Blogkeeping

Acer tree foliage in Whirlow Brook Park this afternoon

In blogging, people come and people go. Favourite "go to" bloggers may fade away. Perhaps they got bored with blogging or found something better to do with their time.

For a few years, I had almost daily blogworld meetings with Jan Blawat in Sloughhouse, California. Her blog was called "Cosumne Gal" but she hasn't added any more blogposts in five and a half years so I think that it is nigh time to  remove her blog link from my "Blogorama" list in the sidebar. I shall replace "Cosumne Gal" with "Drifting Through Life"  by River out of Adelaide, South Australia.

Another blog that has been mothballed is called "The Autumn of My Life" by Donna out of Colorado, USA. We were very much on the same wavelength and at times she was like the big sister I never had. I know that she still calls by "Yorkshire Pudding" from time to time and so our connection will never be entirely severed. I will replace Donna with Bruce from Prescott Valley, Arizona. He is the mastermind behind "Oddball Observations" and his pen name is Catalyst.

Whirlow Brook Hall this afternoon

I keep visiting both River and Catalyst's blogs without the convenience of  sidebar links but tonight that is going to change. 

There are one or two other blogs not listed in "Blogorama" that I keep visiting and  my blog management committee are considering adding them to the side list too.

Nothing lasts forever does it? When I look back, there a number of bloggers who have departed the scene and whose presence was once meaningful to me. But time marches on and everything changes. 

Welcome to River and to Catalyst! 

North American trees on the edge of Whirlow Brook Park today.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/yc1givX

Yay

 My soul awakened today. For the first time, I’m enjoying life. 

Change can be hard, but it can be good. Thank you for telling me that tears can be good. I’ve had to let them out to let go of what I can’t handle. I realized physical exhaustion I can handle but mental exhaustion not at all. To be free, I must fully free myself of regret. I went shoe shopping today, and as the sweet manager told me she was 22, I realized at 39 what a gift time is. 

Today was a good day. I will take it. 

How’s your day?

from R's rue https://ift.tt/G1aH2Pi

The Little Pink Spot

 

“I’m deciding who will get what” 

My patient was a single woman in her early fifties, and she was making copious notes on a Basildon Bond writing pad.

Her answer was a reply to my finger pointing 

I sat down and waited for the rest of the story.

My patient was due to be discharged from hospital later that week. 

She had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer for a while now and this was to be her last admission for any medical treatment  . 

When she deteriorated further she had asked to be sent to St Lukes, which was Sheffield’s hospice at the time. 

I knew she lived in a large family house in Broomhill, which was the trendy and expensive suburb of the city, 

Her house, she told me , was filled with trendy objet d’art .

She was a popular woman too…who went to the Crucible more than I did 

It was her collections and belongings she was worried about .

She wanted the right thing to be given to the right person and was worried that her will , although completed was woefully inadequate for the job 

So she was making a list. 

I had an idea.

I rooted through the ward clerk’s cupboard and found several sheets of multicoloured coloured stickers 

“ Put a sticker under something you want to leave someone and leave your executor the key “;

She thought it was a fabulous idea so much so that she promised to leave me “ an item” for having the idea when she got home. 

By the end of my shift she had such a long list of bequeathed gifts , she had to enter various symbols and letters inside the sticker so that things could be allocated .

I never saw the patient again . I never heard from her executor either 

The pink sticker must have fallen off ……….

Post script 

In the top right hand drawer of my lovely new office desk, in the west wing of Bwthyn y Llan is a sheaf of multicoloured stickers . I bought them in 2009 from Woolworth’s in Prestatyn before they closed and

Someday in the future , I will take the day off ordinary chores and activities and I will amble around my cottage putting stickers on every last bloody thing 

There is some strange satisfaction at this simple thought

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/Ay4F5pn

Time

 I’m sat in X-ray waiting for my appointment . 

I’m fifteen minutes early.

I’m early for everything I do.

I’m very seldom late.

I was musing about this fact only the other day. 

And now being early is a long term friendship joke.

When I’m off to the train out of London at say 7 am, Nu will often say that I’m catching the afternoon train home.

She knows me well.

I know myself very well too.

For this abhorrence for lateness comes from the constant and low level anxieties a child has when going to school.

As young twins, my sister and I were taken to school by my father, who was notoriously bad tempered in a morning. He was also slightly lazy and would not be hurried by school rules so every morning we suffered from anxieties bordering on abusive levels when trying not to chivvy him into snapping but balancing prudent silence against encouragement to get through the school gates on time. 

That constant, low level anxiety shaped a need to be always on time if not early.

It’s not rocket science 

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/4JOwhuG