Tagged: love
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink
Nothing new with me and a melancholy air. Thanks to Colin over here for nominating me as a Versatile Blogger.
The Autumn storms this week and being amongst them in our tiny boatlike caravan provides intimations of mortality aplenty but an afternoon spent with scores of a few old friends and childhood faces, but mostly strangers, singing my heart out for the man in the wicker casket cannot be beaten if you need a reminder that we are here for the briefest of blinks. The flowers were beautiful on top of the lovely coffin – I’ve only seen traditional ones before.
I am sad that you are gone, Paul Bryant; 51 is a cruel age to be taken from your wife and two young children – I didn’t know them. You are a smiling face from my childhood, dark and dishy, you always took life by the scruff of the neck and managed to build and maintain relationships with people from everywhere you went. You were a lovely, lovely man and I really missed you and your smile on Thursday.
If you knew Paul, his family have asked for donations to Cornwall Hospice Care instead of flowers; Paul was supported by them during his fight with pancreatic cancer. My love to Sue and his children, to Pauline and Sid, his parents, and to Jason and Sarah.
Not silent Sunday
I don’t really understand the silent Sunday concept, perhaps someone will educate me.
This week I have been getting ready for the fete at Merafield View Nursing home next Friday afternoon from 1.30pm, doing some marketing and getting ready for self-employment again. I’ve sorted a business account, spoken to tax credits, investigated changes to our income and we are looking for opportunities for John’s artwork, and he’s going to be trying to do some more illustrative stuff which I actually think suits his style.
He has had so much to overcome during the past few years, it’s quite amazing to me that he is willing to try anything again but the idea of being in this quasi dormant state until death us do part fills neither of us with glee. If the medical professionals could get their fingers out perhaps we would have something of an answer or at least an idea of whether or not stroke number five is a foregone conclusion or just a possibility. I know which one the balance of possibility dictates.
Life, chez nous, is not, contrary to my tone, all doom and gloom. We are basically happy. We have lovely children and we love each other, our cups runneth over.
This afternoon I shall be cheating in the kitchen; I’m going to use a Wright’s Carrot Cake Mix. I haven’t tried it before and bought it out of curiosity, not normally being one for cake mixes. I do sometimes use their bread mixes as they work quickly, even on a wintry afternoon. Obviously full of flour “improvers” and other dubious things to help things along. After that I will return to knitting penguins and jumpers and bells. I will let you all know how I get on, carrot cake is so yummy it might be nice to have a cheat which doen’t involve grating.
Life is to short to have just one knitting project on the go.
In other news and thanks to my ex-sister-in-law I have been spending a lot of time over at attic24, drooling over her crochet work and her life to be brutally frank. If any of you lovely people could actually show me how to crochet I would be immensley grateful.
Milestones
It’s three months today since John’s last stroke. He’s not up yet so by the end of the day that milestone may have been superceded by another; the diagnosis of a possible vascular weakness that has not yet been located or identified is just a bit like a ticking timebomb.
When I started writing Sheweevil life was very different, not easier but less dominated by limitations. We still hoped to go and live somewhere far flung and be a bit self sufficient but those dreams included us both contributing “each according to our ability” with those abilities being fairly evenly matched and nicely complimentary.
Now, daily life: a trip to the shops, a day out at the beach, a meal, all have to be planned in meticulous detail. It seems difficult even to remember life before strokes. I could weep for the man I have lost who is, in so many ways, still here and in subtle and strange ways, absent. It is not what I expected.
When you promise to love someone in sickness and in health if you think about it at all you might, perhaps imagine a tragic ending, an early death or a horrible disease. What you do not expect, what I did not expect, was a series of incremental and kaleidoscopic changes that lead me from Picasso’s Femme aux Bras Croisés to his Portrait of Dora.
We can only minimise risk and mitigate damage. It feels a lot like holding your breath with your fingers, toes and legs crossed whilst trying not to fall over and all this while trying to conduct a normal family life – today it feels like a big ask.
The times they are a changing
Like the weather, with the imminent onset of the Summer holidays, I’m aware that times are once again changing.
It’s been just under a year since Arty daughter came back to live with us for some rest and recouperation. She obviously hasn’t had any, as that seems to be in short supply here but to mark here annivesary with us she’s leaving. This is not sad or door slamming, though; she has cleverly got herself accepted (again) to the Art School she should have gone to in the first place in the beautiful city of Bath.
It has been quite lovely to see her re-emerge from the little, tight, emotional cocoon she was in when she arrived to this beautiful, pixie cropped butterfly she has become. And she doesn’t even smell of pasties.
So the Artist and myself will be back to just having Lachlantheboy in the house – perhaps it will feel strange for a bit or perhaps we’ll breathe a temporary sigh of relief as we get used to having just a little bit more space in the house. Whatever happens I know that I will be looking forward to Christmas when we are all back together again.
I suppose in the New Year, Surrealo Son (perhaps I should just call him Hembo here like the rest of the world) will start thinking about his future in earnest; where will that take him?
The answer, my friend, is probably blowing around in the wind somewhere.
I know that Lachlantheboy will miss them dreadfully; he always does but I’m proud that, despite my dad’s concerns (he, too, was much younger than his siblings) they all remain close and obviously fond of each other. A reason to believe I may have been on the right track all along.
Great Bake-in
The weekend bake-in has begun with a round of chocolate butterfly cakes with coffee icing. The recipe is from Good Housekeeping Cookery Compendium (1957), my cookery bible which I have used since I was a little girl and have known all my life. I’m doing these today because John loves chocolate and coffee but it is nobody else’s favourite. I don’t really count as I’m not particular: I love everything! I have a new piping bag and nozzle set (this one, here) and I’ve been itching to try it out since yesterday but with moving mountains and ironing this is the first chance I’ve had. The icing set needed a cake stand like this.
Tomorrow I will be making banoffee pie, not much baking really required but the delicious end result almost qualifies it. Sunday is the marathon. I was going to make bridge rolls but taking up the offer to bring some home from work on Saturday by Arty Daughter seemed too good to pass up. Coconut macaroons will follow; I once visited a ‘bakery’ in Plymouth who had never heard of coconut macaroons, needless to say, they are no-longer trading. Choux buns or eclairs to follow, then a nice moist fruit cake – a boil-in-the-pan recipe, finally a carrot cake, courtesy of Delia. The addition of Surrealo son at the table, who returns from his hectic social whirl in London tomorrow, will make our little band complete. I hope wherever you are and whoever you are with, you have love and good things to eat.
Fathers’ day
In honour of dads everywhere but in particular, the ones that have made a positive impact on my life; there is another one (referred to in this news story) who was, to be quite honest, a bit of a waste of space in the dads’ day stakes (and the husband day, and the person day, and the earth-dweller etc, etc you get the picture).
My own lovely dad could never really fathom the bad one referred to above and for Surrealo Son and Arty Daughter he filled the breach. Sixty is too young to lose someone as special and self-effacing as my dad and we all still miss him terribly. My dad and the Artist had a blossoming friendship borne out of the minute connections, the bits you love about someone that you find in another that make you love them. They were not alike but I could and can see a likeness.
The Artist has had many struggles over the past few years and so have we all. Brain Injury is not an easy thing to deal with, or even, if you pardon the pun, get your head around; not for the person with the injury nor for the people who love that person. we are all learning slowly to cope with it; trying to be more understanding; using our combined intellect (as small as that may be) to work in different ways, think laterally, accommodate.
For all the difficulties I would not have wanted different dads, neither for myself, nor for my children. If I got to choose a longer-living different dad I’d throw him back in your face; you can’t replace a short life full of memories. As for the Artist, well I suppose the real judge should be my children but I know that my family is a happy one and despite all the knock backs, we all love each other.
On Sunday we will be having high tea, as per the menu above.
the life and loves of a sheweevil 