A Stream Of Conciousness

I'm working night shifts this week to cover nurses who have had to put themselves into isolation .
Next week I am on holiday, though I suspect things may change if staff shortages continue.
Everything has changed in work, everything.
And emotions are running high.

In a fit of testosterone I went to B&Q  ( a hardware store for those that don't know) and bought paint and sugar soap and extra brushes .
The store was busy with people with similar plans
Next week I shall start painting my living room a gentle and relaxing vanilla yellow

I feel somewhat bombarded with information

Twitter seems awash with stoic and funny comments about isolation
But most have a sort of shocked desperation about them
Thank the lord for Justin Trudeau and his cute baby beard
I wish he was our Prime Minister.

Some of my family are scared of what will happen. The daily bulletins at 5 pm are teatime grenades
There was no dog food left in Sainsbury's yesterday
They don't mention that on the news.
I had a sausage bab in Mark's cafe yesterday.
There was only two of us in there and I still dribbled butter down my front.....

My friend Ben at work sounds as though he needs a pint. I hope to catch up with him and another workmate Ruth very soon. This is the first time since I worked in spinal Injuries that I've got friends at work.
Ben used to work under my husband.....
It's a small world.

I've just messaged the village pub to see if they do any takeaways?
It may be a source of revenue if taken up by hungry villagers

Theatr Clwyd and the Storyhouse in Chester are now shut, I know it sounds silly but I feel their loss rather acutely.

I'm on my break at work and it's 4.45 am
Briefly I stood outside a few minutes ago and let the cold air over West Shore perk me up.
A short line of mountain goats were picking their way down the Orme towards the hospice
and from somewhere a gull called out in the dark.

Everything feels , just a little surreal

Memory

I'm changing the subject today and will share a story I have shared here at least once over my years of blogging.
Apologies if you have heard the story before
I just think it's worth a repeat, especially today.

I was just twenty two years old when I first grew up as a nurse and as a man
I remember the situation as if it was yesterday, and the memory seared into my psychi thirty six years ago is fresh and as moving and as important as it was on that muddy weekday morning when I was slopping tea into thirty empty cups in the kitchen of an old asylum Ward .

I was tired and weary.
One of four staff, I had helped 30 men to get washed, dressed and fed on Durham ward. A ward that catered for the senile, the head injured and the institutionalised.
It was late morning and the men had been sat in a routine square around the day room as the staff puffed fags on the verandah.
I didn't smoke so it was my job to get their tea, before another rounding of toileting began
The tea was made in one large metal teapot. Tea, milk and sugar all added to the mix and it took two hands to lift the pot as I poured the brew out into saucerless cups.

As I worked I watched the female residents of Durham's sister ward Daresbury , all sat in similar poses along the square of their dayroom chairs.
In one corner sat a visitor .
I had often seen him before , and recognised his smart suit, and his polished shoes.
He always sat with a very still patient, a patient that I assumed to be his wife and they shared tea from a flask that he brought with him every morning.
I remember his wife having grey hair that was curled chignon style at the nape of her neck and that morning I watched in a half interested way, as he started to pull her out of her chair to her feet.
His wife stood shakily, like senile people often do when they don't understand what is wanted of them and after a bit of manoeuvring the man held her in a waltz hold.
They staggered back and forth for some moments, unbalanced and unpracdictable and then I saw something quite magical happen as her muscle memory started to kicked in
With a turn of her head on an arched neck she grasped his hand tightly and they started to waltz .
Very slowly at first , but with a gathering momentum, they two of them danced around infront  of two dozen unseeing eyes , with only me there to witness the event, and they did two circuits of the room before silently  returning to their seats like a pair of ghosts.
I stood still , the teapot still in my hands , and  wept.
In one tiny moment I had seen a true love expressed and recognised the importance of seeing hospital patients as real people with a past and a future

And at the age of twenty two

I grew up