Nest Abandoning

Busy, busy, washing, cleaning.

Nyaaar, nyaaar! Abandon the nest.

Busy, busy, sorting, throwing.

Nyaaar, nyaaar! Abandon the nest.

Busy, busy, ironing, packing.

Nyaaar, nyaaar! Abandon the nest.

~~~

Last child at home is 18 in a few short weeks. Since he finished his chef apprenticeship at the end of last year he's been planning to get a job down south about this time and until this time was going to do precisely nothing but play games on his console. After a false start and without too much ado, just a few phone calls, he has secured a job trial that starts this week coming. Suddenly he needs to leave. He panics. This is all too soon. He hasn't washed or ironed or sorted out anything. Mummy has gone ahead and negotiated with all the various accommodation parties and friends regarding his leaving and where he is staying and then son says late last night it is all too soon "I will phone to postpone the trial". Hmm. My kindness and diplomacy and reassurance that I have cancelled my entire busy day and will help to wash and dry and iron has hopefully calmed his nerves. I just hope it doesn't look too much like I want to get rid of him. I don't really, it is just that he is getting too big for our nest and he needs the glorious outside world and he just does my head in. I already love it when 22 year old daughter comes home, or telephones, and I so look forward to when both of the children will come home to visit their old mum and then go off again. Leaving me and the wonderful Mr Doris to find, for the first time, our own space and dimension.

Happy New Year

Roll on 2012!

It's going to be a hot summer in the UK!

The London Olympics will be fabulous with the UK winning its most ever medals and the country will not end up bankrupt as a result!

The Queen will have her Diamond Jubilee and there will be a lot of partying and having fun amongst the peasants!

There will be a cultural resurgence of some sort, through art or dance or music, and fashion which will see us lifting our sights and pulling us out of the current depression!

My business will take off and by the end of 2012 we will have a good income, some savings and our debts paid off. Our health will be good and we will be very happy. My 22 year old will find a new direction in life that she is very happy with and my soon to be 18 year old will land a wonderful job that will lead to better things for him.

May 2012 bring you and yours happiness and health and prosperity.

Sore throat

After the last post about mental illness it feels like a very long time since I had a physical illness and here I am feeling very sore and poorly with a sore throat. It came on suddenly on Friday night after I had a very long evening doing a party-plan type party at someone's house and suspect that I caught something from one of the models. The product I was demonstrating was skin care so I was working on people's faces.

Yesterday was completely wiped out whilst today is rather busy from early afternoon. I'm going to be like a Japanese tourist and wear a face mask as I have treatments to do that people are wanting and can only fit in today. What I'd rather do is to curl up and not go anywhere today. I think though that I will text each in a while to give them the choice. I know I would rather cancel than risk bringing unnecessary bugs into the house.

On the plus side, yesterday there was one of those 100 best TV programmes during the day which was about Christmas TV moments. Cue the Christmas tree. Ours is a gorgeous pencil slim tree so not too big or heavy but I had to keep stopping to rest my aching arms - and they still ache. It was a rather nice few hours to put that up and looks gorgeous all decorated though it stands alone without any supporting decorations in the room. Not up to those yet.

I have drunken so much herbal tea and regular tea this past day. At least I am well hydrated.

Joy to the World!

Sudden Suicide

Assuming it was suicide..... assuming it was depression ....


When a (now) high profile person commits suicide it will make society look up and consider depression and suicide and I'm hoping that out of the death of Gary Speed (football manager for Wales) that there is greater discussion and acknowledgement of mental health issues.

I think when you have someone who can be seen talking live on TV less than 24 hours before he was found dead, it brings it home:



If depression was at the heart of it I can relate to the way he can look so relatively normal and participate and yet have such huge turmoil going on inside. I can not say anything about this particular case as I do not know the man or his circumstances but I do hope that something really helpful and positive for the world can come from his sudden death.

Mental health should be as central to our lives and as easy to talk about as our physical health and whether we have a cold or sniffle. In reality, to talk about feeling down or out of sorts, or to feel like one is failing or feeling like one is a fraud or undeserving can lead to jeopardising your position. Or to back slapping encouragement that really you are OK and to pull yourself together when in fact you feel like a fragile glass ornament perched precariously on the edge of a steep precipice with wild winds whipping up all round and no shelter or comfort. Terrified, desperate and alone.

Ultimately, a person who commits suicide takes that action and it is their responsibility, but society as a whole needs to take a collective responsibility and to look at what it is that we do, say or expect that binds all of us.

Remembrance

Thinking about myself and my own family, this year is a poignant Remembrance Day. I feel our lives are bound up in the atrocities of World War I and the psychological aftermath on my grandfather which I wrote about in 2006. And then the effects on my mother which she in turn inflicted upon us and which I in turn have tried very hard not to inflict upon my children. Of my siblings, one is incredibly scarred and screwed-up and the other does a brilliant job of keeping all the hatches tightly bolted down. There is half-sibling with whom we sadly have no contact.

From 1917 when my grandfather was first gassed to 2011 when my mother died is ninety-four years. My grandfather had nine children of which the eldest committed suicide, the next died youngish in a road accident and the next is a recluse knowing he had to stay away from people though is quite charming when I visit him, and then the next is my mother, the eldest daughter. After my mother the rest of the siblings, although damaged, did not obviously inflict the level of pain and suffering on their children that my mother did. But then, by the time he had fathered the rest and they were still young, he was finally and forcibly evicted from the family home so the rest did not experience or really know the violence experienced by the elder siblings and were left with a loving mother.

This is not to say that everything is blamed on the aftermath of the war, but if someone has something like Aspergers, especially from way back then when it was not acknowledged, then the brutality my mother experienced and witnessed from her father was easier to replicate on us. What if she had been brought into a loving environment that cushioned and supported her, life could have been so very different. I would be someone completely different. I have said it before, I do not subscribe to the idea of giving thanks for my childhood making me into who I am. Such brutality and psychological traumas are barely able to be survived. Cue my elder sibling who amazingly is still alive despite a lifetime drowned in drugs to escape reality.

Yesterday I was asked by a friend how I am since my mother died a few months ago and I said how strange it feels. This person who was so omnipresent and such a character is suddenly not there. Nothing. Nada. Wiped out. Gone. It is puzzling as to why a person could ever have had such a hold. She hated Remembrance Day and condemned the going on about the past and these old fogeys dragged out each year. Yet there were years, as kids, we'd all be stood to attention at 7am in the cold greyness to get the "best" spot at the Cenotaph in London. I do not have fond memories to remember and I do not cry for her. Yet, it is Remembrance Day and I do feel an interconnection and strangely sad and tearful. More for what could have been than anything that actually was.

All those lives and families affected. In contrast, there is a lovely article on the BBC News website about the Thankful Villages.