25.12.20022
Common cold – you feel like a grotbag and look like a reject from the gargoyle factory.
This has been my saddest Christmas ever. A week or two before Christmas No 1 Granddaughter got tonsilitis and chicken pox, Strep A was mentioned. She was quite poorly with it all. A week before Christmas I started coughing and by 23rd I decided I am not going to Daughter’s for the Christmas lunch on the 24th. We don’t know how Lucy would react if she got a cold on top of her previous ailments. Her immune system must be low just now. How debilitating a common cold is! What made my Christmas was Daughter’s phone call on the morning of 24th to say her mother-in-law had volunteered to drive her here, for her to have a festive glass of champagne with me. I cried. I did the covid test – negative. I wiped door handles, glasses, bottle. I opened some windows to get in fresh air. We had a lovely hour chatting. She’d Facetime me later when the children were opening the presents. And she did. It was lovely to see the children so excited but well behaved.
Here is a new kind of way of dieting – catch a cold. There was an underindulgence in festive food intake. What’s the point of eating if you can’t taste anything. Or drinking. I cooked the gammon and turnip bake, made the root veg salad but not even large dollops of Colman’s on the ham and vinegar on the salad woke up the taste buds. I have had porridge the past two mornings, nothing tasty. I do look forward to taste buds working again. Hopefully this week. My special male friend Iain is coming tomorrow. He is visiting his family and I hope thoroughly enjoying it. He would have had a miserable Christmas here!
The weather has been pretty awful as well. The two-three weeks before Christmas were brilliant. No snow but frosty windless sunny days. I have memorised some picture postcard scenes. Yesterday was dull and damp. In the evening we had a huge hail storm, thunder and lightning. I had to clear the wee gutter under the bedroom window. The downpipe often clogs up and I have a poking stick to clear it. Open the window, a few stabs and the pipe is clear. Perhaps I didn’t realise the problem soon enough. This morning when I went to the studio water had been dripping from above the washing machine. Luckily the washing basket and a pile of sheets on the floor had soaked up most of it. No river across the floor this time (read Blog ‘The hail lot’, 23. June 2019). As luck would have it, the heating stopped working on Christmas Day. At 5pm I noticed the heating hadn’t kicked in. The boiler was still warm so it had happened fairly recently. I did the usual check up routine. Electrical switches were all up. I let air out of the shower radiator, added water into the system. Pressed buttons as advised in the boiler system troubleshooting leaflet. No signs of life. Blast. It was a chilly night but I am fortunate to have wood burning stoves. I had one warm room and bless the electric blankets! I have one on the bed, and my present from No1 Daughter’s family was a heated throw. I could watch rubbish on telly and stay warm. I wrote to the boiler man on Boxing day and he came the next day and sorted the heating. It was a blown fuse. Now, that’s service and it came with a smile!
3.1.2023
Happy New Year. Let’s hope ’23 will be better than ’22. How much worse can the world get before it gets better!? Unbelievable how one man is holding the world to ransom, or Europe at least.
Hogmanay celebrations were very quiet, just Iain and I. We had celebratory champagne, watched rubbish on telly until the bells and went to bed. Achievement of the New Year’s Day was to go to the beach for a wee saunter. We had the beach to ourselves, the weather wasn’t too bad. Yesterday was lovely, sunshine most of the day but today it’s back to the usual greyness. Iain went back up north today. There is a wee celebration for his granddaughter’s 3rd birthday. I am having a wee tidy up here, i e move stuff from the halfway stations to their proper places. Studio heating hasn’t been on and now I have a huge walk in fridge. According to the kiln the temperature there is 5C.
21.3.2023
What happened to the beginning of the year?! I know – I was busy worrying about Mother. She was taken to hospital in January and stayed there two weeks. It was the old infection but this time it had taken too long to get help. I told her for weeks to go and get checked and she kept on saying she is sooo tired… the weather is bad… ice and snow… she doesn’t feel pain… She was on antibiotic drip for two weeks. That didn’t do any good for her general well being. I decided to go and see her sooner that planned. I wanted to go later in Spring but considering Ma’s situation I went in Feb – March. What clothes to take was a problem. The weather in Finland has been very unsettled, rain, snow, frost, thawing. The best I could do was to take a winter coat and wellies. The wee welly boots were ok except they were slicks. No grip at all. I knew how to walk on ice but still managed to fall and hit my head on ice. A helmet would have been useful.
I anticipate going back this year. Ma still manages on her own in the wee house she is in but she has aged. Her mobility is not good and her memory is quite patchy. She can remember stuff from decades ago but ask her what she did yesterday or even that morning and she can be vague. This all shouldn’t come as a surprise as she’ll be 90 in October. She is determined to get fitter once ice has gone and weather gets better. Good on her!