Immersion

And, yes, immersion is a very good word, though I'm not sure if that's how you spell it.

A good way to keep interested.

Today!!!!

Just one totally surreal day.

Googling

So, a few days ago, I was trying to find some information on the web about something. A lot came up, but not what I wanted.

So, today, I sit here thinking what to do and try typing different things in. Eventually I get to quite a new cocktail of words and there you are. I find what I was looking for.

The problem was that the phrase had been used in so many different ways, businesses named for it and it was just everywhere.

But I got there in the end.

Gotta read it all now.

The end of the cold maybe ..............

I'm not too sure what's going on I keep on getting little twitches in my muscles, don't know if it's some kind of effect from the antibiotics. They're quite heavy ones. Or if it's just the end of the cold.

Going to get dinner anyway. Do a bit of work. That actually seems like a real nice idea this evening where I'd been kind of shying away from it for a while again. I guess because of the cold.

Got a ready made veggie curry. I'll sprinkle some coconut on it. And have a nectarine to go with it. It's a very mild curry, don't know whether to add a few more spices.

Humour

Humour is trickling back in again so I suppose I'm starting to feel better.

Not that it's been a humourous day as I've spent a fair amount of the time reading about the situation in the Lebanon in various formats, blogs, message boards and the newspapers. And, then spent time discussing the weather and climate change.

To be honest I was still pretty depressed this morning, not the kind of depression that I was in earlier but I could feel I was still very tired and not functioning too well in some ways. But it seems to be wearing off some.

I mean I wasn't going to sound anyone out. I realised I had this depression again soon after I got this cold, it just sort of wraps itself around your head in a kind of pea soup of depressive thoughts and even though you know that it's not the whole picture it somehow seems to take over for a while. I'm aware of it though now and even though I still get down I can still kind of get myself through it.

I was a bit grotty this afternoon but kept it to myself because I realised the other person was just worn out and that she could do without me moaning as well because they weren't really anything. Pissed off about something being slow, which with my history of being late, not always, but I am quite good at it, wasn't really on.

She'd been worried about my health and we'd been through that but I could see that she was down too. Tired and hot I suppose. I don't mind the heat. I'd like it to be cooler but it doesn't really get to me even when I'm feeling out of it like today. I like summer temperatures of around 21C though really but I get through this type without any difficulty too.

Just have been feeling a bit tired and ill today. But the heat hasn't really affected me.

Humour seems to be coming back and I'm not feeling in the least bit pissed off about the silly things I was earlier on. Just tiredness and feeling low cause I wasn't feeling very well.

Better go and get dinner I suppose. Was going to go out to Tesco but I've a couple of ready meals in the freezer and I'll use one of those and cook some veg to go with it.

It's a veggie curry and will be nice. Have a soya dessert afterwards that's calcium enriched and has a good protein content and I think some extra vitamins.

Tomorrow

I'vebeen taking a course of antibiotics over the last few days and I'm very glad tomorrow will be the last day of them. Pretty heavy dose of them and I'm glad they're almost finished, though I'm back to the doctor again for more treatment on this.

Hope we get to find out what's going on soon.

Perhaps not ...........

I was going to go up to Newbold Comyn again but have decided to stay around town because I have to be back here for 2.50 and I don't want to be late.

It's taken me all morning to wake up really. Maybe it's best if I just stay and work here today.

Go out and get some food and a couple of papers though. Think I should go down to the solicitors too. Not sure when Maureen has lunch though. I want to ask to pick something up from there rather than having it posted.

Right, suppose I'd better get it sorted.

Got to arrange to go back to London for the day in the next few days too.

Leaving

Signing the contract to sell the flat on Friday at 11.oo.

Leaving in about three weeks.

Picking up again

Well, I've surfed having a bit of a temperature without telling anyone to piss off even when getting told off myself. Cause I knew it was going to happen. I let a sentence of it form and just thought go away thought. It's amazing how a bit of depression can affect your thoughts to such an extent, it's as if they cancel out a load of good stuff that you know for sure.

And it did and now I can feel the temperature going down and I feel quite different. I think I'd written about that over at Empower at some time. The way depression can take out the more upbeat things that you know and just seem to leave you with worries without the input of the whole picture.

Anyway I can feel that the temperature's gone down and my mood is clearing with it.

I'm gonna clean out the fridge, tidy up some of the kitchen and then go across to the place I was the other evening and see if there's a yoga class tonight. Can't remember. Not sure that I should do it anyway with this cold but I guess I can kind of crash out on the mat and zzzzzzzzzz.

Or at least not do very much.

If there isn't one today I'll check when the next one is. There might've been one this afternoon but I think they're in the evenings.

Hair

Been wondering whether to get it cut or not. It's kinda in a new realm for me. I remember if I hadn't constantly messed around with the fringe over the last three or so years it'd be heading for waist level again. It's now just below my shoulders which is fine I guess but it's so easy to wash when it's short. I kept on getting it cut to kind of fit in with the fringe that I'd cut.

I think I'll keep it for now. If it lasts the summer out then I'll leave it over winter as well I guess. I've hardly ever had short hair since I was 15/16 or so but I quite like it when I do. Leave it for now I think.

There's pros and cons both ways. Long hair is easy just to leave to dry but it takes longer to wash. And short hair is easier if you're travelling too but I've nearly always had long hair and I'm just used to it. Kind of washing it and just leaving it.

Just leave it for now.

Typing mistakes

Quickly dashes in to alter typing mistake.

That reminds me of one I made once at work ............................................

Never mind ... I think I'll leave that .........

The people who received the letter were so impressed that they got in touch to talk to me. It was pretty impressive I must say.

That'll be the last time

That'll be the last time I go to the home. I had thought of taking another tin of chocolates round before I go but I think I'll leave it as it is now.

I went up to her old room before I left. There is an elderly man there now and he doesn't really like being disturbed and likes to spend a lot of his time in his room. He hasn't much vocalisation left and the little he does speak is in very short repetative sentences.

I didn't stay long because I felt that I was disturbing him. The illness has made him retreat into himself.

I'd been to have a look at the huts. I was going to leave a plaque there when I first donated the money, a bit like a park bench that has been in bought in someone's memory. But I've decided against it.

Quite a few of the residents that I knew are still there. It's great to see people like Margaret looking so content and relaxed. She'd come from another home where she was kept in isolation and she was agressive when she arrived. And she couldn't communicate except, I guess, through that aggression. I saw the change happening daily after she arrived and was given attention and friendship by the staff. She never smiled when she arrived and never spoke. She now speaks and smiles a lot. There's a guy there with an almost identical story but I didn't see the transformation happening day by day, just when I used to visit to see people there, because my relative had died by the time he arrived.

It's an amazing place.

and

The place just rocks.

See post below.

Goodbye

I went over to the nursing home where my relative died this afternoon to say goodbye. I hadn't been over for a while but thought I'd look in with the usual tin of chocs.

Nice to be there. One of the things I wished after she'd died was that I could somehow acquire the personality to be able to look after people like I'd seen the staff there do. I certainly couldn't when I was going over there before. I couldn't understand how to interact in the way the staff did. What I found this time was that I was obviously a lot more relaxed and felt at ease there. The place is so great too.

I gave over a £1000 to the home after she died just to say thankyou for giving her the freedom she wanted in the last year or so of her life. And I know how hard it was for them because she was very difficult to look after. She had a lot of illnesses including Lewy Bodies dementia and she was a bit on the fiesty side to put it mildly at times. The place was good then, better than most places I'd heard about, but, my, you should see it now. Then it was still in the throes of being transformed from the place it was when the new owner had taken it over. He'd done this out of kindness when asked to save the home. The place he took over was in a dreadful state and was being closed down. To see how it's been transformed is remarkable, he's ploughed so much into it and the place has always employed more staff than is set down by law.

What they bought with the money were three wooden beach type huts and a selection of very strong wooden outside tables in different sizes, benches, chairs and sun umbrellas for the garden. The beach huts have been turned into occupational therapy huts. One is a gardening hut with gardening things in it, seeds and seed trays and a wheelbarrow and stuff like that, another is a beach hut that has sand on the floor and the other is a "pub" which is being transformed now and is about ready as summer comes in. The residents can go and get some squash or something here.

The tables and benches, chairs and umbrellas that have been chosen are brilliant too.

I spoke to someone who's husband had just gone in there. I told her it was a wonderful place. I went in this time and could see that you would hardly recognise it as a place for people with severe dementia. Just wonderful. I was going to ask for pen and paper to copy down some of the things that had been pinned up on the wall. You know little pieces of prose along the lines of "I am still here" about being able to reach someone through the curtain of dementia.

The place is so marvellous. As I said it was brilliant before but it is just out of this world now.

I felt at ease and happy there, didn't have to think about how I was interacting with the residents there, it just came naturally. I could remember how people are affected with this illness and responding to them naturally within those limits was easy. There was a very relaxed feel there as well.

They put some old time music on, Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me was on and I couldn't help going into a little song and dance routine as I was leaving. It was that relaxed and great there. And I know how they enjoy all that. I could have gone over there and asked if I could help do some musical afternoons cause they love them and it's quite expensive to get someone in professionally.

It was just great and I really wouldn't have minded doing something like that. So, I'd wished almost that I would learn to be able to help somewhere like that and interact well with the residents.

And I think I can now.

I think it's because I'm more relaxed or something like that.

sadness

When I was there someone said that they felt intensely sad and someone else told me that my life would soon be changing and that the past really was in the past now. That my life had been a lesson up to now. That they knew it had been very hard but that was so that I could learn. Someone else said the same.

(wonder if the exams are coming up!!!)

It seems that I might've brought paganism with me too.

I know that my life has been difficult but I'm come through. And I think it seems harder to people here than it would in a lot of countries. I know there've been some very difficult episodes in it, but that's how it was. Can't change it and if I did it wouldn't be me sitting here.

As far as the time I almost died in very violent circumstances goes. Well, I certainly got to know first hand in such a personal way just how cruel and heartless and unbelievably viscious people can be, but on the other hand people risked their lives to save mine, so I also got to know in a very personal way the other side as well. I guess there's not too many people who've experienced that in such a graphic way. And my emotions and reactions to that were what saw me through the time when I was recovering.

I mean who'd want to think about the other fuckheads. I mean, really. I was very lucky too in that I had some pretty bad injuries but somehow or other I didn' feel pain. I know this was a result of the first blow to my head because I didn't feel that, it must've just knocked something out in my head, though leaving me quite alert and still conscious. I know Donald Campbell, the racing driver, experienced something very similar after a bad crash. And I've met someone else who had a similar experience in regards to pain. I'm also lucky in that I don't have flashbacks, not to anything, though I can think about things if I choose. Some things have gone but I've reasonable recall, and I can remember all of what happened there. But it's not there unless I go and search it out, it's like having to go into a filing cabinet and choosing to take out a memory, otherwise it stays filed away and doesn't bother me at all.

There were some changes but they came later and possibly were more of a withdrawal just to give me some space for a while. I was fucking tired out and had a lot of physical healing to do which I think I probably didn't give enough time to just like I always do. I did things like walking back from hospital after an operation and stuff like that. Just how I was used to behaving I guess.

I'll be meeting these people I've met while I'm here and'll do much the same when I've moved. It will be just one part of my life in one way or another.

Esoteric experience

I didn't feel too good this morning but it's passed as the day's gone on. I was quiet yesterday evening too. But am looking forward to meeting the people again, it was an interesting evening. I like being with people who are interested in searching and exploring in life. And I now have a more open mind.

I don't need anyone to give some kind of verification to the experiences I've had. They've been for real, with other people there for me to be able to check with. I said last night if they'd been visions and voices I'd've just have got myself to a doctor, but experiences that are things that you can verify and that happen too often to eventually be considered chance are something else.

I believe that there is more to life than what I believed before which was that we are born, we get through life and then we die and that is that. I'm not in the least bit religious though I still find Buddhist philosophy interesting and will probably carry on dipping into that now and then. Religion has too many ties and I want the freedom to explore and that I guess I've done, though I didn't ask for any of the experiences I've had, except in a challenging way once they got well under way. They've been too complicated and followed too much of a step by step progression this time to be purely chance over and over again.

I've also been assured that my experiences are no where as unusual as I had thought. Difficult to accept that they happen though, especially for someone like me I think.

Birmingham

Went into Birmingham. Bought a new pair of trousers, the people there always give me a discount and won't take no for an answer. I have a new pair of stripey hippy trousers.

On the way back I met someone who'd got on the wrong train. Must be an occupational hazzard I guess. Hopefully, the attitude as well. I said Not to worry, cause if you travel a lot you're bound to get on the wrong train once in a while. I know that I have. Though I guess it can be more embarrassing for some than for others.

How we giggled.

He said that's the best kind of attitude to have cause there's no point getting worried about it or anything like that. Too true I said. Or something like that.

Luckily I've never been so confident that I've come out without money or cards though. I guess you have to live and learn though. No money means you can't get a taxi the other end if you get on the wrong train, are late and have to rush to where ever you're going.

I have to admit that my couple of adventures while up here aren't the first time I've got on the wrong train. It's only happened a couple of times before which I guess is pretty good too, considering that trains arrive at different times from when they should and the platform they're meant to arrive at can shift.

Chchchanges

..................................

And, er, yes, I've been told that things could be changing workwise but it wasn't really for me to say anything, was it.

I was told that some things are up for sale. It just came up in casual conversation with someone whose partner is in the business.

Message boards

I've been searching for some interesting message boards this evening. I used to do this periodically, save them, and then never go back to them to read or post.

I've found four or five what look as if they'll be interesting reading, don't know if I'll post or not, but will read a couple of them anyway for a while, if not all of them.

Found a nice blog with links out while I was searching for the boards too.

One of the boards I'd saved to go back to before, though I've not got any recollection of it. I don't know why but I used to do this and then stay with the ones I was already reading and posting on.

I'll just tell myself to go over to at least one of these everyday to read at the moment and I'll read the blog.