One From Thirteen Years Ago

 

Home Alone (November 2011)

I'm home alone. Pearlie has gone to one of her regular respite placements so that means two whole weeks without a battalion of carers tramping in and out. And it is also two weeks without her constant griping and complaining. It is a chance for Bert and I to have a taste of what it must be like to live as a couple in privacy and peace. We get this for eight whole weeks a year, and I know that makes us very fortunate people.

As I said I'm home alone. Bert has gone off to Malin Head with a couple of friends. I hope they get reasonable weather and aren't blown off the Head. I've been left with the chickens, the dogs, the pigs and the cats - not too burdensome. Clint has been left with the cattle. I'm supposed to be watching and listening for one of the heifers 'looking away' but we're not holding out much hope. The beast has had numerous goes with A.I. and a good run with the bull and she just can't catch. Clint came in to talk about it. He knows Pearlie isn't here so I've got nobody to moan at me.

Huh! The only place that one will be looking away at is the abattoir. She's far too big a baste to be keeping as a pet.

I interpret this as a dig at the kune kunes but I do not react. He goes on.

Aye! It's the freezer for her, no question about it.

I'm sure he'd like me to get sentimental about her so he can come over all manly and practical and farmerish but I do not give him a chance. He goes on,

Did Bert ever get the bags sorted out for the butcher?

I concur that if he did, I have not been informed of it.

Huh! He's an easy-going boy waltzing off to Donegal in this weather and no worries about the butcher! And in November! Sure it's wild up there! He has little or no sense. I don't know what would take him up to Malin Head at this time of the year!

I remark that I thought the break would do him good and mention that we've got a piano.

Aye! I saw that. I don't know what you thought you needed that for. Huh! What with that oul squeaky clarinet and dinnilin' away on an oul out of tune piano that'll hardly do him much good. It would answer him a lot better to finish that ranch fencing he started.

I have to agree that Bert has a rather dilatory attitude to general chores.

Well! I'm away down to get my own livestock foddered and in before it's too dark to see.

I bid him goodnight.

When he is gone I say to the dogs for there is no one else to say it to,

Y'know – there are a lot of things that Bert is good at, that Clint is not.

And I smile a little smile to myself.

Focus on the Positive

 Well! That was very disappointing. 

My first instinct was to become despondent, but I didn't want to feel disheartened, so instead I deactivated Twitter/X (about time) and decided to take a day off from The News. I have made plans and a list.

Today I will read.

I will light a fire.

I will throw out clutter as I come across it. So far I've binned a worn-out tea towel, an oven glove and another pudding bowl.

I will shower, put on a nice outfit and take Vee shopping.

And I will upload my holiday photographs and recall the lovely time I spent with family in Norfolk and London.

Then I will watch a light-hearted show about a group of people with some strong opinions and no politics. Hello, Sheldon Cooper.

Two photographs taken at Pensthorpe.

Katy and I spent some time at the inspiring West Acre Garden Centre and walled garden. 

James was keen to show me around one of his favourite places - Wroxham Miniature World where I discovered that my grandson is an expert on British railway engines.

Halloween is a really big deal where Katy lives. Emily and I were on the door for Trick & Treating. 

It seems I didn't take that many photographs in London. Too busy walking, eating delicious food and catching up with my sisters. The bench is a memorial to the comedian Sean Hughes and is situated in beautiful Highgate Wood. The second photograph was taken at the celebration for The Day of the Dead in Columbia Road. The reason I didn't get many pictures was because I was too busy  having my own photograph taken. It was a novel experience to have at least twenty photographers taking pictures of London Sister and myself outside We Are Arrow. We weren't even dressed up! 

October Reading

 After the shameful amount of books read in September I am pleased to disclose that October was a big improvement. I started slim, as in volume size.

The Sign Of The Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper.

I picked this one up at the Tesco charity bookshelf. At first I thought it might be a children’s book but apparently not. An account of life in London during the Great Plague. Moderately engaging and not recommended but at least it got me reading again. Otherwise avoid.

More Tesco finds – The Finding by Nina Bawden. Underwhelming.

Yet another Tesco find – My Folks Don’t Want Me to Talk About Slavery edited by Belinda Hurmence. A previous owner must have picked this one up at an estate in the Southern States of the USA. It was a quick read, interesting, part of an academic research project. My inbuilt cynicism led to some distrust of the editing process but I still found it interesting.

Ganching led me to Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. She mentioned it in a blog and described it as something she read in a 24-hour period. I had a copy (Tesco again) and being in the mood for a binge read I found it to be just the job. 24 hours later – enjoyable read to be returned to Tesco charity bookshelves at my earliest convenience.

So that’s me back on track at the reading again. I was longing to read the new Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything. According to the reviews it brings together many beloved Strout personalities including Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess. My only difficulty was – I hadn’t read The Burgess Boys. Well, I have now and I like it very much. Still haven’t begun Tell Me Everything but it is sitting there, waiting for me – a brand new copy. Long time before it ends up on Tesco’s charity bookshelf.

The last book I finished was Dirty Linen by Martin Doyle. I bought my copy in St George’s Market from yer man who runs Belfast Books. His is not a store I’d normally be in but the book was half-price and I’d wanted to read it. Yer man said it was a ‘tough read’ and I’m not sure what he meant by that. But there is this – I’ve often thought that the accounts of the people who died during the period of our Irish history that is called ‘The Troubles’ has been fairly well documented. What is less well documented are the stories of the injured and the bereaved. Martin Doyle’s book went some way to bring some of those stories to the fore.

I went to an event at Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy on Friday evening. The writer Colum McCann in Conversation. It wasn’t quite a full house but it was nearly. Novel readers must be mostly ladies of a certain age. I’d guess the youngest person there was around forty-five. I did not tell the author that I’ve only read one of his books so far and that I picked it up from the Tesco charity bookshelf. Let The Great World Spin. Since then I acquired two more novels and bought another two at HomePlace. It was a good evening.

I’ll be taking Colum McCann on my holiday to Norfolk and London. This Side of Brightness. Already packed.  

Family Time

 

These past few days, I have had the pleasure of Ganching and Kerry Sister's company. They took a house close to where we are, and we were together for part of every day.

So I thought I'd illustrate this blog with a picture of the two of them but when I went to my vast store of digital photographs and looked at the file labelled Friends and Family/General Family/Ganching Kerry Sister the picture above was the only one I could find. I'm not sure what they were at.  Definitely not a prayer meeting. They are both divils for the culture so I suppose it was something of that nature. 

Which reminds me. Ganching, knowing that I'm always collecting random stuff from the internet, asked me to look out an article written by a priest about another priest. I'm off to do that now.

One From Sixteen Years Ago

Pearlie's Favourite Niece visited us today and I found myself remembering how  it was when Nellybert and Pearlie shared a roof.

What a difference sixteen years make. Back then I referred to myself as 'middle-aged'. Now I too am old. And dare to hope that in 10 years time - when I'll be as old as Pearlie was that my middle-aged people will have a lot more patience than I did.

But then - I don't intend to be a curmudgeon. Promise!

Choices

The following is based on a true event. One of the most difficult things about having Pearlie living with us is the struggle to hold on to a sense of myself as a fairly decent human being. There is no feelgood factor.

A few weeks ago I went on a shopping expedition to get Pearlie some decent clothes. Pearlie has never had the remotest interest in clothes and, as long as I’ve known her, has garbed herself in layers of hideous greying underwear, jumpers, cardigans, vile skirts, men’s socks, battered footwear and the lot topped of with a horror movie of a headscarf and a home-made and much patched apron. She had the look of a poverty-stricken Eastern European peasant from the nineteen-forties only with added nylon and polyester.

But now it’s up to me launder this gruesome stuff so I’ve been sneakily throwing out the worst of it and replacing it with decent clothes from Marks & Spencers and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. There will be no more baggy, outsized interlock cotton vests with fraying hems in this house.

Sure ye could put a stitch in them.

Excuse me Pearlie. A stitch? I do have a life. (Or at least I used to)

Her hideous long-legged cotton knickers bought from the packman are slowly being replaced by similarly granny ones from M&S only the Marksy ones are light and thermal and almost pleasing to the eye.

Where’s all my other knickers? Did Margaret take them home to patch?

In the bin long, long ago.

I spent over three hours picking out a skirt, a cardigan and underwear for Pearlie. Had I been shopping for myself I’d have completed in half the time. But I know how hard she is to please. Skirts must be lined, they must not be too long or too tight. Knitwear must not be bulky but it must not be too light. The sleeves must be roomy, likewise the neck. Colours must not be too bright. I played safe and got dark green. I’ve seen her wear dark green a lot. The underwear was thermal, soft and it fitted her. Exhausted I made my way home.

I didn’t show her the new duds at first. I knew she’d be bound to hate something and I even had a notion of packing them in her case so that the first time she saw them would be when the care assistants at the respite home hung them up in her wardrobe. But next day she was in a good mood and I felt I could handle the criticism so I showed her what I’d got. And amazing joy – she liked everything! I was delighted.

But that was Sunday. On Thursday Favourite Niece came out to pack her suitcase. That evening I didn’t get home until nearly eight and I was feeling pretty tired. I was surprised to see that Favourite Niece’s car was still in the yard. Moments later FN bounced out of Pearlie’s room went straight up to me and said, “That skirt’s no good. It’s falling off her. Can you get it changed? And she doesn’t like those knickers. Says she’ll be far too cold in them.”

Did I stay cool? Not exactly. I swore a bit ( a lot) then I did get cool. Well maybe more cold than cool. You know that cold anger thing where you might like to kill somebody? That was me.

Since then I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve been thinking about choices and how it is supposed to be important to give old people as much autonomy as possible. And I was also thinking about how great it would be if middle-aged people got to exercise some choices too like whether we wanted to launder patched rags or not. Or maybe we could choose whether or not we welcomed an aged dictator and a haphazard team of carers into our lovely home.

So anyway after thinking long and hard I have decided that these are the really important choices to offer my aged dictator.

• Milk or Tea.
• Pink hot water bottle or blue hot water bottle.
• Shape up or Ship Out.
• My Way or the Highway.

A Sad Day

This has been a very sad day for all of us at Springhill. One of our Kune Kune pigs, Lily, had to be euthanised tonight. These past few months we have seen her becoming weaker in her hindquarters. This morning she had her breakfast as normal and went to the fields to graze. She didn't return in the evening. Bert found her collapsed five minutes from home. She was halfway through her fifteenth year on earth. I don't know how Rusty will get on without her, tonight will be the first time in his life that he will sleep alone.

An Update

 Daoine a chanann in éineacht le hamhráin, scriosann siad iad do na cinn atá ag iarraidh éisteacht leo*

I started October determined to update this blog more frequently but, as always, life got in the way and 'aussi' a little bit of Duolingo. I did not progress to the Diamond League last week and am trying to be more relaxed about it.

And! I finished two books. Short ones.

I still need to discover if marking the shells of garden snails with Tippex is a bad thing. My friend the naturalist says it is not and my missing snails have likely been eaten by thrushes. Maybe the markings make it easier for thrushes to see them? I should probably stop it. 

**created with the assistance of Google Translate