HOPELESSLY NY-EVE

New Year’s Eve has, for many years, been an unusual night for me and despite the fact that an awful lot of people seem to find it an opportunity to have some “fun”, personally, pretty much since I left my teenage years, I’ve always found it a somewhat melancholy affair.

A memory of happier times

When I was very young it seemed a quite exciting time as the grown ups used to mysteriously stay up late (long after I’d fallen asleep) and in our house it was another opportunity for  (just a few) presents so soon after Christmas. I can’t remember any of them now except for the wonderful green Corgi Toy mini I got with the sliding sunroof, which I still have somewhere… (I think it might still be in better nick than some of the full sized cars I’ve owned.)

In later, teenage years, thanks to the parents in two long suffering alternating households, New Years Eve seemed to mean parties and drinking too much too young. I would always head to these places full of hope that the Fionas, Julias, Patricias or Victorias (why did all the names of the girls I liked always seem to end in “a” back then?) would finally go against all their better instincts and see something admirable behind my potato-faced countenance. That they never did is what probably led to the excessive drinking in the first place, and I would stagger home with the future Insurance Broker who remains my best and only real friend (one of the two people I trust absolutely) and watch the future Airline Pilot dance with lamp-posts.

Later on as I grew slightly taller and took – principally due to the lack of interest from all those Fionas, Julias, Patricias or Victorias I imagine – to dressing in black, I became the person who was shoved out of the door just before midnight in order to “let in the new year”. Standing outside in the freezing cold listening to everyone else counting down to midnight and bellowing their various “Happy New Years” to each other, and getting their snogs in with the Fionas, Julias, Patricias or Victorias has, I think, shaped my cynicism towards the night dramatically.

My college years did little to improve things. Couple the insane notion that you “must find a party to go to” with the slight sense of detachment and awkwardness that comes from living most of your life with a different group of people in a different part of the world and you’re in for a horrific time. I well remember the year when I was only convinced anyone had bothered to include me in their plans because I had a car and was willing to drive it. I recall that evening being so ghastly that I went outside to sit in the car rather than put up with the wretched party any longer, and yet waited hours out there alone in the dark because I’d promised the rest of them a lift home. I think I spent much of the time reading the newspaper my fish and chips had been wrapped in as there was nothing else to read in the car. Loyalty, you see? Loyalty and stupidity, all in one pathetic package.

Another year, no-one was prepared to organise a party, and so the nuclear option was taken of booking an overpriced restaurant in the city, which meant an okay time all-in-all, but being kicked out just before midnight as they were closing rather took the sheen off it, and the food was so slight on their “special menu” that we had to track down a fish and chip shop during the long walk back out of the city and home.

After college I was “in a relationship” for a while, and New Year’s Eve actually was our “sort of” Anniversary for a few years. You might have thought company and the opportunity to celebrate might have made the night more bearable but it never did, not really. Sadly she was the kind of girl who was quite happy to find someone else to do on New Year’s Eve (which I imagine was what she was doing when we first got together) leading to the inevitable recriminations and apologies in the New Year itself which I (unbelievably) put up with for five bloomin’ years, such, I think, was the fear of being alone again. The decade of actual loneliness that followed the inevitable break-up did make me more self-sufficient, I suppose, but always managed to tinge that evening with an air of desperation and melancholy, so I was always likely to find it a tough night.

The last time I went to a New Year party was Millennium night. If I remember rightly, I actually attended two parties that year having been invited to both and feeling unable to let either group of them down. The first I arrived at way, way too early as they were still preparing for the festivities ahead – I watched some more worldwide fireworks on the telly - and then left about 10.30 before it got truly and properly started. The second I arrived at about half an hour later as it was in full swing and I was so intimidated by the whole house full of strangers that I hung on for about half an hour before scarpering back to my empty hovel with the excuse that I planned to climb the hill at the back of the house next morning and watch the dawn rise on the new Millennium, which I actually did do. The number of people also there was a surprise, but they all ignored me and I trudged back down the hill to bed, only to be woken by some neighbours still finding the energy to Conga the morning after.

Thankfully, shortly after that I met the beloved and I now spend New Year’s Eve in her company and without all the madness and the desperate need to be seen to have “fun” that the rest of the world seems to require. Nowadays the beloved and I, both being non-fans of this night where organised expectations – and it’s the expectation followed by the inevitable disappointments that did for me -  of “fun” are so much on everyone else’s agenda, are more likely to toddle off to bed before ten and be woken by the sound of fireworks from the pub. We’ll mutter a sleepy “Happy New Year” to each other and doze off again, hopefully having remembered to pull the plug on the phone.

It’s the way we like it.

So, if you are heading out tonight, or hosting a party, it only remains for me to hope you have a lovely time, but we won’t be joining you. You might think this makes us a pair of grumpy old so-and-sos, but it really is what works best for us. At least we are not alone for long in our sense of despair as the rest of the nation seems to join in being full of general misery and  angst (as well as being mightily hung-over) as the New Year itself actually dawns (or in many cases dusks…).

Happy New Year to one and all.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART FOUR)

DEC 11 2010 – 7.15PM

From the way she sounded on the phone, we were terrified that mum had had another stroke (although ultimately she hadn’t) and basically told her to ring for an ambulance immediately. The beloved and I then dashed around the house grabbing our stuff and got into the car and I drove like a madman towards my mum’s flat, fully convincing myself that “this” was the proverbial “it”.

Despite variable mobile phone signals we managed to call 999 ourselves and confirm that mum had been able to make a call herself and be reassured that help was indeed on the way. I’m not sure whether you would agree that getting her to ring the ambulance herself was the wisest move, and looking back I’m not convinced myself, but at the time I just thought that there was more chance of an immediate response if she told them what she’d told me in that very ill sounding voice, and, if things got worse, the computers would have the right address without me adding to the confusion and maybe delaying things.

We arrived at mums in surprisingly quick time, and mum was already being attended to by two rather fabulous paramedic ambulance crewmen, who had already decided that mum needed readmitting to hospital. A neighbour was sitting with her, as mum had managed to pull the flat's emergency call cord and some of her rather wonderful neighbours had come down and got her to her feet. Later on mum would tell me that she’d taken 20 minutes to climb out of the bath (I would later find that the clamp-on extra bath handle had slipped off in the process) got a nightdress on and crawled across the floor to call for help, and also managed to unlock her front door, and her neighbours had come down and at least got her into her armchair.

The paramedics got mum into the ambulance on a bitter cold evening and explained that they were going to do a few more things and we should head off to the hospital ourselves, which, after pausing to lock up the flat, we duly did. The ambulance arrived at the hospital with its blue lights blazing at around the same time we did, the traffic not being quite so chaotic at that time on a Saturday night, and, after mum had been safely delivered to the resuscitation unit, the paramedics took the time to reassure us that the flashing lights were not due to any sudden deterioration in my mum’s condition, but just protocol, and I really did appreciate them taking the time and having the care to do that.

Another long, long evening followed in the resuscitation unit until mum was admitted back onto the assessment ward that she’d first been on two weeks earlier at around midnight, which is when, of course, all the “midnight parking/clamping angst” that I mentioned in my previous post was addressed. Eventually, after a long and worrying evening, and various long phone calls to both my sister and the GMF, mum was finally settled in a bed and we said our goodnights and headed home in the thickest fog seen in these parts for many a year, getting there about 2.00AM and we gratefully went to bed and even managed to grab some sleep.

DEC 12-13 2010

The next morning, the phone rang about 8.00AM. During her crisis the night before, mum had left a rather alarming sounding message on her neighbour’s answering machine. That neighbour had been out for the evening and had got the message at about 11.30 when she got home. Naturally, she’d worried all night and left it as long as she dared before ringing me.

You may find it hard to believe, but,
Once upon a time, there was a Princess...

I wearily returned to the cycle of hospital visiting that afternoon, but it was a very low point for both of us. Mum was having a lot of “bowel problems” which become a humiliating issue for her. It’s very hard to see her like this when you remember the person she used to be. Those who have only known her in recent times won’t even be aware of how glamorous she used to be in her youth, and how dreadful an emotional fall it must be for her.

As I got hastily ushered out of the curtained areas by nurses having to deal with things they truly do not earn enough to do, I kept getting horrific visions of my own future which are, quite frankly, terrifying. For once I was genuinely feeling a certain amount of empathy for her plight. It must be truly terrifying to be sitting there with your body breaking down so that you no longer feel you can reasonably depend on it. There must be so much of a sense of loss when you realise that all those people you knew who used to hold your hand and tell you it would be alright, people like your mum and dad, or your husband are all gone now. Now you can’t even trust your own bodily functions to behave themselves and strangers are having to clean you up.

God, it must be awful.

Eventually, mum asked if I would leave. Apart from the horrible humiliation of what's happening, it can’t be easy to be seen like that, either.

I didn’t see her again until the Monday evening when things seemed a little brighter. She had been moved to another ward where the tea flowed more freely. The beloved and I had a few problems co-ordinating our visit that night as she had to work late and then we had a lot of trouble tracking each other down when she disembarked from her train at an unfamiliar station somewhere near to the hospital. She also had a touch of ’flu which meant that she needed to keep a reasonable distance from mum whilst I visited, so she chose to be left waiting in the chilly car that evening.

DEC 14-16 2010

Work announced that we needed to have a meeting in Wales the following Monday. This might have caused a problem if they chose to let mum home that day, but we started to prepare ourselves subtly for that possibility.

The beloved’s ’flu was now so bad that she was not going to work (and remained  bedbound for the rest of the week) and the next few days proved difficult for all of us. I know this because some of the thoughts I wrote down in the depths of the night are occasionally less than charitable:

“I am just fecking sick of it. Sick of trying to juggle work and hospitals and home visits and food and fecking Christmas…”

“I know it’s not fashionable but I resent every brain-mashing fecking minute of it…”

“I resent that there is no one else... That I’m expected to step up to the plate, because it simply isn’t me…”

Ah well, at least I’m being honest about it.

Occasionally, at the darkest moments (of which there are plenty), I did imagine that any notions that society might have these days about the deification of “motherhood” might have to be rethought if they had my mother. Small problems seemed to escalate that week. I got angry with the hospital because mum’s water infection that had been diagnosed three times since we first went to the (not a) Walk-In clinic – once by her own GP during her five days at home - still seemed to be being pretty much ignored in the hospital. I got my sister to ring and play a tiny amount of havoc. According to mum, the night nurses seemed to be getting more impatient with mum’s hourly visits to the lavatory throughout the small hours and she was starting to worry that she was losing control of her continence. Because of the sudden admission at the weekend, she also didn’t have her walking stick with her to make it easier to go on her own, and I remain flabbergasted that no-one in the hospital seemed to be able to provide one for her. These nocturnal visits then got even more complicated by the addition of a Magnesium drip being prescribed, so she couldn’t then go alone anyway, although the nurses I saw were always rather fabulous with her, so I began to suspect that any crabbiness was born out of mum’s own frustration rather than any intentional unpleasantness.

Eventually, I returned to the flat to get the stick, alongside some other items, for her. I crept in, did my collection thing and flittered away like a shadow in the night, unfortunately forgetting to lock the letterbox in the post room correctly. I also managed to bring the “wrong” notebook, which led to an unfortunate row during one visit, as my fatigued and frayed temper finally snapped.

When mum still failed to be sent home, another online order needed to be received at the flat, so I returned, only to find that she was so very confused by the times that I’d missed the delivery anyway, and her own mind was so out of it when she made the order at home those few days, that she ordered two of everything. I quietly rang the customer helpline and cancelled the order, which led to another row as mum was now worrying about getting Christmas cakes and suchlike, and my protestations that she shouldn’t worry fell on deaf ears.

This was also the period in which my own back chose to start to spasm after last week’s fall, which didn’t help my own mood.

Mum then started throwing up one night and was swiftly shifted into a “private” side ward and, with the addition of such lovely things as commodes into the routine, and more peaceful night’s sleeps, things started to improve a little.

DEC 17 2010

I arranged to have a day off from visiting as I had a prior evening engagement, my one and only Christmas event of the season, a drink with a few former colleagues. This got severely curtailed as the snows returned and the general consensus of those of us with any distance to travel was to try and get home. My “partying” lasted precisely one hour. Before this I had my hair cut at the same place my mum goes to have her hair done and they send her their very good wishes which was terribly nice of them. I then headed alone (and stupidly early) to the pub where I battled amongst all the office parties to find a lonely table for one to eat at, and – hang the expense - upgraded my solitary chicken burger to a “gourmet” one (I suspect it meant extra cheese).

On my way home through the blizzard, which ironically faded as I got nearer to home, I saw many terrifying sights in the snow of ill-dressed partygoers with bizarre hair presumably on their way out for the evening, and I had to remind myself once again that it was very nearly Christmas, as, despite all the “best wishes” and handshakes as I left the pub, I had somehow failed to make that connection.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART THREE)

DEC 06 2010

The phone rang in the middle of a Monday afternoon. It was mum telling me they’ve told her she can go home and asking whether the hospital have rung me to tell me so yet. I told her no. Ten minutes later she rang me again to ask the same thing. At this point I was starting to question the wisdom of them sending her home, but I imagine they know what they’re doing.

Mum had also told me the day before – Sunday - that there was a prescription to collect. I was required to collect a high toilet seat and a bath seat from a local mobility equipment supply shop, and I had picked up the necessary paperwork during that night’s visit, fully intending to go and get it that afternoon.

I looked outside at the gathering dusk and decided that I’d better head off immediately as I’d rather be trying to get mum into the car in daylight when there’s ice on the ground, than leaving her standing on a cold and slippery kerbside whilst I tried to manouvre the car to a nearby space, assuming of course that there were any to be had at that time of the day.

After a brief stop off at a supermarket to buy her some essentials, I arrived at the hospital and the staff told me that they’d been trying to ring me – after I’d already set off - to tell me that there would be some delay, as mum’s medications needed to be dispensed from the pharmacy and that might take a few hours. This has been a bone of contention with me for some years now. What is the point of saying someone is released to go home and then making them wait several hours for their drugs to turn up? Is it beyond the wit of modern computer systems to look at release lists and tally them with dispensing lists and send someone down a few corridors to get the wretched things? I know that there are procedures to be followed and that hospitals are very busy, and I’m sure that there are many valid reasons why it can’t be done, but surely, surely, someone could sit down and give it some thought and come up with a slightly better system that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to waste a colossal amount of their time and patience on waiting around for hours on end…?

There was a brief discussion amongst the staff and it was agreed that it would be wisest to take mum home immediately, rather than hanging on until around 7 o’clock when the pharmacy cart “usually” showed up. A decision was taken that the drugs would be taxied over to her flat later on that evening. Very much later as it turns out. So, with that decision sorted, and with a certain amount of fuss and bother, we gathered mum’s bits and pieces together and headed off out to the car park. After walking her across the icy surfaces, I got her into the car and we swung by the mobility shop just before it shut to collect her prescription items and I  also had to buy a non-slip bath mat. This was all part of a minor plan to save on the need to do that visit the next day and to ensure she has all she needs at home as soon as she gets there. Sadly after I get mum home, I discover that one of the legs is missing from the bath seat packaging so she still can’t have a bath anyway and I will have to make that extra journey the next day.

Men plan…

The arrival home was not much fun. Mum still seemed confused and, as I tried to set up the bathroom equipment, seemed convinced that there were three of me to do all the other things she thought needed to be done the very second she thought of them. I know that the ordeal was confusing for her, but I’m tired and get rather exasperated at this. During all that bedlam is when I discover the missing foot, which I also start to get frustrated by, and then there was a slightly horrible and ultimately poignant moment when I discovered a rotten sausage lying on the kitchen floor. This was, of course, a remnant of that forgotten meal that had triggered my concerns back on that first Sunday morning and which fallen unnoticed to the ground after she’d served it up the evening before, and is a symbolic reminder to me of how ill she’s been.

I cooked a swift meal of scrambled eggs on toast for her as it’s all that seems to appeal to her that evening, and my technique for making perfect scrambled eggs was frowned upon as I don’t use butter, but the olive oil I’d bought with me from my supermarket splurge. I struggled with the electric hob, too, being such an analogue “gas ring” kind of cook. One slice got eaten, with most of the eggs being scraped on to the uneaten slice. As a sign of how well mum was going to eat whilst at home, this really wasn’t good.

I stayed as late as I could, but the “drug taxi” failed to appear even after I rang the ward to ask where it was, because, to have any chance of getting home in the weather, eventually I had to leave. I was, quite frankly, knackered. I staggered home in my now constant “brain-mashed” state and made a few calls and then got a call from mum around 9.30 saying that the taxi had just been and she’d been trying to sort out her pills and she was off to bed.

DEC 07 2010

At around 4.30AM I woke up thirsty and went down the stairs to get a glass of water. For some reason I managed to fall down them instead, landing in a heap at the bottom having bashed my back on a stair about half way down. It feels as if I’ve cracked a rib, but I have never found out for sure whether I actually did as the real pain didn’t really start for a week and the thing never bruised. Anyway, there was no time for me to worry about me, so I went back to bed.

On my way to mum’s that afternoon after work , I returned to the mobility supply shop and gratefully received the missing leg. The visit to mums that evening found me fitting that and then putting up the Christmas decorations and discovering that the fibre-optic Christmas tree that she is so fond of was no longer working as the bulb has gone. It’s a tatty old thing that has served her a decade of Christmases but is now definitely past its best (but then, aren’t we all?).

DEC 08 2010

Another visit to my mum after work. I’d promised to buy fish and chips on the way so that we’d both have a hot meal, but she ate so little of it that it really didn’t seem worth it. I worry that not eating will trigger a relapse, but she says that she’s suffering from her usual stomach “issues” and that it will be fine. She did, however, seem unwell, and had no toilet paper in the house to cope with this. Her much postponed online shopping order wasn’t due until the morning after and such things would be arriving with that, but I got terribly angry inside about the fact that she’s even considering just using Kitchen Roll overnight and stomped off through the ice to the nearest “Metro-style” supermarket to buy a pack, half wondering whether I would return to find her slumped in the chair.

My mum also suggested, despite me having already completed my Christmas shopping, that I might like to buy her a new Christmas tree, a thought which hadn’t occurred to me.

DEC 09 – 11 2010

We decided between us  that I could have a couple of nights off and so, apart from the odd telephone call, I didn’t have a lot to do with my mum for a couple of days. She rang often to assure me that she was fine and that people were coming to see her and that she was, most assuredly, eating properly, despite having no appetite. She was even considering heading over to the church coffee morning on Saturday if she felt up to it.

I planned to visit mum on Saturday afternoon after the beloved and I had done a major “pre-Christmas” food shop, and during which we also grabbed a few bits and pieces of fresh fruit and veg and a few meal items for mum that we thought should be fairly simple for her to prepare. After blitzing the supermarkets, I parked the car in town and headed off to the nearby temporary Christmas shop and spent a slightly ridiculous amount on a like-for-like(ish) replacement tree for her and then drove over to her place for a couple of hours chat over a cup or two of tea. She had indeed attended the coffee morning, but found it "a bit much" dealing with all the people. She seemed happy enough with the tree at least, although I was more concerned that she was not drinking enough, and during my visit I insisted she drank two cups of tea, two glasses of water and a glass of orange juice, all of which helped to improve her speech for a little while.

We bid our farewells and I headed off to collect the beloved from her parents house and we went home. Later on, there was a brighter moment when mum rang to tell me she had made and eaten egg and chips for tea, which we all saw as a definite sign of improvement, and we really started to wonder whether the crisis had passed.

The beloved and I settled down to watch “Airport” on Channel Five. I know that it’s a bit of a cheesy old disaster movie, but I’m still very fond of it. The rather tragic figure of the mad bomber trying to get the insurance for his wife – his sense of failure and lack of self worth being the quintessential example the other side of the “American Dream” and something I may well write about some other day - was about to get confronted when…

The phone rang.

It was mum, speaking in a very slurred voice:

“I can’t move my legs!”

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART TWO)

The last month has been something of a blur really as I have juggled trying to continue doing my work with an endless stream of hospital visits and the looming monster that was the coming of Christmas. I know I get a bit of a reputation for being less than unduly festive sometimes, but this time round it was positively ill-timed and passed by in a necessarily low key kind of a way.

A month has now passed since that fateful Sunday morning that I described to you all yesterday, and we have settled into the routine of hospital visiting. Generally during the working week, I leave the 2.00PM-4.00PM slot to the GMF and other friends of mums, not least because many of them are getting fairly elderly themselves and the December ice has been lethal hereabouts. I tend to use the 7.00PM-8.00PM evening slot for myself (and sometimes the beloved). It’s not the greatest of timings when you’re trying to juggle meeting delayed trains, eating some kind of an evening meal and travelling in through treacherous weather, but you have to do it, don’t you?

Nowadays I’m very familiar with where the various hospital car parks are in relation to the wards to reduce the required walking which in turn reduces the risk of slipping on the ice. The fees are £2.00 for up to 2 hours, £3.00 for 3-4 hours, and £5.00 for 4 hours or more, although as a calendar day clicks around at midnight, all the fees reset to zero and you have to start piling in the cash again. This can be another little anxiety to add to your worries as you sit and wait for answers late into the night (about which more later). No matter how many staff might tell you that it’ll be fine, you still have visions of the hospital clampers whizzing out into the car parks at 00.01 hours and earning the NHS a small fortune in release fees.

I’m also now overly aware of how the combined phone/TV/Internet machine works. It’s a fine little gadget that hangs over pretty much every bed (in many ways I wish I could get one) and gives the patients free telephone calls to certain numbers, free radio and paid access to internet and TV services. The patient is designated a telephone number which remains active even if you’ve changed beds of been discharged and readmitted (about which more later). Of course to ring in on this number is not free to friends and family. It works out at about 50p per minute which would be fine if you didn’t have to spend nearly two minutes listening to messages telling you this and other statements that tell you what you already know, like “You are calling someone who is in hospital” (No sh*t, Sherlock) and “This number may have appeared on your phone because they have tried to ring you”. If I ever meet that bloke who reads those messages, I may well feel inclined to threaten him with harm…

And I had actually wondered for a while how they could afford to give free calls to the patients…. oh, I can be so naïve.

For the TV or Internet, you have to buy cards from a dispensing machine in £5, £10, £15 or £20 combinations which buy the services in £5 (one day), £10 (three day) and £15 (six day) chunks (amongst other package options I have not yet investigated). The card is then inserted into the device and credit is added to the account and, by a fiendishly simple method of pushing buttons that have been known to utterly bamboozle even brain-mashed computer literates like myself, and are most definitely almost certain to befuddle the elderly and infirm, you get your choice of service set up for those lengths of time.

Oh, and by he way, a four finger Kit-Kat is 52p in the hospital shop. This shows what a "cost of everything, value of nothing" kind of a guy I am...

Mum keeps telling me she’ll pay me back, no matter how often I tell her I don't want her to, and I’m constantly trying to reassure her it’s not about the money. Although, on moodier days, she’ll wonder why it is that she has to ring everyone and nobody ever seems to ring her, and I’ll feel the need to explain that maybe it IS sometimes about the money when the GMF is trying to survive on his pension and my sister staggers along on her invalidity benefits.

So, where were we…?

NOV 29 – DEC 05

Having left my mum at the hospital in an actual bed at 8.00 PM the day before, I headed home and spent a couple of hours on the phone with my faraway sister and mum’s GMF and staggered to bed. Monday dawned and it was my sister’s birthday, although I’d not really slept all that well, but my spirits were slightly lifted by a reader sending me a very uplifting email response to “Zero”, that I read about 4.00 A.M. Monday morning.

I spent much of that Monday feeling quite angry about the events of the day before, because I still think that letting a suspected stroke victim wait in a chair for the best part of eight hours after being sent there by a GP isn't really the best way of treating it. Eventually, mum rang me and told me that a Senior Doctor had turned up about 11.00 and she’d been whisked off for tests and had indeed had a stroke (albeit a comparatively minor one).

Over the course of the next week, there was a relocation to the specialist stroke ward and, for mum, things slipped into a rather tense routine of tests and readings and the general routine of life on a hospital ward and for those of us on the outside, our own little routine of work, visits, phone calls and worry. Then, of course, on Tuesday the 30^th we woke up to the first “proper” snowfall that proved so disabling to much of the country and added to the fun of getting to and from the flat and the hospital no end, but we generally managed it without too many problems. There was one horrible evening when I was visiting and they decided part way through my visit to move her from the high risk to the lower risk areas of the ward. This, of course, should have been seen as progress. However, instead it led to a lot of confusion as mum had just settled herself in and seemed to feel “safe” and “comfortable” just where she was, and had even decided that a bit of TV might be a nice thing to have available and, having spent a couple of days getting used to being where she was, absolutely hated being moved and disorientated again, and there was a lot of fuss about where her things precisely were on her bed-table which got a little bit unpleasant.

I suppose I should have expected a certain amount of tension as mum adjusted to the change in her life and lashed out a little at the unfairness of life and the devastating holes that had been punched in her meticulously organised pre-Christmas planning. Sometimes this meant the staff and her fellow patients were the subject of her displeasure, and sometimes it was me for not being able to buy the right magazine or bring the right thing from the flat. After all, one address book with flowers on the cover can look very like another when it’s not yours.

During that week I found myself writing phrases down in my diary like:

“I feel so utterly out of my depth today”

“I’m not by nature a natural carer, this does not mean I don’t care, but the whole world of hospitals and stuff is something I find no pleasure in having to deal with…”

“The worst thing about visiting the wards is the sense of your own future it can bring. A lot of the people you see in such misery aren’t really that much older than I am in real terms. Add thirty years and I’m there and it’s quite frankly terrifying…”

Thirty years ago seems like the blink of an eye some days.

Then, after a week or so, it was decreed (with a fair amount of unfriendly  persuasion on my mother’s part I’m sure) that she was fit to go home…

But that’s another story.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART ONE)

This was written a few weeks ago now, shortly after the event, but didn't easily fit into the ridiculous notion I had of telling an ongoing narrative for the period of advent, and so it has had to lurk, wait and fester on the perimeter of snowy Lesser Blogfordshire for the opportunity of having its moment in the sun (or weak wintry sunshine if you prefer).

This is the start of a story (which I will probably much return to - be warned!) that has been taking up much of my free time this last few weeks and might in some small and inadequate way help to explain why, having bashed out a large chunk of my "Not Very Christmassy" tale in the early part of December, I stuck with sharing that - sadly unedited - with you rather than the events unfolding in my little life. Somehow, my bleak and bitter reflections on the ongoing story of my mother's illness didn't seem very festive, and my brain was so mashed and there was so little other time available to think of other things to tell you, that it was either go with that or spew out more of this kind of stuff to share with you in the run up to Christmas.

I hope you'll agree that I made the correct choice.

So what actually happened on that fateful recent Sunday to drop that bomb in my life? Well, in some ways not much and in others a huge amount, it depends on how you look at things, I suppose.

The phone rang at 7.20 A.M. as I mentioned, but I was up and about, tapping away at the keyboard having composed a little piece for my sister’s birthday whilst listening to the final session of that day’s test match activity. My brain was in the process of switching over to thinking about my “spectacular” ambitious plans for December’s venture into the world of Lesser Blogfordshire and quite whether I was capable of managing what I thought I wanted to create, and whether anyone would really be interested if I did. After all, linking a load of bits of fiction, in various styles, together as a kind of Blogging Advent calendar was a bit of a daft idea at best, and I could hardly expect to take anyone else along on what might not be the most fascinating of journeys, could I? My previous attempts at fiction on these pages has hardly been the most keenly received of my mutterings in the past, and successful bloggery does tend to wards the “true life” I find.

So, the phone rang. It was my Mum telling me she’d felt unwell and called the emergency doctor who’d issued her a prescription and could I collect it? Otherwise her Gentleman Friend (hereafter known as the GMF) wouldn’t be able to get it to her until mid-afternoon. So I muttered and grumbled my way around the house getting dressed and grabbing a quick “Brunch Bar” (other high energy biscuits are available) out of the biscuit tin, said my fond farewells to my dozing beloved and headed reluctantly out into the icy morning.

I shoved a CD into Blinky’s ancient player and trundled along the treacherous roads in search of the obscure little building that calls itself the “Out of Hours Emergency Clinic” knowing full well that, whilst I’d been there one unpleasant Christmas morning over half a decade ago when Mum had previously felt unwell, I wasn’t really sure where it was. Never-the-less shortly afterwards I was able to pull up at the side of the main road outside the chemist’s that I had thought would be filling the prescription and notice that its shutters were firmly down, sealed up tight against the frozen Sunday morning air.

Happily, hidden behind the roadworks, a short walk away was the clinic I sought, and I strolled in and asked for the vital slip of paper I was after and was handed it. “Job done,” I thought, “Soon be able to get home.”

“When does the chemist’s open?” I asked the receptionist.

“Ten o’clock.”

“Are there any others open?”

“No, even the one in Sainsbury’s doesn’t open until ten on a Sunday.”

“None at all?”

“No.”

“I see…”

Now I know we live in an age of austerity and cutbacks, but even I’m old enough to remember a time when there was always ONE chemist’s that stayed open 24 hours. Mum, I knew, would not be best pleased, but I thought I’d go to her place anyway, maybe have a chat and a coffee until the shuttered emporium opened its doors in a couple of hours.

To me Mum did not look well. Not awful exactly, but really just not herself. I still can’t quite grasp what seemed wrong exactly, but she seemed a bit away with the fairies and was slurring her words more than a tad. I found myself asking questions to make sure she’d eaten properly, because that sometimes affects her that way, and started to get more concerned when she had no recollection at all of what she had eaten for her evening meal the night before. I quickly leapt onto her ancient P.C. (silver surfer, my Mum – we’re so proud) and looked up that F.A.C.E. thing that I vaguely remembered, but it was inconclusive, but time ticked along and we had a chat filled with the awkward silences you get when someone really doesn’t feel quite well enough to be bothered with a bit of a natter.

Now I’m not remotely qualified to make any medical decisions, but I truly felt it would be wrong to just leave her there on her own and I really wanted someone who did have some medical insight to have a quick look at her, to reassure me more than anything else, I suppose. I decided that seeing as the clinic was next door to the chemist’s and I was heading back that way anyway, I might as well take her along with me and see if she could be seen. So I got her all wrapped up, grabbed the walking stick and we headed out across the frozen car park and climbed into Blinky, and headed off.

Then I unpacked her and took her across another ice rink into the clinic to ask whether someone could just check her over. There was a nurse at the reception desk and as I explained the situation, she did point out that due to recent cost-cutting, this was no longer a walk-in centre, but she realised my concerns and told me it would be fine. Then the receptionist returned and started telling me off for not ringing first to make an appointment. Perhaps, I was thinking, it is in her job description to protect the medical staff from the unreasonable demands of the sickly of the parish, after all if we all just walked in to what used to be a “walk-in” centre, chaos would no doubt ensue. I was about to offer to ring her on my mobile to make that very appointment when, luckily, my growing ire was sidelined by the nurse who interrupted her and said it was okay. I know there has to be a system, but Mum had indeed rung that very place that same morning, and I am not a resident of the area and really wasn’t to know the current intricacies of the local healthcare system, although I do now have in my possession a two page document explaining how it all works courtesy of that very same receptionist.

Anyway, Mum was seen by some very lovely folk who did all the tests they could and told me that if I’d rung they’d only have told me to bring her to that very place, so no-one seemed too annoyed at my bucking of the system that day.

Ultimately it was decided that she needed to go to the hospital for further tests and probable admission and, all in all, my concerns had been valid ones. I was asked if I wanted to drive her myself or wait for an ambulance. I decided on the self-drive option and it was only after we’d set off that I remembered the parking nightmare at the hospital and that I wouldn’t be able to pull into an ambulance bay like an ambulance might, even if, technically, I was momentarily an ambulance by proxy.

So I dropped my ailing Mother at the kerbside on a cold and frosty morning, pointed at the wrong double doors and told her I’d meet her inside after I’d parked the car. As quickly as I could, I returned and tracked her down as she’d last been seen staggering off towards the correct double doors and was now comfortably sitting in a bleak waiting room waiting for assessment, the preliminaries of which were swiftly handled by a kindly, if a touch harassed, nurse.

The following seven hours sitting underneath a TV set tuned only to the horrors of an ITV Sunday afternoon waiting for a bed to become available will stay with me a long time, and I didn’t even have to endure it as much as Mum as I disappeared off to her flat for a while to collect her stuff and was back and forth to the car park a number of times to feed the meters (the things I do for fun). A potential hopeful high point came when some senior doctors appeared after six hours only for us to be plunged back into a trough of despond when they disappeared again almost immediately because none of the patients had yet been seen by the (ultimately rather wonderful) junior doctor.

Watching one amazing nurse having to run around supervising the entire ward alone whilst a number of upset and confused elderly ladies, obviously suffering from various types of dementia, tried to escape into the bitter evening convinced me that those making any cutbacks to the NHS should really be forced to spend some time in a ward like that one, and also that, if the time ever comes that the government do decide that I’m finally allowed to retire, maybe they should just put a bullet through my head, rather than letting me decline to that extent.

Sorry, it was a rough day.

SIGNIFICANT DATES

As I get older the number of “significant dates” in my life seems to increase astoundingly.

When you’re about 5, the only dates you seem to care about are your own birthday and maybe Christmas day but, the more years that pass and the more people you have known, the more complicated it seems to get to remember all those birthdays of relatives, who might then become breeding relatives and add to the list, or get married to (or at least very involved with) people who have their own significant dates to add to the collection. The years pass and you meet ever more colleagues and friends, all of whom have their own birthdays and anniversaries and whatnot. Before you know it there’s not a month, a week or maybe even a single solitary day when there’s not something going on to distract your attention or give you something that you really should remember.

Once you start to add in all the other dates that you have to remember – weddings to go to, interviews to attend, examinations to do, appointments with your Doctor, Dentist or Hair Stylist it can all start to get really worrying if you are the kind of person who does fret about such things. If you then have to take into consideration all those business meetings that are unavoidable, and those significant national events that we’re expected to ring on our calendars, those World Cups and Royal Splicings etc., then that way madness lies. There are also all those dates of devastating news events like September 11^th, or just those silly ones like April Fool’s day (Be careful what you believe) and Halloween Night (Must remember to have some sweets available) and personal ones like when your holidays are due to begin (Is the passport still valid?) – or all those tragic ones that you don’t want to remember but still resonate deeply in your memories, like bereavements that might only be significant to you and mean nothing to anyone else on a bright and breezy morning.

Some dates remain distinct in the memory despite it no longer being necessary. The birthday of an ex-partner can still resonate on that particular date even though you no longer should really care. Significant birth dates of childhood friends you’ve not seen or heard of in twenty years or more can still ting a little bell in the mind as that day rolls around, or that of any friend you’ve somehow lost touch with. Even those you never really knew at all, but were aware of their birthday for other reasons might still strike a chord; I still remember December 20^th as being the birthday of someone on my college course despite them not having ever really being a personal friend as such (but oh how they did used to go on about it every Autumn term…).

Those birthdays of long lost friends and acquaintances can still bring on a slight twinge of guilt even if I have absolutely no way of knowing where they even are living nowadays. December 23^rd used to be the birthday of someone I wasted a lot of time running around after but lost touch with eons ago. I can’t phone or even send a card as I have no contact details at all any more. Oddly, that very same date has now become personally significant again as one of my sister’s children just had her own first child on that very date, which is another thing that sometimes happens – one quite important date being “trumped” by something of “greater” importance. My birthday got hijacked by a wedding once, and a very good friend’s birthday became another friend’s anniversary, but both were beaten back into the shadows when a member of the family chose that same date to spring into being. July 29^th still reminds me of a long defunct Royal wedding because it was so close to my own birthday and drew much of the attention. January 4^th is the date I started my first ever “proper” job and still gets a minor mental nod even after all these years.

The worst ones I find are the dates when you wake up, look at the calendar and think, “there’s something about today that’s important” but you can’t think of what it is. It might well be one of those significant dates you tucked away in the back of your mind years ago – the date of your driving test, or an exam, or even just a visit to the dentist - but the numbers resonate and leave you skulking around throughout the whole day feeling slightly troubled that you’ve forgotten something terribly important.

Of course there are also the forgotten dates. Everyone can manage to forget an anniversary or a birthday once in a while as many of us are never quite as central to everyone else’s lives as we sometimes like to think we are, but there are so many other dates that I sometimes think I should remember but they’ve managed to somehow slip away from me. The date of that driving test or those once vital exam results, and even the day I first went to college or school, the first day I set eyes on the woman destined to become the beloved. Somehow they’ve managed to slip away unremembered when they deserved to be nurtured.

Today is significant as it is the birthday of one of the parents of my significant other and better half, so it has a certain importance in our household despite being one of those dates that rarely gains much attention as it has so many more glamorous ones surrounding it every year. It does occasionally, like this year, get elevated to “Bank Holiday” status so it’s not one of those “neverdays” like some, but it’s always going to be something of a bridesmaid to its immediate predecessors in the calendar.

Still, that’s really the point, I suppose. Every day is important to someone, somewhere, and every day can also have a deeply sad personal memory for someone else. Maybe, if we take the time to remember this if and when we decide to tell someone to “cheer up and stop being to miserable” on a day when we ourselves have not a care in the world, the world might perhaps be a more understanding and tolerant place.

Have the best day today that you can. If it’s a sad one, you have my sympathies. If it’s a happy one, well done! Embrace the joy of it today, after all there’s another day coming along tomorrow and none of us yet know what it might bring.

A “NORMAL” CHRISTMAS

As this Christmas has become nothing like a “normal” one for me (those stories are still waiting to be told but are a tad bleak for the season... You see? I AM capable of sensitivity about these matters…) I thought I might reflect on what is a “normal” Christmas hereabouts…

For many years I’ve struggled to find much joy in Christmastime, instead finding it to be one long inglorious rollercoaster ride of duty and damned hard work with precious little in the way of actual joy to be found. I think this dates back to the year my sister first got married and dared (for once) to be away from us on the actual day itself. The wailing and gnashing of teeth by the maternal grandmother, who seemed to have a general lack of a "grace" gene, had us treading on eggshells for the duration and set the template for many years of misery to come. After the deaths of first my grandfather and then my own father, the opportunities for sentimentalist lamentation and woe that this seemed to offer her tainted a lot of Christmas days.

For a couple of years I managed to escape with friends to the pub for a lunchtime tipple and a small tradition was kind of brewing for a while there but lives change and that fizzled out after only a very few attempts. Responsibility for Christmas tended to fall on my sister’s shoulders for the next few years after she had had her children as my mother was never the most dedicated of cooks, and after her departure (or was that "escape"...?) to pastures far away, and the death of my grandmother, responsibility for keeping Christmas fell rather uncertainly into my lap.

For a while we had managed to continue the only real “family tradition” we had, known as the “Christmas Pie” in which you would pull on a string with your name attached to one end and which disappeared into a box with a cotton wool snowy topping and receive an extra post-dinner Christmas present, but that fizzled out when there were just two of us.

So I found myself creating my own traditions. Christmas dinner now seems to need to be accompanied by Californian Zinfandel as it was the wine I found in Tesco the first year I cooked the Christmas dinner and it seemed to taste okay. The other traditions tend to basically include a hell of a lot of fretting that I’ve forgotten to buy something vital for the meal, a situation now compounded by having to track down Gluten-Free alternatives for one of my regular Christmas guests, and way too many trips to too many crowded supermarkets and a general requirement to prepare far too many vegetables.

Christmas itself usually starts for me when work finally releases me on my own recognisance, generally on Christmas Eve, although I always used to find that last morning at work the most misery inducing of the entire working year. I really never got to the bottom of all that, but I suppose it’s just that everyone else always seemed to have something to look forward to and I really, truly felt that I didn’t. I would drive home via a quick visit to my mother to be force fed coffee and Christmas cake (and the occasional sandwich) whilst collecting the joint of meat that I was due to be cooking the next day.

That done I would sit in a traffic jam for a while and eventually get home. I would put “Carols from Kings” on the radio and begin chopping all manner of fresh vegetables and making stuffing and prepping meat for a couple of hours. For many years - before I found my beloved - that remained the only "proper" festive moment I experienced each year. After all that was done, I would set the dining table for the following day before I might just manage to have perhaps the only real “me” time of the entire season and maybe, just maybe, settle down and watch a bit of telly, or, in more recent, happier years, go out for a meal with the beloved.

Christmas day itself then started to become a crazy, unrelaxing time, and I would have to get up at a time that even the most excited childhood version of myself might have considered unreasonable in order for the schedule to have a hope of working. In recent years, the beloved and I have managed to snatch at most a precious couple of frenzied and "stuff to do" filled hours together opening our Christmas stockings and other parcels and maybe grabbing the odd slice of toast before heading out into the empty streets in order to fit in a quick visit to Mum and her "Gentleman Friend" (can you call a man in his 70s a “boyfriend” reasonably?) before they had to go to the immovable object of their church service.

Whilst they were doing their “Praise-the-Lord” thing, I would take the beloved around to “Beloved Towers” and maybe get three quarters of an hour with her parents before leaving her there for a family Christmas without me, and heading back to retrieve my Mother and GMF and driving them back to my house where there would be an annual argument about how to light the coal fire (and whether I should have lit it in my tiny grate before I went out for four hours... Hmm! Somehow I never got to win that one...). There would then follow a swift – and usually fairly grumpy (the "grace"gene remains largely absent) – exchange of gifts, accompanied by me trying to jolly everything along by providing coffee, cake, mince pies, booze and whatever else I could think of to fill any gaping silences before disappearing into the kitchen for two and a half frenzied hours of cooking, followed by half an hour of silent cracker-free, hat-free (and for the driver/cook – i.e. me - wine-free) eating. I swear I put the same crackers out for five years before the beloved took pity on them one year and let them fulfil their destiny.

Of course, my guests always  had to claim to "not eat much" at some point - it's "traditional" - and tell me I'd made far too much food as they would leave masses of leftovers, despite my protestations, no doubt brought on by my profligate upbringing in a comparatively wealthy country, that I'd rather they had too much than not enough.

I would then spend another hour and a half washing up before Mum usually announced over her coffee that it was time to go and I would damp down the fire, pack up their gifts, go through the potentially lethal process of getting them both across the icy pavements and back into the car and drive them back to her flat. A swift unloading of stuff and people, a bit of chat and I would be back in the car to collect the beloved and head home by eight or nine o’clock for a bit of Christmas telly and another year would have been successfully negotiated and I would find myself completely knackered and wondering if I was ever going to have one of those Christmases everyone else I know (and as the telly seems to imply, the whole country) seems to have where they just sit down and enjoy themselves and maybe have a couple of beers…?

Hey, I know compared to some I have had it very easy, and in many ways I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way than the way it was. This year, by necessity things have been very different for me here in Lesser Blogfordshire, and, surprisingly, despite the subtext and tone of what I’ve shared with you above, I kind of missed all the routine and ritual of it. There was still a heck of a lot of running about, of course, but very different running about and somehow it just wasn’t the same. Still, I think we managed to enjoy it despite everything that was going on.

I hope so.

Anyway, however you got to spend your Christmas Day, I hope you had a good one.

A DICKENS OF A TALE

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens is one of my favourite books and is for me possibly one of the finest things ever written in the English language. It is a book that I can constantly return to, and I always find it has something new to say about the human condition each time I do.

I will, however, admit a fondness for the “pre-transformed” version of Scrooge, not because I think he’s a better person beforehand, but just because I can relate to the lonely old devil a bit more when he seems more fallible and more human. It’s a brilliantly well-observed characterisation which has much to say about what it is to be human. It’s very easy for those of us who feel awkward in social situations to get forgotten about of left behind by a world that’s too busy enjoying its own fun, and it becomes quite understandable how that might transform a reasonable young fellow (as young Scrooge undoubtedly is seen to be) into an embittered, cynical loner. The “post-transformation” version, however, seems to be the sort of avuncular enthusiast that I would go out of my way avoid at parties.

If I ever went to parties, that is…

But I suppose to think that is to probably miss the point, and as a tale of redemption and the possibilities of change, it really is hard to think of a story to beat it. As a story it can make me weep buckets and leave me full of joy and hope, sometimes on the very same page, and I genuinely do think it’s a masterpiece. I’m never sure whether the things that move me the most are the ones that resonate with others. I find the scenes where Scrooge abandons his youthful love truly heartbreaking, and a lot of the scenes at old Fezziwigs still bring a lump to the throat, and any number of the beastly visions of the future not-to-be fill me with a raging loathing of the things people do which I suspect was not really the desired effect.

The moments that most move me are of course the ones that most resonate with my own experiences, I suppose, but that’s the beauty of a great work like this. Different things will read in different ways at different times of your life. I read recently that some people believe  that it is the most frightful, horrible figures are often the most sentimental, so maybe I might have to accept the possibility that I am just a horrible person. If that is true, will three Ghosts visit me one night and save me from myself, or am I doomed to a life of misery followed by an eternity of torment? Perhaps that’s what Dickens wanted us to do: examine our own lives through the eyes of Ebenezer Scrooge and wonder if we too could be found to come up short.

In school, the audience was unfortunate enough to suffer my most ham-filled performance of one Jacob Marley in our very own adaptation of the tale, whilst weighed down by a couple of hundredweight of was probably old ship’s chains (no health and safety issues in those days) and so his lines in the book always resonate and seem terribly familiar (“Ask me who I was, Ebenezer…” etc.) and I still feel a lot of empathy for old Marley even today as he only gets to see the folly of his ways when it is too late for him.

My favourite adaptation remains the Patrick Stewart version and every Christmas I do try to find the time to sit down and revel in it (this year, alas there was simply no time or opportunity for this due to my constant need to visit the hospital. My other “traditional” viewings “It’s a Wonderful Life” and The Avengers: “Too Many Christmas Trees” have also sadly had to remain in their sleeves this time around.) although the sequences with “Ding Dong!” Mr. Topper are now a running gag in our household and that particular Tiny Tim does, quite frankly, deserve everything that he ultimately doesn’t get.

On the page, Tiny Tim can seem a tragic figure, but sadly, whenever he’s cast in film productions, they always seem to pick the most annoying little actor they can find, and I usually find the portrayal of him so very nauseating that, in most film versions, I am quite happy to see the back of the little b****r…

I suspect that this is not the Director’s desired intention.

My empathies and sympathies always lie with the family who suffer his loss rather than the loss itself, and Bob Cratchit’s now legendary toast to “the founder of the feast” always, always manages to restore any faith in human nature that later scenes manage to diminish.

Those later scenes, where people gather together and rejoice in the passing of another human being, no matter how loathsome his reputation, really disturb me, which is why I think you can keep the musical “Scrooge”. I am forever appalled by the musical number where those b****rds all dance around and upon the coffin singing “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me” whilst the body of old Ebenezer lurks within. I know it’s for comic effect, but I really do find it all rather distasteful, possibly because, no matter what you may think of them, speaking ill of the dead just seems plain wrong. Maybe I just missed the point there, but then musicals have always been a strangely bewildering form of drama to me.

Ah well, I suppose that it’s just evidence of what a very fine story it is, if it can be adapted into so many forms and remain popular. For me, though, the original book remains the best, and I do try to sit down most years and give it a read. If you never have, or think that it’s just “old hat” or over familiar from all the various versions you have seen, I suggest you give it a whirl, because it is, quite frankly brilliant.


The book pictured is my 1950 edition which is the version I always prefer to read from despite there being other versions around the house. It's now over 60 years old and so I suppose is something of a minor antique, but then, well, aren't we all?

25. WRAPPING

"Nark!" Is what Stu might have thought,

When the police had got him caught!

Eve, however, kept her mouth closed,

And noth-ing she would disclose.

Now Stu knew Eve could be trust-ed

And that he would not be bust-ed

Re-al-ised Eve was quite neat,

Thought his children she should meet!

"Nark!" Is what Stu might have thought,

But Eve was loyal so no court!

Stan told them Chris was blameless

Just a stranger in distress!

Who’d found trouble in the woodland

Stan saved and was on the mend.

Didn’t know what the cops had thought!

Their theories might come to naught!

Knew their case was on the skids,

Stu got sent home to his kids!

Stan told them Chris was blameless,

Will not budge his yarn shameless.

"Look! Golightly caught that Stu!"

Going back to where he knew.

On his own without ass-ist-ance

He’d real-ly gone the dist-ance

Those young cops they were impressed

About a colleague they’d dismissed.

Now they thought him proper police,

They would give him some more peace.

"Look! Golightly caught that Stu!"

More respect is now his due!

See! Just now the story’s through

Hope it won’t dis-app-oint you!

Stu knew Eve would now stick by him

Give his kids a proper Mum.

Stan has someone to be wise to,

Chris might have a job to go to,

Car-ol will still get a fine,

After drinking all her wine!

See! Here is the story’s close,

Almost happy I suppose!

Well, that’s pretty much  a wrap on this strange seasonal  story (a "Chris Mouse" tale if you will) from our dark little corner of Lesser Blogfordshire. To those of you have been following this little advent tale, I hope that you’ve had as much fun reading it unfold as I got from concocting it, although the “plan” did have to be tweaked due to “unforeseen circumstances”. I also hope you recognised all the songs*, I hope you realised that all the tenuously linked-in titles were words that could be preceded by the word “Christmas” (an “Only Connect” moment…), but most of all I hope that the next time I get a daft idea like that, I go away and think of something else to do instead…

Never-the-less, all that remains is to wish both of you the happiest of Christmases and to hope you’ll maybe choose to visit Lesser Blogfordshire again one day.

Happy Christmas!
*For the record -

3. MESSAGE: While Shepherds Watched;
5. BELLS: The First Noel;
7. DRINK: We Three Kings;
9. NIGHT: Once in Royal David's City;
13. STAMP: Jingle Bells;
15. CHEER: The Holly and the Ivy;
17. CRACKER: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen;
19. DECORATION: Good King Wenceslas;
22. CARD: Silent Night;
24. TIME: Away in a Manger;
25. WRAPPING: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.

24. TIME

A-way from all dan-ger,

Locked up in his cell,

It seemed for young Stu-art,

Things weren’t go-ing well.

E-vents on the out-side,

Were go-ing his way.

The police had no rea-son

To keep him that day.

For Stan said that no-one

Had tak-en some trees.

He’d not seen an-y-one

But Chris on his knees

He’d dragged him back home-wards

Tried to make him well,

If Stu-art had been there

He just could not tell.

Go-light-ly was ang-ry,

But Stan wouldn’t budge.

He smiled at the police-man

Who won’t bear a grudge.

Stan said he was sor-ry

Not to help him more,

He’d been more con-cerned with

That lad on the floor.

The Con-sta-ble had to

Try out a new tack,

Took Eve in to ques-tion

About her att-ack.

She plead-ed ig-nor-ance,

She’d not seen a soul.

If some-one had been there,

He’d left her a-lone.

Go-light-ly asked out-right

A-bout that fel-low,

Who’d knocked him right over

In-to lots of snow.

Eve said she’d seen no-one,

But some-times out-side,

Strange men in her gar-den

Had cho-sen to hide.

He did not be-lieve her

Not one word of it!

But need-ed a state-ment,

Or they’d have to quit.

Go-light-ly thought some-one

Should have to do time,

But loss of dig-nit-y

Was not a big crime.

When int-er-viewed Stu-art

De-nied be-ing there.

Until they’d pounced on him

He was oth-er-where.

He’d just gone to Eve’s house

For a bit of fun,

When the police had jumped him,

They’d got the wrong man!

He did not know what had

Gone on there be-fore.

The some-one who bashed them

Was not him, be sure!

There were ma-ny oth-ers

Out drink-ing that night,

It was near-ly Christ-mas

Some drunks like a fight!

The last roll of the dice

Was the leath-er strip,

That from his good jack-et

Had been known to rip.

Stu told them quite bold-ly

That the last week-end,

He’d ripped it whilst tak-ing

A walk with a friend.

They knew that he’d been there,

His coat told them that,

But no trees were tak-en

And so that was that!

The oth-er small prob-lem

The P.C. was sure,

He could-not be cer-tain

Who’d run from that door.

Go-light-ly sighed deep-ly,

Sat back in his chair,

Per-haps they’d nev-er know,

It was so un-fair!

Des-pite all their runn-ing

A-round on that night,

Their only con-vic-tion:

D.W.I.