What is the W Word?

I wrote and submitted this to a writing challenge at my writing group - Vale Royal Writers Group - in January 2021.   I actually was in the top three finalists for the competition.  What I found interesting is that  while this is nonfiction, the other two finalists were a fiction, with made up characters dealing with the lockdowns in various ways which I think did illustrate ways people were coping - but I thought all three pieces sounded similar.  My voice here was similar to the fictional voices in the other stories.  I still have a very difficult time creating a fictional story, it does not come easy to me, so I rarely try.

 What is the W Word?

In January, 2020, I had a dream that I only understood later, when circumstances had changed my life and the rest of the world.  I often have dreams or hear a statement being made just as I’m waking up and like to think of these as messages from a higher source.  In this dream, I was told “You will get through this coming period, by staying focused on embroidery and w----”.   I didn’t catch the second word but did know it started with a W.

I spent January carrying on with usual routines and lining up a number of workshops and courses that I could look forward to in the year.  I even signed up for a writing week at Swanwick, something I’d done a few years back.  I also had some embroidery or art focused workshops and residentials.  I made plans for writing projects and had a goal of completing at least one story a month for the rest of the year.

 On the 20th of March, a Monday, I took my car into the dealership for an emergency repair.   I had a service/MOT appointment for Thursday but it suddenly had a big leak so I called and even though they had no time available, they agreed to let me bring it in and they’d check it when they could.   I walked home the two miles.  The next day, I get a phone call and am told that yes, my car had a leak on the fuel line but they wouldn’t be able to get parts until Thursday, however, they were closing in compliance for the lockdown that had just been announced by the Prime Minister and I could leave my car in their parking lot if I wanted, until they reopened.  Well, I didn’t want that fuel tank to empty out in my driveway so I quickly agreed to leave it there.   It stayed there for two months.   When I went back in May, the erstwhile friendly lobby had been rearranged into a sterile blank space, losing all the seating area and coffee machine and newspapers and tv - and I had to wash my hands and stand behind plastic barriers and follow arrows taped on the floor, while waiting to pick up the keys.  The place smelled Very Clean and I immediately started having choking fits which brought glares from the receptionist, with whom I’d developed a good relationship with over the years.   I’d stumble outside to try and calm down and then go back in and start up again.   As coughing, by now, had become an evil alert to others that you probably have Covid, I feared being wrongly judged.  I only later realised that I was probably reacting to all the alcohol in the antibacterial solutions, which hung heavily in the air and being allergic to alcohol, this was setting up my coughing fits.  Mortified, I finally got my car keys and fled, fearing Paula would give me a call and politely request that I never come back.  

I hadn’t really missed my car because my husband had been furloughed in April and so he and his company car were now a permanent fixture around the house.   His furlough continued on into the summer and I had had to shift a few of my routines around to work around this constant figure pretty much always sitting around the house now.  

The cancellations for all the things I’d been looking forward to began to roll in.   This was disappointing and infuriating and only added to the oppression of this frozen time laying over everyone.   The last cancellation came on my birthday, the 10th of June - when Swanwick notified me they were folding their August plans.   Big slashes showed up on my calendar that sits in the hall.   One by one, all the things I had programmed into my life to look forward to - were gone and my husband’s inactivity did not help my mood.

I remembered my dream and thought “aha! This was what the Guide in the dream was referring to!” and kept up my focus on various embroidery projects I had going.  And began to wonder what the W word was.   By now I’m eager to grab a hold of anything I can to fill my empty days, weeks, months.  Keep the focus on creating beauty and never mind what is going on out there.

I discovered quickly that the W was not going to be Working out, as my gym was shut for the lockdown and a lethargy hit around doing anything much at home. 

I hoped that it might be Walking.  This was an activity that was being greatly encouraged by the government and all sorts of people were out walking, it became a Thing.   I used to walk, all of my life.   When I started going to university at 18, I walked two miles each way and kept up that kind of walking routine for the rest of my life.   Until about five years ago.  My diabetes began to affect my feet and while I’ve recovered from some truly crippling times, I’d been getting the impression that it wasn’t safe to put the miles into my feet anymore like I’ve always loved.  This has been a big grief for me to deal with and that is why I was excited when I walked home from dropping the car off.   I was hoping this meant maybe I could start up a walking routine.   I went out about three more times, there are good walks straight out of my door - along canals, down to the flashes - and I was eager to get back to it.   I had a fantastic encounter with a swan on one of these walks - who crash landed near me - and as it sat there with dirt on it’s magnificent white breast, shaking it’s head, I told it “I know exactly how you feel”.  I was able to encourage it, once it recovered, to follow me slowly up the road, back to the lake.  We became friends - but that was the last time I got to go for a walk as I began to get “no’s” again, on doing this activity.   So the W word was not Walking.

Maybe it was Writing!   I’d started writing and cleaning up various stories from my life and then I signed up for a course in April where a teacher gave us a prompt every day and made encouraging comments on all of our efforts.   I managed to do about half of the assignments and then wham, a block rose up which wiped writing out of my life.   I gradually even stopped the morning pages I’ve done fairly regularly for many years now.    Nope, the W word was not Writing.

In July, my husband got a call informing him he was being made redundant after 30 years with his company.   So W for Working for pay has now left my life, even though it wasn’t something I was doing anyway.   But I have always tried to set up a schedule where I had ‘work projects’ and differentiated between the weekdays and weekends like anyone with a career would.   Now having an inactive husband and an empty calendar and days drifting, drifting by without a routine to hold onto a structure - nope, the W word is not work.   I couldn’t even do gardening and my chores have trailed off to bare minimum.   Cooking dinners was a creative bit of fun for a while but then that fizzled as well.   A lethargy has taken over.

Maybe the W word is Watching!   I’ve watched the people walking by, I’ve watched all the isolating, disassociating changes made everywhere I go - the library, the supermarkets, the schools, the shops.   I’ve watched in shock as people doing their jobs turn customers away, refuse to associate with you in any meaningful way, glare or look fearfully at you over the masks.  I’ve watched as every single company I have anything to do with - is turned into a fumbling, dysfunctional mess that stumbles along, and increasingly, collapses.  I’ve watched confusion, chaos, despair, loss on every side.   I’ve watched the world through the newspapers and social media.   Haven’t ruled this one out.

What about Waiting?  Could the W word be simply Waiting?   Along with myself, everyone is just waiting for something to change, for this thing that makes absolutely no sense, to come to an end.  Everyone uses the phrase “when things get back to normal” around things they want to do.   If you want to stay mentally healthy - you better have some good skills around how to function while waiting.    I think I have those, having built up through my life of waiting for life to happen.  And now here we are - life is happening - and it’s just Waiting!!   I think, now in January, 2021, a year after the dream, I’ve figured it out.  Wait on!

29th August, again

 I've been wailing for some time about how the writing thing has completely seized up once again, this time for months, but have instead just focused on my embroidery projects.  But then the growing embroidery interests also lost it's fizz and appeal, just in the last month.  The one thing I have been managing to do, like in the olden days of my constant transition lifestyle, is a tapestry which makes no creative demands on me.  It's like the cross stitches I used to do but it doesn't have a cross stitch - all the stitches run one direction.   I listen to podcasts while working on it and that has become a favourite activity.

Today, late afternoon, I was browsing on FB on my phone and the "look what you posted last year" thing came up and reminded me that last year I had posted a blog - and noticed that it was on the same date as the last blog I'd written two years before as well.  Well.   I just have to continue the trend, don't I?  Hopefully FB will continue to remind me because otherwise, it would have been a two year thing and that's it.  Maybe it should be.

I'm sitting here in a house which has people in it, which is unusual anymore, as Katherine and Michael are here for the weekend.   We had just finished the family phone call which has started happening on Saturdays since the lockdown.  Katherine and I are usually in our separate houses in England and Scotland, AnneMarie is seven hours behind in Utah and Erica is eight hours in Oregon, so we are getting ready for dinner and they are getting up for the day when we usually talk.  We usually have four little screens on the House Party app - but today!! we only had two!   Because Katherine is here with me and Erica is visiting AnneMarie.  They called from the Leishman cabin up in the back hills of Utah, where they are spending the weekend.

This year is 2020 and it is truly doing many people's heads in.   Last year I wrote about the Fed Ex and postal system, and a proper rant it was.  I'm still fuming and have managed to avoid using Fed Ex ever since.  I determined at the time to not use them again - and get out of the US mail system box that we've had for ten years too.  I'm about ready to make that shift, finally, a year later, due to the antics I got up to this last month.   

On 29th of July - exactly a month ago, Dave got the call from work where he had been on furlough for four months by then - and told he was being made redundant.  Fired.  From the job he has held for 30 years while living in three countries and two states.   On the same day, my daughter Anne-Marie sent a link to the latest house in Utah she had looked at, saying she really really liked this one, pictures didn't do it justice.  I didn't get this until the next morning, of course, but thought the timing was interesting.   I've had her looking for a house in Salt Lake City area, for a few months, after getting some strong directions it would be a good idea to buy one there.  Even though Dave and I have no interest in actually living in Utah again.  It was also time to get all of our household belongings which have been in storage for 20 years, back out into the daylight.  So her instructions had been to find a house which had a big garage or some sort of space where a bunch of furniture and boxes could be fitted.

I was actually on my first trip since the start of lockdown in April.  I was going up to Scotland to finally visit Katherine and get some help on starting a tweed jacket with a seamstress I'd met up there the year before.   I had planned to be gone for a week.   So I leave my stunned husband, reeling with his job shock plus pictures of a house I was thinking looked good, to his own devices and company.   This is after four months of constantly being at home together, not leaving the house, sometimes for days on end.

While I was in Scotland we continued discussing the house and made contact with the real estate agent, who had probably given up hope that this young woman he'd been showing around houses for months was ever going to come through, and started sending separate messages to which he always quickly responded.  The next Thursday, exactly a week after Dave had gotten The Phone Call of Redundancy,  before I'd even come back home, we put an offer in on this house.  I drove home the next day, my head really beginning to spin.

We stayed focused on all the ins and outs and questions and demands and decisions of directions to go in - on buying this house for the next two weeks - and I didn't do much else.  Dave had a meltdown when he realised it was a 'duplex' or as they say in England, a 'semi-detached' - after we'd put the offer in and were doing negotiations.   Interestingly, while there has always been a stigma attached to duplexes - they are usually rentals for one thing - in the US, there is no such stigma to them in England.  They are not as valuable as a stand alone house, of course, but they have more prestige than terrace housing and I've even seen mansions and very large houses built in this fashion here.   So, while we have the English mentality about them now, it was another thing to suddenly be facing buying one in the US.  But we got past that block and a couple of other concerns were alleviated and the more we looked at this house, the more appealing it became.   It had four bedrooms - which was one more than I'd been hoping for and then half the basement was completely unfinished with just concrete walls.   And a perfect size into which to stash everything from storage.  It was the weirdest thing - a complete house, with new features and decorated, furnished kitchen, carpets, blinds, etc - and a big empty storage space almost designed for purpose for us!  Another fun thing was it was exactly AnneMarie's age and had been built in 1996.

On 19th of August, we signed and sent the money but it didn't get registered until the 20th.   So on the 20th of August 2020 - we buy a house in the face of Dave losing his job.   You can't make this up and be believed!    On the 25th, which I thought would be Dave's last pay day (it won't be though), we had some movers clear out the storage unit and dump it in the basement.   Erica and Brian (and Baci, their dog), drove into town the same day.

I now have an address in the US which will become my new mailing address and I can finally get rid of the mailbox service which has driven me nuts several times through the years.   I have a real presence in the states again, rather than a fake one and a deep storage one.

So while on the surface, it looks like nothing much is going on in my life, major tectonic plates have been moving underground.  I think my body is slowly processing all this, thankfully in a way which is not overwhelming me, and that's why it has been okay to just be laying around all day, rather uselessly, but also why there is no energy for creating or writing or handiwork.

We've also realised that my life has dramatically changed for the last four decade changes - due to Dave's work.  His company sent him to Egypt in 1990 and then to England in 2000.   In 2010, he got fired from the American expat system and moved his status from US to UK based, even though it was still with the same company.  He got a big paycut in the process and we applied for and got British nationality.   And now, here in 2020 - still not sure how this is going to play out but his company has forced another big move on us.  And so it goes.   If I don't write again for another year, you can be assured it will be from an entirely different place.   That's all I know.   

My Guinea Fowl Best Friends

I had a pair of guinea fowl move into my back garden and live for a couple of years in about 2015.  They were a couple who were devoted to each other and I spent much time observing and even being involved in their routines.  They first appeared in the field near a small lake out back and took about a week to gravitate toward our house and yard where they finally settled.  They can get the silliest expressions ever on their face when excited, with a kind of goggle eyed, jiggle around on a bouncing neck which I think keeps them doomed to disregard when smartness of birds are considered - but I found them to be quite savvy and with defined personalities. 

They would arise with the dawn and settle into feeding across the large, wild patch that sits out back, mown occasionally but never otherwise cared for.  We first noticed them sneaking up onto the patio to look at the tv through the window and eventually, they became comfortable enough that the patio became part of their routine, even though they never let me get near them outside.   I never fed them. After a munch around for a few hours, they would come up and have a groom and nap right outside the window next to where I had breakfast. They would murmur and chat with each other while fluffing and smoothing various feathers.  I put a chair there, so they had a place to roost next to the window and I often had a meal with a headless bird sitting next to me as they tuck their heads in under their back feathers for the nap. At some point in the day, they would gravitate around to the front of the house where they’d spend some time pecking on the frosted window (and wooden ledge) next to the front door and chirping.   They were definitely as fascinated with watching us as we were them and after some months, I considered us to be friends. 

We grew concerned for them during the winter months, especially after we found out they were originally from hot climates (Africa) but they somehow kept right on going even when it was freezing or blowing up a raging windstorm.  They tended to hover around the house even more as they drew comfort from all the heat that would escape our very drafty house. They lived through two winters with us.

 In the late afternoon, after one last graze session, they would fly up into the lower branches of the birch trees at the back of the garden and settle in by sundown to sleep.   This wasn’t always a simple process as sometimes they’d jostle and change places and even branches and one would try and snuggle up and the other would say “not tonight dear” but they usually ended up quite close in the end, and headless, go to sleep, safe from foxes. 

         They were good guardians who would start screeching if visitors came around but luckily, this wasn’t often.   However, one day, the big black vicious guard dog from next door got loose and bounded into our yard, chasing the birds.  He’d long been frustrated with having to merely watch while they grew accustomed to grazing closer and closer to his fence line and was determined to pounce one.  They started squawking and flying all over the place and I ran out and started screeching with them and trying to drive the dog away. My foot landed squarely in a gift he deposited for us.   After the commotion was over, one of the birds was missing and I sat sadly with the remaining one, watching and hoping, for a couple of hours until he re-appeared. They would actually nuzzle and greet each other with great affection at such times. 

  Wind storms and then winter when it would get really cold, really made me worry but they seemed to get through them.   One time there was such a fierce wind storm with rain bulleting down that the bird (she was a widow by then), was unable to stand on the patio and I watched her being tipped almost upside down before she gave up and ran for the trees.  I fretted all night and was so relieved when she appeared unscathed the next morning, I almost went out and nuzzled her myself.

  The larger one, the dominant white, turned out to be female and the smaller grey was the chap and we learned this in a most interesting way.   One night, after sunset, my husband told me the birds were out back acting really peculiar. This being after their usual bedtime, I came running.  We have a large backyard - maybe a hundred yards wide and the two birds were utilizing the whole space. They were running and flying low, back and forth, taking turns in chasing each other.  The white bird would settle and let the grey catch up and then it would try and pounce on her at which point, she would squawk and peck him and run off. Then he would circle around bewildered and she’d come up to him and peck him again and run off and he’d give chase and the whole thing kept going on and on - for at least 45 MINUTES.  It finally grew too dark for us to see anything but was continuing. We were in hysterics with the show but didn’t know what was going on. I checked google and found a man who owned a lot of guinea fowl and was describing their habits. He then went on to try and explain their mating habits but confessed he’d never actually seen it so didn’t have exact details.  We were watching them try and have sex!! I sent him a message to say that the reason he’d never seen them was because they’d chosen the darkness, after dusk, to do the deed, when normally, they’d be up in their roost asleep. We don’t know if they were ever successful - didn’t seem to be on our watch - and no little chicks ever appeared. It was a sad, sad day for me and the white one, when the grey one disappeared for good.  She actually carried on for a few more months alone and I found her to be a great example for me, who was struggling myself, on how we need to just do this sometimes. And then she went too. Gone but never Forgotten.

Missing Mail and Mild Meltdowns

     Fed Ex has officially done my head in.   I've had an envelope carrying our mail from a US mailbox centre to our address here in UK, every month for years now.  Like clockwork, around the 20th of the month, an envelope gets shipped, which I receive a few days later.   Sometimes I haven't bothered to open them - knowing they are just catalogues and boring documents from banks.  There have sometimes been up to four envelopes stacked on floor, waiting, waiting, at times, until I'm 'in the mood'.
    In June, however, I had a small package coming through which I was highly anticipating.  It was a deck of cards which I had pre-ordered in January, after finding out the author was going to only order enough to fill pre-orders and a few more after that and then no more.  It was going to be a limited edition work of art and she sent emails, long chatty emails describing the printing process, any delays (for example, don't expect to get anything done in China in February due to their New Year shutdowns), how she was naming each deck, several times throughout spring, all of which I enjoyed.  The package was delivered to my mailbox address - I saw it! - but it missed that month's delivery by two days, so I had to wait another month for it to come to the UK.   And oh dear!  this was going to plunk it straight down in the middle of a Mercury Retrograde.   I began to fret.   I looked at the photo of it in the mail centre a couple of times, just to soothe myself.
    On the 22nd of July, it was shipped from the US, arrived in UK on the 23rd, cleared Customs and Duty - and disappeared.  This is what I see on the 25th when I finally check the tracking number.  I sign up for status updates.   I get an email the next morning saying the package would be delivered that day by noon.   I sit around the house all day, missing some necessary errands, until 3 pm, but it never comes.   I call a number given on the website and get told someone would put a search on it.  They couldn't explain my status update email stating delivery because it obviously hadn't been seen since the 23rd.  It was explained that the status update wasn't really connected to what was actually happening anyway.
    The next week, I call again and this time am given a name and a phone number of an investigator - whose number is never, ever answered.   I call the first number again and get told they were still searching.   I get another status update on the 2nd of August which got me excited until I noticed that it was saying the package would definitely be delivered by noon - on the 29th of July.   This was only proof that yes, the system is definitely disconnected from reality.
    I call the following week - this would be around the 5th of August now and get told they are not going to search anymore, it is lost and I needed to get the sender to make a claim for the value.   I write a note to the mailbox centre advising them of this and ask that they make a claim for not only the $20 value of the package, but also the postage getting it to them, plus their charges for sending it to me - over $70 in all.   I'm devastated.   All these months of anticipation for naught.   Being a firm believer in Mercury Retrograde and it's effects - I've tracked that for years and have learned to duck and dive and come out the other end fairly unscathed,  for the most part.   I used to train my employees that I would not be overly distressed during MR if the orders came in wrong and the till dysfunctional every day and miscommunication ran rampant.   But this one was out of my hands.
     On Saturday, the 10th of August I get a letter from Fed Ex, which was relating to me that there was a Customs and VAT charge of £34.81 on this missing package, please pay at this site.  No information on who to talk to about this.  Just pay now or we hold your package.   Apparently, someone in Customs and Duty had assessed the package as having £95 freight charge, plus $20 value of the cards and a £12 clearance charge that they like to stick on packages incurring a duty, just because they can.   This shouldn't even have been flagged for ANY taxes as $20 is just about the limit that they allow in (£15 actually).   They like to add the shipping charge to the value of package charge to inflate their tax haul, which I've always thought is WRONG and evil.  There, I said it.   Of course, the shipping charge to get anything from one country to another is going to be high - often higher than the value of the package itself.   And then I bet there is an agreement out there that if one pays to ship a package from one country to another - the postage should cover it to the door.   So I've always figured this £12 'clearance' charge (used to be called delivery from customs to your door charge) must be illegal.   And that wasn't a typo on the £ sign on the £95 freight charge - which is just more proof it is wrong as it should be a dollar charge, having come from the USA.
     I hit the roof and am an emotional wreck all weekend until I can call on Monday, the 12th, to question this.  And maybe the package has been stuck in customs as I suspected all this time?  I get this guy on the phone that within about two sentences, I can tell he will not help me.  He refused to listen to me - and when I began protesting that he listen to what I'm saying, he started parroting me saying I wasn't listening to him.  All he was saying was that there was no need to pay attention to letter as the package was considered lost.  I wanted WAR, I wanted someone to admit a huge wrong had been done here and clear it and maybe look again.   I began asking him to forward me to the investigatory team and inexplicably, he kept refusing.   Finally, after several minutes of this, with him having taken my identifying details at the beginning and been looking at my file throughout, he asked if my name was Brenda, said he hadn't HEARD my name when I'd first called and to tell him my name again.  I stopped talking in shock, refused to give him my name and he proceeded to call me Brenda several more times.   I sat there, completely silent for a moment, as my mind tried to process what crazy hole I've just fallen into and how to get out?  I finally burst out with the genius mediation tool of "You're NUTS!"  at which point this guy primly says "If you are going to use foul language on me, I will hang up"   I say "I'm not cursing here - I'm saying you are nuts!"  He continued to call me Brenda but backed off his need to hang up on me and I finally, finally thought to say "I sure hope this conversation IS being recorded because you are so out of order" and he suddenly decided transferring me would be a good idea and the phone went silent for a minute and another guy picks up who knows my name and my story. (by the way - someone later told me that they are not allowed to hang up on a customer so we figure he was trying to force me to do the deed.)
     This new guy also started arguing that there was no need to pay attention to the letter as, the package was lost anyway but finally began to listen to my complaints.  Finally admitted that the freight charge was wrong - and oh, for that matter, there should never have been a VAT charge applied in the first place because the package value was under the limit.  But never mind that - the package is lost.  He took the whole thing off the account though.  And knew who he was talking to throughout.   I was only halfway satisfied though - this is an issue I've grumbled mightily about for the whole time I've lived in England (19 years and counting) and I want the system overturned.  I make sure and never order anything from overseas and just stockpile at a relative's house until my next visit usually. But this guy can't help with that.
     I've also fallen into a fight of sorts with the US mail company during this time, but that's another story.  However, it adds to the confusion and stress I'm dealing with over various other things.
      So I'm slowly resigning myself to the idea that I'm not going to get my precious deck of cards after all and that Fed Ex as a company is joining the crowd of broken companies in my mind.

     And now it's time for the next month's package to come.   And it doesn't come.  And on the 27th of August, I get an email from my US mail centre, to contact Fed Ex as they are having problems delivering to me.  Turns out that on two tries out, they can't find my house.   I go through a loop again, several calls to two different numbers, running into nonsense I won't bore you with again - but notice the package doesn't come the next day.  So I call again and this time, get a guy named Louis, who seems intelligent, on the ball and competently cuts through the problem, says they need a phone number (I wasn't asked for this yesterday), wonders with me if the giant cornfield in front of my house (blocking even fleeting views from the road) is causing part of the problem?  Puts it on notes.  Assures me it will come tomorrow, apologises for the hassle.  He is SUCH a relief to talk to I finally complain to him about previous experiences - like being called Brenda - and he apologises about that as well - and says "hopefully this clears up everything for you Shauna" - making a point to use my name, wasn't that nice?
       I rang off and started back into my day, my life, my house and after a few more minutes found that I was standing tall, that I was feeling competent again, that I was feeling like I DO have the ability to cut through to solutions, to take on the world again - instead of this unstable morass that I've been feeling like for over a month (I've had some other issues going on as well).   I mused, in astonishment, that all it took to get me to this point was having a redeeming conversation with an intelligent person who easily set things in order.

Cat Lives

Originally written in 2016 but forgotten in drafts.

     I recently had to take the big decision to put our 12 year old cat to sleep.  Which, I've discovered, has left her constant companion son,  a year younger, in a very lonely state and I've been having to contend with a cat who normally kept his distance,  now sitting on my feet any chance he gets and running to be near me, most of the time I'm around the house.   We took Stinkerbelle to the vet one evening, said good-bye, tears streaming down our faces, then drove home and dug a hole in the front garden, in the dark.  I'm holding the flashlight and Dave is digging and I said "if anyone were to see us, they'd think we were digging a grave" and he said "we are!"  We've had many different animals through the years but this was our first time of having to turn to the Good Death, which is what Euthanasia means.
    So my mind has been full of the antics and personality quirks this cat has entertained and exasperated us with throughout the years (always lived up to her name, for example) and then I remember the series of calamities we had with her shortly after she joined us.
    We basically live in a farm yard and when we first arrived, there were a lot of feral cats skulking around the place.  We found that they'd hover nearby, hoping to be fed but never wanting actual contact with us or to come into the house.   Then one summer there was an exception to this rule as a beautiful, fluffy little kitten showed up and stuck determinedly near the back door, venturing into the house if the door was left open.  So we fed her in the house and she let us pick her up for a cuddle and showed no interest in heading back outside.  She remained a house cat and never was interested in being stuck outdoors - she knew her origins and wanted to get as far from that as she could.  To give an idea of how many cats I could compare her behaviour with I stopped feeding the 'strays' the day I came home and found 15 cats sitting across the driveway waiting for me.  None of them would come closer than five feet though and none would dare venture into the house.
     After a few months of domesticity with our friendly little kitten, I knew we needed to take her to a vet.  At the time, I was working in Newton-le-Willows, which was 20 miles away, so I thought it would be more convenient to take her to a vet there, rather than closer to where we lived.   I'd had a bad experience with a more local vet some years before and was needing to find a new one anyway.   I didn't even have the idea yet, of getting a cat carrier and didn't think it necessary as she was such a sweet little thing.   I made an appointment with a vet and co-opted my 8 year old child out of school to at least hold the kitten and off we went.   Rather quickly, the kitten got panicky and squirmy and Anne-Marie was able to barely manage to hang on to her.   We arrived at the vet after what felt like a very long time and then were made to wait at least 20 minutes in the waiting room.  It was about this time that the kitten was so panic stricken that she started having diarrhea attacks and pretty soon both Anne-Marie and I were covered in this as we were passing her back and forth in our increasing dismay and inability to figure out what to do.   (yes, I realise I'm not looking very good here  by now, on several levels).  We finally got called into the vet and managed to leave some poo streams in there as well.  He checked her over and said she would need to get an eye infection treated before she could be vaccinated and sent us on our way without getting what we'd come for.  The kitten was frantic and by now, so was I  - starting to wonder how I'd manage the long trek home.  After getting in the car, I put Anne-Marie in the back seat with her after which she made an extraordinary lunge and disappeared into the back of the station wagon that I had at the time.  This happened to be full of flattened cardboard boxes from the shop, waiting to be taken to the recycling center.   Stinkerbelle cowered in one cubby hole she found, where Anne-Marie could at least see her and I decided that was probably the best place and proceeded to drive very slowly home.   Again, it took another eternity (we are up to three of those now, just in this one occasion).   We were finally only 10 minutes away from home, end goal in sight, when we reached a traffic calming point where you have to weave around a blockage in the road which has narrowed it down to one lane, taking turns with oncoming traffic.  I happened to be between two big lorries and we had been able to set off from a full stop, were only up to about 10 mph when the truck in front of me slammed on his brakes.  I managed to stop as well but the big truck behind me did not and in slow motion, gently but thoroughly smashed the back of my car in.  If it had been another car, it wouldn't have done much damage but because the truck was so large - there was no hope.  The cat disappeared, screams were heard - probably from my daughter, maybe from me.  I jumped out to deal with the very apologetic young man who was horrified - and the fault of the whole incident - the lorry in front of me who had slammed on his brakes, drove on oblivious.  We quickly exchanged details and my car still being drive-able, we continued on, even more gingerly than before and finally, half an hour later, we arrived home.   After pulling all the cardboard out we found our completely traumatised kitty and carrying her into the house, further imposed more trauma on her by giving her a bath before stripping ourselves, showering and changing.   I got Anne-Marie to school only 4 hours late.   The kitten escaped back out of the house later that day and disappeared for four more, obviously having a serious think about whether she wanted anything to do with people again.
      When she came back, she was not the same, being much more fearful, skittish and less inclined to a cuddle.  This lasted for at least another year before I discovered flower remedies - like Rescue Remedy - made especially for animals and one was to help recover and soothe from trauma.  This helped her to re-adjust and she resumed being a happy cat again.  And I went out and bought a cat carrier.  And lined it with a soft blanky.  And found a local vet who we stayed with until the end.   They even sent a condolence card after her passing, which I found incredibly sweet and thoughtful.

Poetry Reading

One inky black night in December,

the 11th day, falling on a Friday

We gathered round a table brightly lit from above

In a mostly dark, mostly empty, rambling old school.

Not 13, as a coven, nor 12, as disciples,

But 11 of us, men and women sharing only a keen love of words.

We sat unmoving for over an hour

Faces turned to the pages before us

Poring over One Poem comprising six stanzas,

nine lines each, covering two pages

No rhyme nor reason

than the same number 

of syllables on

equivalent lines

of each verse all told.

But even that did not hold the ballet of a Sonnet

- first two lines of 14, three of 9s, a six, a seven,

but no elevens.

Each person spoke once, a few, more than that,

some, quite often.

Moving line by line through astounding pastoral visions,

Plumbing the depths and heights

Everyone notices different treasures, connections,

delights but never dismay,

Dylan Thomas once crafted Fern Hill

Placing words in order of perfection

We read of Gold and Green and Time and him

the like never seen before or since.

One poem, the magic flashed and glimmered.

We left, back into the dark night, forever changed.

And now - here's the poem followed by a portrait of my nephew Quinn, on his birthday, which I think perfectly illustrates it:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves 

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns 

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I as huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Our of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

ASKED for a STORY on DESSERTS

     When I first moved to England I discovered a popular cake here was called Spotted Dick and as I had an Uncle Dick, straight away began to send items with this name on it to him.   Eventually, I found out that one can buy some varieties of cakes here, in a can, just like a can of pineapple slices or mushroom soup, so I determined to send one of these to him.  I went to my local supermarket and hunted all over the place for one of these cakes in a can, which I had seen before, with no luck.   I finally had to ask a shop assistant for help and at first, he was perplexed about what I was asking for and we struggled in our communication for some time.   We finally reached the point where he figured out that I what I wanted was a 'pudding in a tin' - and with that, he promptly set off to show me exactly where they were to be found.  (hint, not with the canned fruit and veg).   In England, pudding is the generic term for all desserts, including cakes and ice creams and donuts and meringues - not just the sweet, thick, custard-like dish that it is in the states.

     I attempted to make a glorious chocolate cake for one daughter, a couple of years after moving to England, which is when I discovered a few processes were somewhat different than my home-economic classes in high school had taught me.  One was the frosting part and another was a big difference in HOW things are measured, which has taken me another ten years to figure out.   I was going to take this memento of love to her class at school, in the afternoon, on her birthday, which happens to be the day now established as Earth Day, the 22nd of April.  Americans, having come up with the commemoration, have been enthusiastically creating big festivities around it for some years now and we got in on a couple of years of this before moving here.   So, after dropping the girls off to school that morning, I started off making the cake.  I'd worked my way through a very different recipe for frosting, involving cooking and separating and mixing, before discovering I was missing an ingredient, so after setting this aside I ran to town to buy it.  At this time, I discovered I was low on petrol so I stopped off at the station to fill up and then had driven halfway home before remembering I hadn't paid!!   I whipped the car around and returned to the station, only to discover I'd placed my wallet (called purse, in UK) on top of the car while filling it - and drove off with it still there.  The clerks had it all on their CCTV camera and were lovely towards me considering I'd been caught stealing.   But now I couldn't pay so I gave them my information, with promise to return with money later, and returned home in a right state about it.  I began working on the cake again - and discovered the frosting had become as hard as a rock.  I didn't remember my old butter/powdered sugar recipes doing that.   I could not get it to soften, in any way and I no longer had the ingredients, nor the will to start over.  I was struggling to glop it on somehow anyway - this cake had extra eggs, sour cream, chocolate chips, whatever I could think of to make it very rich - and it was becoming a terrible, choppy looking mess when the phone rang and a nice policeman told me he had my wallet, ready for me to pick up.   I couldn't understand how they'd tracked me because I didn't have any id, such as phone numbers or addresses in it, but thank goodness.   It turned out that as I had made a turn around a median island in a roundabout, which was covered with a floral display and happened to have a gardener working on it at that moment - my wallet had flown off the car, right in front of him and he had turned it in.  (pretty good, for an Earth Day event, actually).   My grieving despair turned into delight and I decided I had to take this big, dark brown mess of a cake to my daughter's class as I had promised.   So I marched in, announced it was a "Mud cake" in honour of Earth Day and everyone was happy.   Apparently it tasted so good that people wanted the recipe!   Made.With.Love.  despite all else.

     It was about ten years before I dared to try again.   A couple of years ago, I decided to try making a cake for my youngest daughter, before it was too late and she'd be gone from her childhood home forever.  I had just obtained a book of birthday cake recipes - mainly for it's symbolic, drool inducing, eye candy, never thinking I'd actually create from it and told her to choose one for me to make.  She chose a stunning - actually, they are all stunning - angel food cake which was a swirl of multiple colours in the pink, yellow, orange range.  Probably called Sunrise Angel Delight - no, that couldn't be - Angel Delight is another English pudding concoction, I think.   So I gulped and arranged with a friend who lived clear on the other side of town to borrow her oven, as I'd done before and gathered the ingredients.  What I didn't do, what I should have done, was to make the whole thing at her house, along with the baking.  I set to work, whipping into a viable condition - 18 egg whites (successfully separated out of maybe 20 or 22) - the number of which made my head spin.  I then carefully divided it out into 3 or 4 parts which were even more carefully coloured before being swirled delicately back together and gently set into the pan.   Then, rather than immediately putting into a hot oven, as directed - I drove five miles through congested town traffic to my friend's house and then waited to warm up the oven before baking it.  I would not recommend this method.  The cake, starting with great promise, sadly melted down during the lengthy interim and came out rather flat and dense.  It was still beautiful though and tasted wonderful, showing us the essence of what could have been, so I managed to be a 'good mom', in the end, although a bit flushed and scattered.  Again, Made.With.Love.