Saturday in the East

A helicopter has just flown overhead. No kidding. I am wondering if it is too early to have a glass of rum to warm me from the inside out, but for the minute I am sticking with fizzy water, and there’s a new supply of cocoa in the cupboard, or hold.

By chance today I met a woman who also has a boat and who worked for the Alzheimer’s Society. We put the world to rights standing outside a very pretty chapel I had stopped to look at on my way back from being with Mother. Cameraless, having foolishly decided I didn’t need it, I was wandering about with my iPad. The iPad is quite handy at Mother’s as I can look up odd poems or hymns if I can get a connection. For photography, it doesn’t please me. I prefer a camera.

I know another Alzherimer’s Society person as she keeps hens and I buy eggs from her when I am passing. I am starting to wonder if there is some universal law at work where if I start to talk to the only person in an out of the way spot they are bound to have links to dementia care in some way.

Wordsworthian Moments

Back in the Smoke and working from home, trying to make sense of some work that has been passed on to me to correct and complete.

Mother

I had to make a detour to reach Mother. There had been an accident and the police closed the road. It must have been nasty as the road was still closed several hours later when I came back. There was a fire engine there too.
The usual smell of air freshener met me as I buzzed to be let in. In some ways reaching Mother is like going into a prison. Without the razor wire. I am not allowed the codes, and can only move into one area before needing help to access the next. Not that anyone ever asks who I am.
Mother clutched me and said she had been worrying. Nothing new there. Mother could win Olympic gold in worrying. I kept calling her Mum, but she didn’t call me Isobel, so I doubt if she knew who I was. She was looking very summery in light weight pink and white check seersucker trousers I got her last year, with a mauve t shirt and mauve fleece. Her feet were in fleecy pink socks.
We went to her room. She needed the loo, so I took the tops off the hangers, folded them up and put them in the chest of drawers.
She wanted a drink and asked for hot chocolate. A good choice as she drained it immediately and did the same with the second cup I requested. I trimmed and cleaned her nails. She worked the lavender hand cream into her skin obediently. I sprayed us both with the new lavender eau de toilette I had bought her for Easter.

April

At last, April is here and I can post this famous poem by famous poet and Peckham boy, Robert Browning.
Then I am doing the washing up after my early lunch, buying some fruit, and going for a spin on on my bike on this beautiful day.

Top Post

A little while ago GillyGee tagged me. One of her questions asked, which was your most popular post?
I didn’t know, and I didn’t know where to look, but other people seemed able to answer the question, so I guessed it must be somewhere on WordPress.

I had a strong suspicion it would be this post, and I was right.

Rather disturbingly, drowning kittens and puppies features prominently in the searches that have led others to my page.

I am not sure what they think, when they find a poem and a family story.

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

I went to buy tomatoes and onions today.

My eyes grew larger than my stomach, and I came home with gorgeous English damsons, cucumbers, small and so so sweet, raspberries from Kent that are a taste of heaven, Kentish cobs (most already eaten and the shells in the compost) with their green, singular tang, corns on the cob, ready to boil or roast, beetroots with slender pink stems and crimson veined leaves. From further afield, I bought pomegranates, oranges, figs. I’d already got grapes from the garden.

Garden Grapes

I am dizzy with the prospect of eating all this bounty. My head spins with recipes, planned meals and gastronomic pleasure.

In a similar situation, Keats wrote a poem.
We can’t all be highminded.
So while I chomp, I’ll recite this in my head.

Golden Daffodil Moment

I’ve had a great weekend on and off the boat. The weather has been gorgeous; Not Cat has edged a little further into my heart and is definitely My Boy now; I had a lovely birthday spent in the company of good friends with fab presents and cards.

But the high spot was undoubtedly early afternoon Saturday. I was at Mother’s flat, doing the washing up, so it wasn’t a golden moment heralded by an obvious fanfare or glass of champagne.

Emily Dickinson Prompt

Strangling My Muse, http://stranglingmymuse.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/emily-dickinson-mad-lib/, suggested playing around with an Emily Dickinson poem.
This is what they supplied:
There is no ————– like a book
To take————— away,
Nor any ————- like a page
Of —————- poetry.
This —————— may the reader take
Without a single ————–;
How ————- is the cost
That —————a human ————–!

Twentieth Anniversary

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of my father’s death.

One way and another, mortality has been pretty high in my mind for several weeks.

My father died very suddenly. One moment he was turning out his bedside light, the next he was unconscious. An hour later he was dead. I was in London, and received a phone call to say he would probably not survive. I did not have the option of racing to his bedside, but instead sat beside the ‘phone drinking camomile tea and hoping he would not survive if this meant a further reduction in his quality of life.

Today

I’ve got a large glass of wine and an even larger glass of water. I’ve not had enough fluids today and I’m feeling the effects; incipient headache; dry mouth. I like the idea of the wine, but it’s probably significant that I’ve left it on the draining board, while the water is in front of me. And that this at least my fourth glass of water.

So, another evening on Das Boot. Home tomorrow via the cat home I hope.

I’m tired. Very tired. This has been my day: