You know the...

 sort?  The ones that you really have no idea if you devour them or they you?  In an earlier age you would (may?) have parted with £9.99 to enjoy their company.  Now the fifty pennies that you part with to get them in your grasp seems like a safe bet.  Even if the money spent is ill advised and you decide to chuck them out of the window, or better still take them back from whence they came.  This way the charity shop gets another bite of the cherry as it were?

I am of course referring to a tome like this...

all 833 pages.

The print you need a microscope to read.  The density of words on the page you need the skills of Bear Grylls to navigate. The eyes of a hawk to see.  The intellect of Plato to understand (an easy read if you have stickability) and the fortitude of Saint Daniel to not be sidetracked.

I am in the full flush of heart thumping first love, nay call it lust.

I will report back...

‘I didn’t think...

 dying would be like this!’

How many people have thought that this year I wonder?

The grim reaper on piecework this last year must have made scythe-loads of crypto coin?

Audrey is sat in an end of life ward... waiting...

Her only one designated visitor reports that on his last visit she was nowhere to be found.  Hold on, was that her under what he at first thought was a pile of bedding?  Audrey was sitting out of bed with her head on a table under the covers.

She is becoming more confused by the day.  Each day’s dementia questions she sails through, then sinks back into whichever otherworldly place she occupies?

Audrey in better days.

Allotment update...

There’s something about tilling the soil that moves me, calms me, consoles me.  Being outside I feel free, even the weather on Sunday doesn’t dent the desire.

Hail falling like snow, mid- May for goodness sake.

This is the allotment today, a hodge-podge of treasures and my wild imaginings. 

From this

To this...

and this...

just wish everything would grow now... it is so blooming COLD!

The sequel with guest appearance of...

three ruddy ducks.

Carding Mill Valley is a favourite of ours, magnificent scenery and the wide open spaces allow Covid-free passing places.  What is there not to like?

As we puffed up a hill there hanging in a tree was a pom-pom.  Never missing a thing my eagle eye spied the aforesaid ball of wool blowing in the wind.  Looking round to see if no one was about I casually strolled over to inspect with my  ‘Hello, hello, hello what’s going on ‘ere?’ cape, not dissimilar from the bobbies cycling attire of the fifties and sixties. This item of apparel I don when the investigative mood takes me. The mood I ought to say takes me to the strangest of places...  This forlorn multi-coloured answer to the real things wandering by with their lambkins just a rolag away had a message of that I was very sure?  And right enough there it was...

Hopefully you can read it?

To start with I hung it in the college entrance thinking that it would be gone in a trice.  No chance!  After two days the suspension as it where, was killing me so I moved it just inside of the allotments.  Maybe my fellow plot holders channelling their inner Percy Thrower would spot it and enter into the spirit of things?  Still waiting!

Three ducks the local ménage a trois have been hanging about, one drake puffed up and feeling important, the other pretty quacked oft!?!  Six webbed feet landed without ceremony onto our glass roof giving us quite a Duck a l’orange turn.  As they processed onto the roof of the Wrenery I quietly with feather duster spear crept Zulu like to the door.  A quick shove up the third ducks departing jacksie was enough to ‘temporarily’ bring their nest-hunting expedition to a speedy conclusion.  With my bosom heaving with a ‘job well done turn-of heave’ I flopped back into my recliner.  Minutes later the six webbed feet descended onto the fence, their nonchalance hung in the air for the nano second it took me to launch myself from prone to 60 feathers a minute in 0.2 seconds.  Feather duster AND angry whoops accompanied this their second foray.

Their third and final attempt saw me pawing the ground, steam escaping from my nostrils I galloped down the path in hot pursuit.

‘Duck off!  If I catch you, your next appearance will be on my wall!’. I cried my dander well and truly  up.

The paparazzi and the

pom-pom.

At sparrow-fart yesterday  I was up and dressed and looking fairly respectable, well as respectable as I am ever going to look these days.  My dental appointment was at 8.45am, far too early for a woman of my advanced years.  I often say to the dentist I could have bought a small terraced house with the money I have handed over looking after my teeth.  He looks pained as he delves further into my rosebud!

On return home I decided on a session on the allotment.  Being of a slothful disposition I stayed in the same ‘being abroad in the big wide world’ attire.  My usual bag-lady allotment look was relegated to the compost heap that is my covid clothes pile.  Getting lost in the tilling of the soil I was happy in my own sweet world.  Husband was pottering, Ellie was guarding, all was cheery in this Ludlow idyl.  The chairman bustled up and enquired whether we would mind having our photograph taken for a local magazine.  Both of us replied ‘Err... no chance!  Even Ellie slunk into the shed.  Idly the thought occurred I am looking fairly normal for me not my usual ‘Hungry and Homeless’ doorstep look.  Mind you the size of me wouldn’t convince many.  The photographer by way of bribery said how much he would love Ellie in the picture.  That was the coup de grace.  The job was a good’un in normal speak.  

Later in the day, still in the same dental outfit minus the mask obv. I was just about to set off back to my little piece of paradise when flying down the hill came our vegetable delivery cargo bike.

‘Would you mind having your photograph taken for us to publicise our bicycle deliveries?’

In for a penny in for a pound, I agreed all the while thinking what am I doing?  My ‘I want to be alone’ header statement about keeping a low profile was crumbling around my ears.

This morning I stepped out fully expecting stepladders-a-go-go to be in full force as the photographers lay in wait for the newly emerged recluse to show.  I peeped out not a ruddy soul.

Disgruntled I smartly stepped up the hill to the market smarting at the waste of slap and spritz I had carefully applied this morning. 

Trench coat collar...

turned up, trilby pulled low over my eyes Inspector Clouseau-like I followed her.  I overheard, (that in itself is a miracle, with me being so flaming deaf! ) a table and chairs being mentioned.  A few days prior our local charity furniture warehouse had collected a set of finest Ikea dining room chairs.  I ought to say here I have a penchant for chairs.  Our home on occasions has resembled a dodgy backstreet clinic with chairs lining the walls.  As only two bums reside here there is a very good case for discovering exactly why so many chairs are required?  Freud might have a sound explanation, I couldn’t possibly comment and even if I had a sneaky idea I wouldn’t tell!  As the van roared off up the road, I jokingly said to himself, it won’t be long before I buy more.  Little knowing that just nine days later I would be on the case to acquire more, hence me following the lady in question.

This time I am doing the advanced having bought an Arts and Crafts table and four beautiful high backed chairs and one side table.

The problem now is how to get these latest treasures on the the wheelbarrow down the hill and home?

They sure as hell beat the Ikea chairs.  My addiction has gone up a notch. I’ve gone all Burne-Jones,

 husband’s gone all peculiar...

Not sure whether I...

am still here or not?

Not sure whether I even want to be or not?  

Imagine the scene, my lovely mum was head over heels with a guy who was she decided the love of her life.  Until that fateful day he called to take her out standing on the front porch wearing a bowler hat.  Yes, you read that right a bowler hat.

Love died as she opened the door.  

That’s the way I feel about blogging at the moment.

Added to which I find I can no longer comment on mine or other peoples’ blogs.

The witch, the cauldron and the...

 fireplace.

The allotment is slowly being Letticed!  Not Cos or Iceberg obviously!

The‘pot’I found looking forlorn, unloved even.  I know, I will make it centre stage in my Steptoe-type allotment. Just need a couple of other likely old crones to join me in the initiation ceremony come the next full moon.  Any offers?  The Hythe gorilla rope makes a super edging well at least, that is my opinion. 

The fireplace is huge, even the the fireplace man says he has never seen one so deep.  Bearing in mind it is such a tweeny inglenook it looks as if it could incorporate a priest hole?

We have reached the...

eating the pom-poms stage...

That in a nutshell is why there has been radio silence.

What can I say?

I am still here...

hanging by a thread.

The thread is 

Audrey.

Audrey is now in a care home which she constantly calls rehab.  Every time she says it Amy Winehouse springs to mind.  Sadly she has lost the plot.

She FaceTimes me numerous times a day if only to say she can’t hear.

After my voice rises to levels a foghorn would be proud I fall back into my recliner only for another call to ping in.

Limbering up I stretch the vocal chords in readiness for me to forecast that there is fog on Dogger Bank.

Ghost like her face...

 emerged. After a couple of days of radio silence my flat thing murmured.  As if by some ghastly trick, I could see her.  For months our flat things haven’t been producing pictures, now they are and I am sad at the sight before me.  Audrey complaining of the cold sat in her hospital room.

‘I don’t want to die cold!’

‘Perhaps it is your body getting in training for what is to come!’

‘They have just thrown a coat at me and left me to it! Anyway I am being discharged today and nothing has been said!’

‘The care package isn’t in place until the 29th Audrey so they won’t send you home before then’

We talked on until she once again had to dash to the loo.

‘FaceTime me later, love you Mum!’

‘I will, and I do you too!’

Will that be the last time we speak?

I got on to the ward to find out where the dressing gown was that had been delivered on Christmas Day by one of her neighbours.

A chatty nurse said it was in a carrier bag, soiled!?!  She then went on to say she has been complaining of the cold for days and she is toasty and her temperature is spot on.  Yesterday Audrey had a bad day, in bed not communicating.  Today she is a lot brighter, using her iPad.  Certainly she isn’t being discharged anytime soon! 

That was Monday. 

How is it going to end?  I worry when she doesn’t get in touch and now worry when I see the decline when she does.

Today Tuesday has ended with Audrey in bed in her own home?  The NHS have more pressing needs for her hospital bed.

Maybe her dream of dying at home comes one step closer?