Jeni Barnett

And so we move into a new phase of kidney kare. Three days ago I was booked into Guys hospital to have a fistula inserted in my arm. For those of you who don’t know what a fistula is it’s the joining together of a vein and an artery so that dialysis can be achieved … Read more

Like bashful ladies the leaves waved in the wind. I sat at the kitchen table and watched. The clouds heavy and Sid out and about. We have a visiting Jack Russel so Sid goes off, now I know he always returns but it’s stressful though. I went to Lidls’ and bought flat peaches and flat … Read more

There are protests happening all over the USA. Pammie with a placard, is protesting, she’s just had chemo for cancer, but her rage is so great she’s standing in her small American town with two thousand others holding her handwritten sign and protesting The Orange arseholes’ decision to put troops on the streets of LA. … Read more

Accommodating dialysis doesn’t get any easier. I called it cleansing, a gentle euphemism for the reality of the drain of it. Then the old git came up with ‘dry-cleaning’……so now I go to the dry cleaners three times a week. I binge on television box sets and meditate to Belle Ruth Napersteck’s CD on dealing … Read more

As an old Jew being empathetic towards Palestinians does not make you Anti Semitic. Criticising Israel does not make you Anti Semitic. Calling out right wing Israeli politicians does not make you Anti Semitic. Shouting at a young Israeli woman who suggests that war requires the killing of ‘the offspring, so they don’t make any … Read more

I was born in 1949, four years after the end of the Second World War. My mother was in her late twenties when she had me, sister to a brother who was born in 1947. We were slum kids. The tenements of the East End was our playground. Stone steps leading up to our grandmothers … Read more

The Sycamore Gap tree, felled by two ‘morons’, dominated the news this evening, that act of unbridled vandalism is only second in line to the orange buffoons behaviour. Happy that his poll rating is low, happy that more Americans think him now an overblown twat when we knew it all along. Incredulous at his press … Read more

The dishwasher is splashing through its cycle, the old git’s gone to bed, the dawters in the attic and Sid has just jumped through the cat flap. I’ve had another gruelling day of dialysis. I woke at 4.00, couldn’t sleep and decided on a papaya. Little did I know that the humble papaya is not … Read more

The Gorse is glorious now in the Ashdown Forest. I love that the prickly shrub has two common namers ‘Furze’ and ‘Whin’. Driving through the mist, windows wide open, I could smell the coconutty scent coming off the whin it soothed my savage breast along with Radio 3. My breasts have been particularly savaged recently … Read more

The kitchen table has turned into a garden centre with floral overtones Every year my birthday is celebrated with colour and cards since everybody knows I’m an overgrown baby. Any excuse for a celebration. The nurses in the dialysis unit overhead a zoom call and brought in a speaker, ‘Happy Birthday’ was played very loudly, … Read more