One to frighten the kids with

This is a poor picture of my eczema covered face.

It gives only the tiniest impression of just how horrible I look at present.

I have had bouts of eczema all my adult life, some fairly mild, most not so mild and on various parts of my body.  The most severe has seen me hospitalized on three separate occasions, but none for the intensity of the itching has ever come close to this latest attack on my eye-lids and face and neck.

Stopping yourself from scratching is virtually impossible and of course, the the itch is scratched the worse it becomes and the swelling of the area  grows to gigantic proportions.

This has been going on for nearly three weeks (hence the lapse in blogging) and has twice improved enough to let me put in an appearance in the parish office, but each time it returns it is more severe and is now so bad that I am ashamed to be seen.

Needing to shop this morning and faced with a red swollen face with huge folds hanging over small reptilian eyes I decided to go as soon as the shops were open in order to meet as few people as possible.

Headed for Boots where I had a long talk with the pharmacist, who was most helpful and pointed me in the direction of some oil-based treatments which she thought would be more useful than anything I was currently using.  I then went to the opticians section where I bought the biggest pair of sun glasses I could find and put them on.

I hastily shopped in a nearby supermarket and got a taxi home.

Have washed my face in the recommended product and slathered the cream all over my face and neck and now look like an albino reptile rather than a red one.

The itching is still there but I will persevere with this treatment while once again failing to appear in church  tomorrow, having also failed to go to choir practice.

I am not yet ready to walk under a bus, but the time is rapidly approaching.
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Ageing - When is it alright to admit to being OLD?

This is a frequently revisited question but sadly, I think I know the answer.

Never one to willingly admit to being old (not the same thing as admitting my age), I feel the time is approaching when it will be necessary for my own survival to say openly "I am quite old and need a bit of help".

Yesterday shopping in town I left M & S to cross the High Street, three heavy bags in hand and made the fatal error of not heading for a taxi.  Instead I passed half a dozen of them on my determined way to the bus stop.

The bus in question was a small single-decker with only a few (already occupied) seats at the front, and the rear seats were up a couple of steps.  By now my arms were aching and it was a struggle to get to the seat.

Arrived at my stop, having to reverse the procedure and climb back down to the front I dropped one bag, had to stop, holding up the bus while I gathered it - and my wits - together and started the walk home.

This is a mere eighth of a mile or so yet, by the time I reached my doorstep my arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets and my back was aching abominably.

Dropping the bags into an armchair I fell into another one and sat for 10 minutes before I could face putting everything away.

By then my back was so painful I could hardly move and I abandoned all attempt to do anything else but lie down and rest.

Later I phoned to apologise for my non appearance at choir rehearsal, feeling a total twit.

This morning I spent half an hour doing a bit of dead-heading and light pruning in the front garden, a job which even two years ago would have taken me five minutes.

Glumly returning indoors to start cleaning the house, I suddenly realised, this is what getting old is about.

Not looking despondently in a mirror wishing one's youthful face to appear, rather than a lined, drooping sagging old wreck.  Not even looking wistfully at young slim women and thinking "I used to look like/better than, that".  Not even waiting in vain for an appreciative wolf-whistle as in days of yore.

No, old age is about not being able or even wanting to do the everyday tasks which were tackled so lightly and unheedingly only months? well years ago.

Unfortunately the human body does not arrive complete with repair kit and spare parts, so the wearing-out process takes its toll.

Many people I know are far less able than I to go about their everyday business without aid, and I am grateful for my own reasonably good health and strength, but oh dear, the time is arriving when asking, paying for assistance for even simple little things will  be the stuff of life and I do not relish the thought.

So, back to my original question.   When is it alright to admit to being O L D?

Not Again

This rather odd-coloured peacock butterfly is not what this post is about, but I thought if I used the picture it might lure in the readers who share my hatred of the 'real' subject.

Along with late butterflies my Buddlieas are playing host to a whole army of spiders.

For weeks now I have been feather duster armed evicting the wiry thin long-legged ones from the house but am being assailed on all sides by their horrid cousins.

On Monday this week the parish administrator leant over the back of the office sofa to put something behind it and retreated hastily, having seen a large black beast lurking in a box.

Yelling for the caretaker (and she can yell), she and I, left the office at speed.

A few minutes later, another volunteer braver than either of us, had picked up the box and dropped its inhabitant outside in the churchyard.

This morning at the bus stop, it was drizzling so I was well under its roof until I suddenly found an absailing arachnid in front of my face.  Luckily the bus came so I beat a hasty retreat, shuddering.

Half way through the morning, there was a yell from the bookkeepers office upstairs and she ran down the stairs closing her office door first and also shouting for the caretaker.

By the time he had made his unhurried appearance there was no sign of the invader and we all spent the remainder of the morning looking nervously around before touching anything.

Since it is Harvest Festival this coming Sunday and we are slowly gathering a mountain of donated goodies in the office in preparation for displaying them at the service, I am treading very warily around bags and boxes only too aware that their contents may contain the odd surprise.

What is it about this season that produces the desire for confrontation in the (hearts?) of this eight-legged brigade of nasties?

Why can't they just go about their arachnid affairs without the need for face-to-face tactics?

Why am I such a wimp?

Michaelmas Day

After a really lovely St Michael's Day service this morning.  Good sermon, readings and singing.  We sang Cantate Domino very well indeed and finished the service quite pleased with ourselves.

It was a really beautiful day, the sort of day I feel should always mark this very important Saints Day.

The sun was too warm and inviting to ignore so I set about cutting back some of the Hibiscus and Buddleia  (avoiding that which was still blooming).

I became aware after a few minutes that there was a collared dove sitting a couple of feet from me on a Buddleia stump,  quietly eyeing my activities without fear or any apparent desire to fly.  So I went back into the house and collected my camera, sure that he would take off in a panic.

To my amazement he just sat there and let me get quite close before closing his eyes and settling down for a snooze.

When I had had enough and needed my coffee - around 1.30pm - he was still sitting there but flew off as I shut the back door.

The picture is not all that good but it is possible to see that my Michaelmas visitor was very relaxed.

When is it Right to Interfere?

Waiting for the taxi to  take me to church this morning, sitting on the arm of a chair in the front window (I know, yet another bad habit), I found myself watching that least favourite of mine, a spider in the hibiscus making a very ornate web.

Despite myself, I found myself admiring the painstaking work going in to the web, and also the patience of this ghastly unfavourite creature.

Quite without any warning a huge bumble bee suddenly got caught and without a second's thought I leapt out of the house, whizzed my hands round and round the captured creature which was hanging helplessly by now and as it dropped to a lower branch of the shrub I pulled away a further thread.

Back in the house I could no longer see the bee but the spider was steadily working on its repairs, ready for the next unfortunate victim and I wondered guiltily if a, I had any right to interfere, b, whether the bee had survived, and last but not least, just how far human intervention should go.

Take this a step further and we are faced with situations like the one reported last week of the poor starved and tortured little boy who died so tragically at the hands of his own mother.

"Unthinkable", "How could anyone do that to a small helpless soul"  "Why didn't someone do something"?
Well the failures of all the individuals concerned, school, social workers, G. P. , are well documented and not for the first time, but this begs the question, why?

Surely not all those listed who saw various aspects of this child's ill-treatment, were afraid to interfere, somehow assuming that 'someone else' would report what they saw.

Is there then a culture of 'minding ones own business', to the exclusion of everything and everyone else?

How do journalists and photographers who go to film and record accidents, atrocities, violence on any scale, somehow contrive to reflect what is happening without becoming involved?

When does intervention become interference and what is it that prevents good, normal, kindly people from taking that step over the line.  Is it fear, indifference (surely not), embarrassment, I don't know, but there are serious questions here.  Does anyone have answers?

An Embarrassment of Riches

Sometimes life is just so quiet, so boring, so .........uninterrupted that I need noise to reassure myself that I'm still here.

Other days are like today.

Normally Thursday is a household chores, odds and ends day and I see and hear no-one but the TV.

This morning washing in machine, paper-work well organised and coffee beckoning I thought.   "Two months or so since I last had contact with my brothers (I have three), wonder how they are"?

Sitting down with first coffee the phone rang - middle brother, "just wondered how you are?".

An hour later, a ring at door-bell, special delivery (shhh, a ring I had ordered via my favourite TV channel).

Lovely ring, duly admired and added to secret collection, I thought, time to resume house-work.  No, can't be bothered it can wait till tomorrow will watch "Loose Women", have lunch and relax.

Half way through the afternoon phone again - eldest brother "Long time no speak".  etc.

About three quarters of an hour later sitting in a once again silent house I thought how lovely it is to have the silence broken in such a perfect way.

We see each other very seldom my brothers and I, yet a couple of words into a telephone call and it's just like forty years ago.

Some relationships are worth cherishing even if slightly lengthy gaps link the conversations.

You can't choose your relations people say, but if I could, I'd choose the ones I have.

Goodness Gracious Me

Last week one of my neighbours gave me a large bouquet of white lilies.  She explained that she had received them with other flowers but was allergic to lilies and thought I might like them.

This was an uncomfortable moment for me.  I thanked her profusely, said how kind to think of me and took possession of the beautiful (horrible) things.

If that sounds ungrateful it is not.  I truly appreciated the thought, but wish it could have remained just that, a thought.

A lover of flowers, there is at least one exception to that and lilies are top of the list.  They are toxic to cats, every part of the lily from bulb to stem, from flower to pollen, and for this reason I dug up the ones in my garden some years ago, and never have them in the house.

Additionally, if the pollen falls on fabric it is almost impossible to remove the stain and I have twice had an 'instant colour change' to my clothes when throwing out the dead lilies from the arrangements in the church.

Lilies are just the tip of the iceberg though.

Constitutionally incapable of refusing something (unwanted), when offered in genuine kindness, I feel I need to learn how to refuse graciously and so as not to cause offence.

Someone I rather dislike asked me to have a coffee with them a couple of weeks ago and I was on that occasion able to say honestly that I had a prior engagement and had to run.

For once, I remembered not to say "but another time perhaps".  A fatal mistake and one which will return to bite you on the bum if you make it.

Since John's death I have made the acquaintance of the local bus and taxi services so well that I now have a well-organised network of transport for most of my needs, however, I am grateful for the occasional offer of a lift.

Unfortunately it seems that on the rare occasions when it is comfortably warm and sunny (not hot and humid), and I stroll out of the house early heading for the bus stop in plenty of time in order to enjoy the lovely weather, one or other of my neighbours will stop and offer me a lift.

Unable to refuse, I thank them and arrive before the door is open at my destination, wishing I knew how to say, "no thanks, I'd really like to enjoy the air for a while".

Conversely, when it is freezing or pouring with rain no-one ever stops and I get where I'm going wet, cold and fed up.

Truly I am not ungrateful for unsolicited good deeds, I just wish they occasionally matched my needs.

I'm afraid I don't know how to do gracious.