CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR 2021/2022

 Christmas 2021 and the New Year

In my last post I wrote that my partner, Pauline, was home from hospital after an unexpected complication following her hysterectomy. Once home, she just took things easy and we prepared for a simple Christmas - no visiting and no visitors. I saw a frock in the House of Fraser sale and treated myself to it for my birthday. When I said as such to P, her reply was that she would buy it as her present to me. I think that was the first ever thing she has bought for Nikki!

Days came and went, with expensive orders being put in for some good food and wine. I continued my weekly video chats with Pamela and Gia, although Gia went off line at Christmas (a neighbour, apparently disgruntled at the quality of the local fibre optic IP, cut a section out of the cable when they moved away!) Christmas was fine, but two days later P was in acute abdominal pain again. This time we went to QEQM A+E and she was admitted for a couple of days. The problem was a 'kink' in the bowel which was left to see if it would settle down. It did, fortunately. There was talk of her 'overdoing it' at Christmas ... too much food on a weakened system. P was discharged on NYE. In the hospital she had been on 'free fluids' and a doctor mentioned she should try an keep to a low fibre diet for a couple of weeks. As previously, there was no post-discharge advice in writing, so google came to the rescue and I could check what the NHS considered 'good' and 'bad' in terms of low fibre. Now (24/01) she is being eased back into what we normally have, although mushrooms (especially shiitake) are being avoided and other fibrous foods are cut up very small. It's been a challenge for me, especially as we had to try and find ways of using the excess Christmas food up, but I've become a dab hand at creating different  sauces which she can have strained over fish and meat. Pasta has become popular, as well, which reduces the kitchen workload.

As for me ... there is a concatenation of stress. P (we had started living together way back in 1977) moved in fulltime at the beginning of the 2020 lockdown. My house, which I've owned since about 1997, is quite small and very old, and I had been living alone in it since 2003, despite is having virtually no modern conveniences. Why? Partly because P is a hoarder. Even when we were not 'together' (2003-2019) she has had a room in the house full of 'things' as well as half the garage space. Since 2019 I have been trying to encourage her to clear the space as the house has major structural problems and I want to put it into auction. The apartment she was living in (and we were until 2003) was getting filled with 'things' (one of the causes for the separation). Since then it has been completely 'filled' and she has been desperate that I do not see it. In 2021, the heating there broke down and her embarrassment has been such that she could not bring herself to get a heating engineer in. It remains like that, almost a year later. In the meanwhile my house continues its slow decline (literally) and that causes me great angst. I think that this year I shall have to spend several thousand pounds on roof work (and that is just the tip of the iceberg). Sometimes I feel completely trapped. Last Summer I was becoming quite desperate. There were seemingly endless unfulfilled promises - the psychology of hoarding is truly baffling. Then cancer struck. My frustrations sank below the waves as we started the journey through palliative care. All the talk has been of this being a 'wake up call', but progress is so slow that my mental health issues are of concern. I have SAD most years and when young went through years of clinical depression. Now, the depressive periods come as sudden crevasses which I have to negotiate (mostly successfully), but can, on occasion, lead to spontaneous irrational outbursts. They are over in minutes and life returns to an even keel. Yet to come, however, are several months of chemotherapy for P, when I can only expect her to be in a more frail state than she is now. Life will not be easy.

But enough of that ... I've perfected home-baked ciabatta rolls ... and have started messing them about by egg-washing them, cutting them, and adding poppy or sesame seeds. At the moment, only I have them and each bake covers a week's lunches.

    More: not only did P get me a birthday frock, but my good friend Pamela did as well:

On an even brighter note, we do have some things to look forward to in 2022. A trip to Dartmoor and the N Cornish coast had to be deferred last year because of covid, but it looks as if our new dates will not clash with P's chemo days ... roll on March! Then, later in the year we're heading back to Hadrian's Wall as there are year-long festivities associated with it being the 1900th year since the wall was built. We are hoping to tie that in with a ferry to Belfast and a visit with Pamela and Mary.

Enough for now - Happy New Year to anyone who happens to read this!