What happened?

 

A visitor on Tuesday had brought me some flowers so I arranged them.  I have never claimed that flower arranging is one of my talents.  

I had a leisurely time doing puzzles.

Then I had a call from a friend who was very sad so I suggested she put the kettle on and I went to her.  

I had a couple of hours there just listening and came home in need of a snooze.

And somehow I just couldn't relax so I made soup.  A lot of soup.  

I remembered I had two hours of half price electricity so I did the laundry.

Then one friend rang.  And another called.  Then another rang.

So my day of quiet chilling didn't work out quite as planned.  But I am grateful to all my friends.  I felt loved, needed, appreciated. 

And guess what?  There's nothing in my diary today.  I can choose how to spend each and every minute.  😉

5th July 2014

 

That was the date I started this blog.

I'd been reading other people's blogs for some time before I decided to take the plunge.  Many of my favourite blogs from those days have disappeared - Frugal Queen (I watch her videos on YouTube now), Mama's Mercantile, Baroness Prudent Spending, $12 a day to name a few.  I think the blog I have been reading longest is Tracing Rainbows, where the incredible Ang writes a post EVERY day!

I've met a few bloggers: Ang as mentioned above, Elizabeth from Small Moments, Flis from An Englishwoman and her Dog, and several others who are no longer blogging.  I've had correspondence both email and snail mail with bloggers all over the world.

I've never done a post every day except sometimes in December.  My lowest annual post count was 38 and my highest 149.  I've shared my hopes and dreams, my friendships and my struggles with disability, my delight in little things and my musings about life in general.  

So now I'll start my twelfth year of blogging.  If I can think of things to write about.  

The delights of April

 

April went undercover as far as this blog is concerned.

I did courses on "MacBeth" and "Dr Faustus".  And my usual monthly sessions on drawing and journalling.  

I led a gloriously noisy service at Easter.  And several other not quite as noisy services throughout the month

I celebrated a friend's birthday with lunch at a local pub and very nice it was too.  

I had my Trundle Truck serviced so I will be able to go places this summer.  

I went swimming with The Monday Mermaids three times.  

I did some doggy day care.

Jack and I made a start on decluttering the garage.  Just a start.

That was March

 

The great thing about March is that we have finished with February!  There are more sunny days, less bitter cold, more looking forward, less moping.

My month started with eight days with the lovely Holly-Dog.  (I have been mis-spelling her name.  Sorry, Holly).  She made me very welcome and has invited me for a few days in May.  

I've had quite a few meals out.  Some time ago I made the decision to reduce the number of times I eat out and so make going out much more of a treat.  This month I have had lunch out thrice and brunch once, as well as a couple of meets for coffee.  

I've been swimming three times.  I'm in a group of five who call ourselves Monday Mermaids.  We are all "ladies of a certain age" and we hire a small private pool for an hour.  It's great.

Jack has been twice and made a start on the garden for this year.  He also came with a friend for afternoon tea and with his son for coffee.  Many years ago I conducted the weddings of both his son and his daughter and it's a real pleasure when I see either of them.  

I've been leading a lot of worship as one (non stipendiary) priest has been away on a cruise and another (stipendiary) has been in hospital.  

G is for Guests

It is such a joy to prepare a meal for friends!  When I was working I prepared many meals for friends and parishioners but these days almost every meal I cook is just for me.

Today my dear friend Bonnie came for lunch.  I found the first few sweet peas and arranged them in a pretty vase for the table.  I made some creamy mayonnaise and on the strength of that made coleslaw and a tangy potato salad.  That veggie box contained some lovely peppers which were splashed with olive oil and roasted.  Boiled eggs are always a treat for me so they came out too.  There was a mixed green salad, tomatoes, and soused cucumber.  And to top it all a salmon fillet each.  For pudding we had home made mango ice cream, freshly churned by me this morning.  

All food is best garnished with a large helping of love and laughter and we had both in plenty.

Ah, it is good to cook for guests!

F is for friends

 

Really it should be that a Gold Star is for friends.  I've collected them all my life.  Here are a few.

First S.  Her parents were friends of my parents and we started school together.  These days our friendship is mostly conducted by Christmas letters and the occasional e mail but last year I had the privilege of conducting her mum's funeral.  That wonderful lady used to hide several of is when we bunked off from cross country at school!   S and I spent a hilarious afternoon remembering each other's mothers.

A little later I met A.  She had spent her early years in Northern Ireland and the family moved here during The Troubles.  Again we knew each other's family and a few years ago I went to her mum's ninetieth birthday party - once again a hilarious time of reminiscing.

I got E from a jumble sale!   I was behind a stall at a sale to raise funds for Girl Guides.  E was quite a tough haggler at such events so we got talking.  I mentioned that I was hoping to set up a new Guide Company and she offered to help.  Nearly fifty years later she is living in France but we email regularly and still see each other once a year.

M also came along to help at Guides.  We were in the same church and she had a young daughter who wanted to join Guides.  Several years later I conducted the daughter's wedding.  M is now very house bound but we phone each other weekly and I think both if us have smiles on our faces for quite a while after the call has ended.

J came as my chimney sweep.  When he had done the job he told me that he always gave his clients a gift before he left.  That year it was shoe polish.  In subsequent years he gave me rum flavoured bubble bath, Winnie the Pooh sticking plasters and a bunch of carrots with a knife to scrape them.  Just in case you haven't realised J is Jack - you can find out more about him if you click on "Jack" in the sidebar. 

I could go on about friends I have met through Church, about my neighbours and about people I met casually but wanted to know better.  All of them are precious to me.  Here's a round I learnt in Guides many years ago

Make new friends, but keep the old

One is silver and the other gold.

Thanksgiving

 A Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!  We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here but it sounds a lovely festival.  I hope you all have a lovely day.

Or should that be I hope y'all have an awesome day?  (I do my best.)

It started with Clap For Carers

 My neighbours would all go out to our front gales at eight o'clock on a Thursday evening and clap or otherwise make a noise in appreciation of all front line workers during the early stages of the pandemic.  That went on for several weeks and I got to know more of my neighbours and I got to know them better.

We enjoyed this new neighbourliness and even when the clapping stopped we contined to go out at 8pm each Thursday and that continued throughout last summer.

Then summer moved into autumn with its dark, cold evenings and we decided to meet at 11am instead and that still happens most weeks today.  This Neighbourhood Nattering lasts about half an hour but it's really brought the little community on this Close together.  One gentleman has died and his wife has been supported.  One lady has had surgery and chemotherapy for cancer and she's always being offered lifts.  A couple go away regularly with their caravan but they know that neighbours will keep an eye on the house and put the bins out.  People shopped for me and are now taking me for medical appointments while I cannot drive

So many things about this pandemic have been terrible but I wonder how many communities have been drawn together as this one has.

How is it for me?

 

Thank you for all your good wishes.  I've now been home fr a couple of days.  There was a suggestion that I should come home the day after the op but I resisted very firmly as there would have been no-one here. 

My lovely nephew will be staying until Friday.  I have set up an "SOS family" on Alexa so that she can call for help if I need it.  It's quite a lot cheaper than the usual Lifeline system and I feel it is better as it doesn't rely on me remembering to wear the alarm.  I feel very blessed as there is no shortage of kind friends and family offering to be on my SOS family list.  

I also feel rather lucky that I don't have to wear those horrid surgical stockings!  My legs are in such a mess (from previous accidents and surgery) that I can't tolerate them so I have extra medication to prevent blood clots.  I've also got pain relief to take and that makes the exercises less uncomfortable as well as making sure I can sleep at night.  

Thankfulness

 I'm quite busy at the moment as I prepare to go into hospital for the knee replacement.  And I have so much to be thankful for!  

Today is World Gratitude Day.  And I am so grateful for all the love and care I am receiving right now.  My nephew is coming to spend a week with me which will be quite difficult for him and I am very grateful.

He will have to go into work one day while he is here but the friend I phoned to ask her to come that day not only said "yes" but also. "I'm so pleased that you asked,"

Annie-the-Home-Enhancer has agreed to come more often until I can do more things for myself.  Jack too, will be keeping an eye on me - and I'll bet no-one is surprised at that.

I'm grateful for the skill of the surgeon and the rest of the hospital team and I'm also grateful for our wonderful NHS.

Thank you!

It's good to talk!

Ever since the first lockdown started I've had a monthly zoom with a couple of friends, Sandie and Jan. (Before that we used to meet for pub lunches.)   They are sisters and I can't remember not knowing them.  We are "Coffee Kids", still kids despite our ages ranging from 69 to 77!

Back in 1954 a group of eight women decided to meet each Tuesday and they continued to meet every week for over fifty years.  At first it was a cup of Nescafe, a real treat in those years of post war austerity.  (Anybody else remember those tiny tins of coffee powder? )  They were The Coffee Girls.  It's hard to think of a similar group today as most women go out to work but I suspect that in those days some sort of a meet-up was an important defence against being driven crazy by the endless round of caring for husband and children alone at home.

As well as the weekly Coffee Morning they had days out together, they had parties, when one couple bought a narrow boat they had day trips on the canals.  Those women and their husbands were all Aunties and Uncles to me.  

The last four Coffee Girls in 2002

As years went by inevitably those Aunties and Uncles died.  Around twenty years ago I had a party for the four remaining ladies at that time and as many Coffee Kids as I could trace.  It was good to catch up with everyone.

So, once a month, Sandie, Jan and I, each in our own homes, make a cup of coffee and settle down for a chat to celebrate a friendship of 67 years.  

It's good to talk.

At Last!

To be replaced with chocolate - please!

 "The letter" arrived yesterday!  I will be having surgery on my knee in less than three weeks.  I will be going as an NHS patient to a small private hospital in Grimsby and I expect to be there just one or two nights.  

I am inundated with offers of help.  I am so lucky!  I have offers to take me to hospital and to fetch me home.  Someone will sleep here to make sure I am OK.  Jack and Annie (my home enhancer) have both offered extra help.  Others will shop, cook and odd-job for me and I suspect I will be checked on so much that I will be lucky if I get any sleep.  

And I am so grateful!  Grateful not just for the offers of practical help but also for the love and care behind them.    I am truly blessed.  

Somewhere for a picnic lunch

 Meet-ups with friends have been difficult until recently but I'd long been promising Katy that we could meet for lunch.  I'm still not happy going into cafes and restaurants so we decided on a picnic during her lunch break and we decided on the churchyard.  I don't think I've ever picnicked in a churchyard before but I shall certainly do so again. 

There are memorial benches along the pathway so Katy sat on one of these while I sat in my trundle truck.  

There are pretty flowers which have been allowed to grow wild

The trees are all very mature and they create lovely views,

All this and a lovely picnic and conversation with a friend.  Bliss!

The Kindness of Neighbours

 I realise I may be a cockeyed optimist but I am finding good things which have come as a result of this pandemic.   For me one of the best things has been increased opportunities to talk to my neighbours.  Our little close, was always friendly, but neighbourliness has increased many-fold this last year.

A couple of nights ago I was out watering my back garden when I heard the neighbour behind me doing the same thing so I asked if he could use a few spring onions.  He assured me that he could always use a few spring onions and asked if I could use three kitchen chairs.  It seemed like a very good swap from my point of view!  I accepted and he brought them around for me and they are now in my back garden.  At the moment they are around my cast iron table but I have heard a whisper that a new wooden table may be on the way.  (Yet more kindness!  You'll hear more about that in due course.  )  

I wanted some new wooden chairs to go with the table but can't really afford exactly what I want so these will be in use for at least a couple of years.  How's that for the kindness of neighbours?!

Adjusting 2

The next few weeks are going to be very difficult.  In many ways I am very fortunate.  I am used to being on my own.  I have a very well stocked store cupboard.  I have no-one who depends on me and others have offered such help as they can give.

But in other ways this is a difficult time.  I am used to my alone-ness being punctuated by coffee with friends, going to church, popping to the shops and all the thousand and one little sociabilities of life.  Life has a rhythm , needed if I am going to relate to other people.  

That has changed.  One day looks much like another and it is my tummy, not my watch, which gives me the nudge to get things done.  As I said yesterday I am still dressing fully even though there is a temptation to slob all day.  However, I am determined that these next few weeks will be good and fruitful so I am trying to create little "rituals" to look forward to each.

I have to admit that often I am a total slob and eat my meals from a plate or tray in the sitting room but I have noticed that my inclination to use the table has increased.  I want to make meals much more of an event.  

I have set the table properly rather than just grabbing the cutlery as I sit down.  I've used a pretty napkin rather than just scooping up a tea towel and making do.  I've taken the time to bake mini bread loaves rather than just a big cob.  I've taken a few flowers from the bigger bunch in the sitting room.  I found a bottle of sherry and one of my Mother's cut-glass sherry glasses and I've had a small one before lunch.  And you may just see a chocolate orange, the gift of a friend who left it on the doorstep.  It's a little reminder that even though I am eating the meal in solitary splendour, I have friends who are thinking of me just as I am thinking about them.

This joy has been building up for ten years!

Have you ever wanted to not want something?  I have.

It was ten years ago and I was in the middle of a mental breakdown.  I'd been doing two quite demanding jobs simultaneously. I was vicar of five parishes and I'd been carer for my Mother as she recovered from the amputation of a leg when she was 88 and then slipped into dementia.  In both those roles I had to be a rock for other people and my mind and body eventually rebelled and said it was their turn for a little TLC.    I just couldn't work any longer.  I wanted to retire but I hated retiring at 58.  I felt like a failure.  Looking back I had no reason to be ashamed but it didn't feel that way at the time.  

And so I resigned from a job which I had loved but I was unable to do properly any more.  Retiring as a vicar means one loses not only one's job (and income) but also one's home, social circle and (in my case) a lot of my identity.  I was not in a good place emotionally and within weeks of my retirement my only sister got a terminal diagnosis and once again I was a carer.

It was not a good time.  When I should have been caring for myself I was instead helping my sister, which was demanding as she was disabled and a wheelchair user even before she had the cancer.  When I should have been trying to build up a life for myself here in Caistor I was away at her home helping her to sort out her life before she left this world behind.

But over the years my life has changed.  I'm no longer "the vicar" but I can get far more work on a part time basis than I could ever do! I can still exercise ministry and indeed do so on a very regular basis.  I've got a very comfortable home and a thriving social life.  And most of all I now wake every morning with a smile on my face and an expectation of a joyful day.

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my retirement.  I took out for lunch two friends who helped me and listened to me all those years ago and are still my great friends now.  I have never been so happy.

January

I went to church on Christmas Day and I went to church on Sunday but apart from that I haven't left the house.  I have a truly disgusting cold.  I don't get many colds these days - it's nearly two years since I had one - but when they come they certainly make themselves at home.

This is not a good start to 2020.  I don't feel like doing the usual looking-back-and-looking-forward post for 1st January. However, I want to wish you, Dear Reader, a happy 2020 and I want to resolve that this will be a good year for me too.

So it's back to a very old theme for me this month.  For me (as for many other people) January and February can be very "bleugh".  Christmas is over, the summer seems a long way away, we get colds and flu and life doesn't seem very rosy.  So I want to use this blog as a prompt to make me look for life's little pleasures, the little joys which can too easily go unremarked.

And today's pleasure was a phone call from a friend to make sure I was OK and then her visit to the shops to fetch me something to alleviate my cold symptoms and to get the bananas which I was craving.  And what's more she even brought me some flowers.  Life is looking up!

Thankful for you

Special greetings today to my American readers at Thanksgiving!  I hope you have a wonderful day.

And extra special greetings to my friend Connie who usually lives here in the UK but is visiting her family in California.  Connie, I shall hold you to that promise of pumpkin pie when you get home!

I have never had pumpkin pie.

That was October

Well, I've had a lovely month!  I celebrated my birthday.  I visited several friends and went out for lunches with several more.  I still have a house full of flowers. 

I visited Jack!  Actually I visit him fairly often but this time his great grandson was there and his parents (Jack's grandaughter and her husband) were happy for me to bless baby - always a lovely thing to do.  I'm happy to report that Jack is well but at the moment he has considerable family responsibilities so he won't be back on the blog any time soon.  (He still reads it!)

One rather sadder visit was to a friend who has Alzheimer's.  Again I visit most months but it really is a horrible disease.  I can feel my friend disappearing and am determined to enjoy her company for as long as I can.  Visiting people who have dementia is difficult.  C still knows me but her view of the world and the people around her is very strange now.  However, she still likes me to hold her hand and listen.  I hope that if ever I get that dreadful disease someone will do the same for me. 

I've joined with a friend twice for board games sessions.  We have a light meal and a lot of conversation and it's one of my favourite ways of spending a day.  

Health wise it hasn't been one of my better months.  I had a flare up of an on-going digestive problem and I've had tendonitis in my shoulder for several weeks.  This means that of four limbs only one is still in reasonable nick!

I've led worship several times.  Most churches in the area are now adequately staffed but they all need help when someone is ill or needs a break.  As I've been filling in in various places for so long it's quite easy for me to stand in without much hassle,  

So now we're in November.  I've got plans!

Friendship Day

One of my feeds tells me that today is International Friendship Day so I've been doing a little bit of hunting on the web and as far as I can see it may be Friendship Day (I hope all days are that!) but certainly not International Friendship Day!   

Friendship Day is a day with a murky sort of presence,  It's celebrated on different days in different countries.  Hallmark Cards tried to promote it back in the nineteen thirties but met with consumer resistance.  (Good for nineteen thirties consumers, say I!)

Anyway, I've been thinking of my various friends whilst I've been indulging in my early  morning coffee.  There's Alice, one of my oldest friends.  I met her when her family came over from Northern Ireland when I was still at school and the headmaster asked me to be her "godmother" until she found her feet.  Fifty years on we are still friends.

There's Amy who came to stay earlier this year. Many years ago she replied to my advert for accommodation when I moved to a new city and she was my landlady for several years.  After a short break I became her landlady but no matter who was lodger and who was landlady we were friends and forty years on we still enjoy each other's company.  

Then there's Sue.  I picked her up at a jumble sale!  She was a great jumble sale go-er and I was behind a stall when we got talking and I mentioned that I was hoping to set up a Guide Company and she offered to help.  Forty years on she is living in France but we still manage to meet at least once a year

There's Jack.  I met him originally when he was my chimney sweep.  We were sorting his daughter's wedding when he told me that my garden looked a mess so I suggested that if he didn't like it he could do something about it.  From that unpromising beginning a real friendship sprang.

I've met many wonderful people over the years and made friends when I have least expected it.  Where have you found friendships?