Little Parcels of Love

Yesterday I was reminded of the Wendy Cope poem about the orange.

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.

I’ve always liked that poem. It reminds me of the joy it is possible to get from everyday life and how funny extra large things can be.

It was the sight of a huge apple turnover that had me reciting the poem.

Apple Turnovers - £1 coin for size

My mum is very unwell now. She has wonderful friends and family who bring things when they visit, like flowers, food and magazines. With flowers there is always the risk that too many will make the house look like a funeral parlour. Food that won't get eaten and magazines that won't be read can feel like a waste.  Mum jokes that she has a very well fed food recycling bin and the dog is getting very fat. I couldn't help laugh at the turnovers being given as a gift to someone who was struggling to eat half a bowl of soup.

People aren't giving food. Not really.  What they are giving is little parcels of love.

Before now I've struggled to understand the people who take on charity challenges.  I remember watching the first London marathon with my friend. We sat in my living room on the flock blue sofa, eating a marathon  (snickers bar) as our way of showing support and laughing at people wobbling all over the place and wearing silly costumes.  These days it is faster and much more serious.
My friend turned to me and said, "When I'm old enough, I'm going to do that.  It looks brilliant doesn't it?"
I looked at her as if I had a bad smell under my nose.
"Will you do it with me?" she asked
"Errr, No!" I said.
Maybe that's why we are no longer friends and I have no idea if she has run the London Marathon.
I never understood the people who said, "I'm doing it for my Dad," or "It is to make my Mum proud."
But I've worked it out now.  It's a little parcel of love.

So, while I will never run the Marathon I have decided to do this year's Swimathon.  It's for two cancer charities: Cancer Research and Macmillan.  I have noticed that cancer is hard to live with or die from and if I raise a little bit of money it might make things a little easier for someone else.  Also, I like swimming and getting into the pool regularly has helped keep me sane. (I know what you're thinking but I would be a lot worse without it).  It's also my little parcel of love.

A friend has already sponsored me and that feels like a little parcel of love too.
If you feel like donating you can here

Game Shows and Waiting

In life and death there is a lot of waiting. It requires patience. We like to find ways to bide our time and there have never been more methods available to occupy it. The aim is to keep you in the present because the past can make you feel sad and the future is frightening.

I have always enjoyed counting. There is nothing quite like running through numbers to keep you in the present but you have to count something: steps, lengths of the pool, pages left in your book. Reading, playing an instrument or just tapping out a rhythm with a pen on the table can anchor you in time and space.  As can tv, games like candy crush and a spot of Twitter procrastination.

 Psychologists write long articles about mindfulness and breathing, telling you, with an implied wag of the finger that modern life is stopping you live your best most present life. They warn that modern life is filled with distractions. It is and thank goodness for them. Sometimes, being mindful and present is hard. You do your best. You keep your life in separate boxes; a truly compartmentalised life (try saying that on 3 hours sleep - or even doing it).

Games shows have become my new favourite distraction. It’s true, I’ve always enjoyed a quiz. The evening quiz shows like University Challenge and Only Connect stretch your brain but sometimes the future is too big and scary for these difficult quizzes to become a proper distraction. Daytime game shows are a whole new revelation. They suck you in with their seemingly easy questions but no one ever wins because of impossible rules or gimmicks. Tipping Point asks, “Which prime minister was Boris Johnson’s book, the Churchill Factor about.” You know the contestant is going to collect their counter and spend ten minutes deciding which slot to put it in. Those games at the penny arcade are fun because you rattle through a pot of 2ps in a minute but you wait to see. “Margaret Thatcher,” the contestant answers and you should lose interest but somehow you’re hooked. Tenable is like Pointless in that it asks questions that have lots of answers. In Pointless you have to find the least common answer and in Tenable it’s the top ten answers and nobody ever knows all ten of the busiest racecourses in the UK. Babushka is a new one that no one will ever win. I’ve not seen it yet but my sister has described it to me: easy questions, and you get to open a Russian doll with nothing inside and you lose all your money or hard questions and you don’t get to open the doll.

There must be a market for a new TV game show that would keep out unwelcome thoughts.

In the evening, at the pool, I met some friends. They go for ‘Swim and Chat’ and I could hear their conversation breaking through my counting. As with all women my age, they discussed their children, the state of the education system, their aches and pains and moaned about their husbands. One husband has an online shopping habit. Long gone are the days when a husband would sit happily browsing through the Screwfix direct catalogue dreaming of a power tool but not being prepared to do the paperwork to actually buy something. Now, it’s one-click ordering and the new toy arrives via a slightly harassed looking woman in a rusty car.  His latest toy was an endoscope. Counting was no longer working. I needed to know. What did he need an endoscope for?
“It will come in useful for finding things down the back of radiators,” my friend said with one eyebrow raised and a twist in her mouth that could be interpreted as either anger or amusement.
“Oh,” we replied. There’s not a lot you can say to that.
After a while, the conversation moved through all the possible uses and we settled on a new game show. Nick and His Endoscope, or Through The Orafice. The idea started as a party game. He could be sent into different rooms and the guests would have to guess where he has put it from the image on the screen. We imagined it’s transfer to TV. We imagined the voiceover man. “And now over to Nick with his endoscope.” “What lives in an orafice like this.”

I’m sure it will be a hit. I think I’ll given Endamol a ring later.

Sleep is for wimps

“Who needs sleep? Well, you’re never gonna get it. Who needs sleep? Tell me what that’s for. Who needs sleep? Well, you’re never gonna get it. There’s a guy been awake since the Second World War.”

I sing to myself throughout the night.
“Sleep’s for wimps,” I tell myself  when those song words dry up and fail to give answers.

I haven’t written anything for ages. Words buzz in my mouth like wasps but refuse to come out. My head is a jumble of unsaids.

If you read about writer’s block it tells you to just write. Write anything. Apparently it doesn’t matter. I could write about elephants called Bill but Bill is boring and I’m frankly sick of owning an elephant now: elephants stink. Elephants,apparently, need very little sleep (about 2 hours a night and often go 2 days without sleeping)

So, I’ll write about insomnia songs.
Barenaked Ladies knew a thing or two about not sleeping. It has been my go-to song for a while but it might be time for a change. “There’s so much joy in life. So many pleasures to be found but the pleasure of insomnia is one I’ve rarely found.”

Insomnia by Faithless says, “Deep in the bosom of the gentle night. I search for the light. Pick up my pen and start to write.”
This is normally good advice but wasps and elephants.

The Eels say, “I need some sleep. Can’t go on like this. Tried counting sheep but there’s always one I miss.” I’ve tried counting sheep too but you are meant to imagine them jumping fences and mine won’t jump. They are just too fat or tired to bother.

Irving Berlin, who knew how to write a good tune suggests, “When you’re worried and you can’t sleep count your blessings instead of sheep.” This is good advice and works for going to sleep but has no effect on staying asleep.

Bobby Lewis knew how it felt. He was tossin' and turnin' all night long but those were different times. He sang, “The clock downstairs was striking four. Couldn’t get you off my mind. I heard the milkman at the door.” Oh, for the comforting sound of clanking milk bottles on the doorstep. Maybe I should get a milkman.

There is something about this 3 or 4 am time. Chicago wrote, “Feeling like I ought to sleep. Spinning room is sinking deep. Searching for something to say. Waiting for the break of day 25 or 6 to 4.”

These songs are great. It helps to know that you are not alone. Even Megadeath’s Insomnia helps because I can tell myself that at least it’s not that bad. “I’m running in quicksand. The guilty past I’ve burried. Something’s haunting me. The guilty past I’ve burried.”

If you see me today I could just be humming one of these tunes or quote The Beatles “I’m so tired I haven’t slept a wink. I’m so tired my mind is on the blink.”

The Escape Committee

My sister and I are forming an escape committee as we speak.  We are assembling spoons and checking maps to see the best place for a tunnel.

You read about them all the time.  The press is full of contempt for the elderly bed blockers who are clogging up our NHS.  All those old people, who quite frankly have outlived their usefulness and should just be put out of their and everyone else's misery, refusing to go home because they are still too ill to look after themselves, not sprinting out of bed after a hip replacement. I mean, how very dare they? Taking up beds that could be used by people who think their cold is going to kill them.

Obviously, if the journalist writing the article has a parent who has recently needed the services of the NHS they want them to bed block.  They can't possibly care for their parent: their job is too important.

What no one seems to write about is how difficult it can be to get out of hospital.  My mum had a very successful operation to repair a fractured hip.  She hasn't been in too much pain and is moving well.  However, she's not particularly well and wasn't before she slipped off the chair. She wants to go home.  She's ready to go home and has people at home to care for her. Being in a orthopeadic ward won't make her other symptoms go away, raise her blood pressure, or magic blood tests into a normal range.  They can't make her eat or stop her sleeping as often as she does because she is sick it has nothing to do with her hip.  No doctor, working over school Easter holidays, wants to be responsible for going against procedure and who can blame them? They've probably been working far too many hours to know if they are making a sensible decision.

So, to save them from the worry, we are off with our spoons.

Physician Heal Thyself

The more time I spend around hospitals or medics the more worried I get. Our health service is underfunded and it's staff are at breaking point.  Every corridor has a notice for a fundraising event, each ward has a tombola or raffle and staff often look sicker than the patients.

A student nurse told my mum that she had only had two hours sleep.  "It's OK," she said because after this weekend there won't be more overtime for a while and I'll be back to my normal hours."
Her normal hours were irregular 12 hour shifts. I've met doctors on the stairs or in the lift who I saw when I visited the previous evening and that morning and I've asked them if they've been home.  They haven't. "I managed an hour in the on-call room," they beam.  They are young but it's unsustainable.  I know GPs my age who can't recruit staff or get up one morning and just can't do it anymore.

The proverb "Physician Heal Thyself," was, according to Luke, referred to by Jesus. It's not a new idea.  Patients did not want to be treated by doctors with leprous sores hanging off them then and we don't want to be treated by doctors and nurses who are sleep deprived and on the verge of a breakdown.

None of this is the fault of the staff who are unable to heal themselves. We are asking them to do the impossible.  My GP surgery has two full time GPs, and three 3/4 time GPs and has 13.552 patients registered.  It's time we had some grown up conversations about what we all need to do to make this work, for everyone including the staff.

The Visit: A Short Story

 Note: This is fiction based on a recent hospital visit. If you know me then you don't have to worry about my trauma.

Jane had lost her voice again.  It was becoming a habit that she could do without.
"Your family must love it," people said whenever it happened, which she thought was a bit rude. It was true that she could talk the hind legs off a donkey but her family liked that. Without her voice, they had to fill in the gaps, which they didn't enjoy.  She thought of them as her quiet periods; like Picasso had his blue or rose periods it turned her chatter into an art form. 

"If I lost my voice as often as you do then I'd lose it when I have to go and see the mother-in-law," her colleague said. 
"Then you'd have to sit and listen without defending yourself," she told him, pointing out that there was never a good time to lose your voice.  Although this was true, some times were worse than others and this was one of them.

Her mother had fallen and broken her hip.  Ringing for an ambulance was an interesting experience.  She had wondered when you would be able to contact 999 by text.  That was a week ago and Jane had been visiting every day. 
"Go!" her mother would say after about 5 minutes of sign language, "I can't understand you, anyway."
Stubbornly, she stayed, watching the staff and listening to her mother snore.

Hospitals are very different places at the weekend. This was the second day Jane had managed to get a parking space straight away.  The coffee shop in the atrium was closed and people were kicking vending machines that had swallowed their money.  Patients congregated around the doorway, unsupervised in their gowns, pushing drip stands and sharing cigarettes. Corridors that were normally bustling were deserted, as clinics closed for the bank holiday and no doctors stood on floor 1 1/2 twisting their stethoscopes while they chatted.  The smell of the antibacterial hand gel had gone stale and was mixing with the spilt coffee that had been on the floor since Friday night.

Jane pressed the buzzer to her mum's ward, named after a local village that she had never been to and prepared to wait. There was an immediate crackling sound from the intercom, giving her the signal to try the door.  It opened.  Most other days the staff greeted her with a nod but today she felt as though she were completely invisible.  Outside her mum's room there was a yellow 'cleaning in progress' sign and a nurse had just woken her mum to stick a thermometer in her ear, a clip on her finger and a blood pressure cuff around her arm.  She hung back at the door.  There was no point in attempting conversation and she didn't want to have the conversation about where her voice had gone.

Another nurse popped his head in the room in front of her.
"Can I just ask about Brian Matthews?"
"Maybe later," she replied distracted by Jane's mother's abnormally low blood pressure.
"Oh, it's just..." he began.
The nurse looked up, caught Jane's eye and swallowed a yawn. 
"Are you here to visit?"
Jane nodded.
She turned her attention back to the other nurse and said, "If you just wait a moment then I can answer your questions when we go."
Jane waved at her mother and mouthed a 'hello.'

The obs seemed to take forever but as soon as they were done the nurse swept out of the room, taking Jane by the arm as she went. Jane opened her mouth to protest but no sound came out and before she knew it she was standing in a dark side room with the two nurses. She noticed how quiet the room seemed until the female nurse took a huge breath that sucked all the oxygen from the room.
"I'm really sorry to tell you that Brian.."
She paused and looked at the other nurse her eyes searching his for the right words.
"Brian died." He decided to be blunt.
"It was all very peaceful and we were just about to call you.  Actually, did someone call you? I didn't think there was time but.."
Jane looked shocked but still she couldn't make a sound. 
"Oh, you've gone very pale.  Sit down.  We'll leave you for a moment.  I expect you will want some time to say your goodbyes."
Both nurses backed out of the door and shut her in the room.  She looked at the bed. Although he was covered with a sheet Jane could tell that Brian had been a big man.
"How did I get myself into this situation?" she wondered. "And how do I get out of it?"
Brian lay silently, being of no help, whatsoever.

She checked her handbag for paper and pens. "Maybe I could write a note, explaining everything," she thought.  All she had was a napkin and a lipstick and that would only make matters worse. It wasn't as if she had the voice to explain the mistake to the nurses, so she sat for a full quarter of an hour in a small room with the curtains closed and a dead body. She left the room, dabbing her eyes, head down and left the ward.
"Who was that?" said a nurse at the desk.
"I'm not sure," said the other, "She's been in to see Brian Matthews."
"Oh shit," said the first, "I forgot. I need to ring the relatives. If only I hadn't done that back to back shift I might remember these things."

Jane looked in the bathroom mirror, scrubbed the make up off her face and pulled her hair up into a high pony tail before returning to the ward.
"Where have you been?" her mother asked, "And what has happened to your face?"
Jane started a complicated game of charades.

Film. Play. Book. Tragedy. Death. Comedy.

Unrealistic Expectations for Musicians

It can be difficult to be a musician. There are expectations on all sides that can be impossible to manage.

I always hope to play all the right notes on the piano but that never seems to happen, no matter how much I’ve practiced. I forget that the piano in the church needs fighting and never really sounds nice. After our church rehearsal some of the children asked me why I was covering up the piano. I told him that it needed its sleep or it got grumpy. They gave it a little stroke, knowing how it felt to be cold and grumpy, having just walked in the rain to sit on a cold stone floor for an hour. Their sympathy helped. The beast was in a better mood the next day.

Beginner musicians of all ages often unrealistically expect to be able to play pieces that are too difficult. I am often shocked by drummers who can’t can’t to four, yet think they are ready to play in a band. I find all of this really funny. It was the adult music school’s Easter concert last night and the conductor had an unrealistic hope. It wasn’t an expectation, just a wish. She looked at me, my other bass clarinet pal and the bari-sax player and said, “Can I trust you three to sit together? Last time I was so excited to have a big bottom and I looked up and you were all corpsing.”
We remembered the fart noise from the tuba before. “It’ll be fine,” me and my big bottomed pals laughed. It’s never fine. There is always so much to laugh at. The Long Suffering Husband had resisted the urge to stuff cheese in his ears but had drunk half a bottle of wine and was accurate in his praise at the end. “I thought Les Mis was really good..... Yes, excellent.....It just went downhill from there.”

As a teacher, I sometimes worry that I encourage unrealistic expectations in my music students. This week, six took music exams. They all passed with scores significantly over the pass mark and they were all disappointed. I’m sure that I’ve never expected them to get distinctions but that’s what they all wanted. Maybe they deserved them but some examiners are harsh markers. Music is subjective, which is why Drake earns more than Alexandre Desplat.

It is universally accepted that classical musicians will have more (costly) training than pop musicians but will be paid significantly less.  Even bad guitarists and drummers seem to be able to make a living. Musicians, like many other people doing creative work, are not as well rewarded as they should be. People assume that because they are doing work that is creative, they must enjoy it and therefore don’t need to be paid well. Musicians like to eat and pay their rent and this can be an unrealistic expectation.

In the church I fuelled some unrealistic expectations.
“Miss, did you really give the flute players 50 housepoints each?” an indignant boy asked me.
Unapologeticically, I agreed that I had.
“It’s not fair,” he said.
“Oh, what did you do that should have earned you that many housepoints?” I was genuinely curious.
“Well nothing,” he shrugged, “but they don’t deserve 50.”
I arched my eyebrow at him. He flustered and tried to back away.
“When you can stand in a cold church with both arms held out to the right at shoulder height for two sessions of nearly half an hour each without putting your flute in the ear of the the person next to you, read a code that most humans can’t comprehend, not lose concentration while people walk past or talk or drink coffee, make beautiful music that people can’t be bothered to listen to, keep going when someone knocks your paper with the incomprehensible code on to the floor, remember to breath in while constantly blowing out without getting faint or dizzy and do all that while smiling and pretending that it’s not work and that you are so grateful for the chance to do it that you don’t need any reward then I’ll give you fifty housepoints!”

He goldfished at me for a while and I considered whether I had gone too far and finally lost the plot.
 In the end, I just agreed with him. “You’re right, it’s not fair.”