deadheaduk

So it was a funny old week last week what with the car and everything but then there was a parent and grandparent factor as well. My Gran, bless her, celebrated her 99th birthday in hospital due to a fall after a dizzy spell resulting in a broken wrist. The plan is to move her to a care home while she recovers enough to go back to her own home but that seems to keep getting put back while they monitor her general health.

In the meantime my dad has had to have tests on his heart as he came over all peculiar while out walking. thankfully after a day of tests he was given the all clear and this meant that their plan to go to Spain, which was postponed due to the Volcanic ash no flight ban a few weeks ago could go ahead.

Then on Saturday, while we were at the car lot buying the car, I got a message on my mobile from my dad. The asked me to call him as soon as possible and he sounded quite upset so I panicked assuming that something had happened to my Gran. Sarah suggested that we finish off getting the paperwork for the car done and I call as soon as we get home. We dashed off in such a hurry that I left the manual and the service history documents behind! When I called him it turned out that he only wanted to tell me that they were going to Spain the following day and that my Gran was going to be moved on the Monday!

Then the following morning I got a text off him saying they had decided not to go to Spain. When I spoke to him he told me that my Gran’s blood pressure had dropped and the hospital were worried about her. So he had had a sleepless night wondering what to do and finally decided that they wouldn’t go even though it meant that they would lose the money they had spent on the air fares.

An hour later they got a call to say that their flight had been cancelled due to the volcanic ash cloud that had returned to european airspace – so that was a waste of a sleepless night! My Gran had picked up by the time they went to see her in the afternoon.

Today would have been my mum’s birthday, Sunday is obviously Mother’s Day and next month will be the 20th anniversary of her death. So as you can imagine this is quite a difficult time for me. This time last year I was in a really bad place and although I’m feeling a bit better now there is still a long way to go before I’m fixed! One problem is that I still haven’t got over the death of my mum who died far too young but with help I hope to move on in the not too distant future.

When I first started blogging about 5 years ago this issue came up and at that time I started to write about my memories of her but I didn’t get very far and I never published it. Well in order to move the healing process on I resolved to do so this morning to mark her birthday…..so here goes!

Jean Edith Shewan

1938-1990

There is a picture that I always think of when I think about my mum. It was taken on Christmas day and she is kneeling on the floor, smiling at the camera and holding up her arm to show off the watch she got as a present.

I guess the reason the picture stands out in my mind is that she was wearing the watch the night she died and afterwards my dad gave the watch to me – not much compensation for my loss but would anything have been?

She died far too young and at a very important stage of my life and the hole she left just hasn’t healed. It was such a big hole that for many years I couldn’t remember her before the onset of her illness. This single event that has had more effect on my life than any other and now 15 years later I’m only just beginning to come to terms with it.

Memory Flash #1

It’s lunchtime and my mum and nana (her mum) have returned from the town. They have been into numerous shops and now sit with a handful of till receipts doing what they call “reckoning up”. They will have been into both of the towns fledgling supermarkets, peas would be 1d a tin cheaper in Hintons than in Presto’s so they would buy them there. Binns, the department store, would have been visited to buy sausages, the only food my brother would eat and only then if they were the right shade of pink. Now they had to account for every penny, even if this meant retracing their steps 2 or 3 times, until every penny had been accounted for.

We were creatures of habit at lunchtimes and my brother and I always came home for what we called dinner. In those days we had an hour and a half for lunch so there was time to get to and from school. In any case we wouldn’t have eaten anything other than mums cooking so even after we moved house we still came home, even though it involved a half hour bus trip in each direction.

You could tell what day of the week it was by what we had for lunch. There was a routine to life back then that I’ve never been able to achieve in my life or my chilren’s lives since. I don’t remember them all but here goes: Mondays lunch would be made from the leftovers of what we’d had for Sunday lunch. If we’d have beef or lamb my mum would make a meal she called ash. This was a sort of stew with the leftover meat and potatoes in a stock. I didn’t always like the potatoes and would often leave all these little white cubes in the bottom of the dish. If we’d had chicken she would make chicken casserole.

Midweek we would have mince and dumplings, the dumplings would have been cooked in the oven and browned on top. Fridays, it would be fish fingers and chips because, well you always have fish on Fridays don’t you.

Today was my birthday and I got a card from my brother (on the day which is a novelty!) and on the front was a quote which I think is a good philosophy to have it said:

“Life is too important to be taken seriously”

It was one of Wildes!

It sodding was not! …

Today was Ben’s birthday. He was 4.

When he got home from school there was a card waiting for him from his Grandad (the Northern one!). The only problem was that the card was inside a plastic bag and had clearly been opened. Naturally the £30 that had been inside the card was nowhere to be seen.

So somewhere between Sunderland and here some theiving scumbag has opened the envelope and taken out the money. The fact that the postmark had been scraped off would suggest to me that it was done by a postal worker who didn’t want the sorting office he was from to be identified.

So the question is “What sort of lowlife would open a card which is obviously meant for a child and steal their birthday money?” Not to mention the card had Grandson on it as it was from his Grandad and Great Gran who are 78 and 98 respectively. So this theiving shit has stolen from a child and two pensioners! I really do hope that they choke on the vomit that comes from drinking Ben’s birthday money!

It’s no wonder that the mail service in this country is in decline – at the end of the day (and here I’m starting to sound like a Daily Mail reader) what is to stop them? If they get caught they will probably only be suspended on full pay indefinately because of the antiquated systems that still operate inside the Royal Mail.

Rant over!

It’s my Gran’s birthday today – she said she was 21 but I know she’s really 98!

Only 2 years till she gets her telegram (although I think it’s a card nowadays) from the Queen. I told her that I’ve never seen one and asked her to hang on till she get’s hers!