The hospital has a new directive. No longer are the nurses able to give you a little prick. It now has to be a short sharp scratch.
No longer can you snigger over a cannula.
Whether its a scratch or a prick it still hurts.
Looks like a cartographer has been tattooing a map of Mesopotamia on my flabby arms.
In and out of hospital is playing havoc with my head, but we are getting there.
The pace maker is settling down and my fat legs are reducing.
I lay in the sun and meditate.
I flop on the swing set and listen to Louise Hay telling me that my body will heal itself. That I have to be kind to myself, forgive myself and though I don’t believe it now I will see the difference when I tell my body that I love it even if I have been a bitch to it for 77 years.
This last trip to the hospital was short but devastating.
Endless waiting. Egg mayonnaise sandwiches on curled white bread.
Doctors that misunderstood me.
More waiting.
Tears of frustration and a vow that whatever happens next I will not call 999.
I will breathe, put my legs above my head and trust that Louise Hay isn’t talking total bollox.
So I’m learning to be generous when everybody around me seems to be taking holidays, walking their dogs. Running marathons and hopping on airplanes to the Balearics.
I wish them well.
So this is how to deal with a seemingly small life.
1. Eat delicious eggs from the local farm.
2. Put’The Other Bennett Sister’ on repeat.
3. Take drives through country lanes.
4. Talk to friends.
5. Listen to friends.
6. Binge on Radio 3 unwind.
7. Buy a new dish washer.
8. Walk with a walking stick
9. Make fires for the flames.
10.Stroke the cat – a lot
Looking at the minutiae of life and being curious is a gift.
Now is the time to let curiosity come to the fore.To watch a dragon fly, to wonder at chimney pots. To take an interest in anybody sitting at the next table in the caff.
Seniority enables impromptu conversations at the check out.
I don’t think I was a very curious child. I lived inside my head.
So when I had my dawter I was concerned she wasn’t curious enough.
Unlike my friends grandson Rafi who, aged 5, asked
‘If you take the wings of a fly does it become a walk?’
When I asked my five year old dawter why she didn’t ask me endless questions she had the audacity to reply
‘Because I know the answers.’
The arrogance of childhood.
The only subject I recall being curious about, when I was a nipper, was jokes. I liked the ‘funny’ in situations.
I recall being curious about what makes a joke funny.
The rudeness of men saying women couldn’t tell jokes. I proved them wrong.
But then jokes were resonsible for my various sackings.
I was accused of being racist on the food show when I told the inoffensive joke of the Chinese woman who had a food processor on her head. Her name was Blender.
They edited it out of the show.
And the day the boss walked into Radio Kent. I was mid joke-telling.
‘How do you circumsize a whale?’
‘Send down four skin divers.’
I was never asked back to the Tunbridge Wells studio.
Sadly we live in a world where jokes are vetted and noody knows how or what to laugh at any more.
I can remember the first joke my brother wrote. I was seven he was the funniest boy I had ever met.
‘Great minds think alike….great bums stink alike.’
I laughed my head off he was my hero.
And then whilst lying on the carpet in the sitting room my brother asked me who erected Nelson’s column.
I had no idea.
He fell about when he told me it was Lady Hamilton.
My father told my mother to take me into the kitchen and explain the joke to me.
I learnt the facts of life over a smoked salmon bagel.
I collected jokes as a kid and got called out by the local Seconday Modern School and the Grammar school.
Even before I started as a professional I was getting reprimanded for bad behaviour.
David Attenborough is 100, and not a day over 50, he has the curiosity of a man who found his feet young.
I worry about the younger generation who have limited dreams.
AI stealing their jobs.
Greedy bastards stealing their future.
We have hundreds of new builds where we live – nobody is buying them.
Now they want to build on Tunbridge Wells common.
For whom?
For why?
Some heartless developers that want to make a quick buck whist generations of yunguns have nowhere to live.
That never happened to Mr.Attenborough.
I drove out to Normans Bay today to cath the rays. It was hot. I took a little collapsable chair and a walking stick so I could get myself onto the beach.
Through lanes of leafy green trees. Down small tracks with pink grass and overgrown verges.
I stopped at the level crossing at Normans Bay Station and waited for the train to pass.
Before I could find a parking spot the sky clouded over. A delicious deluge of sloppy big rain drops.
I turned the car round. My new wind screen wipers cleaning without one squeak. When I got home it was proper pouring. Not for long but enough to give my new nasturtiums a watering.
I helped the old git prepare a fire and we watched ‘Britains Got Talent.’
I had to turn it off in the end. My intentions are good but the reality of Saturday night telly is deeply distressing.
Screaming crowds and people laughing at bad jokes…….
Knock knock. Who’s there? A little old lady.
A little old lady who?
Wow, I didn’t know you could yodel!
I’m going to bed….