What is Grief?

I honestly don't know. If forced to answer I would have to say its as deep, varied and in every case as different as love and hate.

Its not the immediate deep wrenching loss of death, oh no, its longer, harder leaping at you in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. It may seem as though you no sooner think you're 'over it' than something long dormant springs to mind and therefore life and you're left stunned with immediate loss and pain as if the disaster, tragedy, break up, death had just that moment happened.

Disobedient eyes well up with the tears you thought you'd shed enough but suddenly and without warning you find you hadn't.

Last Thursday Ollie died and what the hell he's a dog and a dogs a dog, right? No People who think like that couldn't be more wrong and maybe are unfit to ever have animals in their lives.

Whatever.

Mostly I'm already accustomed to his passing. He is gone I walk to his grave a dozen times a day I talk to him and Herself and I'm over it. I am.

Until I look at the food. I know, have always known I cook too much for any one meal it probably stems from being part of a largish family and maybe there's a hint of my own greed involved but it never mattered Ollie took care of the excess food situation and if truth be told I probably, almost certainly, cooked some extra just for him. I never cooked one slice of bacon, I rarely eat as much as a whole slice but Ollie would be at my feet doing his half starved act.

Since Thursday I've had so much excess food I don't know what to do with it. I am unaccustomed to leftovers. Jezzie is helping out she's not a great eater and she is a fussy one so her sudden interest in leftovers is unusual, I suspect its her way of helping me when I stand looking at the waste and howling for the loss of a greedy boy.

Such a silly thing to grieve over, stupid to be reminded of Ollie every time I see a half eaten cat or dogs meal. I actually stand looking at them and wondering what the hell to do with them as if it matters and as if I didn't know.

Grief is a funny thing its gone and then the silliest most unimportant thing brings it rushing back and there's four half eaten cat and dog meals in the kitchen and a whole pot of whatever it was I cooked and know I won't finish.

My Ollie is Gone

I don’t think I knew how important he was and is to me. He was the last link with the life I had before I came to Ireland. It was a very different life, one where he had regular check ups at the vet and even more regular appointments at the dog grooming parlour the nice young man used to come and collect him and bring him home all nice, clean and very happy.

Different days. Pippa and Trixie joined us when he was about three and Pippa who has no time for Trixie loved Ollie immediately and steadfastly. Lately she was rubbing against him and licking/kissing him, it didn’t occur to me she was worried about him he seemed fine. True his hair was too long but I did trim his fringe, he wouldn’t let me do the rest of his coat. He was such a strong boy and I in so many ways have become weak.

Today 27th May 2016 I buried Ollie I got two of his precious toys to put with him. He loved them both, would sniff them out from wherever I hid them and proceed to try to kill them stone dead.

I should have gone to the shop today, its a bad day to run out of fags but just this last time my boy had to come first.

How many times can a heart break?

I don’t know but it seems to me it happens too often.

My fault I didn’t take enough care of him

Gone were visits to the groomer every six weeks.

Gone were the regular check ups.

He didn’t deteriorate I did and he paid.

My Ollie, my best boy, my guilt

My Ollie is Gone

How many times can a heart break?

I don't know but it seems to me it happens too often.

My fault I didn't take enough care of him

Gone were visits to the groomer every six weeks.

Gone were the regular check ups.

He didn't deteriorate I did and he paid.

My Ollie, my best boy, my guilt.

Learn

If you loved You could not walk away Love goes with you Uninvited & unwelcome
Full frontal and unabashed Love is not take or leave Love is not a state of mind

What Happened to Him?

How did such talent and almost success crumble to dust, who knows, who sees disaster on the horizon? Well he does he could write chapter and verse. The slow descent, it never happens quickly. The forgotten meetings, missed opportunities all of which he insisted he only missed because he knew they were rubbish beneath his reputation and stature. He had he always said been a fool to consider any of them.

Sometimes he woke on the floor, sometimes he woke in bed it made no difference to him he could never remember how he got into bed or onto the floor. All he could tell anyone for sure was that both were empty and he would be loath to do that, what face another truth? Not a chance.

Slowly everything but the booze dried up until even booze had a price he couldn’t afford. He took work where he found it and tried to develop an old love into a new career. It didn’t work. It was respected but it wasn’t interesting to a wider audience.

Freelance is just another word for unemployed it doesn’t pay the mortgage. He lost jobs, then family. He struggled until eventually out of the new communications world he found new work it was anonymous and relatively menial but it paid well, its big advantage? He could do it blind drunk no one would know. It became a routine a long boring routine. He helped friends, he gained a different stature but he was bored

Until one day a new name appeared

Is this a beginning? Nah. Is it a flight of imagination? Who knows 

Feet!

Toes, specifically toe nails. Anyone who uses a shower instead of a bath must be aware that feet are the toughies to actually wash. One has to kneel to ensure feet are properly clean, which is fine but not in my humble...opinion satisfactory. Be honest how many of us love to soak our feet in a hot tub? I do and to that end I have a thingummy bowl that has a motor of some sort which when plugged in causes the water in the bowl to splash about and which is said to be relaxing. I can't be sure because I've never plugged it in. How many of us would plug water into the electric and then put our feet in it?

I don't know the answer to that and it makes no difference I have no intention of trying it. But the bowl is sort of foot shaped and is for soaking ones feet and relaxing.

I never relax when my feet are in the bowl, ever. On my mind and over ruling any desire to simply sit back and read a book is the thought of what happens next because what happens next is always toe nails. I don't hate toe nails, its not like I'm the only one who has them, but they are not easily dealt with, not at my age.

As we age bending becomes not so much harder as almost impossible and the thing about cutting toe nails is it can't, unless we get someone else to do it and I wouldn't give that idea houseroom, be done without bending our backs. I'm sixty six my lower back has given up doing anything I want it do. It doesn't so much shriek defiance as refuse to co-operate and bend and that means I'm at full stretch trying to make the scissors stretch even further and as most of us know unlike finger nails toe nails are not easy to cut. It actually takes a certain amount of physical agility and a hint of strength to do it.

My finger nails are easy to reach and because they're quite long easy to cut, my toe nails are harder to reach and because they're quite short and made of some diamond resistant alloy are the devil of a job to cut.

As soon as I have anything else to worry about and I have quite a lot to worry about at the moment things seem to conspire to harass me, phones, deliveries, letters, housework, feet and toe nails and so far the worst by a country mile are toe nails.

How is that possible?

How to Live?

Who says I want to

Who tells me 'Go, run'

Who created the problem

I've got confirmation

Now I must decide

Decision was made

Years ago

To Dress or Not to Dress

I seem to be on a bit of a roll the subject of todays trip down memory lane is dress code. All my working life I wore high heel shoes for work not the ridiculous and potentially dangerous five or six inch heels some girls wear now but a safer more sedate but nevertheless smart three inches or so.and always to match whatever else I wore.

Everyone, or the girls and women anyway, did the same. I had walking shoes to get to and fro and high heels for the office and the opera house. I think a two or three inch heel is more comfortable than either flat shoes or the ludicrous high heels some women wear today. Have you ever looked at Fox News presenters in the studio? every one of the women I’ve seen have been wearing the kind of heels that make ladders unnecessary.

I remember one girl at the opera house insisted on wearing socks not unreasonable in some jobs but in a theatre an usherette is highly visible and has to present the right image. She refused, management got tough and we all had to wear the correct uniform which to be fair the management had always provided.

I was irritated not because I cared if someone wore socks or not but because the management crackdown meant I had to wear the red scarf around my neck instead of in the sophisticated, tasteful arrangement around my waist I’d worn for years. Bloody girl soon shot off back to Australia but the strict dress code remained.

If you think about it most television presenters also dress for work, usually the men are in suits, the women smart dress, of course they represent themselves but they also carry the responsibility of representing their employers and their job. Its one of the most basic aspects of employment: you look the part.

If anyone ever does a study the chances are most of us dress for work in a uniform of some sort, everyone from factory workers, nurses, police, firemen, ambulance people, catering staff. some bank staff and office workers. We all dress for work and then along comes some selfish cow who thinks uniform of any description however minimal is beneath her and if she wants to wear trainers or hob nail boots to work its up to her.

I disagree.

An Affair

Earlier today I read a post on another blog and it took me on an unexpected little trip down memory lane. I didn't disagree with it at all, celibacy is something that I think grows on all of us slowly and anyway the thought of me swinging off chandeliers makes me bilious.

I was one of those women who had affairs with married men not in my youth when I think if only subconsciously we're all trying to guess which one will be the one we marry and consciously avoiding any man with a wedding ring or who we know is married. I don't remember thinking of any individual but surely I must have. Its just time takes the edge off and you remember Alan and Greg but not if you thought they might be the one.

Do we all marry for love? I doubt it I definitely don't recommend it. Love won't get you a mortgage or pay the rent. Marry for good and sufficient reason and work to make the marriage work is after sixty six years my advice and probably the best way to look at the subject. Wild affairs with the gardener (Lady Chatterley's Lover - boring book) are all very well but gardeners are two a penny the employer of the gardener is a much rarer breed with a bigger house and a healthy bank balance or once he was. Why look for more than is there what does it help? Isn't an affair a kind of refusal to look beyond the time, place and company?

No, its not loves young dream that moved me to type it was the affairs with married men, to me at the time I thought of affairs as good fun and so did the women I knew. One friend said to me it was like bunking off school, and it was. I don't recall it ever being more than an adventure, an escape from the hum drum. It wasn't meant to hurt or Gods forbid cause divorce that would have put a serious dent in the relationship! It was nothing more than a little bit of light escapism and as far as I know did no harm. If it did if maybe divorce happened sometime later then maybe it was always going to happen.

Such affairs are not meant to be deep emotional ties that would surely have spoiled the whole thing. It was a night out, a week or week end away. It was a good hotel and lots of laughter and a sort of different kind of friendship.

If a man or woman enters into an affair looking for more than escapism they should maybe stop and look at their real life first because the best thing about an affair is its not our real life. Another friend of mine shot off to Cannes every year for a rendezvous with her married friend. She was also married the week in Cannes was time out.

I enjoyed every affair I had there were not so many but each of them were free of angst, free of  the suffocating will I won't I We both knew damn well we would! In many ways they were the best, most carefree of times

Have You No Self Respect?

What do people think of and see as self respect?

I  think its an image we have of ourselves built up over the years of disappointments, rejection and even the dislike we may have encountered. Our self respect is a shield that we physically need to present to the world. Its probably almost certainly not who we are when we are alone in that place where we indulge our worst habits and shed our ugliest most heart felt tears.

Self respect is so strong a part of us that most of us would find a place to hide before we did anything we thought might be the smallest bit embarrassing, unrepresentative and damaging to who we need to be seen to be by other people because it is a need one that goes much deeper than wearing a suit for work and any old thing at home. Our self respect is our shield it is the face we present to the world on a daily basis. It is what enables us to recover from every loss and slight in a lifetime.

I saw the title of this post yesterday phrased in such a way I was stunned at what the poster apparently thought should be considered self respect, they are so far from real self respect they appear to have no understanding of it or what it means to those who have their own self respect stolen.

Self respect is not regained by running and hiding from abusers that is a complete surrender of self. It is allowing someone to not even say, to imply that if you only run away they will let you run, any dirty little secrets you keep locked away from prying eyes will stay locked away even as they forget the unimportant, irrelevant you.

The hell with that its not self respect its the abject loss of all self respect and all individual personal privacy...

The only way for self respect to be regained is by defeating or reaching an understanding with those who stole it. Its not an option its not negotiable to be yourself in public you must be able to present if not the old self respect then a new one, one forged in the secret, bitter battle for the return of something that no one should ever steal and then share as if the victim had no right to privacy and no right to object to such a fundamental loss.

Just Saying

In England I used the same mini cab company/driver for years I don’t know why I did it was probably a combination of habit and convenience I suppose. I never thought about it I just called a cab and it was always fine.

In Ireland it seems if you use the same cab on a regular basis some driver/s start to think they’re doing you a favour even though they get paid each trip. A mini cab, and this applies wherever you live, is not a friend its a convenience and although its usually friendly on the part of customer and driver it is still a paid for service. No minicab driver does you a favour although I should say that in the nature of things some of them must help some people however infrequently it occurs.

I was thinking of that today as I walked back from town. I wasn’t in a good mood and this is no fault of any driver I simply forgot or didn’t know that today is a Bank Holiday and so having walked into town I then walked back without completing the reason for going. I wanted to go to the bank its the only reason I went to town and the bank was shut. Oh dear how pissed off am I.

I think I must have  been in Ireland for about seven or eight years, who keeps track when its such fun, and in all that time I’ve never learned the dates of Bank Holidays.why should I Bank Holidays mean nothing to me now except when the bank is shut. All the way home I was kicking myself because of course making such a silly mistake means I have to go to town again and to be honest I’m getting a bit of a thing about going to town and about calling for a minicab.

I’ve no more to say on the subject it was a wasted journey and I’m fed up of the knowing looks, but once again I did get a lift the last few yards home for which I’m very grateful He is a kindof distant neighbour and like most of my neighbours he and his wife are very nice people.

Twitter can be such Fun!

Or not. Late last evening the revered by himself Gerry Adams tweeted some rubbish about a film he had just watched He said Django was a Ballymurphy nigger. Obviously the word nigger is in itself offensive and equally obviously no one in Ireland has been treated like a nigger since the days  when slavery was legal all over the world. But also equally obviously Gerry Adams meant no offense to anyone all he or whoever sent the tweet...was doing was attempting to justify IRA crimes by aligning them with the downtrodden masses which to be fair is what the IRA and in particular Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness always do.

Gerry Adams, the IRA and its sympathisers have been saying the same thing for decades it was always wrong so its a bit late to start complaining now. I thought it was silly, a bit amusing and a long overdue comeuppance for some of the most arrogant pups on the planet.

True a couple of tweets did irritate me but that was because they attempted to justify when all they needed to do was apologise, then wait and deal with the matter at a later date, after all knowing them it wouldn't take them long to find fault and complain of being treated like second class citizens again.

Its almost reassuring to know Gerry and his supporters can make mistakes.

I've never seen Django nor will I be rushing to find a video of it now. I don't know if I've spelled it correctly and frankly its not important enough to find out. 

From time to time all of us say  and do silly things this one wasn't even criminal - get over it.