Lle Llywela

In work, we were trying to get rid of some old furniture, so the Estates waste management officer hooked us up with, of all things, a television producer looking to dress a set for some new show or other set in the 1990s. They took so much stuff. Not just the desks, but also a huge stack of old files and folders that had been mouldering in the basement for years, and all kinds of other junk stationery no one had bothered to dispose of.

It's kind of humbling to realise we were still using this stuff, when to this TV set designer it was perfect for a shabby 1990s set. Apparently, we're just that out of date!

I don't know the name of whatever they are filming, but I desperately want to know what it is so I can watch and try to spot our old desks and folders!

(They've also been filming something Victorian era around one of our buildings, which I'm already keeping an eye out for.)

And then, all of a sudden, I have an allotment!

I put my name on the waiting list about a year ago, but honestly thought it would take longer than this. Six months ago I had an email asking if I wanted to stay on the waiting list, and was told I was at #59, so again thought it would take years.

Then last week I had an email offering me a plot!

I went for a viewing this morning and picked the least overgrown of the smaller plots on offer (I am not ambitious enough for a big one). Signed some papers. Paid my deposit and received a gate key in exchange. And voila! The plot is mine. A birthday present to myself.

It has been neglected for a long time by the looks of it, so it is going to take a lot of work before it will be ready for planting, but I'm already making plans.

Job the first: cut back overgrown fruit bushes along the path because they are very in the way when trying to get past
Job the second: remove the remains of a collapsed greenhouse with grass growing all over it
Job the third: start removing grass from the beds and begin digging them over, one small area at a time

I've already bought a lockbox to keep on site and a new garden spade to store in it. Additional supplies will be added, a bit at a time.

The project begins...

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!

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...

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.

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.

Goodbye to my little Alfie cat, I'm sorry we couldn't make you well again. The noisiest, chattiest little cat ever, he always sounded as if he was announcing the end of the world when all he was really trying to say was 'when's dinner? I'm starving.'



He's been under the weather for quite some time - every time he's seen the vet for at least the last three years, I've always said, 'there's something wrong with his digestion,' but examination and blood tests even as recently as September failed to shed any light. His decline over the last week or two was abrupt and rapid, and a scan yesterday finally revealed a cancer of the gut, aggressive and advanced, so we made the decision to let him go peacefully. But he kept his fighting spirit right till the end - with a red blood count so low the vet was amazed he could even lift his head, as soon as he was brought into the family room to say goodbye, he jumped up and headed straight for the sink to play with the water!

My niece is already distraught. She came with me to the vet last night and was so very brave.

I was there when Alfie was born, rubbing his chest to help him take his first breath, and I was there to stroke his back as he fell asleep for the last time.

Rest in peace, Alfie. We all loved you so much.

This has not been a good festive season.

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.

So. Doctor Who. End of an era, and all that.

Oh my.

( Spoilers behind the cut )

Four episodes in, I'm really enjoying Strange New Worlds so far. I don't care how much it does or doesn't adhere to TOS canon. I even like that it's formulaic, because it is using that formula to firmly establish all of its characters and their dynamics, mixing and matching the pairings to strong effect. After the way PIC completely wasted its entire cast, for which I will always mourn, it's such a relief. Bittersweet, because I so badly wanted this kind of writing for the PIC cast, they both needed and deserved it, but a relief.

La'an is my favourite, so much vulnerability behind that hard, brittle outer shell. I'm so glad to see Chrissy Chong absolutely killing it in such a strong role after the way she got fridged on Bulletproof.