I to the hills

Apart from the various really quite serious things wrong in my relatives' lives at the moment (though there are lots of good things too) I wish to put in a complaint to the management about some further items:

1) My garden is a haven for slugs. Standing at my patio doors one drizzly evening, Daughter 1 counted, at a cursory glance, sixteen slugs busily making their way across the lawn in different directions towards various beloved plants. There are probably thousands in the undergrowth and THEY'RE EATING MY GARDEN!

2) Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law 1 have a mouse in their house. They have in fact just this moment (don't say I don't bring you drama) caught it in a humane trap and SIL 1 is about to take it for a long walk outside, but this is a recurring problem that they need to solve. It's made very much worse by the fact that SIL 1, though a lovely chap, suffers from depression and OCD, and a free-range mouse seems much more of a problem to him than it might to other people. Also the pair of them are soft-hearted animal lovers and don't want to hurt any mice.

3) My choir is going to be auditioned next year. I shall probably be so nervous that I will mess up my audition. Up to now, it's been a happy come-along sort of affair.

4) I can't play my latest tune, or at least not at any speed. I Googled it and found a small girl who can play it with gusto. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1JCL1Ln3sk  Here she is. How discouraging.

5) Cassie Cat hasn't come in this evening. It's one minute past midnight. I've been out whistling for her, which usually works, but there's no sign of her. I know she's probably having a happy time terrorising the neighbourhood mice (now, there's an irony) and giggling at me from the hedge, but I would like her to be safely in her bed in the kitchen. Do you think there's any chance she's hunting slugs? No, me neither.

6) I would like to be on the top of a smallish hill such as The Knock at Crieff, above, gazing towards other, bigger hills which I wouldn't have to climb, on a warm (but not hot) day, with the sound of nothing but birdsong and rustling grasses in my ears and nothing to worry about. And I'm not.

Raisiny

Look, Grandson can play with a toy now. What a talented boy. And what a joy he is in our lives that are a bit iffy at the moment. My mother is home from hospital with us, but is requiring a lot of care. She's getting better, but slowly, from what the GP described as "a massive operation" to remove the bit of bowel that had the tumour on it. Mum is 89 and a half so it's no wonder that she's not leaping about, but I don't like to leave her alone in the house so this has pinned me down more than somewhat. Also, Mr Life has been very fed up at work - far too much to do in far too little time - so has decided to retire a few months early, immediately after the turn of the year - which will be interesting. I'm not sure how he'll take to being tied to the house.

Anyway, who wouldn't be cheered up to have this smile flashed upon them?

Son came down on Sunday and rebonded with his nephew.

Mum got up and bathed in his smiles.

Son used Grandson to improve his upper body strength.

But as if life (aside from the baby) wasn't tedious enough, there's a chap who's just won the Times crossword championship by doing three of its cryptic crosswords in 24 minutes. Mr Life and I enjoy a cryptic crossword but it takes the pair of us working as a team about as long as that to finish one such puzzle, and that's on a good day when we do manage to complete one. This chap had difficulty with only one clue: "Often pouring cups one's filled with dried fruit". The answer is "raisiny" and I'm frustrated because even knowing the answer, I still can't explain the clue!

Leaving aside the question of whether "raisiny" can really claim to be much of a word (hmm) - I can see that "often pouring" is "rainy" or maybe just "rain", and "one" is "i" and so "one's" could be "is" - but what do "cups" have to do with it? I'm sure it's obvious to someone out there, so could you explain it to me, please?

Edited to add: Thank you Freya! As she points out, "cups" means "holds" so it just means that "rainy" and "is" are held together to mean "raisiny". I still feel thick but at least I no longer feel frustrated.

In my defence, I've got a streaming cold together with sore eyes, throat, bones etc so what with being up during the night to accompany Mum to the loo, my brain isn't perhaps in top gear. But still. Grrr.

Wilt

I know I shouldn’t complain. Some people have far more difficult lives than I have: war, famine, earthquake. But you know those lists of life events which are supposed to be the most stressful you can experience? I feel we’ve had most of these during this year alone. Of course, one of these has been spectacularly lovely: the arrival of Grandson. But most of the others haven’t.

For example, we’ve had birth (Grandson), marriage (Daughter 2) and death (my confused aunt, for whom I was the chief carer or at least the person who organised the care).

We’ve had engagement (Son), retiral (me), life-threatening illness (my mother).

We’ve tried and failed to sell a house (my mother’s). We’ve moved her in here (though her house is still full of her stuff – we quail at the thought of the further stress to come when we try to dispose of 89 years’ worth of rather copious possessions).

We’ve lost Daughter 2, when she moved permanently (or for the foreseeable future) to London, which has been so sad. And now, for the second time in two years, she’s lost her job. The architecture firm she worked for in Edinburgh more or less collapsed because of the financial crisis and then she moved to London for a six-week job which turned into an eleven-month one. But now that firm too has run out work. So – back from honeymoon, one week’s notice and that’s that, apart from a little freelance work to finish off a project.

Since she’s married an actor who doesn’t get all that much work, this means that they’re both now seriously impecunious. And the country’s financial position seems to be getting worse and worse.

Luckily, Grandson just beams affably despite it all.

I suppose there’s got to be a plot twist at some point. You think?

Can't I just be a cat? No? Well then, I'm complaining.

Humph

Sorry to cast a blight on your day but I’m rather miserable. Maybe you should stop reading now. My troubles are nothing, I know, compared to many people’s; but it doesn’t really help to cheer me up when I contemplate that lots of people are considerably more miserable. My gloom is all based round my children, who are such kind, affectionate, deserving young folk. I mean, I know I’m their mum. But they really are lovely.

Our son-in-law is still not at work. In fact, he’s hardly been at work for about eighteen months. He’s been on every medication known to man, had various types of counselling, tried fish oil, St John’s Wort, homeopathy and so on.

Daughter 2 is going out with an actor, a relationship that has lasted over four years. It’s not that we don’t like him: as far as we know him (and we don’t feel we know him that well) we like him all right. It’s just that he’s not around much. Either he’s working around the country in some minor role in some minor production or he’s unemployed and living with his parents in the Midlands of England. If he did by some fluke become successful, he’d still never be around much, by the nature of the work.

She’s an architect and in normal circumstances could get work in London, where he really needs to be based for work (except that he can’t earn enough money to afford London rents - Catch 22…). But then even if he could, he would frequently not be there because of work - Catch 23. With the recent downturn in the building trade this wouldn’t be a good time for her to change firms and she doesn’t particularly want to live in London anyway. We certainly don’t want her to be so far away. At the moment, he’s just arrived here to stay with us while he takes part in a musical in the Festival Fringe, so they’ll see a bit of each other for a month or so, but then what? She’s 27 now. Time to know where she is, in my opinion. Not that she complains. She's too nice.

And our son has left home for his first job at a hospital in Dumfries, a couple of hours away. He’s there for a year and then in Glasgow (not so far) for a year, so of course he won’t be home to live again. He does know where he is and I don’t like this either. He’s such a jolly, helpful, cuddly, funny chap and he’s gone.

Now, I know that things could be worse. We like our son-in-law and he has many good qualities. We’re very lucky to have had Daughter 2 with us so long; also our son. And two hours isn’t that long a journey. But there’s no use people saying these things because I know them and I’m still miserable. Children leave home; it’s natural; I’ll get used to it; they’re all healthy; we can visit; we’re lucky to have such great kids; and so on. Yes, yes, yes. I don’t want to be reasoned with; I want things to be different. It doesn’t help the sadness when friends give good reasons why I shouldn’t be sad.

I remind myself of the poet Philip Larkin. In one of his letters he was replying to a friend who had experienced various disasters – ill health, redundancy, divorce – and he recounted his griefs - maybe a corn on his foot, a hole in his shirt and a piece of mouldy cheese in his fridge. He then added that he knew his problems were trivial compared to hers but, he added, “mine are happening to me”.

Well, quite.

So I’ve been making myself even more fed-up by doing destructive gardening – my very unfavourite kind. We’ve been in this house for 19 years and my herbaceous plants have become a bit jungly – lily-of-the-valley being the most rampant of all (why did I ever plant it?) – so I’ve been wrecking my already wrecked back by digging huge clumps of things out. I’m hot, muddy, scratched and not finished by a long way. My garden looks a mess (well, bits of it). And I’ve hardly touched the even-more-rampant ivy which I foolishly planted to hide the ugly garden wall. Wall? What wall? Take my advice: never plant ivy.

The cats are nice, though. Furry. They're happy enough.

Sulk

Ok, now. I’m stamping my feet petulantly for a little while, so you might want to skip this post.

1) My dad, now moved permanently from the hospital he’s been in since September to another hospital for old people who need a lot of nursing care, is upset by the move and much more confused than he was before. He seems to think that he’s back in the army during the war and is trying to organise all the other old chaps into springing into action and… well, it’s not quite clear what he wants them to do, but they’re equally away with the fairies and are ignoring him, much to his fury. Not good.

2) My mum hasn’t been very well this week and I’m back staying every night with her, having got down to three nights per week. This is all right in its way but I’m worried about her too.

3) My son-in-law isn’t well again. Poor chap. Send him some prayers or good wishes or whatever you have available, please.

4) Daughter 2, whom we love and adore, is going out with an actor. This may not seem a problem to you, but it is to us. To be more precise, she’s going out at a distance with a mostly unemployed actor, and I’m sure that eventually she’ll have to move down to London to be with him. While I know that this would be perfectly natural, and we wouldn't stop her, we will miss her so much. And she doesn’t want to go to London anyway, except that of course he’s there. Or at least, he would be if he could get enough work to afford to live there, instead of in the Midlands with his parents.

5) I went to the optician today because I have a funny pink spot in the middle of the vision of my right eye. He spent an hour and forty minutes shining lights into my eyes, puffing air at them and showing me photos of my eyeballs on a computer screen (and if there’s anything that makes me feel more squeamish than veins, it’s anything to do with eyes apart from the view one normally gets of them; and as for veiny eyeballs….!!!) and then told me that I have the beginnings of cataracts in both eyes and also appear to have a hole at the back of my right eye. He’s referred me to the eye hospital. He says that it might not matter, but – sorry if this seems fussy - I prefer my eyes unperforated. Up till this afternoon, I thought that the only parts of my body that weren’t showing signs of late middle age were my eyes, since unlike most of my contemporaries I don’t need glasses apart from to read the phone directory in poor light.

6) Salford Person has abandoned me, or at least she hasn’t read me today. SP, I hope my speculations haven’t offended you. Come back!

I know everyone has problems, and some people have much worse ones than my family. But – that’ll do for the moment, thanks. Enough is enough.

Ah well. Above you see some wonderfully blue hyacinths and below, some lovely flowering plum blossom. Better concentrate on the good things in life. Like spring.

As I typed that, Son arrived home. “I’ve had an exciting day,” he said. “I got to stick my finger up someone’s bottom and feel his prostate.” (He’s a medical student. I hope you were taking this for granted.) I told him my eye news and he was sympathetic. “Maybe you need to get a cat,” he said. (This is part of a continuing get-a-cat campaign.) “Then if you can’t see, the cat can go and find you things. Like… mice. Have you ever felt a dead mouse? You could, if you got a cat.” He’s definitely one of the good things.

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Post script the next day:

Thank you so much, fellow bloggers, for your sympathy. I particularly enjoyed Thimbleanna's comment that I should be thankful that it wasn't I who had to put my finger up someone's bottom. How very true. I mentioned this to my husband.

"It would be even worse," he said sagely, "to be the owner of the bottom."

Yes, indeed. Suddenly my life feels quite lucky.