Thursday 30 May 2019

08:00 Lois and I take a shower and after breakfast start cleaning and clearing up a little in the greenhouse and cutting back all the escallonia branches that have pushed their way in through the gaps between the panes.

Lois cleans our greenhouse table with a cloth -

Two points to note: (1) Lois's old "Firenze" (Florence) t-shirt, 

souvenir of our visit (March 1997) to our daughter Alison,

when she was spending a year as a student in Pisa, and

(2) the escallonia branches that have invaded the greenhouse

She starts to clean the greenhouse floor

The greenhouse now in the finest order, all spic-and-span  - hurrah!

11:30 We relax with a cup of coffee on the terrace and discuss the lovely condition the greenhouse is now in.

I commented that now would be a good time to invite famous local resident, Arnold Drucker, who, according to our go-to local news site, Onion News, would like to see a nice greenhouse to complete his education as an amateur architect.

He has already seen a lot of different types of buildings in the area, but he recently admitted to journalists that he was a bit of a "virgin" when it came to greenhouses.

While claiming to have "taken a good look" at homes, hospitals, churches and other structures designed for human or residential use, retail-associate Arnold Drucker, 32, said on Tuesday that since he had been in, or near, a large number of buildings, he assumed he would make quite a good architect.

"I mean, I've been in tons of buildings, and I've really noticed them all, so I'll start with an advantage, especially considering the number of doors and stairs and entire rooms I've used. I’ve almost been in more rooms than I can count," said Drucker, who concluded that his long history of entering, occupying and leaving buildings has given him sufficient knowledge to begin designing floors, walls and ceilings.

"A cinema is different now, because it has lots of seating, and a library needs a bunch of shelves. Museums and sports areas are more difficult, but I could just specialise in what I know about, which is ordinary houses and shops. Off the bat, however, I can say that any building has got to have a bathroom, ceilings higher than a person, and at least one place to put furniture (chairs or the like) to sit in. Man, imagine if I sat down and really worked on this!"

Drucker has since undertaken to apply himself to further study after realising that he has never been in a factory, a greenhouse or a school. (Report – Onion News)

Lois and I really admire Drucker's motivation and diligence - and we think we can definitely help him widen his experience here - and our greenhouse is not the world's largest, to put it mildly! A quick lightning visit to our garden could be exactly what Drucker needs to complete his qualifications as a world-renowned innovative architect, that’s something we have no doubts about. And I think I saw him the other day in the local pharmacy - he was buying some strong headache pills.

12:00 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap. Meanwhile, Lois pops next door to talk a little with Bill, our neighbour, who was recently discharged from hospital - he is suffering from a terminal cancer, and doctors are not really sure how much time he has left, poor Bill.

15:00 I get up at 3 pm and go up the loft ladder. I gather as many old business letters and documents, bank statements etc as possible from the less well-documented areas of the attic, which lie far from the entrance-hatch, and lug them down the ladder. I put them all in bags on one of the three beds in our daughter Alison's old room.

All this is yet another phase in our current downsizing mini-project.

Then I put aside, into a separate pile, all bank statements and credit card statements for possible shredding later. Finally, I put a number of the documents - those I consider 100% useless - into our car boot (for example, till receipts older than 15 years – good grief, what madness to have kept all those !!!!).

Tomorrow, when we go shopping for food at the "large" Sainsbury’s supermarket, we will be able to check if there is enough space in the "paper bank" in the recycling section of the supermarket's car-park for these sacks of useless old paper.

16:00 Lois comes back and we relax with a cup of tea and a biscuit on the sofa. She tells me a little bit about how Bill is currently. He seemed a little sleepy, she says, but his medication may be the cause of that. 

The council’s delivery woman had earlier brought his (hot) lunch, and Lois could see that he had eaten half of it and left the rest. His appetite is not that good at the moment, he explained - but Lois pointed out that that was not particularly surprising, given that he was not now as active as he was before. Neil, Bill's son, showed up at 15:45 after a visit to Mary, his mother and Bill's wife, now living in a nursing home about a mile away - Mary suffers from severe dementia.

The crisis in Bill's health, and the decision to place Mary in a nursing home, and all of that, arose recently, and all quite suddenly. Bill's cancer had started in the pancreas (without symptoms) and the disease was first diagnosed approx. 2-3 weeks ago, when it had unfortunately already spread to other organs. When told the shock news of his diagnosis, Bill realised that he would only have one more night with his wife after 60 years' of marriage - he would be going to the hospital the following day.

Although Mary has had worsening dementia for a few years, Bill was until then coping well with looking after her, and he was expecting that that situation would continue for quite a few more years yet. Then suddenly everything changed.

It all shows that one's life can easily be turned upside down at any time and without warning - "carpe diem" is the message. Yikes - our turn will come one day, no doubt about that - but exactly when is something we are obviously not 100% sure about, which is probably just as well.

Let us hope Lois and I can make Bill's life a little more enjoyable, but it will take time to really understand his exact needs - we’ll have to go carefully to start with.

18:00 We have dinner. We feel completely exhausted: we have done a lot of physical work today, in the garden, in the house, in the attic, plus the mental strain of Lois’s first visit to Bill in his new situation.

We spend the rest of the evening watching a bit of television. An old episode of Top of the Pops is on, from December 1987. The programme hosts are the charming Gary Davies and Mike Read.

A very nostalgic episode with all the hits from the 1987 Christmas chart, in particular the iconic "Fairy Tale of New York", by The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl.

I look in our 1987 photo album and I see we only took 4 photos at Christmas 1987: two pictures of Alison (12) and Sarah (10) opening the Christmas presents Lois and I had stuffed into the two sleds we had bought for them in the US a few years earlier. 

Plus there are two photos I took during a walk the three of us went on in the neighbourhood Christmas morning while Lois stayed home and cooked the Christmas lunch.

Flashback to Christmas Day 1987

In the “old days”, before the digital era, we took far fewer photos, no doubt about that. But those 4 photos tell us everything we need to know, you might say. Christmas time is for children.

Happy days !!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz !!!!!!

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg tager et brusebad og efter morgenmad går i gang med at rydde lidt i drivhuset og skære eskallonia-grenene tilbage – dem, der har skubbet sig selv igennem kløfterne mellem ruderne.

Lois gør vores drivhusbord rent med en karklud –

to punkter at bemærke: (1) Lois’ gamle ”Firenze” (Florence) t-shirt, souvenir

af vores besøg (marts 1997) hos vores datter Alison,

da hun tilbragte et år som studerende i Pisa, og

(2) de eskallonia-grenene, der har invaderet drivhuset

Hun går i gang med at gøre drivhusets gulv rent

Drivhuset nu i fineste orden, ren og pæn – hurra!

11:30 Vi slapper af med en kop kaffe på terrassen og diskuterer drivhusets ren og pæn tilstand. Jeg kommenterer, at nu ville være en god tid til at invitere den berømte lokale indbygger, Arnold Drucker, der ifølge vores go-to lokale nyhedswebsted, Onion News, ville gerne se et godt drivhus for at fuldføre sin uddannelse som amatør arkitekt. Han har allerede observeret en masse forskellige typer af bygninger i området, men han indrømmede for nylig til journalister, at han var lidt af en ”jomfru”, da det kom til drivhuse.

Mens han hævder, at han har "taget et godt, langt blik" på huse, hospitaler, kirker og andre strukturer designede til menneskelig brug eller beboelse, sagde detailmedarbejderen Arnold Drucker, 32, tirsdag, at eftersom han har været i eller nær et stort antal bygninger, antog han antager, at han ville være en ganske god arkitekt.

"Jeg mener, jeg har været i tonsvis af bygninger, og jeg har virkelig lagt mærke til dem alle, så jeg vil starte med en ganske god fordel, især i betragtning af antallet af døre og trapper og hele værelserne jeg har brugt. Jeg har næsten været i flere værelser end jeg kan tælle, "sagde Drucker, som konkluderede, at hans lange historie om at komme ind, besætte og forlade bygninger har givet ham tilstrækkelig viden til at begynde at designe gulve, vægge eller lofter.

"En biograf er nu anderledes, fordi den har masser af siddepladser, og et bibliotek skal have en flok hylder. Museer og sportsarealer er vanskeligere, men jeg kunne nok kun specialisere mig i det, jeg kender til, som er almindelige huse og butikker. På en stående fod imidlertid kan jeg sige, at enhver bygning skal have et badeværelse, lofter, der er højere end en person, og mindst et sted at sætte møbler (stole eller lignende) til at sidde i. Mand, forestil dig, hvis  jeg satte mig ned og virkelig arbejdede på dette. "

Drucker har siden da forpligtet sig til at koncentrere sig videre om sine studier efter han indså, at han aldrig har været inde i en fabrik, et drivhus eller en skole.

Lois og jeg beundrer virkelig Druckers motivering og flittighed – og vi tror, vi helt bestemt kan hjælpe ham med at udvide hans erfaring her – og vores drivhus er ikke verdens største, for at sige mildt! Et kort lynhurtigt besøg hos os, kunne være præcis dét, Drucker har behov for, for at fuldende sine kvalifikationer  som verdensberømt arkitekt – det har vi ikke nogen tvivl om. Og jeg tror, jeg så ham forleden i det lokale apotek – han var i gang med at købe stærke hovedpinepiller.

12:00 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. I mellemtiden smutter ind i nabohuset for at snakke lidt med Bill, vores nabo, der forleden blev udskrevet fra hospitaler – han lider af en terminal kræft, og lægerne er ikke helt sikre på, hvor meget tid han har tilbage, stakkels Bill.

15:00 Jeg står op kl 15 og går op  ad loftstigen og samler så mange gamler rudekuverter, forretningsbreve og forretningsdokumenter, kontoudtog osv som muligt fra loftets mindre veldokumenterede områder, der ligger langt fra selve loftlemmen, og slæber dem ned ad stigen. Jeg lægger dem i poser på en af de tre senge i vores Alisons gamle værelse.

Alt det her er endnu en fase i vores nuværende downsize mini-projekt.

Bagefter går jeg i gang med at lægge i en separat bunke, alle kontoudtog og kreditkortudtog til mulig makulering senere. Til sidst lægger jeg en antal af dokumenterne – dem jeg betragter som 100% unyttige – ind i vores bils bagagerum (for eksempel kassekvitteringer ældre som 15 år – du godeste, sikke et vanvid !!!!).

I morgen, når vi går madindkøb på den ”store” Sainsburys-supermarked, vil vi kunne tjekke, hvis der er plads nok i ”papircontaineren” i genbrugsektionen på supermarkedets parkeringsplads.

16:00 Lois kommer tilbage og vi slapper af med en kop te og en kiks i sofaen. Hun fortæller mig lidt om, hvordan Bill har det for tiden. Han så lidt søvnig ud, siger hun, men det kan være, at hans medicin er årsagen til det. Kommunens leveringskvinde havde tidligere medbragt hans (opvarmede) frokost, og Lois kunne se, at han havde spist halvdelen af den og efterladt resten. Hans appetit er ikke ret god for tiden, forklarede han – men Lois påpegede, at det ikke var særlig overraskende i betragtning af, at han ikke længere var så aktiv, som før. Neil, Bills søn, dukkede op kl 15:45 efter et besøg hos Mary, sin mor og Bills kone, der nu bor i et plejehjem, som ligger omkring 1 mile væk – Mary lider af alvorlig demens.

Krisen over Bills sundhed, og beslutningen at anbringe Mary på et plejehjem, og alt det der, opstod ganske pludselig for nylig. Bills kræft var startet i bugspytkirtlen (uden symptomer) og sygdommen blev først diagnosticeret for ca. 2-3 uger siden, da den allerede havde spredt sig til andre organer. Det hele viser, at ens liv sagtens kan blive vendt på hovedet hvornår som helst og uden advarsel – ”carpe diem” er budskabet. Yikes – vores tur vil komme en dag, ingen tvivl om det – men præcis hvornår – det er vi ikke helt sikre på!

Lad os håbe, vi kan gøre Bills liv lidt mere nydeligt, men det vil tage tid virkelig at forstå hans præcise behov, det ved vi med sikkerhed.

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad. Vi føler os helt udkørte: vi har udrettet en masse fysisk arbejde i dag, i haven, i huset, i loftet.

Vi bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn.  De viser et gammelt afsnit af Top of the Pops, fra december 1987. Programmets værter er de charmerende Gary Davies og Mike Reid.

Et meget nostalgisk afsnit med alle de hits fra årets julehitliste, i sær den ikoniske ”Fairy Tale of New York”, af The Pogues med Kirsty MacColl.

Jeg kigger i vores 1987 fotoalbum, og vi tog kun 4 fotoer ved juletid:  to billeder af Alison (12) og Sarah (10) i gang med at åbne deres julegaver, som Lois og jeg havde proppet  i de to slæder, vi havde købt til dem i USA et par år tidligere. Og to fotoer, jeg tog i løbet af en gåtur i nabolaget mens Lois blev hjemme og lavede julefrokosten.

Tilbageblik til juledag 1987

I de gamle dage, før den digitale æra, tog vi langt færre fotoer, ingen tvivl om det. Men de der 4 fotoer fortæller os alt, vi behøver at vide, kan man sige. Juletid er for børn.

Lykkelige tider!!!

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!