an update

Feb. 23rd, 2025 11:29 am
llywela: tree (Tree of Life)
I've not been around much lately. For this blog, that's not such an unusual thing, but even in my other online hangouts I've been much less present over the last six months or so than I used to be. There's just been a lot going on.

The main thing is that my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer last September, after a long summer of shuffling back and fore between various different doctors for a battery of tests. He's on hormone therapy and doing well, the oncologist is optimistic that he still has a few years left in him, but it is a terminal diagnosis and as such came as a bit of a hammer blow. We're still coming to terms with it.

In Other News, it's been just over a year now since I got my allotment (a year and a week, to be precise!).

It's been a strange sort of year, in many ways, and I find it disheartening sometimes to look at other allotments on social media and see how much more they seem to have achieved in the same timescale, so I have to remind myself that those are influencer allotmenters who all have much more resource than I do - they are working their allotments in pairs or as extended family groups, they have greater financial resources as well as manpower, easy access to transport, and admit to receiving lots of freebies from suppliers in exchange for a shoutout on social media. I don't have any of that, so everything I've achieved has been done by myself, by hand, mostly on foot, in stolen moments when my time isn't taken up with other responsibilities - and when I think about it like that, I think I'm doing okay, really.

My plot has gone from this (photo taken the day I first got the key and installed my lockbox for tools, ready to get started):


To this (photo taken last week):


Not bad, if I do say so myself. I've got leeks ready to harvest as and when they are needed, garlic and shallots overwintering and doing well, overwintering seedlings coming on in the greenhouse, fruit trees neatly pruned, thicket of self-seeded saplings all chopped down, the overgrowth has been tamed, new compost bays built, and new growing beds set up ready to be uncovered for planting.

(The plot behind mine is completely abandoned, though, mine ends just behind the black box and green bin you can see in the photo, so I'm going to have to make an effort to keep clear space between that and my plot this year, now that I've unearthed the row of blackcurrant bushes at the back of my plot from all the brambles coming over from behind.)

It's been another mild winter, mind, so let's all keep our fingers crossed we don't experience another Slugageddon like last year!
llywela: Serenity in flight (Firefly1)
we had a bit of drama yesterday afternoon and evening when the lock on my Nan's front door failed, locking her in and her carers out

context: Nan had a stroke back in January. She is living at home again now, but has carers going in four times a day to get her meals, do the washing, see to all her needs; she cannot manage alone

so yesterday. The morning carer got in and out okay. Then the lunchtime carer couldn't get in, the lock had failed. My dad went out to look at it. Two out of three uncles went out to look at it (the third is on holiday, or he'd have been there too). They all failed to get inside. One of the uncles went away and came back with fish and chips from the local chippy, which they posted through the letterbox, so that Nan had something to eat.

a locksmith was called. The locksmith failed to get inside. Hours were passing. The lock stubbornly resisted all efforts. Dad went off and fetched a sandwich, which was posted through the letterbox for Nan to have for her tea.

the locksmith decided that he needed to be inside the flat to fix the lock. This was a problem since, as discussed, everyone was locked out and it is a first floor flat. A ladder was produced. The locksmith climbed up the ladder to the window. Nan managed to get the window open, which was probably the most physical exertion she's had all year.

the locksmith climbed in through the window - and got the door open at last! Seven hours! It took seven hours, start to finish, before it was all resolved.

Long story short, my Nan now has a new lock on her front door!
llywela: Poppy and Alfie (cats1 - Poppy & Alfie)
Had a lovely week in Devon last week with the whole family - parents, siblings (and in-laws), nieces, nephew, the whole shebang. We stayed in a big converted barn on a flower farm - the flower farm in relatively new hands and looking a bit neglected, sadly, but still lovely. We could have lived without all the flies and wasps of mid-August, but had a great time hanging out together and sightseeing around and about.

It was a Monday to Monday holiday, unusually, so after arriving home on Monday I headed off to the cattery to collect Poppy, and while I was there, the lady who runs the cattery (Angharad) asked if I knew anyone who wanted a kitten. It turned out that at the end of last week, they'd got up one morning to find that someone had dumped four kittens (approx. 5-6 months old) in a taped up bag and bin by the side of the road at the bottom of their driveway - there isn't even a pavement there and it is a busy road, so it was a horribly dangerous position for the poor little things to be in.
a taped up bin and carrier bag left at the bottom of a driveway, alongside an empty road

Two of the kittens, from the bag, were slightly injured and were taken in by the local Cats Protection League, but they didn't have room for all four, so the cattery had kept the other two, who were in good health, and were looking to rehome them. Both girls, we think, although not 100% sure.

Well, as it happened, my sister C and my parents had promised the Oldest Niece a kitten for her 8th birthday next month (how is she that old already?!?!?!), to live with Niece and my parents at their house. C had made a tentative arrangement to take a kitten from one of her flatmate's colleagues, but it wasn't definite. When I told her about these abandoned kittens, that was that, we were having one.

I spent most of yesterday morning on the phone to the cattery to discuss our interest in the kittens, and made an appointment to go and see them at 6.30. C and her flatmate K both came with me, with Dad. One look was all it took, and that was that - both kittens came home with us! One has been given to Niece as an early birthday present, to live with her at Mum and Dad's house. She has named it Emerald, because it has lovely green eyes:


And C and K have taken in the second kitten, which they have named Midnight:


Both kittens have had a good first night and first day in their new homes, and are settling already. Welcome to the family, fur babies!
llywela: peacock in front of Cardiff Castle Keep (Castell Caerdydd)
My cousin got in touch at last this week. It's been five months since her mother died, five months of almost total silence. The timing of her message is interesting to me - it was her son's second birthday last weekend, and the family unanimously decided to send him birthday cards and gifts as if nothing had happened, as if his mother hadn't been ghosting the entire family for all those months -it's not his fault, after all - and apparently heaping those coals of fire upon her head worked, because just a couple of days later she created a new WhatsApp family group and fired off an update message.

The gist of the message was that Lesley died of sepsis due to leg cellulitis - which is pretty much what we'd inferred already from our understanding of her final illness. Vee says however that this was secondary to a primary innumodeficiency that she'd had from birth, but was not diagnosed until she was 76 years old, just a few months before she died - too late for treatment to make any difference. After her death she was referred to the coroner for a thorough investigation, Vee says - reading between the lines, I believe more than ever now that this was at Vee's own instigation. If a patient with a known immunodeficiency dies of sepsis from leg cellulitis, that seems fairly definitive cause of death to me, what more is there to uncover? Vee doesn't include the outcome of this investigation in her message, from which I can only infer that nothing else sinister was found. Unless she is fudging the timeline and the immunodeficiency wasn't diagnosed during her lifetime at all, but was the outcome of the post-mortem investigation, with Vee pushing for an investigation because she was so sure there was a root cause for her mother's lifetime of ill health, perhaps.

Either way, Vee concludes by saying that Lesley had a direct cremation with no attendees on 21 July, exactly one week before Vee gave birth to her second child at home on the living room floor, a little girl - and she sent a picture, the baby looks very sweet. Her name is Tembely, which means baby elephant - that's a tribute to Lesley, who adored elephants and had little elephant ornaments and pictures all over her house.

So. Pregnancy hormones presumably played a part in the whole sad saga, but I'm sorry, I still see no reason whatsoever why either Vee or her husband couldn't have informed the family from the start that there were question marks over Lesley's underlying cause of death that needed to be investigated in depth, that there would be a delay before anything more was known and they would let us know in due course. Such a simple message to send, and it would have spared the entire family months of heartache, not knowing what was going on or why the funeral was delayed.

Not that there was any funeral, after all. It was what I feared from the start, only worse. Direct cremation with no attendees - not even her own daughter! I could weep at the thought of it. Lesley was so gregarious, so open-hearted, was loved by so many people, and attending the funerals of loved ones was so important to her. She would have wanted a funeral. She would have wanted her loved ones there, to say goodbye to her. I don't understand why even Vee herself didn't attend to see her on her way. And it was only three weeks ago! I would have travelled to London for it, we all would have travelled to London for it, if only we'd been allowed.

So now we're all back to the status quo: pretending like Vee's behaviour hasn't been atrocious because no one likes to be the one to send her off the deep end. When I'm feeling less upset and less cross I will ask if she intends to hold a memorial service down the line, or if she feels like she has said her goodbyes already.

And while I'm on my holidays in Devon this week (leaving tomorrow) I suppose I will have to look out for a present for the new baby...
llywela: (seascape-rainbow)
There's some family stuff going on at the moment that I want to get off my chest, but it's likely to get quite long and complicated, so I'll put it behind a cut. Please feel free not to read. I'm just venting.

Read more )

alone again

Apr. 3rd, 2023 07:16 pm
llywela: flower (Flower1)
After two-and-a-half weeks, I am alone again. Peace and quiet and aloneness.

Things have been a bit hectic. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my Auntie Lesley had passed away. March 17th, it was a Friday, and it hit quite hard because I've always been close to Auntie Lel. I saw her last on 3rd March 2020. It was her 74th birthday, it fell on a Tuesday, which was the day I always went to see her anyway, had done for years at that point, ever since the brush with death that left her so frail and semi-housebound. In her day, when she was younger and healthier, she was the most active person imaginable. She was the neighbourhood gossip, the busybody, she knew everything about everybody within the confines of the suburb where she'd lived her entire life, and she would do absolutely anything to help anyone who needed it. She'd give you the shirt off her own back if she thought it would help. She was just lovely. She loved her home and she loved her family, was happiest when she had us all around her. So when she could no longer go out and about the way she used to, it fell on us, her family, to go to her. And we did, those of us who lived locally. We arranged it so that someone was there just about every day of the week, so that she wasn't alone, even though her only child (she was a single parent) had moved far away to London and only rarely visited despite being obsessively paranoid about her mum's poor health.

So I went to see Lel on that birthday, in March 2020. I went after work, taking a card and a little gift, and sat and chatted about I don't even know what. About the family. About her neighbours. About our gardens. And, probably, about the Covid-19 virus, which was spreading rapidly at that point and was a major source of concern. Then, as evening set in, I kissed her goodbye and headed home. "See you next week," I said - but I didn't, that was the last time I ever saw her. By the next Tuesday, I knew I had potentially been exposed to Covid by a colleague who'd risked a weekend in Italy just as the virus was exploding over there, and I knew Lel's health was too poor to take the chance of giving it to her, so I stayed away and phoned her instead. Then lockdown was declared, and by the time it was lifted my cousin had had her mother moved from her council flat in Cardiff to a care home in London - something Lel had always told me she absolutely categorically did not want, although I understand why my cousin wanted her closer. It has been a slow, steady downward spiral ever since. I spoke to her on the phone regularly at first, but that contact dwindled as she became less and less able to manage her mobile; in the end, it was just permanently dead or switched off. She went into hospital for the final time in December and I had hoped to get up to London to see her this week, while I have the week off work, but alas it was too late. She passed away on 17th March, with her son-in-law, rather than her daughter, at her side.

That was the Friday, two weeks ago. Lel died in the early hours. We were told mid-afternoon. That evening, my niece came for her regularly scheduled weekend sleepover. And the next day, the Saturday, her entire household tested positive for Covid - both of my parents and my brother, who lives with them (niece doesn't live with her mother, who is unable to look after her). So I just kind of...kept my niece with me and managed as best I could while they were all testing positive and feeling lousy and looking after each other. Getting her to school and back was an hour-and-a-half round trip on the bus, twice a day, while also juggling a full time job! Her school just isn't on a bus route from where I live, so it meant long walks to and from the nearest bus stop, and she only has 7yo legs, she can't walk very fast. Luckily my boss was very understanding - and Niece herself was a little star, so cooperative and uncomplaining, despite the major disruption to her life. Dad finally tested negative last Tuesday, after a week-and-a-half, so he picked up the school run by car again at that point, which was a huge relief. Then Mum, the last to shake it off, tested negative at last on Thursday, which just happened to be her birthday, so we all went round for a big reunion after work and school and had a little birthday tea. Niece could have gone home at that point, but Mum still wasn't feeling well so we gave Niece a choice and she asked if she could stay with me until Monday, today, so that's what we did. After two-and-a-half weeks, we went out for a day trip this morning to Castell Coch and she went home with my parents after that.

And I came home and did loads of gardening and a big Tesco shop to celebrate getting my freedom back!

Strange, hectic times.
llywela: (Default)
just learned that my Aunt Lesley passed away at 4am this morning - she's the aunt who was moved from Cardiff to a nursing home in London during the pandemic. Her health has been deteriorating for a long time, so it isn't unexpected, but still desperately sad

my poor dad has now lost two siblings in under three months
llywela: tree (Tree of Life)
Big Sis and her family have been here for the weekend, because it was our uncle's memorial service yesterday - it's been over two months since he died, but because he was cremated for transport home to the UK having died on holiday, there was no rush, so my aunt waited until she felt able to cope with it. A nice service, standing room only, full of family and friends sharing happy memories. I almost managed not to cry, but then they mentioned my cousin who died over twenty years ago, and that set me off. That, and seeing the widow of another cousin, who died two years ago, who made the effort to bring her kids to the other side of the country to pay their respects - none of us were able to get to her husband's funeral, due to covid.

This afternoon Sis and I went to see our Nan in hospital, where she is recovering from a stroke, and Nan just took one look at Sis and burst into tears, she was so happy, because she knows Sis lives too far away to visit easily so wasn't expecting to see her.

Nan was a lot more alert this afternoon than she was last time I saw her. Speech is still a struggle, but it is better than it was. She knew my name. She pulled a few other names out of the bag too, although she couldn't necessarily pin them on the right person. She has got the phrase 'I love you' down pat and says it over and over. We Facetimed a few people so she could talk to them, too, and she was thrilled.

She is not eating, though. Not getting on with hospital food at all. She pulls a face like an eight-year-old just at the thought of it. They gave her a bowl of chicken pasta. She has never eaten pasta in her life. The sauce is made with sweet peppers, which she hates. I coaxed her to eat a few mouthfuls, because her chart said she hadn't eaten in at least two days, but she hated it - and had to be fed, because she was struggling to get the food into her mouth anyway. Trifle for pudding went down better, and we got her to eat two small cakes and drink a glass of milk, she was clearly hungry, just really hates the food. Sis persuaded the kitchen to give us a menu for the week so we could select specific food she might eat, rather than them just giving her whatever is default every time - one of my uncles has done the same thing previously, but you can only do a week at a time. The nurses, who were all lovely, did say that she can ask for something different at any time - but her stroke affected speech and language. She just doesn't have the ability to explain what she does or doesn't like, or to tell anyone if she is hungry, or to describe what she wants.

So she is improving, but still a big worry.
llywela: (seascape-rainbow)
My uncle died peacefully in his sleep on Christmas Day, New Zealand time, late Christmas Eve, UK time.

We were expecting it, but. We'd only been expecting it for a few days. From excited to be going on holiday to see the grandchildren for the first time in 4 years to in hospital with covid and other issues to inoperable aortic aneurysm to dead in under 2 weeks was one hell of a rapid downhill trajectory.

We're all slightly in shock still.

Also, my Lil Sis and her girlfriend both had covid for Christmas, so.

It's been a very downbeat holiday, all round

bad news

Dec. 21st, 2022 05:54 am
llywela: tree (Tree of Life)
I think my uncle is dying, on the wrong side of the world

He and my aunt flew out to New Zealand last Monday. They were really excited. Their youngest daughter and her family live in Christchurch and they've not seen each other in person for four years. This trip has been long in the planning and even longer in the anticipation.

My uncle is 78 and in the last couple of weeks before the trip had become quite frail and unsteady on his feet, but not enough to be concerned, although I did sit in on a zoom chat between his three daughters, with the two who live here warning their sister what to expect when he arrived, the kind of support he was going to need. They were joking that he was just going to spend the entire month camped out on the sofa.

They flew out last Monday. Landed on Wednesday.

By Saturday he was in hospital. Covid - after he and my aunt had shielded so rigidly, so religiously, for so very long, because my aunt has Crohn's and is classed as highly vulnerable. She was not allowed to visit him in hospital for that reason, but tested positive nonetheless. It was the flight. That's where they caught it.

By this Monday just gone, my uncle was complaining of back pain, which triggered lots of alarm bells because last time he complained of back pain it turned out to be an aortic aneurysm and he just barely survived, largely because he was already in hospital at the time and could be whipped straight into surgery. But he was a lot younger then.

I just heard from my cousin. He's had a CT scan which revealed more aortic aneurysms in his stomach. They have decided against surgery as there is a less than 2% chance of survival. He is being kept comfortable with pain meds and all other treatments have been stopped. My aunt has been allowed to sit with him.

He's going to die. On the wrong side of the world.

They were so excited for this trip.
llywela: (Default)
Congratulations to my cousin J and his wife E on the birth of their 5th child, a beautiful little girl. Their older children are aged 16-25 - they are already grandparents, even - so the new baby is in the position that is usually called 'the afterthought', yet she is anything but, this is very much a planned and wanted child, despite the large age gap. Four years ago, J lost his beloved baby brother to cancer, the whole family was devastated, and the decision to try for another baby was made then. It's been a long road from there to here, they are both over 40 now and had a miscarriage along the way, which makes this weekend's news all the sweeter. May their new little girl have a long and happy life!
llywela: (Default)
...aaaand the littlest niece, down in Cornwall, now has covid too! It's her birthday tomorrow, as well, she's turning 5. They'll have to cancel her party, and it's the first they've been able to plan for her since she was adopted!
llywela: (FF - ball failure)
After working hard to stay safe for almost two years, the plague has finally reached my inner circle. Layla-May had exactly two days back in school last week, developed symptoms on Sunday while she was with me, and then tested positive for covid on Tuesday.

Her mum doesn't usually see her at the weekend, but she made a point of coming down for dinner on Sunday as she hadn't been able to visit during the week before. Talk about sod's law. Chelsea has now tested positive as well, and she hasn't had her booster yet as it has to be scheduled very carefully around other treatment she's receiving, which is tricky.

The rest of us, so far, seem to be in the clear; my LFT was negative, and so far so good for mum, dad and my brother. Chelsea was quite unwell for a couple of days but seems to be improving now. For Layla it has mostly been headache and fever, but she is very upset that quarantine means she can't have her usual weekend with me this week - our Friday nights are so set in stone that she even came to me still on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve!

Out of 30 children in her class, 11 had tested positive before term was a week old. And that's just one class.

What a time to be alive.


llywela: (Default)
Today I attended my first in-person funeral in over two years. I've done a whole bunch of streamed funerals in that time, including for my own cousin, which I desperately wanted to attend but couldn't, so it felt like quite a big deal to be able to attend in person today.

Today's funeral was for the husband of my dad's cousin, which doesn't sound like a particularly close relationship, I know, especially considering that my dad has (or had, they aren't all alive still) something like 56 first cousins, all told. But this particular cousin is one we've always been very close to, as a family - she and her husband have been more like an uncle and aunt to me than anything else. So I was invited to attend, and considered it my honour. I was very, very fond of Peter. His death last month was expected, he was 84, had heart trouble for years, and had been failing for several months, but it was and is deeply sad.

It was a lovely service. Peter would have hated it, because it was all about him. He was the quietest, most deeply reserved man imaginable, hated being the centre of attention. At any event, he was always in the background, trying to avoid being noticed. It's hard to find a photograph in which he isn't wearing a pained 'oh no' expression. Give him a hug and kiss and he'd get all embarrassed. But the service today was just so full of love, so many people standing up in tears to talk about how this gentle, reserved little man who always liked to hide in the background had very quietly made such an enormous difference in their lives, just by being kind and thoughtful and generous, by noticing them when they were struggling and reaching out to offer words of support and encouragement, by never hesitating to help out when help was called for, by always being there for anyone in need.

Rest in peace, Peter. You were very loved.

llywela: (Default)
So this weekend brought with it the news that my Nan, who will be 90 next month, has caught covid.

She's barely left the house in two years. She's been to the doctor a handful of times, and came to family gatherings in the park exactly twice,to meet my sister's kids, and that's it. She doesn't leave the house, she barely even sees anyone, the family have reduced physical contact to a bare minimum. But she can't be completely isolated, not without going stir crazy, and she has to have her weekly shopping, so...

My Uncle Marcus and Aunty Linda have been doing the shopping for Nan, every week without fail. Linda recently went on a coach holiday with her sister. They both had to have negative covid tests before they could board the coach, so they figured it was safe. They had their trip to Blackpool, came home, and then Linda went with Marcus to deliver Nan's shopping, as usual. Twenty-four hours later she was pinged by Track-and-Trace because someone else from the coach party had tested positive. So Linda was tested - positive. Another uncle, Robert, was taking Nan for her covid booster jab on Friday, but because of the contact she couldn't have the jab, had to go for a covid test instead. And tested positive.

Her main symptom at the moment is a chesty cough. She's double jabbed. But she is almost 90. We just have to hope and pray that she is protected enough and will get off with a light case - and Linda, too.
llywela: Serenity in flight (Firefly1)
Congratulations to my baby sister, who has secured a flat to move into with the girl friend she won't admit is her girlfriend (you know, they just live together and sleep in the same bed and do everything together and are planning a whole future together...).

Sis is autistic with a slight learning disability and has been unable to parent her child, who is almost 6. For many years it didn't look like she would ever learn to be independent, so this is a really huge step for her. I really hope it goes well, that they are happy, and manage to run their little household effectively. Good luck to them!

update

May. 20th, 2021 02:48 pm
llywela: flower (Flower1)
It's been a while since I posted, which means it's about time for an update. Where to begin? With today's news, I suppose.

Some of my friends will know all about the ups and downs we've experienced with my little sister, tempestuous force of nature that she is. For the last two years or so, C has been living with her best friend, K, and K's dad, who has a small flat a couple of towns along the coast. It has been a good arrangement for C - K and her dad have been a really positive, stabilising influence on her, sorely needed as she is highly vulnerable and has been taken advantage of in the past.

Last night, C and K returned home after visiting my parents and found K's dad lying dead on the bathroom floor. Heart attack, Elvis-style. An awful experience for the two girls, really shocking. And it is too soon just yet, of course, for them to even begin to think about what to do now, whether they can stay together in that flat or not. They are with K's mum for now, as C didn't want her little girl (who lives with my parents) to see them upset.

In other news, after homeworking for 14 months, my status has finally changed. I am now categorised as 'blended home'...which just means I am still working from home, but am allowed to visit site from time to time to do bits of work there, mostly site checks and room inspections. Well, it's an occasional change of scenery, at least. Which is much needed, quite frankly - when I went for my first covid vaccination a couple of weeks ago, I had to travel to the other side of town for the first time in over a year and felt like an animal in the zoo being given enrichment! Whole buildings had been demolished and rebuilt since I last saw them! So it'll be nice to get to see something other than my own four walls once in a while, although I'll be honest, I don't really fancy going back full time. Which doesn't, in fact, seem to be entirely on the cards - a 'better ways of working' programme has been set up and it looks very much as if a blend of home and site working will be the way forward. We'll see.

And in other work news, my boss is retiring this summer - hoorah! Ahem. She's, um...challenging to work with, shall we say. Anally retentive, nitpicking control freak, to put it mildly. The deputy who will be stepping into her shoes is much, much more pleasant to work with.

Last time I posted, my garden wall had just collapsed in a storm and I was in despair over the fate of all the plants in my main border, buried beneath the rubble. It is now rather more than two months later and my landlady has just today, finally, had a quote approved by the insurance and appointed a builder...who is not available to start work until mid-end June, although they say they will come sooner if they can.

So it is just as well, really, that my dad came around with a lump hammer a few days after the collapse, broke up all the bricks and piled them up in the middle of the lawn. The lawn is completely ruined, of course, but it meant I was able to dig up all the plants from the border and transfer them into temporary housing until the building work is complete. If they'd stayed buried beneath the rubble all that time, I'd have lost everything! As it is, the herbacious perennials have inevitably fared rather better than the shrubs. There were a few notable casualties - I've lost my beautiful winter-flowering coronilla and my enormous, so dependable erysimum 'bowle's mauve', both so popular with the bees, the fennel and the big rosemary are gone, one or two others that were badly damaged remain on life support, as it were - but the vast majority were salvaged and are now recovering.

It was a busy couple of weeks, spending every break and lunch hour digging the entire bed up into every container I could beg, borrow or steal from a variety of generous donors! Bird food tubs, plastic crates, vegetable grow bags - all of these and more have been pressed into service. And because it was so early in the season, not all of the herbacious perennials had started to shoot, so I had a couple of weeks where every time I thought I'd finished, something else would suddenly poke its head above the soil to let me know it was still there! It was lucky the end of March and April were so dry, really, while this horribly wet May has at least spared me the onerous task of keeping so many pots watered.

This is what the garden looks like now:



And that isn't even all the pots - a lot of the smaller ones, including all the spring bulbs, are around the side, where it is shadier so they won't dry out as quickly. I also gave a bunch of them away to a community garden project at a homeless hostel, since some of the larger clumps came up into three or four pots each so I had plenty to spare! Exactly where I'm going to put them all next month when building work begins I'm not quite sure yet - there is going to be a considerable shuffle and squash, that's for sure.

When I think what it looked like this time last year, full of flowers and bees...but it will be beautiful again, eventually!

Also, yes, my neighbour and I can now just wander in and out of one another's gardens, if we choose. Before the rains set in, in fact, I was going into their garden daily to water the pots, as the old man had gone into hospital for a hip replacement and his wife is disabled! Before that, I had to get used to having old Dennis waving at me from his garden every time I wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on, as he likes to sit out back to smoke his pipe! It's probably a good thing we get along so well, really.

I am now working on a recovery plan for the lawn...
llywela: (Default)
We lost my cousin Gareth this week, Wednesday night. We knew it was coming, we’d known for a year, he lived a good six months longer than originally predicted, but in the end it was really fast. I was watching an American presidential inauguration for the first time in my life when the message came through that he'd developed serious breathing difficulties and been taken to hospital, and by 10pm it was all over.

He was tested for covid on admission to hospital and it came back positive, so he'll probably go down as a covid death, but he was also end stage lung cancer already living on borrowed time, so the main implication of the positive covid test is that his wife and children will now have to isolate as they grieve.

Three kids aged 15, 12 and 7. After his diagnosis he fought tooth and nail to buy as much time with them as he possibly could. He made it to another birthday and he lived long enough to enjoy a final Christmas with his family. I hope those memories are of comfort to them.



This picture was taken in Vienna in December 2019 when Gareth was celebrating his 50th birthday. The calm before the storm. A week later he was in hospital, by Christmas he'd been diagnosed, and just 13 months later he is gone. Throughout his illness, he always worked hard to maintain an upbeat outlook. We've been having weekly extended family Zoom sessions since the pandemic began, and Gareth came to them for as long as he could, even though speech was one of the first things he lost to the brain tumours. We have a silly little quiz most weeks and when he was there, Gareth almost always won - even when he could barely spit a sentence out! I spoke to him last just before Christmas, when he was waiting to have cement injected into his spine, which was being eaten away by the cancer, and despite the pain he was still as cheerful as ever.



This picture has always been a favourite. Little cousins all in a row. This was 1977, I was the baby here. It seems strange to think that two of these cousins are now gone. We lost Paul (4th from left) in a road accident more than 20 years ago. And now Gareth (the little blond boy 2nd from right).

Pandemic restrictions mean it is unlikely the extended family will be able to attend Gareth's funeral, just as we were unable to join him for his lockdown wedding back in the summer, and that grieves me, but I know that many other families around the nation and around the world are going through the same thing. Gareth's own brother is in the same position, living as he does on the other side of the world in Japan.

Their other brother, incidentally, also has covid just at the moment. And my aunt is struggling, having now lost both her husband and her youngest child to cancer.

The other thing that happened on Wednesday was that my dad had another big bleed in his bad eye - the same thing happened just over a year ago, and he ended up losing part of his vision in that one eye, so it's a big concern. He had initial treatment at the hospital yesterday and is now waiting to have laser surgery in about five weeks, once the blood behind his eye has cleared.

Never rains but it pours, right. Meanwhile, my sister has had a full medical ahead of her coloscopy, which we hope will happen soon.

And Layla-May has been diagnosed with asthma and is on inhalers.

But apart from that, everything is fine! How is everyone else coping with this latest lockdown, pandemic, floods, January blues, and all the rest of it?
llywela: The Professionals (Pros1)
Today, the 5yo should have been seeing Santa.

The event was organised by a local community group, based out of an old stately home near where I live. The initial plan was a masked-and-distanced in-person meeting in the very beautiful reading room at the house, but then with covid cases locally beginning to spiral, that plan shifted into a personalised video call with each child who’d booked.

Then on Saturday evening this latest lockdown was announced with almost immediate effect, only a few hours warning. And a little later we received an email from the very upset organisers to say that they were going to have to cancel the event and issue a refund, because the Santa Suit and video equipment are all locked away in the house (community centre), which because of lockdown they are no longer permitted to enter. There wasn’t time on Saturday night to retrieve it. So all those kids won’t be getting their call from Santa today after all.

Such a shame. Luckily we did get to wave to him on Saturday, as a different version of him did a masked-and-safely-distanced walk around the neighbourhood, accompanied by an elf I went to school with!

Also today, my brother rebelled against his work.

He works in a telephone support centre, taking calls from people having technical issues. They switched to homeworking back in March and that worked fine for months.

Now, this job has never been ideal. It is in another town and Bro doesn’t drive, so he has always had a really long commute on public transport, working unsocial and constantly changing shift patterns, so the move to homeworking was a blessing for him. He could work his shift without a 90-120 minute commute at either end, without having to worry about missing the last bus, without having to leave the house at 5am to get to work for 7.30.

At the start of December, with covid cases locally already beginning to spiral out of control again, the company abruptly decided to recall all service desk staff to on-site working, claiming they weren’t answering enough calls. The entire management, however, continued to work from home. This has been a nightmare for Bro, who has asthma and generall fragile health, once again condemned to hours on increasingly flaky public transport every day (a lot of services are no longer running, so getting to and from work is extremely difficult), as well as hours spent in a poorly ventilated building with a whole bunch of other people, in a town with soaring virus figures. Government advice still says that anyone who can work from home should continue to do so, but the company got around that one by claiming call centre staff as key workers.

Now this week, we are back in full lockdown with a new and even more highly transmissible form of the virus circulating generally. The company is still insisting that all service desk staff must continue to work from site, while their managers remain safe at home. The service desk staff have all been complaining, lodging health and safety appeals, to no avail.

So today my brother rebelled. He decided not to risk his health on public transport. Instead as his shift began he logged on at home to carry out his shift in safety. How the company will react remains to be seen. But they were endangering his life. He doesn’t need to be on site to do his job. If they try to sack him, he has a strong case to take to tribunal. And I will be behind him all the way!

(ETA: Apparently the entire team independently made the same decision this morning! Only one person went in, and that was just to collect a headset. Mass action for the win! The company will have a hard job sacking all of them!)
llywela: flower (Flower1)
Today is my cousin Gareth’s birthday. He’s 51. This is the birthday we did not expect him to see. Last year he took a romantic mini-break to Venice for his 50th with his long-term partner, but was taken ill while away and was in hospital by the end of the following week. By Christmas he’d been told he had lung cancer, and by the end of January he knew it was terminal. He was given a very short prognosis, planned a big family wedding that almost immediately had to be cancelled because of covid, finally managed a much more intimate wedding once restrictions allowed, and now we are one year on, it’s his birthday again, and he’s still alive. He’s not in great shape, he can barely string a sentence together anymore (although his mind is as sharp as ever, the link to the tongue has eroded), he's losing the use of his left arm, and ended up in hospital yet again the other week because the damn disease has got into his bones causing spinal fractures, he’s now waiting to have cement injected into his back to stabilise the spine. But he’s still alive. We’re optimistic now that he’ll get to have this Christmas with his kids, which seemed impossible six months ago.

The cancer is still terminal, eating away at him a little more every day. But today he is still alive and I’m thankful for that. Happy birthday, G.

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