Instead of an Excuse

So many posts unposted, so many blogs unread, so many comments ignored or not left, so many emails not replied to, so much writing left unwritten.

I don’t really know what happened, why I have barely glanced at my computer for the past two plus weeks (really? yes,  I just counted 17 days). I have been feeling rather tired, am I simply under the weather? A bit depressed?

There have been days full of sunshine,

gloomy, foggy days,

working days,

snapping sparrows bathing in the dog bowl

during idly looking out of the window days,

and days full of magnificent autumn colour.

In other words, nothing out of the ordinary. Now that it’s November, most of the leaves have gone and the nights have turned mildly frosty. There’s a bitter North-Easterly blowing and Millie’s walks are ever shrinking in length. She’s not too unhappy about it, she has started to limp after strenuous exercise; I am not going to ask more of her than she can do.

The sad thing is, I miss writing, blogging and visiting blog friends. I feel guilty for not replying to emails, which is a bit silly. I throw half an eye at the blank, dark computer screen, sigh, then sit down with a trashy thriller for an hour.

My attention to detail appears to have gone into hiding too. I ordered a new printer+ on the internet and when the thing turned up it was massive, far bigger than the space allocated for it. It was an office printer, wide format, with  facility for legal papers, large and small sizes, envelopes etc., as well as a fax machine. I have no fax number and no need of a fax. When ordering I forgot to look at the specifications and, most importantly, the size of the gadget. Printers have gone down in price since I bought the previous one and as I couldn’t be bothered to pack the thing up again and return it, it now sits in a different room, staring at me, balefully, every time I pass it, accusing me of sloppiness.

Sleep is hit and miss too. No wonder I am often tired. I love to go to bed late, get a book ready, wriggle into a cosy position, and feel grateful for having a warm, peaceful and comfortable space to put my head at the end of the day. Sometimes, just when I am at my most snuggled in, my mind suddenly insists that sleep is a waste of time, and how I could much better spend my time thinking, dreaming, reading, going over the past day and organising the next one. Fatal! I might have allocated anything from five minutes to an hour for this state of being between waking and sleeping but, once I am embarked on this route, sleep flees. Two, three, four times I rise again, for a drink of water, a visit to the loo, a sleeping pill, another sleeping pill. I do eventually fall asleep to wake to another complicated day and, given half a chance, I grab a nap after lunch. But then again, I could be reading instead of napping?

All Or Nothing

Clematis Tangutica in October

The phone rang: “Sorry, Mrs. Friko, I have rammed a chisel into my hand. It doesn’t look good, I’d better go to A + E.” So said Paul, aka New Gardener, five weeks ago. He required surgery and a long process of healing.

The phone rang: “Sorry, Mrs. Friko., I can’t come on Thursday, I’ve hurt my back. I’ve an appointment with the Physio.” So said Old Gardener three weeks ago. He was unable to move without pain for two weeks and unable to bend for another week.

“The mind of the gardener is, in a way, the mind of the chess player.

He makes a move after having thought out what the ultimate effect

of that move may be. He visualises the end of the game.” *

Late September, early October, after the long hiatus of high summer, when gardeners take a well deserved break and spend a little time glorying in the fruit of their labours and admire the ravishing colours of their borders, it is time to pick up the pieces and continue the game. It’s actually a busy time in the calendar, pruning, tidying, clearing paths, transplanting and planting, clipping rose bushes, dividing overgrown clumps of herbaceous perennials, generally planning the coming spring's changes. 

No help for it, I had to knuckle down myself. Except, I seem to have become strangely feeble, lacking not just energy but also strength enough to dig holes, transplant small shrubs, do serious weeding. It’s hard to get down on my knees and even harder to get up again. As for pruning fruit trees, forget it. How did I ever do all these things myself? What happened to me? 

Sitting down, going for gentle walks, snipping here and setting in the earth there, I forget how old I have become. The disparity between spirit and flesh springs to mind. When I can’t fall asleep I now-a-nights spend a lot of time gardening in my mind. Having Austin and Paul has made a huge difference and I’ve rediscovered my pleasure in creating an outdoor space that’s worth looking at.

Then, last week, the phone rang: Hi Mum, I’ve got a bit of time to spare. Would you like me to come for a couple of days and catch up on jobs round the house? How about from Monday to Wednesday?"

“Yes, please.”

Then Paul rang.: "My hand is much better, would you like me to come back next week? I can make Tuesday."

“Yes, please.”

Then Old Gardener rang: “The Physio has helped, I could come over on Tuesday and give you the morning.”

Goodness me, no. Absolutely not. How would I cope with supervising and ordering about three of them? “No, please. But if you can make it Thursday, that’d be great.”

Which means that between Monday and Thursday my garden has been in intensive care, with operations being carried out at a tremendous pace. Old Gardener left just before lunch today. He’s coming back on Monday, Paul is coming back on Tuesday. At this rate I shall run out of jobs by the end of this month. They know of each other, could they be making themselves indispensable, each in his own way? My son won’t be back for three months, he’s out of the running. It was lovely to have him, even better to have got through a list of tasks which needed urgent attention, but having busy people around makes me want to get out of their way and take a nap. As that was out of the question, it being politic to show willing to chip in occasionally, I feel as tired as if I had done the work myself.

The unmistakable smell of autumn is the smell of decay, shot through with the bitter fumes of smoke. With the help of my son Old  Gardener was deprived of one of his favourite activities, namely lighting bonfires. He is a bit of a pyromaniac, bringing with him a supply of spent oil just on the off- chance. I believe it might even be illegal to use spent oil.  Watching a large pile of prunings, both of trees and shrubs, growing to unmanageable proportions fills me with dread. The last time Austin took it upon himself to set light to such a pile, immediately upon arrival and before I could give explicit permission for the deed, there was a massive fire going in a wooded part of the garden. He badly scorched a branch of the beech tree which is clinging on for dear life anyway, a yew hedge and  one side of a yew pillar. I wasn’t keen on a repetition. When I remonstrated he said: " they’ll grow again, they’ll be back next year.”

Solon, my son, took it upon himself to break up, cut and even saw through each bit of pruning, stuffed what could be stuffed into the green council bin for collection and otherwise filled two huge builders’ bags (the sort they deliver sand and grit in) and took them to the tip. It was a boring and repetitive job, but the stuff is all gone. And I am inordinately pleased. Austin was quite downcast this morning when he saw the empty space where the raw ingredients for a fire had been. “I see you’ve got rid of my bonfire,” he said.

*Richard Wright:  The Practical Book of Outdoor Flowers 1924

2 am and counting . . . . .

It’s 2 am and sleep remains elusive, in spite of having taken two sleeping pills.  It’s almost like I don’t want to go to sleep, there are too many thoughts chasing each other in my head. Not unpleasant ones, just everyday kind of thoughts; the kind which may appear trivial during the day but assume great importance at night. At night these thoughts matter and make sense. I have a suspicion that my subconscious welcomes them.

I have made up my mind that I won’t live longer than 80, if I get that far. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t, we have a good number of nonagenarians  in the valley, so why not octogenarians. Right now, old age doesn’t raise the same terrors as it does during a day of assorted aches and pains. Still, 80 is probably enough.

I have several wardrobes full of clothes, some of them totally unsuitable for a lady well-travelled down life's highways and byways, with a few experiences under her belt. Some of the items in the wardrobes suit different ages, lifestyles, shapes, and purposes no longer relevant to me. I even still have work clothes. A clear-out is imminent.

Still, during the years I’ll allow myself to live I shall wear clothes to suit my mood; bright and unusually colourful clothes, just a touch out of the ordinary, without causing others to point  fingers at me and snigger behind hands. I am not a beige or greige person, I must have something more suited to my personality and attitude. Actually, I no longer care what people find acceptable; a wonderful perk that comes with advancing years. I might don Mum’s fur hats and maybe even Aunt Josephine’s mink coat on very cold days.

Then there are the shoes, My daughter called me “the Imelda Marcus of Hertfordshire when we lived there, - you have to be a ripe old age to remember Imelda - when she could still bring herself to speak to me, that is, my daughter, not Imelda. I’ve never spoken with Imelda. I  have scores of  boxes of shoes, most of them hardly worn and therefore still pinching. I will take them out of their boxes, give the ones I no longer like to charity, and wear the others; at first in the house to wear them in a bit, then outside. It’s a great pity that wherever I go in Valley’s End I meet mud, soggy fields, and narrow roads bordered by deep ruts and puddles. Realistically speaking, wellies are the most suitable footwear round here, but when I die, I shall leave some really posh and expensive shoes behind. Enough to make me ask for some to be buried with me. I daresay I shall still be buying shoes when I’m in a wheelchair. I recently gave some black and gold satin shoes to Dee, my daughter-in-law.  She takes a smaller size than I do, but she loved them enough to wear them with a bit of padding.

And then there’s yoga. Several years ago I broke my leg and ankle in several places, needing the insertion of a collection of metal plates, nails and screws. Recovery took a long time and at the end of it I had a stiff ankle which would not bend in the required yoga contortions. Ever since then I have given up on yoga which was really of great benefit to me before the accident.  I must start again, somehow, either by myself or with the friendly yoga teacher who lives in the village. Because of my panicky fear of driving up steep hills and down again (only here in Valley’s End) I shall have to walk up to her house above the village, a fair climb, which I might manage after some initial difficulties. I will have to take frequent breathers and admire the view.

And blogging: I will do more of it and make new friends too. It’s such a pleasure when I put my mind to it and find something to write about. Comparing daily life with others on other continents is informative as well as fun; how else would I have got to know some of you who give me insights into your days. Besides, I enjoy writing, something else I’ve almost given up completely. So many writing projects require completion. A friend, who reads this blog, spontaneously said : You write very well, I do so enjoy your blog. You really should write more again. Somebody else asked me to write regular book reviews for a local news sheet. I’ve already turned her down.

Come to think of it, I will try and make friends elsewhere too. I have so few, in spite of many invitations to join groups. Beloved and I were talking today about loneliness; neither of us is at all capable of nurturing a friendship. I have an inkling why that is so: we are sufficient unto each other. Sadly, that may not be for very long, and the quality of our sufficiency has changed. It’s hard to keep each other stimulated after years of marriage, particularly when one of you is fading in mind and body; luckily dementia and/or Alzheimer’s are still a way off but age brings a slowing down of the faculties of even the sharpest and most agile brain that roamed the earth in company with the dinosaur. Yes, that long ago.

So here we go, friends have to be found. I shall make a very careful selection of suitably like-minded people and throw myself on their mercy. But I’ll draw the line at the Senior Citizen’s Club. And the Women’s Institute.



I actually wrote this collection of thoughts between 2 and 3 am. I’ve reread it and corrected many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, otherwise it’s what came into my head unprompted.

Conscious thought: Isn’t the management of life easy in that state between fully awake and semi-consciousness.

Meditations On A Rainy Day III

The difference between these two pictures is 20 hours

and an awful lot of rain.

It’s the same stretch of river and the same willow tree.

For tonight the forecast says dry and very cold.

2014 has been good to me, or perhaps I have been good to myself? They say “Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied”, or ‘Life is what you make it’. Even the ancient Romans knew that. Appius Claudius Caecus told us that  ‘Every Man is the Architect of his Own Fortune’. I expect everybody has their favourite proverb but do we all follow the sentiment?

Well, I think I’ve cracked it. For the whole of the year I was determined that apart from the odd stumble here and there my path would be smooth, that I would not let indifference, unkindness or bare-faced lying on the part of others, no matter how close the connection, push me into unhappiness or illness. And I’ve done it. Two separate relationships have made me very unhappy in previous years; one is severed completely and the other is cooling. So, that’s that. I am amazed at how easy it was in the end. I feel regret, but accept what is and cannot be changed. Both situations have been fraught with unease and pain in the past, in both cases a catalyst caused me to stop and examine my motives for continuing with them, when there was no profit and all loss. It feels good.

Half the young ladies in London spend their evenings 
making their fathers take them to plays that are not 
fit for elderly people to see.               G.B.Shaw

All the pleasures and happinesses of 2014 have been modest, play-going chief amongst them. Thanks to a good friend we have had many trips to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford; many more are planned for 2015. That wonderful new institution, Live Streaming from the foremost theatres in London, as well as the Royal Opera House, have meant that we hardly had to miss anything we crave. As well as going to poetry meetings in Knighton, over the border in Wales, we have resurrected poetry readings at our house once a month; wine and poetry in a circle of like-minded friends make for wonderful evenings which require little effort but give an inordinate amount of pleasure.

A Book Is Like A Garden Carried In The Pocket.

Chinese Proverb

Aren’t I lucky. I have both. An endless supply of gardens on my shelves and an outdoor garden for work and play. The balance has been shifting, I’ve allowed myself far more reading than gardening time during the year, partly due to the ease with which I can, thanks to a Kindle app, read for hours without stopping. Gardening has been important too but I’ve relaxed my harsh policy of eradicating every weed that dared show its face; or if a plant wants to lean over, muscling in on its neighbours' space, so be it. I will not chastise and imprison it in a rigid corset of stakes. Besides, I’ve dug up and given away many clumps of herbaceous plants this year to replace them with easily cultivated shrubs. But best of all is to be out in the garden in summer, drag a chair into the shade of a tree, fetch a drink and open a new book. Bliss. 

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

Pat Conroy: My Reading Life

To my great surprise, I’ve continued with blogging throughout the year. Had you asked me five years ago I would have said that this is an activity destined to last but a short time. I am posting less, reading fewer blogs, leaving comments only once or twice a week. I have made absolutely no effort to gain new followers and have cut down on the numbers of those I follow. But I am still blogging. It’s my only other addiction apart from a craving for chocolate. Will I give up either next year?

I often think that the night is more alive 

and more richly coloured than the day.

Vincent van Gogh

Leaning out of my window last night, breathing deeply to get rid of stale central heating air in my lungs before bed I looked up into a clear, cold, starry night. The swollen river hummed monotonously, deeply soothing to the spirit. The night was calm and so was I. Counting my blessings is not for me, but appreciating the joys of the simple life is. 

Whatever happens in the new year, I will be kind to myself. 

Nightwatch

Dulle Griet  (Mad Meg)
 Brueghel, Pieter the Elder

Two-thirty am, on Ward AMU; as always, when I am here, I have tricked the medics: I have taken 2 mg of smuggled-in diazepam as well as the 10mg of temazepam prescribed for me. I have no idea how bad this combination of tranqilizer and sleeping pill is for me but it has allowed me some hours of uneasy, often interrupted, but nevertheless recognisable sleep, a state of being I would otherwise not achieve. The heart monitor above my bed is bleeping regularly, several short bleeps of sharp, even tone interspersed with a number of higher, more urgent, longer notes. These latter tell me that the rate which fluctuates between anything below one hundred beats per minute to up to one hundred and thirty beats has reached the upper rate. l30/pm is not good but still better than 180/pm, a heart rate I have endured on previous hospital stays. The day before I had gone for a deep tissue massage to Jilly-with-the-healing-hands. She went to work on my back with her usual enthusiasm, thus stimulating my adrenal glands into a frenzy of adrenaline production which caused an electrical malfunction. For 99.9% of people  there would be no ill-effects. Not me. I am awkward, or rather, my obstreperous cardiac system is. 

I lie quietly, listening to the monitor and the noises around me. I am wearing an eye mask, the sort of thing they give you on long-haul night flights, and have stuffed ear plugs into my ears. They never fit properly, only when I keep my fingers on them, pushing them further into the ear opening, do the noises in the room recede. The eye mask is a little uncomfortable but it does the trick of dulling the already dimmed lights to an acceptable level. The noise from my neighbour has woken me. “Go away”, she shouts, “I don’t want to talk to you. You hear me?” It sounds like a command, not a request. Her voice is guttural, riddled with the cancer destroying her lungs.

The self-medication has slowed my thoughts, I am too tired to be angry at the disturbance. Floating in semi-sleep on the lonely island of my hospital bed I am directing a vague prayer towards an unspecified omnipotent deity. “Please, back to normal, back to normal, back to normal”, as if  the rhythmic repetition of the phrase could regulate the wild hammering in my chest. I have experienced this malfunction many times in the last five years, but every time I am afraid that this time it might not stop as suddenly as it started, that it might never go back to normal.

My neighbour continues to fight old battles. “How did you get in here? I don’t want you, get away from me.” There is implacable hatred in the sound. There is also fear. “What do you want? Get out”, her voice rises in panic. “It’s mine, mine”. And over and over: "I don’t want to talk to you, go away, you hear me!” She is so angry that her words become an indistinguishable mishmash of gurgling phlegm, spat out in a fury of demented malice. I had seen the woman earlier in the evening when I passed by her bed. She was calm then, a very old, very ill, heavy-bodied relic, toothless mouth wide open, not long from death. Now, at night, dementia has resurrected her old enemy, somebody surely long-dead, but hated and feared still. The gurgling turns to a rattle, she is falling asleep again.

A great wave of pity overcomes me, I am swamped by a feeling of tearfulness, a mourning for what is, and a fear of what is to come. My heart aches for the old woman, whose remaining nights on this beautiful earth are filled with the poison of a festering sore, neither forgiven, nor forgotten, never relieved, never healed. In the dead of this hospital night I promise myself that whatever happens, whatever imagined or real ill is done to me or done by me, I will resolve it; I will not let the demons pursue me into the fog of my dissolution.

I drift back into an uneasy sleep.

In the morning the orderly brings my breakfast. I sit up, swing my legs over the edge of the bed and pull the table towards me. As I am doing this, I glance up at the monitor at the exact moment when, after 50 hours of non-stop pummelling, my heart rhythm returns to normal.

The Thief In The Night, or Life Is Too Short To Sleep Through

It came to me, quite suddenly, last night.
Perhaps I should amend this to: today,
it came to me today.
Bright shining hands informed me without passion,
that yesterday had been and gone,
more than an hour ago.

My pillows plumped, I lay
in the uncertain dark of  summer's night,
a single church bell
measuring segments of deathly silence,
sliced into equal portions,
reminding me that sleep is of the essence.

Tomorrow is another day,
a phrase to browbeat me into submission,
the tyranny of sleep a burden on my thoughts.
Everyone else around me has succumbed
to  dead of night,
trusting, anaesthetised.

The chattering noises of the day are stilled.
Demands on me have ceased.
Now I can breathe, my life my own,
no telephone, no world wide web,
all newscasts hushed,
the music of the night the only sound.

Body and soul at peace, I rest.
And then it came to me:
why must the book be closed,
the lamp extinguished,
the circling thoughts imprisoned and subdued,
the tyranny of sleep obeyed,
obligatory yet elusive.

For once, let me be free of this constraint,
Let me be wakeful,
the hanging moon my only company
until dawn's tender hand
dissolves the shadows of the night and brings
clamorous day once more to call on me.

First Love

Lorenzo Quinn - First Love

There are nights when sleep will just not come to me and all that remains to do is to give up and give in, and compose myself in patience, allow myself to drift.

Mentally, I spread my wings and let my thoughts go where they will, flying high above the landscape of my memories, alighting here and there on the peaks and skimming the troughs.

One night recently I landed on a memory dear to me, but long in the past. When I was seventeen, there was a boy I loved very much. He was nineteen, a college drop-out, a bit wild, tall and lanky, who owned a Vespa. He was my first true love. We suffered all the pangs that young love brings, the heartache, the joy, the delirium; it was a time of soul-stirring, blood-quickening intensity. I have fallen in love since, each time there has been great excitement, but no later love has been as sweetly innocent, as new and shiny, as that first one. Neither set of parents approved, which made the experience all the more delicious. My schoolwork suffered, he vacillated between working and going back to college. When a parent put their foot down we broke up, only to get back together again promptly.

We had a blissful time of it, gloriously melodramatic, bitter-sweet; the kind of young love the great poets describe:

Love

Joyful
And sighful
And pensive in turns,
Now easing,
Now freezing
In anguish that burns,
Drowned in despair,
Demented with bliss,
The lover alone
Knows what happiness is.

Goethe


Alas, it didn’t last. His parents moved away and for almost a year he came back every few weeks, hitchhiking on the Autobahn, a distance of 600 km, a journey which took him from between twelve to eighteen hours, depending on the kindness of drivers.

Then it was me who left, I started a course in the UK which was to last for two years. We wrote each other passionate letters, but the inevitable happened. Life intervened, new experiences, jobs, studies, and eventually, a new love. He was heartbroken; occasionally, he visited my mother who, very unwillingly, gave him news of me. My new love soon failed but the misery of that commitment continued for many years.

We met just once more, many years later, in London. Germany and England played against each other at football and my first love came over with a group to watch the match at Wembley Stadium.

In the event, he missed it. We met at Piccadilly Circus, in the midst of vast crowds; the meeting was to be a very quick one, before he was to join his mates at Wembley.

Instead, we walked to Hyde Park, spending the whole of a brilliantly sunny afternoon sitting on a park bench; catching up, reminiscing, regretting what might have been and never was; finally falling silent.

We didn’t kiss until we said goodbye at the turnstile into the Underground station, he to return to his hotel to pick up his bag, me to take the train back to my unhappy life.

We could so easily have gone to his hotel;  perhaps it was too late for both of us.

It is true what they say, you only regret the things you didn’t do.

NIGHT

Three a.m.

For the moment I have given up on sleep.
I am at peace, the night welcomes me with open arms.
The whole world is mine.
Yesterday is long gone, tomorrow is no more than the thinnest shadow of light just over the horizon.
There’s nothing on my mind to disturb my equilibrium.

I put down my novel, pick up the poetry anthology on my night table; read a favourite poem.

I decide to get up, draw the curtains and open the window wide.
The night air is balmy, it caresses my face tenderly.
The waning moon pierces the velvet sky, creating a silvery sheen above the deeper blackness of trees and the edge of the hills.
Bright Venus is in attendance.

All is still, all is silent.

As my spirit settles into the night, my eyes distinguish minute differences in the texture of the darkness, here and there a man-made light glimmers and the gentlest breeze shifts the tops of trees.

My ears become attuned to far-off sounds.
An owl hoots; there is an answering shriek from across the valley.
In a distant farmyard a dog barks briefly, disturbed perhaps by the call of a vixen.

I hear a hum, a delicate, yet deep-throated hum; like a blanket of sound covering all other sounds.
It is the river, flowing low after weeks of blue skies and no rain to fill its bed with new vigour.

The river carries my spirit and I become one with the night.

Confession Is Bad For The Soul

About as bad for the soul as it gets.

In the wee small hours of the morning

When the whole wide world is fast asleep,

I think of  . . .

And never ever think of counting sheep . . . .

Having had a full body massage today/yesterday doesn’t help, a massage always stirs up all the aches and pains that normally get buried during the day and then proceed to nag me all night. And without a massage I’d never get full control of my joints and never get rid of the rocks lodged in them.

It is 3 in the morning and sleep is as far away as the man in the moon.

Tomorrow/Today is my birthday, one of those with a big fat nought, the one where retirement and old age start, where you finally have to face up to the fact that you will never do any of the things your vast talents promised you’d do when you were young,

I have just been downstairs to the drinks cupboard and poured a large glass of sherry; on top of 20mg of temazepam and a double dose of paracetamol that should at least dull the feeling of dissatisfaction, even if it doesn’t knock me out sufficiently to send me into the arms of Morpheus. 

I wish I could be the kind of nightowl who sits over a glass of whiskey on the rocks, a gently smoking cigarette in the ashtray and a romantic tear glistening on her cheek. I am not even granted that dreary stereotype, being far too damned realistic and down-to-earth for any fancy rubbish like that. Besides, I neither smoke nor drink spirits.

I am the sort of insomniac who tosses and turns all night, whose thoughts are of the pointless, circular kind, who feels nothing but self pity and useless regret. And is going to be a complete wreck in the morning.

A group of boring women is taking me out to lunch tomorrow. There is no other kind of woman in rural England; the sort, for whom a good gossip is all the intellectual stimulation needed to provide a warm glow of rather nasty self satisfaction. I shall look a complete mess, which can barely be hidden under a layer of make-up. Still, at least I know how to put on a party face and these poor souls mean well; they went to the trouble of booking a table, organized others of their sort to come along and make up the numbers and they probably feel they are doing me a great favour, when all the time I feel I’m doing  penance.

I’m too bloody kind in spite of my nasty, sneering nature. I should have told them I was busy. It is my birthday, after all.

All of you would probably be overrun with family. The number of female bloggers who describe themselves as “mother of ../ wife . . ./grandmother of…./ always surprises me. I thought we’d left the era when we were somebody’s appendage behind us, and had become women and people in our own right and not valid only because we filled a niche in somebody else’s life. I’m wrong there.

I am all those wheels on somebody else’s carriage myself but I’ll be damned if I validate my existence other than by my own efforts, on my behalf. Still, it would be nice if any of the brood could be bothered to make a fuss of me on my birthday.

I was a rotten mother, always too busy earning a living and being a friend to my children. “I don’t want a friend”, my daughter, who no longer speaks to me, said, “ I want a mum, like the other kids have”. Tough tittie. Food and clothes and a roof over your head came first, my girl.

Right, that’s got rid of most of my readers. In my present state of mind I don’t care, although it would be very kind of you if you could overlook this lapse of good manners and give me the benefit of the doubt. I might behave better in future.

But now I am depressed; I am aching to go to sleep and stop talking rubbish into nothingness, which is all there is to the virtual world.

Thank Goodness, You don’t know who I am.

Confession is bad for the soul, not to mention embarrassing.

If I post this, I deserve to be evicted for stupidity.


Would you believe that the thrush has started his morning concert, and there is already enough light in the sky to see the river? I think I'll go down the bank in my nightdress and drown myself.