This post, again, won’t be a normal one for me; not that I have been posting very often over the past few years so ‘normal’ is probably not the correct word to use, but that’s by-the-by.
Just like many people, I haven’t been able to concentrate, especially when it comes to reading the books I would normally choose to read. As well as anxiety about the virus I have had a bad flare-up of my osteo-arthritis in my hands and feet which has meant I haven’t been able to do much housework or gardening, any sewing or knitting, typing or writing for any length of time, or walk far without pain. (Fortunately, after over a month, the discomfort is now ebbing away.) However, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I have also been sitting with Elinor while she works at her university projects. She suffers from chronic anxiety and this virus has made her unhappy and she too, has found concentration very difficult. If I sit with her at the kitchen table she is more likely to get on with work than if she stays in her room where there are distractions aplenty and opportunities to slide into despondency. She is also aware before I am when I start to drift off to sleep and she gives me a helpful nudge. She has introduced me to many things during our companionable vigils in the kitchen and not all of them are to do with graphic design and graphic illustration – her degree subject. Her on-line ‘research’ has led us down many winding paths, admittedly some more interesting to me than others. We have found many Covid-19 articles as you have too, no doubt.
First, this article from Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. Please watch the video in the article.
I think all of us who are especially vulnerable will find our situation similar to that of the Lady of Shalott.
I have been listening to music. I have been reading poetry and short stories, essays and children’s books. Everything that doesn’t need me to concentrate for too long. I was rather pleased with my choice of Lent reading this year. The first book I read was ‘Simply Good News’ by Tom Wright. I started it before the pandemic got going and even though my reading slowed down I was able to finish it and read my second book, ‘Luminaries: Twenty Lives That Illuminate the Christian Way’ by Rowan Williams, before Lent finished. Tom Wright’s book explains why the Christian faith is ‘good news’ and shows that many Christians over the centuries have lost sight of this. It is an exceptionally easy book to read and explains our faith, or what it ought to be, very clearly. Rowan William’s book is an excellent read with twenty short essays on different people from St Paul to St Oscar Romero who are inspirational role-models. I see that this book has been chosen by the Bishop of Ipswich and St Edmundsbury as recommended reading for this month.
I read and enjoyed Margery Allingham’s ‘Flowers for the Judge’. Allingham’s plots are better in some of her books than in others. However; I don’t read her novels for the plot but for the atmosphere she creates and her excellent descriptions of London in the 30’s and 40’s and 50’s, of her characters, their mannerisms and names, of the weather and how it affects towns, country and people, of the countryside, especially the East Anglican countryside.
I am currently reading ‘A Literary Pilgrim in England’ by Edward Thomas the war poet. This is a book of essays by Thomas about many of England’s (and Scotland’s) most famous writers. The book is over a century old and was published in 1917, the year of Thomas’ death; he was killed while fighting in the Battle of Arras. He talks about the influence ‘place’ had on all these writers and divides the book into areas. For example, ‘The West Country’ has pieces on Herrick, Coleridge and W H Hudson; ‘The East Coast and Midlands’ features Cowper, George Crabbe, John Clare, Fitzgerald, George Borrow, Tennyson and Swinburne. I am enjoying it very much being a devotee of Edward Thomas’ writing.
Our rector, Leon has been working hard to keep us together and in touch as a community of worshippers who cannot worship together in the same place and whose churches are locked. Apparently, worshipping together in church will be one of the last things we will be permitted to do once the lockdown eases. Singing is the main problem as this forces globules supposedly full of virus out of our lungs just as much as coughing and sneezing does. Even if we decide not to sing hymns there will be other considerations that would probably make going to church difficult. Leon puts a short talk on YouTube each Sunday and has also begun midweek services from one of our churches. For the past couple of weeks some of us have been having a Zoom chat for 45 minutes at the usual Sunday service time.
May you all keep safe and well.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
This year has been….unsatisfactory. Nothing terrible has happened. We are in fairly good health, we are comfortable and very fortunate. But….almost everything we have tried to do this year has not been straightforward. There have been delays, cancellations and anxieties. I think the last update I wrote on our affairs (this is after all a diary blog) – apart from our holidays, a couple of outings and a few posts of things I’ve seen – was in the spring. I seem to have had less time than ever before for getting things done.
We visited Lowestoft on Tuesday this week so that Elinor could attend a podiatry appointment. The weather was cloudy and damp but fairly warm for the time of year. This is Lowestoft South Beach
Richard’s first year of retirement was meant to be a year in which we improved our lot. Retirement after over 40 years of continuous employment was always going to be a bit of a challenge but he decided he was going to see how the first six months went before making any decisions about what he would do with his time. He has found that he doesn’t miss the work at all though he does miss the social aspect of going out to work. Living in the country, some miles from the nearest town means that we don’t see people very often and we have to work hard to get any kind of social life – or go without. He has come to no decision as to whether he takes up a hobby, does voluntary work or any other activity; he has been too busy with the house and driving Elinor about. He has been a church warden for many years and is a member of our church’s PCC (Parochial Church Council). He has recently joined our local Parish Council too so he has employment enough!
Gulls on the breakwater
His retirement began with the death and funeral of his mother, which was not a good start. He has missed her very much; her support of him, her good sense, her understanding. Our holiday in the Peak District this year was taken at the anniversary of her passing and those of you who have kindly followed this blog for over a year will remember that we heard of her death last year as we arrived in the Peaks all prepared to go and visit her.
Looking towards Lowestoft docks
Richard has enjoyed working in our large garden and making a few improvements to it and to our house. We started the year by getting all our windows and doors replaced. We have a new summerhouse and a new potting shed. Our next project was to gut the family bathroom upstairs and the downstairs shower room and get new suites for both rooms and then redecorate. We asked around for suitable plumbers and a couple were recommended. We selected one and he came to see us and plans were made. It was decided that we would also have a water-softener fitted which was done as soon as the downstairs shower room was finished. And this is where things really went wrong. We hadn’t been happy with the speed at which the work was done. Days went by when no-one turned up. There were delays and more delays. We said that the upstairs bathroom would have to wait until we returned from Germany as we didn’t want anything left half done while we were away. The plumber failed to return. He has made no contact with us and has not responded to any of our messages. We had already paid him, at his request, for the work done to the shower room and for the water softener (we ought to have smelt a rat here!) but there are still a few things that need to be finished off properly in the shower room, ‘snagging’ it is called, which now will never be done except by us, in our non-professional way. We have a garage full of bathroom fittings and tiles and also some of the plumber’s and his men’s tools and equipment which they haven’t collected. We must find ourselves another plumber but we cannot face the upheaval until some time in the new year. I hope the work is done at a time when it isn’t too cold!
Off-season seaside resorts are a little sad and quiet
We have just had our gas boiler replaced. We use propane gas as we aren’t on mains gas here in the country. It is very expensive but the alternatives, oil or electricity, are not ideal either, both being very expensive too and as we have a gas fire and a gas hob, a gas boiler is the best option for us. We found a gas fitter who was able to get the work done during the second half of October. It was to take three days. In the end it took quite a bit longer as inevitably, problems were found. The fitter wanted it all done by the end of October as he was going to Las Vegas to celebrate his son’s 21st birthday and he did manage to get his part of the work done by then. He arranged for an electrician to come and wire the boiler up but the electrician couldn’t come immediately and when he eventually came he had difficulty with the system. He got it done, so he thought, and we thanked him and sent him on his way but when the boiler switched on the water heated but the pump wouldn’t work. We called the electrician back and he tried again. It still didn’t work. We contacted the fitter when he returned from Las Vegas and he eventually got it going. It took two and a half weeks to fit the boiler and the weather had been quite chilly! Fortunately we have an electric immersion heater which meant we still had hot water, a gas fire in the living room and a portable gas fire which we put in the hall at the foot of the stairs. Elinor got the electric fan heater in her room and the fitter left us another electric fan heater in case of emergency. We wore lots of layers!
At the same time as the gas fitter started work Richard began experiencing severe pain in his leg and back. He saw the doctor who gave him lots of tablets and lots of advice. He was in agony but manfully struggled on until he found that his leg was becoming numb and it was unable to take any of his weight. He fell over a couple of times and hurt himself. We phoned 111 and the medics there passed Richard on to the out-of-hours doctor. I took Richard to Beccles hospital to see the doctor that evening. Richard has a partially slipped disc in his back and a trapped sciatic nerve – not full sciatica as he could still feel his foot! He has still managed to fall over a few times since then – falling down the stairs while I was out with my mother for the day; falling over in the garden while I was out again – but at last the feeling is beginning to return to his leg and the pain has subsided. The hope is he will gradually be able to do more things and the feeling will come back completely. He has been told it will take four to six weeks. At first, he could hardly walk even with a stick and was unable to drive at all. He can now drive very short distances but the damage is in the leg he uses for the clutch pedal and he doesn’t trust himself to be able to do an emergency stop, to drive in heavy traffic, to drive far. I am doing all the driving at present.
The sea front with Richard and his walking stick
Elinor’s college course since September this year only asks for her to be at college for two and a half days a week. Richard is at home most of the time now he is retired. I must admit I miss my alone time and my routines have had to be changed to accommodate these other domestic changes. One good thing is that Richard and I now (usually) share the duty of driving Elinor to college and I found a little more time to work in the garden this summer! I still visit my mother a lot and take her shopping and to her many hospital, doctor’s and optician’s appointments. She is gradually losing her sight and as each month passes I notice she has less energy and is less interested in doing things. I take her to church once a fortnight; the intervening week I go with Richard to our church. I miss going to church in my benefice every week; I miss the people, the churches, the services and the preaching. But, my mother needs me and I can’t let her down. I like my mother’s church and I am so pleased to be able to help her do what she needs and loves to do. There used to be members of her church who collected her and brought her home but not any more. The people who used to do it have either died or moved away and as her church is some miles from where she lives there is no-one now who could easily collect her.
The sandy beach
Elinor did really well at the end of the course she took last academic year. She re-took her GCSE Maths and managed to get a ‘C’ grade which is what she was hoping for. She never has to go to a Maths class ever again! She also got a distinction in her Art and Design course and everyone was very pleased with her. She applied for and got a place on the two year Graphic Art course she had wanted to go on the year before. Despite this achievement she is unhappy that yet again she is the oldest one on her course and cannot find anyone interested in being friends with her. She is lonely. She has been extremely anxious and has struggled to attend college during the past few weeks and has found that working at home has been difficult too. She is frightened of making mistakes and that her work might not be of high enough quality. So she prevaricates and then avoids doing anything and then panics when she realises she is behindhand. It is impossible to convince a chronically anxious person that their fears are unfounded so life at home has been distressing for us all. There is no escape from the constant pressure of it. It is our elephant in the room; except it isn’t an elephant as they are too nice. It is a troll, a gremlin, a monster, a sickness that is almost palpable and it is ever-present.
A Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) eating the tiny crabapples on our species crabapple tree. The Fieldfares have just arrived for the winter from where they spend the summer in Scandinavia
There is however, a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. We have tried over the years, many different ways to deal with Elinor’s mental health issue. In our ignorance at first, we attempted the stern attitude. Well, that failed spectacularly. We then saw many different therapists who tried countless different methods of finding out why Elinor is as she is and then attempting to help her by getting her to talk about things, them talking to her about things, giving her Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and oh, all sorts of therapies. Last winter we even resorted to drugs at the insistence of her GP (family doctor). The side effects were awful and it took until the summer for her to stop getting flashbacks and nightmares.
The Fieldfare again. They are beautiful and fairly shy birds.
A couple of months ago my hairdresser told me that she was seeing an acupuncturist because of depression and anxiety. The affect on her health and happiness had been astounding and she was feeling better than she had for years. She had had regular appointments at first but at the time of talking to me about it she was only going back now and again for ‘top-ups’. This got me wondering if it would be something that Elinor could try. I carefully spoke to Elinor about it but she refused to contemplate the thought of someone sticking needles in her. I tried again two weeks ago when Elinor was tearful and desperate for some kind of relief. She said she might be willing to think about it. She thought, and ten days ago she thought we might do some research into it. She then agreed that it was something she would be willing to try… but those needles..! On Thursday last week while Elinor was in college for her half day I went to see my hairdresser to ask for the name of her acupuncturist. By a happy chance this lady was having her hair done at that moment and agreed to talk to me. I have made an appointment for Elinor to see her next week. We will see what happens.
A small Common toad (Bufo bufo) hitching a ride in the wheelbarrow
Alice, my elder daughter who lives in Sheffield, has directed her first play. It was a great success and Alice enjoyed the experience but found it exhausting. We thought she would need a rest from her drama group for a while but she tells us she ‘accidentally’ auditioned for their next play and got cast! Can anyone explain how one can accidentally audition for a play?
A Scabious flower from the garden photographed in October
She had become unhappy living in the house she shared with a few other young people – they were fine but the landlady was awful – so she gave a month’s notice and found another house with a room to let and moved in at the beginning of this month. She has bi-polar disorder and if she gets over-tired or anxious her health deteriorates. The play and then moving house caused her to be very tired and quite anxious so she did feel under-the-weather for a while. She applied for another six-month temporary job at a higher grade in the university library department where she works, got an interview last week and has been successful! She hopes to start the job at the beginning of next month. Yet again it is only a part-time job and is only for six months but the money is better than what she gets at present and one must never look a gift-horse in the mouth – as they say.
Dog-rose hips (Rosa canina)
There we are. A resumé of most of the events of the past year with many gripes and groans included. What I intend doing is to post a few photographic highlights of the past six months (yes, there were a few highlights!) during the next few weeks. I hope to intersperse these with some current affairs on the approach to Christmas. Whether I manage any of it, who can tell!
Hawthorn berries (Crataegus monogyna)
I leave you with my music selection which is the Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s opera ‘Peter Grimes’. Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft and lived for many years a few miles further south along the coast at Aldeburgh. I love the music from Peter Grimes and these interludes give a taster of the opera as a whole but without the singing! The four interludes are entitled ‘Dawn’, ‘Sunday Morning’, ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Storm’ and the playing time is about 17 minutes.
When we moved to Somerset for 18 months twelve years ago I was very homesick and I listened to this music a lot while we were there to remind me of the coast I love. Looking through the comments on the different recordings on Youtube I find I am not the only person to find this music, especially ‘Dawn’, so evocative of the Suffolk coast and the North Sea.
Elinor had her eighteenth birthday on Wednesday. She celebrated by going to college, attending her Psychology class and then going into the city with her friends. They went to McDonald’s and had something to eat. Elinor would have preferred to have gone somewhere else as she doesn’t like McDonald’s’ food but her friends all do, so she went where they wished to go. She bought some fries and offered to get her friends’ food for them but they declined her offer and bought her an enormous badge with ’18’ on it and insisted that she wear it. They gave her their gifts and then they all went to their favourite bookshop and browsed. They also visited a department store and the boys found the toy department and fooled around with the toy swords and guns. I collected her from college at 2.00 pm and we went home. She opened her presents from us and had a few cards from relatives in the post. My mother had baked her a chocolate cake. My brother came to stay for the night as he had a meeting to go to in the area early next morning. We all ate cottage pie for our evening meal as it is Elinor’s favourite. She was so tired she fell asleep during the evening.
This may sound a rather tame way to celebrate an eighteenth birthday but for the past few years her birthday has been spent at home with just her parents and her sister for company. Until she started at college last September, she had had no contact with people of her own age for a long time because of her chronic anxiety. She was a very lonely and depressed young woman.
Her first term at college was a very difficult one; as you know if you have been reading this blog. However, by Christmas she had fought very hard to over-come her fears and had attended every day for six weeks and had caught up with most of her work. This term has been very successful so far. Apart from a couple of days absence because of a bad cold she has been into college every day and has started to attend her Maths classes again. She has taken a test in Psychology and got 85% and completed a paper in Maths and got 79%. Her English is good and continues to improve and she is working very hard at her Art. Her Art teacher is very impressed indeed and believes she has a good chance of doing very well in her exams. She hopes to go on to do a Graphic Art course at the college. She is beginning to get some self-confidence and is enjoying quite a lot of her college work. She likes the feeling she gets when she does well in class. She is also learning how to control her anxiety and is starting to ask for help at college when she feels anxious.
Richard and I are feeling more relaxed about her than we have in years.
It is hard for parents to realise that their own (probably selfish) hopes for their children may not be realistic hopes. We know that Elinor is very intelligent and capable and we dreamt of her taking many exams, doing well and going off to university like her sister, her cousins, her old school friends. If she hadn’t become so anxious she could have done these things. We have had to put up with comments from other parents who accuse us of spoiling our daughter – giving in to her and letting her stay at home. These other parents implied that had Elinor been theirs she wouldn’t have got away with it. She would have been forced to go to school. I have no idea whether their method would have worked. We did try at first to ‘make her’ go to school but when your child is so terrified she vomits at the thought of school, and panics and then starts to shut themselves away from all contact with others, it becomes impossible to continue. We have seen so many therapists and they have all said that the worst we could do is to try to force her to do anything. We were left feeling helpless, impotent and guilty. We were avoided by almost all the people we used to know through the school. We fought and fought to get her the best help and to find some way for her to continue with her education. Once she left school eighteen months ago everything became easier. Elinor started to relax for one thing and then she completed a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. A year ago we were contacted by the Education Department who asked if we would like some help. YES!
The key to being a happy parent is to rejoice in the wonder of being a parent. This child that you have created is a unique and wonderful creature, loved by God. It doesn’t matter whether they pass exams or not, are intelligent or not, are healthy or not – except you would rather they were healthy for their sakes. You love them. A parent has a duty to make sure that their child grows up knowing they are loved for who and what they are and not for what they can do. There are always opportunities these days to take exams, get qualifications, go to college at any time and at any age. We do not have to fit in with everyone else. Of course, a parent must teach their children the difference between right and wrong, respect for others and that life isn’t easy most of the time. But – the important thing is to help your child to grow and blossom and become the person they were intended to be and what they want to be. This isn’t spoiling them, this is the opposite of spoiling.
Our ‘Fish-hook’ Fero cactus developed flower buds for the first time ever. It was so late in the season that the flowers never opened but we were pleased nevertheless.
I thought I would tell you a little of what has been going on with us.
This smoothie and soup maker is a new acquisition of my husband’s. He has been enjoying experimenting with different ingredients and then sampling the results.
My husband has an appointment with his specialist next Friday when we hope he will find out a little more about his condition. (He has a tumour on his pituitary gland which is probably benign).
‘The pituitary gland is a small ductless gland at the base of the brain which secretes hormones essential for growth and other bodily functions.’ The Concise Oxford Dictionary
He had a blood test yesterday in preparation for this appointment. My sister (who knows about these things as she works in the medical profession) tells us that to remove the tumour the surgeon will go up R’s nose as the gland is just behind where the eyebrows meet. It is often done during day surgery with no need to stay in hospital.
I haven’t had much time for gardening lately but this pyracantha at the side of the house had grown so much since its last trim in May that I had to find the time to deal with it.
This is the result of two days of work with loppers and a step-ladder. I will have to get rid of the honeysuckle growing through the right-hand plant as it is pulling the whole thing away from the wall and I am frightened that high winds or heavy snow will cause the plant to lean too far forward and break.
Alice is still applying for jobs but with no luck so far. She has a part-time job at the university library filling shelves which doesn’t give her very much money and she is finding it very boring. She thinks she will finish writing her PhD in a couple of weeks time which will be wonderful as she has been at it for nearly four years. She may be able to spend more time looking for work when she doesn’t have to write so much. The drama group she belongs to has just performed ‘Antigone’ by Sophocles and Alice was in charge of the curtains and also performed other stage managerial duties. I didn’t go to see the play as I have too many calls on my time at home at the present. The next play is an adaptation of ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen and Alice has been cast as Emma. I would love to be able to go to see her in that but it may not be possible.
Most of the sugar beet has been harvested from the fields near us. This is very early in the season as usually, it is done during the wet and cold of late autumn and early winter and the lanes are then a sea of mud. So far we have had a fairly clean harvest.
My younger daughter E, has had a hard time adapting to college life. The first few weeks went very well but she suddenly had a return of her anxiety which really shocked her as she thought that she was in control of it. She has missed quite a few classes in all of the subjects she is taking as the panic attacks affected everything she did. There were days when she thought that she would be able to get into college and we would drive there only to find she was unable to get out of the car. The anxiety paralyses her and she cannot think logically. We would drive away and try again later. Some days we would make the journey three times. However, the staff at the college have been absolutely marvellous and have gone out of their way to help and encourage her. Last week was half-term and she was able to do a little catch-up work but spent most of the time feeling very depressed and frightened. This week however, she has suddenly found her feet again and has been in every day and is doing very well. We are praying, keeping our fingers crossed and touching wood. We have spoken to our GP who has enabled E and me to attend a four session course which will be every Monday evening for the next month on Stress Management which may give us a few helpful tips and stratagems. The course covers all sorts of stress, anxiety and depression so there will be some parts that will be of only partial relevance to E’s situation. However, with all the financial cuts to mental health we are lucky to get this help so we will take advantage of it. I am not sure when we will be able to cook and eat our evening meal as the course is between 6.00 pm and 7.30 pm and it will take about three-quarters of an hour to get there and the same to get home again. When R is at home he says that he will be able to help out.
This pre-germination spray of the field behind our house was performed on 4th October
My mother recovered slowly from her stomach upset and is now back to normal. I took her to Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on Tuesday for her regular eye check-up and she is fine and doesn’t need another injection yet.
You can see the horrible-looking green spray which smells very nasty
My mother-in-law collapsed about six weeks ago and lay on her bedroom floor for some time before she was discovered. She has a panic alarm which she wears around her neck but for some reason she didn’t press it. For some time she has had great difficulty in walking but after a rather strenuous visit to the hospital that day she found she couldn’t stand at all and fell down. She was taken to hospital the following day and it was discovered she had also had a mild heart attack. She is still in hospital as more and more problems with her health have been discovered. My husband has visited Manchester a couple of times for a few days to see her and help my brother-in-law out. It may be that R’s Mum won’t be able to go back home. She is still in the critical ward in the hospital until her health can be stabilised. She will then go into respite care for a month and will be assessed to see whether she could cope in her home or not. If she does go home she will have to have much more help than she had before. If it is found that she isn’t able to go home she will have to go into a nursing home and her house will have to be sold to pay for that. This is a very worrying time for R and his brother. Mum-in-law has her 89th birthday on Sunday.
This is the same field on the 15th October
The crop germinated quite quickly because of the warm and damp weather we had
At the same time as my poor mother-in-law was first in hospital my brother found that his 33-year marriage was at an end. He is absolutely shocked and very unhappy that all the effort he put into caring for his wife and their two children (who are now grown up) and making a nice home was all to no avail. His wife no longer wishes to be married to him as she has found someone else. They are now having to sell their house and everything they have has to be split between them – pensions, cars, furniture – everything. It is all proving to be too much for my brother to cope with. He has been to stay with me a couple of times so that he can see our mother and have a little comfort too. I have spoken to him tonight and he tells me that he has been signed off work for two weeks with depression and has been given anti-depressants by his doctor. He is looking for another job away from where he lives where he may be able to get a cheaper house or flat to live in. Both my sister and I have been through a divorce because our husbands no longer wanted to be with us so we know what he is going through. I am now happily married but my sister has not been able to find anyone else.
This is the field on the 31st October with a few pheasants.
So you see, life has not been a bed of roses for us for a while now. We hope that nothing else happens to add to our load of worries.
This has been a very strange summer. The weather, for one thing, has been very unpredictable. British weather is always unpredictable but this year it has outdone itself, I think. Torrential rain, gale-force winds, mini tornadoes ( they are called willies in East Anglia!). Lots of humid, stormy days in July and the coldest August for many years. The plants in my garden have got very confused. It became quite cool and wet at the end of June and the beginning of July (just in time for our holiday) so my Viburnum Bodnantense thought Autumn had arrived and started to flower.
Viburnum Bodnantense is supposed to flower from Autumn through to Spring.
My Alpine Pasque Flower thought Spring had come back and began flowering again.
Alpine Pasque Flower flowering for a second time this year
We found them blooming when we got home from our holiday on the 9th of July. The poor things then got a bit of a shock as the temperature rose from about 15 degrees C to 28 degrees with high humidity. August temperatures dipped again and last week I found cowslips in flower in the garden.
A cowslip in flower at the end of August. Cowslips usually flower in April and May.
This week the temperature has risen at last from 12 degrees C and grass frost at night ( in August!) to a pleasant 20 degrees today.
I have found a few fungi recently.
Pleated Inkcap
I photographed a better specimen in May
Pleated Inkcap
which is when I saw this one which is ( I think ) a Snowy Waxcap.
Snowy Waxcap
Coming home from church on Sunday we saw this
Shaggy Inkcap
The oak tree in our garden is covered in galls as usual.
This is a Knopper Gall on the acorns photographed on 26th July
The same gall photographed on 5th August
As you can see, it had grown quite a lot in ten days. They are now turning a darker colour.
Our Horse Chestnut is suffering from the fungus infection that causes blotches on the leaves.
Blotches caused by the fungus Guignadia aesculi accidentally introduced into Britain from North America in the 1930s
Muck spreading and ploughing was delayed for a few weeks but was eventually done in the field behind our house last week.
Muck spreading. Mmmmn lovely!
Ploughing
Muck spreading and ploughing. The local farmer is very considerate and doesn’t leave stinky pig-muck on the fields for long as you see.
Skillful and speedy tractor work
The seagulls love following the plough and then stay around for a day or so feasting on all the grubs and worms.
A mixed flock of seagulls
These gulls are Black-headed Gulls with their winter plumage ( no black heads only black smudges on the side of their heads)
Another reason I think this has been a strange summer is the anxiety and worry we have all had has caused the time to pass by in a kind of haze.
My elder daughter has been trying to finish her PhD and find work and now has a large overdraft with the bank. She has been able to do some proof-reading recently which has helped a little.
My mother was disappointed to find she had another bleed behind her left eye when she went for her check-up at the hospital. She has started another course of injections. She has been unwell with a bad upset stomach this last week and when I saw her today she had lost a lot of weight and had become very frail and vague. She only told me about the upset stomach when I rang her yesterday – she hadn’t wanted to worry me!
My younger daughter, after two years out of education because of chronic anxiety has had the courage to apply for a place at college to do some GCSE exams. She has been accepted and yesterday she went there for a ‘taster day’ – a practise run-through and a chance to meet her tutors and get time-tables etc. She came home exhausted and tearful after spending seven-and-a-half hours in college – the longest time away from home and/or family for years. Her term starts next Monday and she is so very nervous. I will be driving her into college and then picking her up again when she finishes which will mean nearly 100 miles a day for me. Eventually we hope that she may be able to get the bus into Norwich but she probably won’t be able to manage it for some time. We are all holding our breath and hoping that she doesn’t lose her nerve.
My husband has had a problem with his throat since April. He has had a recurring painful ulcer at the back of his throat that comes up when he eats. He has pains in his neck too. He has found that taking anti-histamine seems to control the ulcer. He has visited his doctor three times and the first two times was told it probably wasn’t anything to worry about and to come back in a month. The third time the doctor referred him to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at the hospital. He eventually got an appointment to see the specialist on the 5th August. The specialist didn’t know what was causing the problem so arranged for R to have an MRI scan which took place on 18th August. R got a letter from the hospital last week asking him to see the specialist again yesterday. R has been getting more and more anxious as the summer has progressed, as is only natural, and the long delays in between appointments have been difficult to cope with. The specialist began by saying that she couldn’t find anything in the scan to account for the problems R has been experiencing, however she had found something else which will need dealing with before any more investigation into the throat business is done. There is a growth on his pituitary gland at the base of his brain and this will have to be operated on soon before he becomes really unwell. He will have to take some time off work and won’t be able to drive for some time before and after the operation. The specialist is referring my poor husband to another specialist who will contact R in about a month. R is very relieved it isn’t cancer but is very nervous about having a brain operation.
If my posts have been sporadic, if I have written a load of rubbish or made a rather stupid comment on your blogs it is because of all of the above. I can’t think straight and I can’t concentrate on anything. My arthritis is playing-up in my hands especially and I am so far behind with everything it is shocking! However, I am a strong person and with God’s help I will be able to support all the members of my family and all will be well.
