is very hot work. But luckily we bought a Gen-U-Ine Tilley hat in Canada so at least he can look cool as well as try and be cool.

Cramming the remnants of the Russian Vine into the neighbour's garden waste bin (our own garden waste bin was already FTB) is a bit like trying to persuade spaghetti to make a neat pile on a plate. In the end he shoved a load into the bin, and chopped off all the bits that didn't fit. Just like spaghetti.

The garage and shed are now revealed in all their decrepitude. I think the shed-raising is postponed until next year now - too much to do before the end of the year (like getting the windows replaced before they all opt out of their own accord. Trust me, that is no exaggeration).

I brought the labourer a cup of tea. I hoped the picture might prove refreshing... 

 if not entirely seasonal.

In the end we used three bins - both neighbours had some space left in theirs. No collections for another fortnight so that means minimal garden waste production - or in other words, a bit of a respite?

Sunday 13th July - seen and heard

Seen:

As we were parking in one of the multi-storey carparks in town, a man parked opposite was fiddling around with the bonnet of his car. He reached inside, and fished out a small bedraggled kitten, a sort of grubby cream/grey colour. It looked vaguely oriental, and about three months old. It had traveled 20 miles in the engine - that's a few lives used up very early on in its life. I reckon it was reasonably OK as it was beginning to wriggle quite energetically. The people who had accidentally hi-jacked it took it to a local vet. I'm hoping this story will have a happy ending.


Heard:

We went for lunch in pret, and sat next to a family with two young children. "If this sunny weather keeps up, we might go to the beach tomorrow" said Dad. "Yes please" enthused 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old-son. "Oh you can't come, you have to go to school." said Dad. Sometimes family life is not all child-centred. Still, no tantrums ensued, so school can't be such a bad place.


Heard and Seen:

Swallows were scooting up and down the shopping streets at roof level, twisting and banking to zip round the corners from West Street into the Carfax, doing acrobatic landings among the chimneys and turrets of the shops. We heard them all chittering away first, and then could see them here, there, everywhere. No-one else appeared to be watching them do their "Red Arrows" stuff.

Picture of a swallow
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/swallow/index.aspx

picture of a swift
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/swift/index.aspx

Actually, now I come to look at some picture, they were probably swifts.

Friday 4th July - The Old Shed

Did you know we had a shed?

I think the "past tense" is very appropriate in that last sentence.

It's been there ever since we moved in, back in 1984. It used to have a workbench and a bicycle and various gardening bits and pieces stored inside.That was back in the days when it still had a roof and a door which could be opened and closed. Sadly, the paint wasn't strong enough to keep the door intact when the supporting Russian Vine got the chop.

last summer

The shed is on the right. Can't you see it? No, we couldn't see it either.

We aren't sure what's in the shed any more, but I think it is a mixture of rust, obnoxious garden chemicals, and rotten wood. The next task is to shovel the detritus into a sack and take it to the tip. The roof needs a more specialist disposal procedure as it is asbestos sheeting - relatively stable at the moment, as long as we don't start chopping it up.

It's another significant step along the long road to reclaiming the garden and replacing the garage with a Real Shed. There will be NO MORE Russian Vine. That is, if we do manage to get rid of it.

Saturday 5th July - Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care

"Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
It is of such fundamental importance to the human condition that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were deemed to be unalienable rights by the United States Declaration of Independence."                                             wikipedia

I ran out of happiness, briefly, on Friday afternoon. Apparently, according to the-man-who-knows-me-all-too-well, this is a fairly standard occurrence at this point in the Summer Term. In the last few weeks, my normal schedule goes completely haywire, and extra events like concerts and exams get shoe-horned in. He says I become a ticking time-bomb. It is not a case of "will she explode?" but "when will she explode?", and unfortunately there is no knowing what will set me off.

Perhaps I should put one of these on my Christmas list:

The happiness blanket monitors brain activity and displays it on the fibre optic blanket. It has been tested by British Airways on recent flights. It glows red if the passenger is stressed. 

http://www.gizmag.com/british-airways-tests-happiness-blanket/32799/pictures

Last week I was also dealing with 


the non-arrival (again, that's EVERY time this year so far!) of the home delivery of one of the various potions I take every day, 

re-arranging my teaching schedule for this week to be able to get to London for hospital appointments (I suspect that an oesophagual manometry examination is going to be every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds)

concerns that now the drug trial I have been on has ended, and the drug is licensed as an effective treatment for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, I have been told that I won't be continuing on the drug after all (WHAT! take me off a drug that has been proved to work?!?)

Trying to sort out my school teaching schedule for next year, involving discussions with schools, "the office" and complicated calculations about travelling times between various villages and towns


There are also all the various family "goings-on" that are "on-going" at the moment.



Well, the last straw was small and almost weightless, and it gently floated down out of the blue and landed on Friday afternoon.

I did a bit of shouting, ate my supper (thank you, lovely man, for making it for me), said hello to my son who had come for a driving weekend, and went to bed.  

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/sleepy-kittens-download-theme

Everything was much, much better in the morning.

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.                                                  Macbeth, Act 2, scene 2