On this rainy Saturday in June, I've been sorting out papers and came across something I must have scribbled in May 2008. But it's relevant to this year, too, except for the weather pattern which has been quite different.
As the primroses appeared in March, I stood on the garden path and scratched my head, for I could not remember planting them in the lawn. Granted 'lawn' is now a misnomer for that side of the path which I've surrendered to the wild. A golfer would call it 'the rough'. I have the leather jackets to thank for it, and the birds. The plague of craneflies a few years ago left a generation of grubs that ate the grass at the root. The next time we mowed, half the lawn disappeared into the mower like a wig going up a vacuum cleaner. I put down grass seed and the birds came to gorge themselves.
Looking up 'ground cover' on the internet, I found I already had a couple of the recommended plants growing in the rockery so I transplanted some pieces of bugle and dwarf comfrey and left Nature to it.
Nature is a consummate artist. Much of what has happened since has been through the agency of seed, so the snowdrops and primroses and species tulips are being spread about - but how is it that they grow in just the right places, as if by design? And who is it who plants the bulbs? Several years ago we dug a shrub out of the other part of the lawn - that word again, which just about qualifies in this case - and filled the hole with home-made compost. The following spring saw a bunch of red tulips in the place. 'Well,' we said, 'they came from the compost.' Except I hadn't composted any. Over the next couple of years, the tulips were joined by daffodils. This year neither appeared apart from a few leaves spearing out of the grass. 'Well, that show's over,' I thought. Two weeks later, a bunch of bluebells appeared. Just behind them, in what you might call the border, only it's more like a frayed edge, an iris suddenly bloomed.
This spring has been a discovery, of the violet under the rambling rose, the centurea I've always wanted but have no recollection of planting, the border in the front garden which I did plant, but not with this result in view, a glorious tapestry of merging plants rising and falling in height.
Someone came to read the meter. He was dull of face and looked as if meters are all he reads, but he suddenly asked me, 'Who does the garden?' I gave him the wrong answer. The true answer is 'Nature'. All I do is crawl about on my hands and kness in an exploration of wonder, giving a helping hand here and there, pulling out some goose grass, live-heading the dandelions, grubbing up the moon daisies for which I have a dislike bordering on superstitious dread - they are so very invasive, so very weedy. Sometimes I trim the grass, and the wheat and barley that grows under the bird feeders, with shears. Mowing is for high summer only, when all the visitors - the toads, frogs and newts - have gone. I divide snowdrops and dot them about. I shake the seed heads of annuals on to fresh ground. There is no cause any longer to go to garden centres and buy plants, so expensive that I can only ever afford one at a time and never the three or five always recommended. As for 'drifts' - they are for the seriously rich. I have surrendered to nature and am her willing handmaid.
I went cautiously into the front garden last week. After a spring that has been long, cold and wet, it was the first visit of the season, and I expected to spend all morning writing a list of things to do that would take weeks to achieve. But there was so little to do that would I just did it, taking the seed heads off the iceplant and cutting down the ornamental grasses and penstemmons. No, nothing else to do but crawl about enjoying all the surprise free gifts.
My surrender to nature came when I decided not to have the front lawn treated anymore. Yes, four quarterly treatments did create a handsome lawn worthy of the name, but I missed the daisies. Now the front is turning into a rough like the back, but is there anything quite so glorious as watching your cat chase flies in long grass? My only job for this year is to look after the cowslip seeds chilling in the fridge. I've waited five years but they've never arrived on their own, so I guess I shall just have to put them in the ground myself.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
And then the JR again
After two weeks, Mum returned to us from Witney hospital. Another two weeks and we had just about restored her, got her eating again and even, finally, got her eyes tested. Two weeks after that, the glasses arrived. Five days later, Mum was rushed back into the JR with a strangulated hernia. We did not dare send the glasses with her.
At first all seemed well after the operation but a couple of days later she had a heart attack, all her beats and pulses stopped and she flat-lined. They resuscitated her, at the cost of a few ribs. Twice we went in to say our last goodbyes, but every other day she revives. Now it's June and we're still waiting for a place at Witney. Mum must be the longest ever resident in the Surgical Emergency Unit, but they are treating her well. And we have trusted them with the glasses, which they've bar-coded.
At first all seemed well after the operation but a couple of days later she had a heart attack, all her beats and pulses stopped and she flat-lined. They resuscitated her, at the cost of a few ribs. Twice we went in to say our last goodbyes, but every other day she revives. Now it's June and we're still waiting for a place at Witney. Mum must be the longest ever resident in the Surgical Emergency Unit, but they are treating her well. And we have trusted them with the glasses, which they've bar-coded.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
The Community Hospital
She arrived at Witney Community Hospital yesterday morning. We arrived there in the evening and found her deranged. We've seen her deranged before, but this seemed more complete and final somehow. She found it difficult to focus on either of us and spoke drivel non-stop, but every now and again focussed on thin air, lit up and said 'Oh, hello!' I see dead people. . .
She's in a bay shared by three other ladies, each of them friendly enough if a bit withdrawn. The little old lady all shrunken and toothless in the next bed was the only one who had any conversation. You have to keep reminding yourself that this person has a past, was once a lively, robust woman. As for our little crone, she fought hard not to eat, but we got some icecream down her, the inside of a custard tart and half a jam sandwich. The food at Witney is incomparably better than at the JR, and when we looked at the menu card filled in for the next day, we couldn't have done it better ourselves.
The staff nurse introduced himself as John. He's a scouser and sounds just like Derek Acorah - the psychic in 'Most Haunted'. I hear dead people. . .. He's a bundle of jokes and laughter and spent a lot of time with us trying to get to know Mum better. Now, that's how to do it. Are you listening, JR? The staff were really concerned about her lost glasses. The JR had insisted it would be best to get an optician to see her once she was back home; she wasn't back home for two months, and then the optician was away for a fortnight. The appointment is next week. They were concerned and they were helpful. I know exactly what to do now.
God bless community hospitals, and let's curse those buffoons dedicated to their demise, convinced that health provision on an industrial scale is the best way forward.
She's in a bay shared by three other ladies, each of them friendly enough if a bit withdrawn. The little old lady all shrunken and toothless in the next bed was the only one who had any conversation. You have to keep reminding yourself that this person has a past, was once a lively, robust woman. As for our little crone, she fought hard not to eat, but we got some icecream down her, the inside of a custard tart and half a jam sandwich. The food at Witney is incomparably better than at the JR, and when we looked at the menu card filled in for the next day, we couldn't have done it better ourselves.
The staff nurse introduced himself as John. He's a scouser and sounds just like Derek Acorah - the psychic in 'Most Haunted'. I hear dead people. . .. He's a bundle of jokes and laughter and spent a lot of time with us trying to get to know Mum better. Now, that's how to do it. Are you listening, JR? The staff were really concerned about her lost glasses. The JR had insisted it would be best to get an optician to see her once she was back home; she wasn't back home for two months, and then the optician was away for a fortnight. The appointment is next week. They were concerned and they were helpful. I know exactly what to do now.
God bless community hospitals, and let's curse those buffoons dedicated to their demise, convinced that health provision on an industrial scale is the best way forward.
Friday, 10 April 2009
On the Road Again
She was home for a week and a bit. In that time we had the benefit of the best home help service we've ever had: a small team in uniform who always arrived when they said they would, were cheerful and efficient. I positively looked forward to their coming. But then on Thursday Mum stopped making sense, slept all day and went droopy on the right hand side. I confess I dithered. I knew that as soon as I lifted the phone, they'd be taking her back. I wanted to go off to the allotment and just leave things to nature, but it wasn't possible. I lifted the phone and ten minutes later da-da da-da an ambulance arrived and we were back on the road again.
It turned out not to be a stroke. The paramedics had revived her from a hypoglacaemic attack with a glass of sugary milk on the way to hospital. So, it should have been easy to get her home again, but no. They wanted to keep her in overnight for observation, so they did. Yesterday we had a series of phone calls asking us if we thought we could cope. Why not? Aren't we used to it? But then someone let it slip that they couldn't release her if they thought we couldn't cope. After one hysterical phone call saying 'You have two minutes to decide!' I agreed she should be transferred to Witney Community Hospital. Almost our greatest grief was the potential loss of our hard-won care package.
Frankie saved us. Frankie saved us over and over again. In this whole nightmare, Frankie our Care Manager has kept us sane and most lucidly informed. She's been magnificent. Last night she stopped off on her way home late from work to put a letter through our door detailing everything that had happened over the day and all the contact details we needed for the new agencies now involved. We've lost her now, with the move to another hospital, but we'll be sneaking round this morning to leave an Easter egg on her doorstep. All being well, Mum will be back within the week, slightly more mobile, and the care package will resume. Meanwhile we continue work on the big present we've bought her, a summerhouse to be called 'Sybil's Cave' where, we hope, she can sit over the coming months and enjoy the garden.
Anyone watching last night's harrowing Panorama on home care will have been grief-struck. I have no doubt these things happen - we've experienced some of it ourselves with a past agency. Never grow old but if you must, don't grow old alone.
It turned out not to be a stroke. The paramedics had revived her from a hypoglacaemic attack with a glass of sugary milk on the way to hospital. So, it should have been easy to get her home again, but no. They wanted to keep her in overnight for observation, so they did. Yesterday we had a series of phone calls asking us if we thought we could cope. Why not? Aren't we used to it? But then someone let it slip that they couldn't release her if they thought we couldn't cope. After one hysterical phone call saying 'You have two minutes to decide!' I agreed she should be transferred to Witney Community Hospital. Almost our greatest grief was the potential loss of our hard-won care package.
Frankie saved us. Frankie saved us over and over again. In this whole nightmare, Frankie our Care Manager has kept us sane and most lucidly informed. She's been magnificent. Last night she stopped off on her way home late from work to put a letter through our door detailing everything that had happened over the day and all the contact details we needed for the new agencies now involved. We've lost her now, with the move to another hospital, but we'll be sneaking round this morning to leave an Easter egg on her doorstep. All being well, Mum will be back within the week, slightly more mobile, and the care package will resume. Meanwhile we continue work on the big present we've bought her, a summerhouse to be called 'Sybil's Cave' where, we hope, she can sit over the coming months and enjoy the garden.
Anyone watching last night's harrowing Panorama on home care will have been grief-struck. I have no doubt these things happen - we've experienced some of it ourselves with a past agency. Never grow old but if you must, don't grow old alone.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
The Art of Reviewing
Ma has served her sentence and will be released on Monday. So, in between rearranging her room, etc., I can return to more literary reflections. I have just finished Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book. It is certainly one of the finest pieces of contemporary fiction that I've read and stands head and shoulders above those which are either more commercial or more literary. I'm really not sure how to define 'literary' but in this context I mean novels carried sheerly by the beauty of their prose with only a passing nod to plot. I've read two of those recently and having exclaimed at beauty on each page, found it more and more difficult to pick them up each evening until, finally, I didn't bother. And then I began on Brooks. This is not what this blog's about. May be the next one. This one is about my misgivings regarding reviews. I have read what the press has said about Brooks, and I have read what the customers say on Amazon, and I believe she is the victim of a widespread disservice of being damned with faint praise.
I like Amazon reviews, but then I get good ones. In fact, my Amazon reviews are what keep me going in the dark times, to think that there are people out there completely unknown to me who have enjoyed a novel so much they've taken the trouble to write about it. Each time it happens, I stand amazed. Equally I stand amazed when I look up reviews of a book by a well known author and find there is none. Or, as in the case of Brooks, that she has not been unanimously awarded five stars.
Whether one connects or not with a book is, of course, a very subjective matter. Last week, for instance, I gave a class of students doing the Oxford Diploma in Creative Writing a passage from Melvyn Bragg's Credo as an example of going the extra inch in dramatising. Most of them got very exercised about it - not, to my horror, about it being a graphic account of rape, but about the quality of its writing. They trashed it. They trashed Bragg. I staggered out of the class with my self-confidence - what there is of it - severely threatened. Had I boo-booed? Had I revealed myself as someone with a terrible taste in novels? Well, no, I don't believe I had. What had been revealed was the absolute arrogance on the part of most readers who will dismember an author's work, his efforts and his reputation with no apparent authority or qualification for doing so. This is review by the mob. These were they who lust after public execution. I kid you not, this group was baying. Why?
It's not the first time I've met it. Indeed, looking back, I think each time I select a passage to make a point I lay myself - and the hapless author - open to such attacks. Well, beware you budding writers! Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that the fate of this book was set when Brooks won the Pullitzer Prize for her previous one. It doesn't do to win prizes in literature, not if you don't like your subsequent work being worried at by rottweilers. Why do people destroy others? Envy, that's why. And so perhaps that's the reason why Bragg was trashed, because he is a famous TV presenter.
As readers, let's cultivate a more generous spirit and know that, when something strikes a false chord in us, that something is only the hammer and it's our strings which are producing the discord. Let me put it another way: opinions differ from person to person. If we don't like a book, by all means we should say so and say why - having the courage of our convictions - but we should not count anybody who disagrees with us as a fool. The problem may well be all our own. With regard to the two 'literary' efforts I tried recently, I haven't written reviews: that is my way of commenting. And it's my way of acknowledging that those who have read these books and absolutely loved them are at perfect liberty to hold such views.
What becomes obvious in reading most reviews is that people read as readers, not as writers. Perhaps - here I console myself - I often find myself at odds with others because I read as a writer, and that's why my appreciation differs. If most people actually knew what it is like putting a book together, devising a plot, establishing the right narrative structure, creating credible characters, their opinions might be better informed and more gently offered. What Brooks has achieved, and I say this as a writer, is a virtuoso piece of story telling, a novel which is not only brilliantly and beautifully written but is also unputdownable.
And to whoever it was on the Amazon site who said that People of the Book is a good holiday read - i.e. reading about the relentless persecution of the Jews over the ages is a great way to relax on the beach - may we never meet, for you are truly scary.
I like Amazon reviews, but then I get good ones. In fact, my Amazon reviews are what keep me going in the dark times, to think that there are people out there completely unknown to me who have enjoyed a novel so much they've taken the trouble to write about it. Each time it happens, I stand amazed. Equally I stand amazed when I look up reviews of a book by a well known author and find there is none. Or, as in the case of Brooks, that she has not been unanimously awarded five stars.
Whether one connects or not with a book is, of course, a very subjective matter. Last week, for instance, I gave a class of students doing the Oxford Diploma in Creative Writing a passage from Melvyn Bragg's Credo as an example of going the extra inch in dramatising. Most of them got very exercised about it - not, to my horror, about it being a graphic account of rape, but about the quality of its writing. They trashed it. They trashed Bragg. I staggered out of the class with my self-confidence - what there is of it - severely threatened. Had I boo-booed? Had I revealed myself as someone with a terrible taste in novels? Well, no, I don't believe I had. What had been revealed was the absolute arrogance on the part of most readers who will dismember an author's work, his efforts and his reputation with no apparent authority or qualification for doing so. This is review by the mob. These were they who lust after public execution. I kid you not, this group was baying. Why?
It's not the first time I've met it. Indeed, looking back, I think each time I select a passage to make a point I lay myself - and the hapless author - open to such attacks. Well, beware you budding writers! Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that the fate of this book was set when Brooks won the Pullitzer Prize for her previous one. It doesn't do to win prizes in literature, not if you don't like your subsequent work being worried at by rottweilers. Why do people destroy others? Envy, that's why. And so perhaps that's the reason why Bragg was trashed, because he is a famous TV presenter.
As readers, let's cultivate a more generous spirit and know that, when something strikes a false chord in us, that something is only the hammer and it's our strings which are producing the discord. Let me put it another way: opinions differ from person to person. If we don't like a book, by all means we should say so and say why - having the courage of our convictions - but we should not count anybody who disagrees with us as a fool. The problem may well be all our own. With regard to the two 'literary' efforts I tried recently, I haven't written reviews: that is my way of commenting. And it's my way of acknowledging that those who have read these books and absolutely loved them are at perfect liberty to hold such views.
What becomes obvious in reading most reviews is that people read as readers, not as writers. Perhaps - here I console myself - I often find myself at odds with others because I read as a writer, and that's why my appreciation differs. If most people actually knew what it is like putting a book together, devising a plot, establishing the right narrative structure, creating credible characters, their opinions might be better informed and more gently offered. What Brooks has achieved, and I say this as a writer, is a virtuoso piece of story telling, a novel which is not only brilliantly and beautifully written but is also unputdownable.
And to whoever it was on the Amazon site who said that People of the Book is a good holiday read - i.e. reading about the relentless persecution of the Jews over the ages is a great way to relax on the beach - may we never meet, for you are truly scary.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
What happens when somebody thinks
One of the nurses has not only worked out what Mum wants when she calls out all the time, but has had an idea what to do. When we got to the ward yesterday, we found Mum sitting quietly in a wheelchair at reception! Company is what she wants and needs. Not the kind that taxes her with conversation but the kind that includes her as it goes about its business. She greeted us with a smile and for a reward we took her out to see the sunny day.
The John Radcliffe needs a garden. How can you lift a patient's spirit by wheeling her round a carpark? If a garden is not possible, then how about some daffodils planted on the banks?
We asked the Matron to taste the food Mum was given last evening. Understandably, she declined. So we would like to set up a challenge to everyone involved - the dietician, the consultant, the bosses of Carillion: taste the food! If you decline, you have no right whatsoever to put on a patient's notes 'rejects food' as if it is somehow her problem. 'Food inedible' is what should be noted. We took Mum to the cafe and she swigged down a fruit smoothie without a problem.
The John Radcliffe needs a garden. How can you lift a patient's spirit by wheeling her round a carpark? If a garden is not possible, then how about some daffodils planted on the banks?
We asked the Matron to taste the food Mum was given last evening. Understandably, she declined. So we would like to set up a challenge to everyone involved - the dietician, the consultant, the bosses of Carillion: taste the food! If you decline, you have no right whatsoever to put on a patient's notes 'rejects food' as if it is somehow her problem. 'Food inedible' is what should be noted. We took Mum to the cafe and she swigged down a fruit smoothie without a problem.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
THIS WAY MADNESS LIES
What was the point of getting her hair done? By 6pm she had pulled on it so much all the curl had gone and it's back to lank strands. She pulls on her hair and cries out. She claws at her forehead and cries out. She tries to readjust herself in the uncomfortable seat and cries out. 'I want to go HOME!'
My darling mother is now deranged. I will live forever with the guilt of not having stuck to my guns when, three weeks ago, I phoned the consultant to have her moved to the Witney hospital where they have dormitory wards. He talked me out of it.
Science and scientists - so convinced of themselves and that everything they utter is the truth. They do not know best all the time. They do not. Trust your instincts. I certainly should have trusted mine.
Now I can hardly bear what is going on and if anyone asks me how mother is I sidle quickly away like a crab because I do not, cannot talk about it anymore. I wait now for her to go to the home she cries for, the place where there is no pain, the place we came from.
My darling mother is now deranged. I will live forever with the guilt of not having stuck to my guns when, three weeks ago, I phoned the consultant to have her moved to the Witney hospital where they have dormitory wards. He talked me out of it.
Science and scientists - so convinced of themselves and that everything they utter is the truth. They do not know best all the time. They do not. Trust your instincts. I certainly should have trusted mine.
Now I can hardly bear what is going on and if anyone asks me how mother is I sidle quickly away like a crab because I do not, cannot talk about it anymore. I wait now for her to go to the home she cries for, the place where there is no pain, the place we came from.
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