Symbolism

This is what I hope Moll and I will be doing all next week. Playing and relaxing and having FUN.

But first of all, I have had an unwanted visitor who I feared was coming away with us tomorrow.

She was irksome, painful, and like a greedy fledgeling, ate and ate, growing larger and redder as the days went by. Antibiotics were prescribed – the first lot disagreed with me, so we tried another lot.

By yesterday afternoon my visitor was huge, throbbing and it was difficult to talk.
Then, as I met a friend last night, we started talking about our worst fears. I cried. As you do. She hugged me, proved what a wonderful friend she is and I cried some more.

I got back, had supper with Himself and we talked about love and cuddles and what they mean, how important they are.

“Like an internal memo,” said Himself. “We can use them to express how we feel just with actions.”

I hugged that thought to me (and actually didn’t cry) and later, as I brushed my teeth, I felt something in my mouth burst. I won’t go into the gory details, but I started trembling and laughing with relief and wonder.

My abscess had burst.

This morning my poor battered gum is almost flat and my relief is as great as the sunshine streaming through the windows.

And on that note I will bid you au revoir – we are off tomorrow for a week. A week away from work, computers and everything else. It will no doubt rain but what the hell?

PS I have just read Elizabeth Berg's latest blog (see link on side bar, links don't seem to be working) and she says, "All people need is recipes, and to be love and be loved. And dogs."

Being somewhat of a philistine when it comes to food, I would omit the recipes but wholeheartedly endorse the rest of it. What do you think?

Jack and the Beanstalk

This is principally for my dear friend Carole who bought me some broad bean plants several weeks ago.

I’ve never grown them before, but look - SUCCESS!

Don’t think I’ll be harvesting a huge crop this year, but I am so chuffed that ANYTHING has come up.

On a completely different subject, Shelagh sent me the following quote which I think is so true.

Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the
letting of a little water.
Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

Here’s hoping your hearts are light as a fluffy cloud.

And if they aren’t, that you are able to get some relief.

The good, the bad and - the beautiful

The good news – well, you know my good news. And the weather has to be the best this year. Cornwall looks breathtakingly beautiful, and on Saturday Moll and I walked down through Mylor Churchyard where a wedding was about to take place. The granite posts had been decorated with bunches of the palest pink and white roses, and pink rosebuds had been tied to each stake on the wrought iron gate at the entrance to the church.

Walking past the wine bar there, we saw a lot of smart bods in morning suits and flowery dresses, huge hats and too high heels. Short haircuts and nervous smiles, braying laughs and posy sun shades. I had to make sure we got back to see the bride, who looked stunningly happy, but appeared to be wearing a long cream sundress. Just as well it was so hot.

The bad news for Himself started with a tummy bug on Friday afternoon. He insisted on taking me to the pub to celebrate but he was very pale and had spent most of the afternoon dashing to the bathroom poor love. We stayed for one drink and came home.

He went to bed early but the tummy bug has persisted all weekend, and the poor darling looks ashen, his voice has become croaky as if through lack of use, and he’s so weak he can hardly walk.

Typically, we have scaffolding going up outside the whole house and Himself and his mate are due to start work on Tuesday to repair large chunks of the top flat, move all the TV aerials and paint the entire frontage. In the state he’s in at the moment it’s as much as he can do to stagger down the corridor. We can only hope that Monday brings an end to it – or at least an improvement.

As for the beautiful? Well, my Moll has had a shower so her coat gleams, her eyelashes sweep majestically down her face in the most artfully coquettish gesture ever – did I tell you how incredibly long her eyelashes are? And apart from the fact that she needs her anal glans done (we won’t go into that right now), she is looking very beautiful.

Perhaps best of all, behind me comes the sweet, heady smell of a bunch of honeysuckle that I picked while walking along the coastal path on Friday afternoon. The lemony fragrance reminds me of an English garden full of the best of flowers: rich, pungent roses with petals like velvet, the fragile scent of sweet peas with their clever pastel shades, and of course my favourite honeysuckle, twisting its way up a warm stone wall.

GIVE ME TIME

Many thanks for all your kind and helpful advice regarding sleeping. I am trying all of them (apart from Salman Rushdie which I can't face, Graham!)

The good news is that I've finished the first draft of my novel, GIVE ME TIME!!!
And the picture is of the woods where my protagonist goes to play his cornet.

I'm shaking with adrenaline, know I've got a lot of editing to do, but the foundations are down. I will now leave it to settle for a few weeks and begin the hard work....

Have a great weekend everyone!

Insomniacs Unite

The above is a Soothing Picture which is what I need, for I'm afraid I have another moan now - this is turning into Flowerpot Hypochondriac Week. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

First I’ve had a moan about my deafness which is, I’m glad to say, cured as of Monday afternoon. Everything sounds so LOUD now. As I type even the keyboard rattles with a musical rhythm like tap dancing fingers.

The other thing that has been bothering me is sleep – or rather the lack of it. I’m an eight hour a night person and have never suffered from lack of sleep before, but for the last month or so (probably longer) I have been waking up at 3 or 4am and can’t get back to sleep.

The reason for this initial crisis was pressure from work which has now sorted out, I’m glad to say. But the habit seems to have continued.

My GP said my body clock had got out of balance and to take some sleeping pills (we had some from Superdrug) for 3 or 4 nights and that should do the trick. I tried it and it didn’t, so she prescribed me some which, she assured me, would not give me a hangover in the morning. Wrong. I felt utterly hyped up and paranoid all day and decided it was a high price to pay for a few extra hours sleep.

Last week I managed one night of 7 hours sleep and then went back to waking very early so I had one night of that, then took a pill the next night and so on. The trouble is now I’ve started worrying about not sleeping which makes matters even worse.
I’ve been told about deep breathing techniques which I tried but last night made not the faintest difference. I tried reading for an hour, felt tired but couldn’t sleep. Then it’s light at 5am and the animals decide they want their breakfast – you get the picture.

Now the idea of going to bed worries me because I suspect I might have another 4 hours of lying there tossing and turning.

Himself said, ‘Take the pills for a week and that might kick you back into gear.’ My GP agreed. But I don’t like the idea of taking pills – not that they’re addictive but because they make me feel gloopy in the morning and I hate that.

What I need to do is re-programme my brain. But how? Any ideas anyone?

Sorry - what did you say?

It’s not often I long for the weekend to be over, but this one I was counting down the hours till 10 past 4 this afternoon.

I’ve gone deaf – sorry, hard of hearing - you see. This happens on a regular occurrence because I have narrow entrances to my ears and when too much wax builds up, my ears need to be syringed. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, but in order for it to happen, I have to put oil in my ears for 5 days before hand. This means that the wax tends to clog up my ears, I feel a huge pressure round my sinuses and inside my head, and frankly Monday afternoon cannot come round soon enough.

As luck would have it, on Friday morning I had to do a phone interview with a consultant. Tricky when you can’t hear the other person well. So I had to start off by saying, “I’M REALLY SORRY BUT I’VE GOT BLOCKED UP EARS AND CAN’T HEAR VERY WELL.”

“THAT’S ALL RIGHT,” he said. “I’LL SHOUT!”

Which he did. And in fact it was fascinating – and I was taping it in case I missed anything - but that’s another story.

Being deaf is a strange experience. Other worldly. Isolating. Removed. All these things. I’m not entirely deaf, of course, but the little I can hear comes from the end of a very long tunnel. If one of my ears pops, I jump, realising how incredibly noisy the radio is, or Mollie’s bark.

Everyday things that I’ve taken for granted suddenly become impossible, or at best far reaching. I start to try and work out what people are saying by watching their mouths. It makes me miserable and weepy. I feel like a little girl, wanting someone to sort it all out for me.

I often think how terrible it must be to lose your sight, but being deaf would run a close second.

Meanwhile roll on 10 past 4 this afternoon…

The Credit Crunch

These are Gloucester Old Spot piggies, and the picture was taken at the tenth anniversary of the Truro Farmers’ Market a few weeks ago. Himself and I are both much enamoured by pigs – in fact he stood there and watched them quite contentedly for ages….

I heard yesterday that our local animal rescue centre has been badly hit by the credit crunch. They have noticed a big increase in the number of dogs being dropped off by distraught owners no longer able to keep their beloved pets.

The reasons include:-

Having to move into rented accommodation and most landlords won’t allow pets.

Having to work longer hours in order to pay bills, so the dog is left alone for 8 or 10 hours. Dogs are sociable creatures and need company; they can become destructive if left alone for too long.

People not able to cope with food, vet’s bills and/or insurance for their dogs.

I find this so sad, and it must be agonising working in an animal rescue centre. The only time I’ve ever been, I had to be hauled out in tears and taken for a cup of tea to get myself back together again. Seeing those poor animals who’d been badly treated, or abandoned, or both – don’t start me on that.

I have to say, it’s cheaper for us to feed Mollie per week than Bussie, but then Himself insists on feeding Bussie every time he goes into the kitchen. He sits by the biscuit cupboard – Bussie this is – with the most implacable stare. You can almost hear him saying, “Open the ***ing cupboard you silly fool.”

I glare at him, say NO and give him a stroke.
Himself says, “Oh, all right,” and gives him another plate of biscuits.

None of our pets are insured (she says, touching wood quickly) – having a scruffy mongrel like Mollie means that she is much less likely to have health problems than a pedigree dog – inbreeding tends to cause these sort of problems. And Bussie? Well, he’s a scruffy old farm cat. He did need vet treatment last year when he got an abscess following a fight he’d been in, but thankfully the treatment wasn’t for long.

It just shows that this credit crunch is hitting everyone. Not just you and me but our pets as well.