It’s the night before Christmas…again…

As this year starts to wind in its neck, I am reflecting on the number of obstacles I have negotiated this year (which I already knew were on the horizon when I predicted 2015 as my annus horribliest). They have come and gone…and I haven’t.

• Deaths – 2 (my friend/my cousin)
• Marriage – decree absolute achieved after finally starting to realise that the whole 23 years had been a chimera
• Sale of “family” home
• Trumped up, desperate allegations delivered by the police from my former friend – TWICE!
• continuing treatment of cancer

…and others…

But as it turns out there are silver linings

• I am still alive
• I have a lovely new home which I have furnished and adorned without having to refer/defer to anybody
• I find I do have a sense of adventure. I started the year in Israel in an attempt to “connect” to my roots in some way…it may demonstrate how shallow I am that I did “connect” in the music-riven Bible Belt of the Deep South of US in the Fall of the year. Both trips really drilled down into my inner core and are helping me in all sorts of ways.
• (…and going back to being shallow) I like being a UK size 10 (and even bought an item of Size Zero clothing this year)…AND…I have a pair of leather trousers.
• I have people (who I love and who love me) surrounding me as much or as little as I want
• continuing treatment of cancer
• I am happy

..and to return to the night before Christmas. I have not, or not as yet…broken the trifle dish…last year I had only pedestal to serve…this happened twice. Fingers crossed for this year.

 

 

 

Lunching to lounging

Who are these people? At every turn (and, it seems this lady is “for turning”….a lot), I seem to be encountering the phrase “your Christmas Day outfit and style” – this dilemma is not one I am familiar with, shop for or…to be perfectly honest, give undue consideration to…I am not a Christmas jumper kind of person and glitter/kitchens don’t really gel. For me, it is really a day that is barely one step up from a pyjama day but includes smoked salmon. That’s my take on it but my table will, naturally be heaving…Philip in the Cabbage Van has made his first visit – the prelude to Christmas order and he or another will be back midweek in one of their fruity or veggie vans…

Elvis and my other Deep South Christmas merchandise will be up and will, inevitably set the required tone…

But…Santa, LBD and glitz aside, health issues continue. More treatment on Monday when I imagine I will have to confront the newly found heart problems but am trying to let it ride and just keep taking the tablets. What a can of worms this cancer lark is. With eyes firmly on the future, not past it seems the treatment can cause the same survival issues as the disease…maybe it’s better (?) to die from heart problems than cancer…who knows and guess I won’t get to choose, but I can sit and ponder.

My friend was interred at Highgate Cemetery this week. She now has a foot (or some ash) in both of her much loved worlds – the Caribbean, where she will forever stalk its marine life and north London, her other home, near the Ladies’ Pond. It was another day of memory, poetry, tears, flowers and rum but inevitably some bass notes of black humour.

Poems all the more poignant as they were in her own handwriting…

and there goes my heart..breaking all over again…

 

Thinking about Thanksgiving

It would be easy to sum it up as “thank you for the music”…but

I would have liked to experience the Thanksgiving “thang” rather than just the prelude..and wonder about the various phrases/cards/mementoes I saw on my travels, which maybe (of course) represent the type of places I homed in on, rather than the true American Thanksgiving ideal…

• “What a friend we have in cheeses”
• “Gobble til you wobble”
• “Be thankful for all the troubles you don’t have”
• “We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives”

It struck me that when I was at my lowest ebb, I took myself back to my roots and hoped to find “it” at The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem but didn’t. I was disappointed (although not surprised) to feel absolutely nothing. It may be representative of my shallow nature, but I do feel I found “it” in the huge, crazy, eclectic, diaspora, wildlife rich, redneck, whiteneck, gun-toting, cowboy, guitar-toting, goo-goo, shopping mall, food court madness, with one helluva great soundtrack, that is the southern US.

I have much to be thankful for…I have seen the splendour of the knees of the trees, nesting bald eagles, drag queens and Elvis. I have all the things that really matter in life (bar my health, I guess)…and “I walk the line…”..and go off for more medical treatment…

 

 

 

These boots are made for walkin’

I am back home after my Deep South adventure to find that I have sprouted wings. Not only have I acquired these wings (from the Bible Belt, I assume) but they are “mighty” itchy. They have been occupying themselves injecting some zest for living, music, travelling (along with margaritas, mint juleps, rum punch…) As a result, I am planning to get out there and do it all (and more), on steroids, whilst I am insured…so watch out North America and the Caribbean

Meantime whilst I wait to depart again, I lurch between medical departments, buildings, specialties as I catch up on everything I had calmly”shelved”. Apparently appointments were missed whilst I was away. I had not cancelled or re-arranged them as I had never received any notification. So 2 clinics down already, hospital today, more tests Monday followed by herceptin treatment and then back to oncology again on Tuesday…(dependent upon whether the doctors strike goes ahead). I think my personal inconvenience is rightly shadowed by the way the government is handling and bullying the doctors who give themselves (literally body, soul and personal lives) to our medical care.

No jet lag to date…I put the fact that I washed my clothes with dishwasher tablets and put sensitive washing tablets in the dishwasher as a case of poor eyesight rather than anything else. I have been re-acquainting myself with cups and mugs made of china rather than paper or polystyrene. However, I look at the Christmas decorations in the shops with dismay…I wonder if I will ever see the like of American “holiday” merchandise again.

 

Confederates, Critters and Cocktails

The Deep South cannot be compared in any true perspective to the UK. Whilst people, things and food look familiar (well..sometimes!), they really aren’t. The landscape is vast, the Tennessee  River is vast,  portions are vast and some…Apparently there is not only line dancing to be tried but clog dancing…or am I being too gullible? Well it appears not…There is “clogging” to be done in the Appalacians…Music and dancing abound so may as well give it a go

Will attempt to post visual 1st impressions for ya’ll ya’ll

Searching for Rhett, grits and gumbo

So I have delayed/postponed/cancelled all medical appointments because I have (finally) managed to obtain travel insurance that isn’t more expensive than my travels. I cannot risk any new developments, diagnoses, tests, investigations whilst I get on with doing the “living” bit whilst I still can.

Gone with the Wind comes a distant second to Sound of Music in the favourite film stakes…so I am saving the Salzburg shindig for when I am restricted to European travel and, instead, am going on a trip I have been hankering after forever…The magnet for my holiday is Nashville – The Grand Ole Oprey, Baton Rouge & Lafayette (and who wouldn’t want to go to places with names like that?) but I am more than happy to take in all the other delights of the Bible Belt, the Mississipi Delta, Memphis, Graceland, New Orleans…and in my head, I am already shopping, cutting a disc at Stax Records, hitting the Honky Tonk bars…and trying to find an alcoholic drink on Sundays..

I have a visa, a ticket AND a translation guide so I can be understood and, (by happy chance) get another language under my belt…eg hello translates as “Hey yall” and am just going for it ’til “I’m too pooped to pop” and am, (hopefully) “happier than a tornado in a trailer park”

Chucking health onto the back burner, going for broke and “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”

Solomon Grundy goes left field

…so…an “interesting” week….

• NOPI Feast (…and “feast” doesn’t even come close!) with Scully on Saturday
• Birthday lunch and a perfect storm on Sunday 🙂
• Afternoon tea with the Master at Brasenose on Monday
• Colin, prosecco and sparklers on Tuesday
• Fine Art combined with severe Swiss angst on Wednesday
• Womens suffrage on Thursday
• George Eliot on Friday…and…inquest “verdict”

The week is totally enveloped in the heart-wrenching inquest into the death (yes…death…of 18 year old) Connor Sparrowhawk, my friend, Sara Ryan’s son “Asked why she had not mentioned the need to observe Connor in the bath, Sara Ryan (click on Sara to link into twitter feed) said it had not occurred to her to raise it with expert staff. She said it would have been like asking a school teacher taking children on a school trip not to “let them loose on a motorway”

This post may make sense to nobody except me but a reflection of how bizarre and eclectic life can be…All the week has been accompanied by relentless oozing pus, 2 lost finger nails, 6 lost toe nails and foul tempered cats alongside solving my telephone intrusion issue…and all set against the background refrain in my head of just how far Dollywood is from either Nashville or Chatanooga…