Monthly Archives: February 2010

Graham had a disturbed night, dreaming of horrid zombies, so he says, so we rose late, got going later, and have drifted later and later as the day has trickled past.  A trip to the Swansea retail park for Screwfix and a new-to-me branch of the bank didn’t help and I drove home in an alarmingly confused state.  I can do that happily and safely on familiar roads in daylight, which is just as well.

The new branch of the bank is a major step forward.  It’s small, friendly, not buzzing with electronics, and I can park the car right outside the door, which is marvellous.  Especially when you drive up just in time for a heavy hail storm.

We’re having rather a lot of hail storms just now.  I don’t like ‘em.  I find them threatening and oxygen-robbing things and, normally, I stay inside, sheltering, rather than risk dashing through such a hostile environment.  Cold, painful, and slippery.  And not a little frightening.  Give me zombies over hail storms any day.  Unless they’re zombie snakes, of course, but the less said about that the better.

As we drove off the radio was giving air time to some American poet or other, much to Graham’s horror.  “Bloody time-wasting poets get everywhere these days,” he said. “Time they were all taught a lesson in real life.”

“I thought it was us poets what give out lessons in real life?”

“You gotta be joking.  Just listen to this geezer…”

I listened.  Graham is right.  Time some poets were taught a lesson in real life.

[Names and identifying details of offending poets suppressed in the interests of good taste and strawberry blancmange.]

I’m not quite sure what to make of today.  Woke to a snow-dusted, sunny world when it ought to have been mild and grey: “We seem to have lost focus on our forecast last night,” said the sweet little man on TV it’s impossible to hate.

I stood watching snow lumps thaw and slide gracefully down the side of the car, to fall with a plop! in the gutter.

Next door’s black character cat came out, spat, and went back inside again.  That’s a cat litter tray that’s going to get an extra heavy load today, I reckon.

And then, after an early lunch, to the doctor’s.

I’m really not sure what to make of that.

He’s been going over all my past records to familiarise himself with my case, and that’s gratifying.  Except that it seems all the paper work relating to my history of heart problems has disappeared.  A great mystery, to him and to me.  He didn’t say anything in agreement with my suggestion that some data entry clerk had picked up that part of the paper file, groaned, looked over his or her shoulder, and junked the lot rather than laboriously code it all up.  Didn’t say he agreed but didn’t say he didn’t, either.

So, the upshot of it is that he wants to re-build the history under his own close supervision, starting with an echocardiogram at the local hospital.

Hey ho.

I never could get completely used to that feeling of déjà vu, but I feel that a new examination and classification can only be to my advantage.

Meantime, the leg problem has to look after itself.  If it’s caused by the heart condition then one course of treatment is called for.  If there is no heart condition then an entirely different one is needed.

When it comes down to it, I think I’m right.  There’s nothing to be said but ‘hey ho’.

A strange day, full of perambulations and connected ramblings.

I’d been dreading it, trying to plan it but failing in the face of the unknown.  How to return a hire car, pick up my own car, and be transported from here to there without risk of abandonment?

In the event, it all happened without my control.  A phone call from the garage, to tell me that my car was ready, with an offer to send ‘a man’ to collect me and transport me over to Neath Abbey to pay the bill and retrieve my little silver Ford.

Then, alone and without external influences, I drove the car and myself back home.

I called the car hire company, over in Swansea.  “If you come over now, we’ll be able to transport you home.”

So, with Graham as navigator, off to Swansea, to leave the hire car and be transported home.

“I feel a little disoriented now,” I said.  “As though control has slipped through my fingers and passed on to someone else.”

“Well, let’s have lunch, and a nap, and it’ll all sort itself out in your poor little brain.”

So, lunch, and a nap, and here I am.  My poor little old brain hasn’t quite caught up with me yet.

And yet…

It hailed, a regular hail storm, in Swansea.

A documentary, of the “perfect city” next to Chernobyl, populated by dreams of ghosts.  And pasted photographs on the walls, showing regulation grim faces of Soviet men, uniformed but not quite convincingly frightening.  They were not ten feet tall.

The promise of sausages, just so soon as I can bring myself to peel potatoes and cook a good peasant dish.

Sausages and mash. Perhaps I shall reconnect with my reality there.

It’s turned a little colder but it’s a different kind of cold.  It’s been raining and damp, too, but a different kind of rain.

Everything feels softer, somehow, like fresh laundry, fragrant with a touch of lavender.

Things could turn nasty again, of course, very nasty, but we’re half-way through February and it feels like March is hammering on the door, wanting to get on with the job.  And any nasty weather we get now will start from a feeling of Spring, yield to it soon enough, and not be too long hanging around.

Not even bad weather can stop the planet turning, nor the seasons moving on.

True to his word, Graham took himself and our new chipper out to the left-hand corner of the back garden and set about reducing the great 20-year tangle of forsythia to three buckets full of chippings.  Might seem sad, and it is, but in our climate forsythia needs careful annual pruning if it’s to be prevented from developing into a non-prickly bramble patch, producing a few miserable strands of yellow bloom in early spring and then sulking through summer and autumn, looking close to death but never quite getting there.

Unless a Graham gets his hands on it of course.

The job took about three hours, two tea-breaks, and several laughing chats with our neighbour, who was as pleased to see the tangle go as we are.

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Die, darn you, die!

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After yesterday’s glitch the new chipper worked faultlessly, grinding away without hesitation.  Graham says it’s because he applied WD4o to the grinders.  Maybe, but I suspect that sheer terror at having caused offence to such a fearsome chap may have something to do with it.

Ah, but it was wonderful out there in the sunshine!  It is still officially winter but if they’d suddenly announced it as the first day of spring I’d have agreed with them.  I stood in a patch of sun at Graham’s side, feeling the beneficial rays penetrate to my chest and my lungs heaving a great sigh of relief.  I’ve made it through another winter without further damage, and I’m profoundly, eye-mistingly grateful for the gift.

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