R's rue

  The alliums are flowering in the garden and look lovely despite not fully open this morning. I cut Centaurea Montana ( Mountain Cornflower) for the kitchen and filled the gaps with Ammi Majus ( Bishop’s Flower) and blue aquilegia  picked from the lane borders. Cut flowers, like owning  a cat, make a house a real home I always think I’ve always thought so and I wonder where I learnt that from? I’m physically back to normal today but will listen to my body and will sleep most of the afternoon before shift. The day before night shift ,is a literal day of rest for me. Pottering and flower cutting, that’s my therapy, and dozing alongside the coconut smelling Dorothy  I’ve made chicken noodles with a low fat satay sauce for supper and an egg mango salad for lunch, and have watered the planters and written a considered message to a friend whose relationship has sadly faltered . I’ve nothing big to share today. No belly laughs or sad stories. Nothing intere...

I don't know if you are the same but sometimes, in idle moments, I find myself using the internet to look back on things - places I went, football games or concerts I attended, people I knew. You go down rabbit holes with side tunnels that go this way and that. Today I thought about a secondary school teacher who was once a colleague of mine. Let's call him Chris because that was his name.  Chris was a dedicated  and hard-working member of the Maths department. A bachelor, he lived a couple of miles from the school. He was not in a relationship and it seemed that he had simply dedicated himself to teaching. An Ipswich Town fan, Chris also supported the school's P.E. department by managing one of the boys' football teams. In that regard, back in 1988 or 1989 he  asked me if I would drive the school minibus down to Wembley Stadium in London so that his team could watch England Schoolboys play West Germany Schoolboys. It was a big ask but I said yes. Chris, who didn...

 Gratitude list Time with a friend yesterday You all are the encouragers of my dreams. Thank you. I never thought someone like me could be so loved. You prove it every day. And my gratitude is immense. Thank you.  A sweet treat Your turn from R's rue https://ift.tt/BIhtzeO

  I’ve seen hundreds of vigils in my time Perhaps even a thousand . One sticks in my mind more than any other and it was in Sheffield in the 1990s  It was with a young man in his twenties.  A slight, Bonny lad with pink cheeks and brown hair.  He was unconscious and sadly brain dead and he had a mother and many brothers who were sitting with him in shifts. I was working nights and it was very dark and very cold  as Sheffield winters often are, And he was in a dark side room with his mother who was sat in a chair and a younger brother who was asleep on a mattress on the floor.  Now, because the mother hadn’t slept, one of the sons had fashioned a paper shade cover over each lens of her spare glasses, so by slipping them on she could effectively shut out the light of my inquiring pen torch when I came to assess her son in the middle of the night. What we hadn’t factored in however was the youngest son’s sense of humour ,as unbeknownst to all, he...