The best laid plans of Mice and Men and Margarets.....

Well it's been a time since I posted. 
Why?
I have had a serious bacterial illness that left me unable to function and has left me deaf.
Came on like a strange headache, I was in the garden when it started to sway round me and I thought I was going to faint.

I nipped round the corner to the Doctors who luckily was in and had an emergency appointment, he looked me over and told me it was a one off. Probably tiredness.

The next day I was in excruiating pain all over my body and couldn't move, hubby took me to see Dr Edwards, a jolly hockeysticks kind of woman, skinny, fit, tanned, big white teeth and a mane like a horse.
"EEEhhh " she laughed, "Ear infection, it'll burn itself out you have blisters on your eardrum."
Later that night, the pain increased and I was crying in agony, it felt like a burning hot knife was being pushed into my ears, we rang 111 the emergency online doctor and they got us an appointment with the walk in centre at 11pm.

While we were waiting to see the Doctor, I heard loud popping in my ears as if someone was popping balloons or shooting a gun.  Bang bang bang so loud my dear hubby could hear it sitting next to me.

Then my ears bled and seeped yellow goo. God it hurt, it really really hurt.

 When it was our turn to go in, we saw a lovely Carribean woman doctor with pretty dreads and a lovely caring attitude, she took swabs from my ears and told me to ring my doctor and they could give me the appropriate anti-biotic as it was a bacterical infection.

The following day I couldn't stand up, I felt the room swirling around me, everything went dark. I was by now completely deaf, I sat down and felt like I was falling into a pit. I needed air so hubby took me into the back garden and I sat on a chair and screamed in agony and panic.

We visited a Doctor or emergency room every day for a week and nothing was stabilising, we had lots of advice that didn't work - Dr Edwards refused to get the swabs back for us as she thought there was no point, so the locum doctor did and I have a specific infection that can be cleared up by the antibiotic and I was also given anti dizzy tablets.

Dr Edwards told me not to take the antibiotics.

Now it's what three weeks later, I am deaf as a post, feeling bit better, can read, write my blog, do about ten mins of Facebook before I feel queasy - I'll know if I will hear again in another two weeks or so apparently.

Winston Graham wrote in one of his novels, "one day you can be fit, strong, planning for the future, and the next gone."   

I'm not gone yet, I'm still fighting.

Plums!

Made about 2 kilos of plum jam, plum crumble, plum ice cream sauce, and have frozen loads to make sugar plums at Christmas.  Life has been better and not just because of the multitunenous plums.

Garlic has been abundant, strawberries, blueberries are nearly there - pears and apples growing on apace. Sage, Chives, rosemary, fennel, oranges and grapes are all waiting for us.  Our little garden is almost a totally edible experience. Apart from the grass yes - but that's for the goats!!  We also use the roses,lavendar, nastursiums, curry plant, and the Bay leaves growing next to the sage.  We have Aloe Veras by the score. Our freezer is full of cooked recipes from 1625 to 1940s to present date.

We have decided to move away - somewhere where we can grow and sell stuff- we seem to be good at it.  I will still write & hubby still has to work, but we will look and see what we can find.  It's given me a kind of peace knowing we're ready to move on.

We'll pot up as many plants as we can and take with us. I couldn't bear the thought of some-one chopping my lovely kitchen garden to bits to cover with cement - like the guy at the end house did with the little orchard in his garden - or the people next door who prefer paving to plants.

We'll take the blackberries, the rhubarb, the edible sunflowers and everything we can pack, after all, we brought them all here.

So I'm starting to look, peace and quiet to write, a big kitchen so I can cook, room for two cats and a dog and perhaps some chickens, and our garden.  Who knows might even find a derilict castle!!

 

Hiatus

Well, I've already had a little break from the blog, but I'm going to have a week or so more to decide what I really want to do with my life.

I can't live in this house anymore, however beautiful I've made it, however fruitful and lush the garden has become. The Cotswolds are becoming claustophobic, every time I look round another field is being turned into houses. Little houses crammed on top of each other without a breathing space.  Those who aren't moving are extending so the village is a constant thrumm of building machinery.

I remember the scree scree scree of the house martins as they sail across the summer sky. Now drowned out by diggers and pile drivers and the swearing of workmen wearing just shorts and a yellow armless jacket over massive beer bellies and tattooed legs.

If I lived in the middle of London for instance, jack hammers on the road, buses,heavy traffic and general noise would be something I had signed up for.  Been there done that - moved for a quiet life.  Not happening. 

Today I'm particularly frustrated as I can't get out of my road. Blocked by builders vans and cars. Ask them you say?

Tried, apparently they're all deaf and I'm invisible.

Anyway time to have a think - if I can with the constant thumping in the road and the dog barking next door.   I need to get out.  Need to feel a breeze that doesn't contain brick dust and cement. 

See you in a couple of weeks.

Keep well and safe,

 

Ups and Downs

My books are selling well - so that's an UP.
The Police will issue parking tickets to the neighbours - so that's an UP.
We have a break booked in Cornwall - so that's an UP.

I don't get much sleep because of the neighbours - thats a Down
I am worried about whether we will be able to sell our house - that's a Down
I'm never completely out of pain with my sciatica - that's a Down.

It's all relative really.

I have food in the fridge. A roof over my head. A husband who loves and supports me in everything I do. A brain in my head and good things to get involved in. Two cats to stroke and love.

But I'm tired. I look at myself today I feel exhausted and I have black rings round my eyes like a Panda. 

I just keep going because I have to tell myself things are really not that bad.

Have a good weekend everyone - Hope you have more Ups than Downs.
 

Laugh it off....

I wish I could.  Today I am hemmed in unable to get out because our neighbours across the road have 8 yes 8 cars parked in the road.  The young woman next door to them had their cars parked on her drive and she couldn't get out to work. She asked them to move and had to wait a good ten minutes for one of the men to come and move it. She kept looking at her watch as she was getting late for work.
Then one of the men asked her to go and park somewhere else - hasn't she got a sister or a relative she can park on their drive?
WHAAAT?????

My sister is very ill.  What if I need to get out quickly? What if I have one of my anaphalaxsis?  I am stuffed because the man over the road is an inconsiderate arsehole who only cares about what HE wants.

I wish I could talk to my husband, but I can't phone him at work. He calls at lunchtime. 

Hubby calms me down. Stops me going across the road with a baseball bat and a can of petrol and matches.  OK that's a bit over the top. I spend my life controlling my temper. Half Shoreditch and half Irish with red hair equals a very short fuse.

Another rubbish thing - some moron calling himself Grampy gave me a crap review for 1955.  He said it was full of typos. IT WAS NOT, Amazon checked it, my proof reader checked it, I'm pretty sure they would have noticed.  I checked every word, researched everything I mentioned. He said it wasn't his 1955.  Stupid sod. It was MINE not his.
GRRRRR he didn't even live in London.

JK Rowling is great with critics, when one person gave her a terrible review she just smiled and said "I've still got your money!"  She has one line put downs on Twitter that are brilliant.
She just laughs it off.

Wish I could. 

I'm sitting with a red face and my heart pounding wanting to be anywhere but here.

British General Election 2017

I've never really thought of myself as a political activist, but I guess I have been all my life.
In my time at the BBC I was the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU) representative at both the Open University and White City. I negotiated deals in conjunction with my Union colleagues to give better redundancy deals during the horrific "Producer Choice" years. Many people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for my work for them. 

I have been a Woman's Liberation supporter from the time I went to Hornsey College of Art and discovered that there actually were many wonderful women artists who were totally ignored. Before that I just thought that all the great masters were men! 

Artemisia Gentileschi.   Raped as a teenager, she turned her art into a weapon.

I have tried all my life to make the world a better place, not ljust for me, but for everyone. I have fought bullies at school and in the workplace, I have fronted up to Bosses over sexual harrassment and even left jobs because of it.

I wore Solidarnosc badges, Grades are for Turkeys not BBC Secretaries, and badges to support our Nurses.
 
Now I am trying to influence people not to vote for an uncaring Government in an uncaring world. 

I also want young women to vote, because in 1918 after years of suffering and deaths of young women, women in this country got to vote. It was a step forward from being a man's possession into being a modern independent woman.
 
I just hope that by tomorrow, the fake Mrs Thatcher and her men in black will be a thing of the past and we will get people who care about what happens to us.

It's often said about BREXIT, "It's the will of the British people."
It wasn't. It was 48% of people who wanted to stay and 7% who abstained and 51% for, it was basically half and half.

A lot of people who voted for it were co-erced into it by relatives/friends/partners etc.  Without thinking or knowing what it would actually mean for us as a country.

We have always been a mongrel nation, so for me immigration doesn't even factor. Anyway what about all the Brits living abroad?

A great deal of people do not think for themselves at all.  A great deal of people refuse to vote saying it's nothing to do with them. Then moan about the Government in place.

Blimey this has been a rant and a half on a miserable wet Summer's day - flaming June indeed. Followed by flaming July and a bloody awful August.

Have a good day everyone.



 

Back Again!

I've managed to get my worn out old laptop going again by sticking a pen in the hole where the on button used to be and working it round like a skeleton key. Seems to work. I've been looking for a new computer but haven't seen one that has all the stuff this one has at the right price. Oh well, at least I'm back again!

What have I been doing?  Well at the Bank Holiday we went to Charlton Park with the Sealed Knot, it was torrential rain, about a thousand Knotters turned up and the only audience seemed to consist of Knottter's families and friends and around 200 members of the public.

So we did what we do best, carousing.  The beer tent had a metal band (no - not robots!) and the medievals provided well priced beer for our sustinance. Hubby made a historical joke to one of them in Stanleys Regiment - said he was surprised they weren't waiting on the sidelines for something to happen!  (You need to know War of the Roses history to find that funny) but the chappie laughed.

A friend said it was like the beer tents of old, certainly was, couldn't hear the band for the chatter, couldn't hear the chatter for the band. All good. Friends old and new chatted, put the world to rights, mainly over caravan maintenance and WW2 aircraft. Ladies conversations turned to children, grandchildren, Balls at Bath and old memories, all very Jane Austen.

Through the torrents of sweeping rain came the cheerful tune of an ice cream van playing "Popeye the Sailor Man" - this guy was obviously expecting a different kind of Bank Holiday Monday. 

Yesterday back at Waddesdon Manor, one of only nine House Hosts who turned up! Most of the rooms were roped off and some closed completely. The house was full of children on half term holidays with their parents,grandparents,aunties and uncles. It was hot and sunny outside, but humid and clammy inside the Manor, so they put the heating on to take the moisture out of the air. It was an exhausting "please don't touch" kind of day. Fragile antiques and poking fingers don't really go together.

Got home, aching and exhausted, eating my tea I felt a weirdness in my mouth and went to see what it was. A bright white bicusped of wisdom tooth had broken through my gum!  Why now? I never needed them before!! (Both of my wisdom teeth on the lower jaw have never come through before - sometimes they had threatened to in my twenties - but then changed their minds!).

So I went to bed exhausted and I have to say, despite new wisdom tooth, none the wiser.