Yuletide Message

Hello everyone!
We haven't sent lots of cards this year - a pack of ten charity cards costs nearly £4 so 40p each, add on the stamp and every card we send costs the best part of a quid. Even the years I have made cards we've still spent a fortune, and the charities get maybe 10p each time. So this year, we've dramatically cut the number we've sent, and we will just give all the money to Breast Cancer Care (who have helped me) and the RNLI (who we hope we'll never need to call, but some of our friends have!).
So, Yuletide Blessings and Merry Christmas to all our friends and loved ones, and the space we've left on your mantlepiece has helped to do some good!

And in the meantime, here's a message from a friend, who gave me these wise words a couple of years ago - I think it bears a revisit.

I don't generally go in for moral lectures, but this one sort of caught me a bit - anyway, here it is...

A Personal Appeal...

As someone who has experienced sleeping rough, please spare a thought this Christmas as you tuck into your hot meal and open that pair of socks from Auntie Mildred that you loathe.

• Look through your cupboards, is it filled with tins that you haven’t used, probably won’t. Then donate them to your local soup kitchen.
• Got old sleeping bags, there are plenty of homeless charities and soup kitchens who would appreciate them and could pass them to someone for whom that warmth could save their lives.
• Smile and wish them merry christmas, just because they are homeless doesn’t mean they aren’t people anymore. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of human contact to give someone hope again.

Don’t just think of the homeless freezing in the cold, think a little closer to home too. Have you seen your elderly relatives lately? Maybe you should, they might need a light bulb changing, a heater fixing or just a chat.
How about the little old man in the bungalow at the end of the road? Smile, say hello next time you see him. Behind his door he might be sitting in one small room next to a single heater, cold and worried about the money he doesn’t have. While you eat your turkey, he might be eating a cold sandwich because he can’t afford the gas bill with the price hikes. If you got to know him, well then it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to pop over christmas day with a hot plate of christmas dinner and a smile. You might just make someone's christmas a merry one.

 

Holding on

My dear friend is still hanging in there... he's slowly, almost imperceptibly improving... they've stopped sedating him now, although his kidneys have shown no signs of any function at all, so he's still on full-time dialysis at the moment. Hopefully he will start to wake up in the next couple of days - it's been suggested that, knowing him, it will be lunchtime on December 25th... just to make sure everyone gets to know about it! I have to say that it would be the best present any of us could wish for.

This news has cheered me up immeasureably - I got all festive, and the house is now covered in tinsel.  We have a tree - a tiny baby one in a little pot, which would look silly with lights and baubles, it looks pretty perfect as it is... although I have to admit that there are a couple of gold stars... We celebrated the turn of the year last night, with many many candles... but I will be up for celebrating again when I am sure that J is out of danger.

Yuletide joy

It's been a day of peaks and troughs.

My poorly friend made it through the night... this wasn't a foregone conclusion, his kidneys had failed catastrophically and his family were told to prepare for the worst. It seems unfair, he's 48, has never smoked and has had a drink about twice a year in the thirty years I have known him. He's spent all his life doing "good works" - youth work, scouts, special constabulary - a really nice bloke. And it's all gone horribly wrong. I've learnt, though, in the last couple of years, that the world isn't fair, and shit things happen to nice people.
As the day has gone on, the updates have been getting slightly more positive. When they took the DNR notice from his bed, that was a pretty big milestone - a few hours more and they reduced the drugs they've given him to keep him from moving - now they are talking about letting him wake up. It's been a long slog so far, and there is a long way to go, but now they are saying that he's stable, rather than critical.  If he can get through another night, and breathe for himself, then there will be cause for real celebration upon the morrow.
He does seem to have had his usual effect on technology though - so far he's broken three dialysis machines...

On a less positive note, I saw my next-door-but-a-couple neighbour today - she was diagnosed with a cancer in her jaw a couple of months ago, which was discovered at a dental check up. She has had some chemo, but I hadn't seen her for a few weeks, and another neighbour had mentioned that things weren't going too well... It seems that the cancer is pretty advanced, and they've told her that they can't do anything more.  The surgery they would have had to do would have left her unable to speak or eat, the radiotherapy would have burnt her face painfully and it would all have only given her a few more weeks. So she's decided that she's had enough, and she's withdrawn from the active treatment now. She's very frail, and talking to me for half an hour wore her out so much she had to lay down...

So, a day of contrasts. Fear, joy, sadness... It's the longest night, as I type it's about half past midnight, and so we're about half way through the longest night.  The Solstice is at just after 5am here - when we are as far from the Sun as we will be this year - from then on, we start the slow but steady climb back to spring, when there will be new life and growth all around us.  Before that spring, we have to get through the rest of the winter... but knowing that spring is coming is what will get us through.

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I hope that you have a merry and peaceful one.  Sending Yuletide blessings to you all...
FFFF

'Tis the season to be chilly...

... tra-la-la-la, la-la-la-brr......

It's been a bit parky today.  Not quite the way it was a year ago, though - a year ago we were walking on the beach in about a foot of snowdrift, which was a tad freaky...  It was something of a surprise when I looked at these pictures and realised it was exactly a year ago today.

There is something about a seaside town in winter which is strangely endearing, to me at least, but then I have spent much of my life in seaside towns and I learnt early on that I love them more outside the summer season!  The fairground looks rather magical in the snow, I thought, what do you think?  The lonely figure in his sailing waterproofs - now that's a slightly different thing.
It's past my Dad's birthday now (Nov 28th) - as a child, this meant that we could at least acknowledge the approach of Christmas.  We weren't allowed to even mention it before then!  Now it was safe to talk about it, but not to do anything about it - that wasn't permitted until after my baby sister's birthday on December 7th.  There are other December birthdays to worry about now, and my poor son-in-law has his on December 23rd, which does have a tendency to get lost in the madness.  A friend from school was born on New Year's Day, which meant she never got a proper birthday party as everyone was all partied out by then.
The Christmas dinner season is starting in earnest now - Monday night is the 2CV club do, then Tuesday night is the other 2CV club do... we went to the pub this evening and it was full of tinsel and fairylights, the tables starting to be bedecked with crackers and holly for other people's parties...  I guess we do need to start thinking about it soon!  There are sweeties to make, embroidery projects to be finished, stuff to buy and wrap... I hate the stress of it all but I do like the whole giving pressies bit, I get a real buzz when people open something I've agonised over and smile enough that I believe I got it right!!!

A seasonal message on behalf of someone else...

This is lifted from the blog of The Broken Photographer - I can't make the reblog function work, guessing because I am not a tumblr member...

I don't generally go in for moral lectures, but this one sort of caught me a bit - anyway, here it is...

A Personal Appeal...

As someone who has experienced sleeping rough, please spare a thought this Christmas as you tuck into your hot meal and open that pair of socks from Auntie Mildred that you loathe.

• Look through your cupboards, is it filled with tins that you haven’t used, probably won’t. Then donate them to your local soup kitchen.
• Got old sleeping bags, there are plenty of homeless charities and soup kitchens who would appreciate them and could pass them to someone for whom that warmth could save their lives.
• Smile and wish them merry christmas, just because they are homeless doesn’t mean they aren’t people anymore. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of human contact to give someone hope again.

Don’t just think of the homeless freezing in the cold, think a little closer to home too. Have you seen your elderly relatives lately? Maybe you should, they might need a light bulb changing, a heater fixing or just a chat.

How about the little old man in the bungalow at the end of the road? Smile, say hello next time you see him. Behind his door he might be sitting in one small room next to a single heater, cold and worried about the money he doesn’t have. While you eat your turkey, he might be eating a cold sandwich because he can’t afford the gas bill with the price hikes. If you got to know him, well then it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to pop over christmas day with a hot plate of christmas dinner and a smile. You might just make someone's christmas a merry one.

Can anyone disagree with any of this? I can't. Think on...