clairef

wed 27 May as is often the case on a day when I'm not working I get a migraine. My head was achy this morning when I woke up and it progressively got worse. I tried to knock it back with coffee and sometimes caffiene works but today it didn't. at around 11.30 I took a large ibruprofen, one of Geoff's big co-codamol and a Rizatriptan and retired back to bed with a cold flannel and the cat. I had weird dreams – clearly drug induced and woke up 2 hours later feeling washed out but pain free. I made a cuppa and sat outside with my book and then had some late lunch. Read some more and later drove to Burgess Hill to pick up more compost. We have so many tomatoes and they need potting up – some are ready to go into big pots and be stacked, so got some more long bamboo canes as well. The bale of compost was 125L – I ended up going to B&Q and the nice woman on the checkout gave me an NHS discount and a helpful guy lifted the very heavy bale into the car for me. I took both me and Nat to lift it out of the car back at home. I read some more and Nat made dinner. Christian has gone to spend the evening with his girls. They are looking to move out sooner rather than later. They've been making enquiries with agents. Makes me feel a little sad that they'll be gone, but it is the right thing for them to be on their own. Makes me think of my own move and I've been looking at stuff on line again. Once the house is clear again I can think about putting mine on the market however how I can sensibly visit to view properties is a conundrum as I can't stay with mum and dad, strictly speaking anyway. Some of this is bonkers though. That's another essay! Not for tonight

Tuesday 26 May Long hot day yesterday. I went to work as I knew I'd feel worse and guilty for cancelling, more so than cross and annoyed, for going in. So in I went. Actually it was a distraction. My work friend Jess was there and we had a good talk and agreed over everything that was wrong. She even said she was glad I was there for her to offload about it too. It can be quite cathartic and then we decided to talk about something else. Never mentioned, on Sunday, Geoff and I did a walk – just a short one bearing in mind his foot – 2.6 miles. I managed to get up lost driving there, but it was nice once we arrived. The village was Warnham just outside Horsham. Part of the walk was through the deer park and there was a massive stag with huge antlers. He was separate from the does – couldn't see any babies – maybe too early for them. Load of geese also. I finished at 2pm this afternoon – today was an extra to help Emma as they were short. I had 2 batty ladies, and large man with massive legs, and a batty man with a catheter, then back to one of the batty ladies. I use the word 'batty' but they are very lovely and sweet, just muddled. My first lady told me she'd had nothing to eat, but her food diary the carers complete showed she'd had scrambled eggs on toast. She said to me ' I don't feel like I've had scrambled eggs on toast' – I said are you hungry, and she was, so again I'm tea and toast lady. Makes me hungry too I've found a crime / drama series on all 4 – Walter Present – a French series, called 'The Other Mother'. Watched 2 episodes, might see another whilst sitting in bed soon

Sunday 24 May I am still furious but see there is plenty of polarised views about this issue. Some people think it IS totally OK – weirdly – to travel a long distance when symptomatic of a virus which has killed around 36,000 people in this country and thousands more worldwide. There's no accounting for stupid I suppose. Actually there's no accounting (actually maybe there is) for selfish more like. There is zero point in anything we have all been trying to do, there's no point in me continuing to support my community nursing team and following the guidance. However all this gave me a migraine this morning and is in danger of giving me another one. I m struggling to see how I am going to manage to go to work tomorrow and if I do, how I am going to keep my big mouth shut

Saturday 23 May I cannot write anything other than I am apoplectic with rage. I have a 4 year old (well had) (actually 2 of them at different times) and therefore I can do anything I like. Bollocks to everything

Friday 22 May My sleep has really gone back to pot. I cannot go off despite feeling tired. Today I have resorted to alcohol and am hoping for the best A certain person has really pissed me off shouting at me for wiping the work top at the wrong time and then very cross with me for having the audacity to be in the kitchen at the same time as she was making her dinner. I went out for a walk and went past a house where there was a box of books being given away. I found one: “Us” by David Nicholls – who wrote “One Day” which I have read and which was made into a film. This one “Us” was longlisted for the Man Booker prize 2014 so I thought it would be worth taking and I did. Its a hard back and feels like a weighty tomb and i shall take it to bed tonight. I did a square for Matthew's blanket, just need to sew in the ends, potted up some seedlings, planted a few things out in the garden and watered the tomato plants. I think I have washed up about 4 times (ok maybe 3) today somehow, but when someone makes pizza (and I didn't even have any) from scratch, there is an awful lots of clearing up to do. Back to work tomorrow.

Thursday 21 May Hell it was hot and I've had a day of sodding leg dressings, sweating under all that plastic and by the end with a face like a beetroot. I went back to the office at lunchtime thinking, not for the first time, I am not paid enough for this!!! I was feeling sorry for myself until I chatted to one of my nurse colleagues about her longstanding ongoing problems with her ex husband (who is an arse) and her daughter (who he has tried to alienate her against her mum) and now she is well messed up (the daughter) and thought I'm so relieved I'm not living through all that kind of crap any more. I've not done anything except go to work today. Came home and showered and then had to go out and get Dad's birthday card and post it as I'd been very forgetful and not bought it a few days ago. I walked it to the sorting office so its caught the last post but not sure if Royal Mail will come up trumps again like it did for Matthew and my late posting. I walked home feeling really crappy, worn out and with an aching head and sore throat coming on. Corona virus? I've thought multiple times I'm coming down with it. So I lay on the sofa and watched 'After Life' on Netflix and after ½ hour felt quite a lot better, so no, not some virus, just a bit worn out. By the way, I finished my book yesterday “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones. Here is a Guardian review. I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not a book reviewer like our Martine, but I would recommend it. I picked it up on one of my charity shop trawls – something I cannot do in this environment as they're all shut

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/02/an-american-marriage-tayari-jones-review

Wed 20th May I couldn't get off to sleep last night, I was still awake at gone 1 am. Up and down to the loo multiple times. I thought I was going to have a migraine but fortunately I didn't. This is day 3 of the two working at home and the 1st day I've been here with them both. Felt like I've been creeping around trying not to make any sound and disturb them. I've broken lock down (its all stopped for all intents and purposes anyway!), and Matthew came for a day's visit. I of course gave him a hug, bugger social distancing, I've not seen him for months and he came in the house though we sat outside mostly and went for a walk around Nymans Woods – his step counter showed we did 7,000 steps. There was hardly anyone else there, no mud at all cos its been so dry and only a murmur of traffic from the motorway. Not a single plane trail to be seen and we were only about 8 miles from Gatwick. Sadly I bet that doesn't continue

Tuesday 19th May Today was another big day; not for me or Natalie, but for my son Matthew. He is 30 years old today. It always makes me think on my children's birthdays – I know what I was doing x number of years ago today. On 19th May 1990 at 8 minutes to midnight, Matthew was born in Plymouth hospital. I'd been in labour (on an off) since about 6pm on the 18th May. I'd gone to bed that night after having 'twinges' all evening, which had subsided for a couple of hours and then come back in the middle of the night. We went in to the hospital at 6am, and I really wasn't very far along. So it lasted all day and all evening until he eventually made his appearance a shade before midnight. I can only really remember feeling exhausted, and I couldn't sleep when I got to the ward despite being exhausted as my brain was weirdly wired, I was probably over tired. I was starving too and no one gave me anything to eat. I hadn't eaten for nearly 36 hours by the time I got some breakfast. And someone else in the ward was snoring I remember. I'm not going to go into an account of my labour, I was glad to have 'done it on my own' with a minimal of 'stuff being done to me', but its was tough after. My main memory is of him being weighed the morning we were going home and he'd lost 10% of his birth weight. They made a bit of a fuss about it and I didn't know any better and it freaked me out and I was very upset. Then I couldn't tell anyone I was so upset as I was convinced someone would take the baby away from me. So you pretend everything is ok. That's all history now and I'm lucky to have a healthy and happy son who's doing well in his life and enjoying living in his own lovely flat.

Monday 18 May Daughter went off this morning, a little after 9am, to go to work. A proper full time permanent job, giving a good salary and benefits including a pension and free local train travel. Can't be bad for a Monday morning. what an enormous relief. She is happy (if on a bit of a roller coaster) as Christian is now living here, and they will both be working from home; she is actually training for the next couple of weeks. I made dinner this evening for the 3 of us – meatballs (home made of course) cooked in a tomato sauce. They went out for a couply walk afterward, I didn't suggest I joined them I had an hours walk with Sarah and Kathy this afternoon. The temperature was perfect, warm and sunny but not too hot. I have made the mistake of being booked to work tomorrow and its supposed to be hot. It was so nice to just get up when I was ready this morning. I did have a migraine left over from yesterday but tea, meds and more sleep fixed it.

Sunday May 17th. Today it is 5 months to the day to when I will be 58. Its worse than having a 30 year old son. We were well staffed today – weekends are either a nightmare or really ok. and again today it was really ok. I finished everything by lunchtime and I offered to finish early – they can mark me doing less hours I don't care – do got my afternoon back. I saw a real life covid + patient today, however she had no symptoms and she was 98 and very confused. She had a fall a week or so ago and been in hospital, and come back to the care home, and I was looking at her head wound. I had to snip some of her hair off to get the dressing off, but it was fine and she didn't cough at all. I wore all my stuff including eye goggles. Downside was came home with thick head whch really hasn't cleared despite coffe, tea ad lie down. I had to get card for Matthew – been very disorganised mum and left it late to get it posted, but I've put it in post at sorting office so hoping Royal Mail will come up trumps and deliver Tuesday for him. Natalie has cleaned upstairs in honour of Christian moving in with us today and even changed all the bath mats and washed me – its a miracle :–) She's gone to pick him up and I've just heard them arrive back downstairs. Its going to be interesting to see how this pans out. Well, I hope. I'm going to bed soon with some meds, I need to sleep.