Telling A good Story

Brothers. And sisters ( +inlaws) before the trache

Working in palliative care, I understand all too well the power of the diversion story, something that deflects the attention from death, dying, symptoms and sadness

This post from fifteen years ago is a case in point

“ My brother was tired when I visited him this evening. He was also rather weary and fed up with the tracheostomy which is to be expected.

Unable to speak , interaction can be a little difficult for him and for us, and when visiting , being in the hospital. I was reminded of when I used to take my mother out from her nursing home room, and I was glad that the story I recalled got my brother, sister in law and visiting nephew Peter smiling.

My mother in the months before her death was a terribly difficult character. A chronic bronchitic and un diagnosed COPD sufferer she was confined to her room on an oxygen concentrator which she found dreadfully frustrating seeing that she was a 60 cigarette a day lady!). To take her out, she needed bottled oxygen, so on my weekly visit from Sheffield ( a 200 mile round trip) I used to "borrow" one of the huge oxygen cylinders from work! which I used to smuggle out of the spinal unit ( by using one of the patient's wheelchairs as a trolley and a big woollen blanket!)

When I finally reached Prestatyn, I would have to toilet my mother (not the most pleasant of jobs) , then trundle her down into The Prof’s nissan micra for her weekly afternoon out!

 I had learnt early on that she would have to be sat on a selection of incontinence pads ( or if these ran short some subtly sculptured plastic carrier bags overlapped to catch the drips) and after getting her sitting comfortably and connected up to the massive oxygen cylinder, we set off for the outing of her choice.
Now she was a bit of a cheap date!

Her favourite trips included :

*A fish and chip supper in the car park at Prestatyn Beach ( the car windows would always be full of coughed up mushy peas afterwards much to The Proff’s amusement)
*A drive up to Gwaenysgor Hillside
* or ( and most importantly) a trip to Sainsbury's car park! ( which is a supermarket for those that don't know)

At Sainsbury's I would set her up with a cigarette and a crossword (praying that a spark would not ignite the flammable Oxygen- now don't worry too much I WOULD always turn the O2 off when she lit up) and I would go into the store to purchase her weekly "treats" as she would sit quite happily in the passenger seat, waving as passers by like Princess Margaret 

These treats would always be the same

2 strawberry tarts ( with cream)
2-3 miniature bottles of gin
1 crossword book with pen
A selection of sweets ( to bribe the Nursing home staff so that they would take her for more fags during the day!)
A box of tissues
20 fags,

She was a crafty old cuss too, for every week after she  accepted her booty, she would suddenly "remember" some other item she had supposedly forgotten! 
I went along with this ruse....and would dutifully go and get her another miniature gin " for tomorrow night" she would say.........and as I did, she would enjoy one of her sneaky 50ml bottles of Gordons, before jamming the plastic bottle in the ash tray or down the air con vent flap!

It was nice to see my brother smiling at my memory....mind you, he would have told the story better if he could talk...he was always a better storyteller than I would ever be”

Nuremberg

 

If Russell Crowe didn’t make another film, Nuremberg would be a fitting swan song, for he plays the wily Nazi Herman Göring, the central defendant in the famous post war crime trial with suitable pompousness but with a power, on par with his old gladiator days. 

This “behind the scenes” film version has Rami Malik as the psychiatrist Douglas Kelly who is employed by the Americans to assess each of the 22 defendants for the likelihood of self harm. It is him who plays a cat and mouse game with the German second in command and he who reports back to the prosecutor Robert Jackson ( Michael Shannon) with snippets of information that will allow the allies to win a courtroom battle with the slippery German.

As someone well versed with the behaviour of psychiatrists, I found Malik’s interpretation odd to say the least. He is angry, smirky, overly involved and no way objective. The performance is overblown and unrealistic and therefore the interplay with Crowe, ( who steals every scene they share) is incredibly uneven. 

Shannon , is suitably intense as Jackson, and both Leo Woodall and Richard E Grant shine as a Jewish German army translator and the Tory MP, David Maxwell Fife who finally saves the day.

I will leave you with this, the Waitrose Christmas Advert….its lovely, but has triggered in me a troubling worry with the tone of this year’s adverts…..more with that another time 

WTF

 

When I’m dead and gone, some unfortunate fucker will have to sort through my shit. In my bathroom they will find a few figures of cats. Whimsical childlike cats with Asian features, each with a raised paw and a tinking bell.

And no doubt they will think

What the fuck did he have these for?  

They were a gift from my friend Ben 

He’s a gentle soul, who started in the hospice the same week as I did. 

An academic who worked with my ex husband, Ben bridges the gap between university and clinical practice. He is liked and respected for his considered approach to patient care, and has a sort of universal connection to races and cultures from all over the world. His wife is Korean and his family live in the US, and he bought the cats in Japan at his brother in law’s wedding.

In Japan the cats will bring their owner good fortune and money. 

I’m all for that, 

And apparently they should sit somewhere high up, where traffic is high

The shelf above the loo seems practical and pragmatic 

It’s out of the psychopath Weaver’s evil clutches

And there they will sit, smiling benignly on my big hairy arse every time I sit down to contemplate the world.

Like antique or my cottage, or the paintings on my art wall….. I won’t own these cats, I will just look after them for a while until they find a new home.

And I hope they do indeed bring me and their next owner good luck

Anne Murray - You Needed Me (1978)

It took me an hour and a half to get back to Trelawnyd tonight 

Storm Claudia 

Even Weaver said hello

It’s nice to be home

A German

I’ve just been on a study day about the treatment of acute trauma 

An interesting mix of counselling approaches CBT and EMDR 

I soaked up information and approaches like a fat Welsh sponge 

It was wonderful 

It cost me 250 £

Money well spent 

The Liverpool study day mixed its participants into small groups and in my group was a serious German born counsellor who smiled rarely 

I found it my mission to make him smile, mainly because I found him terribly attractive

He was butch and masculine and heavily bearded 

He was also far to serious .

And in the afternoon he actually laughed at one of my interactions , a time I challenged the tutor with a colourful comment of “ I think that is bollocks”

At a tea time 1 to 1  he told me seriously that he found me “challenging” in the group work 

And in a sudden moment of privacy and honesty I told him that was because I found him rather attractive 

“I’m in a relationship” he said kindly with a nod

“You bloody would be “ I told him 

He touched my arm for seconds longer than he should of and I lapped up the flirt like a spinster out on a church picnic

Oh lord ! I said and meant it 

And he laughed loud and long, still holding my arm

And before I walked away at the day’s end  he asked me for my phone number 

Someone’s Darling

 A praying mantis holding up Christmas lights, just part of a collection of Christmas gifts I’m getting ready to post to friends in Australia . It’s a tradition I’ve kept for years now. 

Sending odd Christmas decorations in the post….its comforting as it is regular .

I had lunch with Chis Eleanor…soup and a cheese panini and we put the world to rights.

It’s lovely to be called darling, several times…in a conversation .

It’s a treat.

I wish it happened to everyone, every day

To be referred to as someone’s darling,……

We Are All Getting Older

 I now have a strange etherial shadow dominating the sight in my right eye. 

It’s a misty ghost

An apparition 

A sea mist on a Christmas morning 

And something the eye consultant warned me of .

When I close my eyes in the sunshine

I can see the shadow of the bleed quite clearly, a dark amoeba against a pink eyelid

My bestie Nu has had some health problems recently and admitted to me that she suddenly felt old 

I understood that feeling today , when I left the darkness of my front door with the dogs , totally unsure of where my feet had ended up on a wet path as black as midnight.

Mary has milky eyes and is careful where she steps and I now understand her hesitations as we both let Roger now take the lead.

Something he has never done before.

In the dark my sweet young boy now takes point position 

His head held high 

And we follow him 

Trusting his dim old head and his happy personality .

The Choral

 The National Treasure which is Alan Bennett is 91 years old and for me his later works have been somewhat uneven and all rather bleak in their storytelling. Perhaps it’s the near mortality of an old man that leeches into his writings, who knows, but this story of the formation of a Choral piece in the World War One backdrop of a Yorkshire mill town could have been his tour de force piece. The story is, of course more complicated than the rags-to-riches tale of a band of strangers. The teenage men, desperate for love and sex are awaiting conscription, as the older businessmen are dealing with loss of their sons and of fortunes. 

The women’s characters are strangely underwritten too, and even more unevenly played as either Madonnas or whores, which gives the whole film a cold and flatly unsentimental edge to it.

I was bored and disappointed by the whole thing .