I love love love seeing people read - Loud swearing

I love love love seeing people read

because they are being themselves and I can just watch and see. It doesn't matter that I can't understand the words sometimes.

It's a bit like watching runners coming to a crossroads in a long race, they each have their own gait and way of responding to the flurry of applause as they approach the bend.

Loud swearing

My brother called and I relaxed into a lot of swearing about perhaps turning up one day with luggage and maybe even the hamster too.

I can swear, but I can't do anything else at the moment. Though I did put on load of laundry and I had a brilliant perceptive thought about Tesco being the place where I could buy woodchip and special bedding fluff for the hamster.

What do you love?

I asked someone this question about 10 years ago. I knew immediately this was the one unanswerable question that was needed at that point when I saw the reaction. I got a different unanswerable question in return later and could only shake my head, no verbal reply or explanation possible.

Recently after a funeral I had a long chat, all afternoon actually, with my brother and someone I have known since about 1998. My question to her was: Do you love? Are you loved? Then I tried to take some lovely photos of her and made a hash of it! We talked in a cafe, in the street, in another cafe, more street...

Burial "Raver" Strange, but I like it.

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Post from my undealt-with-draft-file series. There are 87 drafts, so this series may last me until the internet changes its spots.

Between a film and a poetry workshop..

..I was able to phone my brother, father and mother. I leaned over a stone bridge in the sunshine, sat on a bench, sat on a wall, found a quiet street with another low wall to sit on. So lots f chatting and catching up until my phone ran out of power. I was probably speaking rather loudly but who cares, the traffic was doing its best to drown me out. My brother sounded as if he were underwater so w were repeating everything to eachother several times. I did say it would be better if we texted eachother.

My brother was on the Strand in London on his way to meeting a friend, my parents had just got back from a day of travel and excitement including lunch at The River Cottage. I asked my fatherctontell me exactly what they had eaten. The soup was celery with some little gooseberries included. My mother was on the sofa with her legs stretched out. I was with her when the phone died on me. I am sure she understood.

Doing the same things - 3 line paragraphs

There is a reason for doing the same things. It is because it is slightly different each time. Just walking up and down stairs, opening and shutting the doors into different rooms is about doing it while I can. Every door makes a different sound. Some things only have a meaning later.

Walking around my parents' house waiting for my father to be ready to go somewhere. Really this meant looking at the tiles on the roof garden, thinking how my brother and I used to play there in the hot summers. We'd use the water hose and flood it! We let the pet rat explore there too.

Let's do a series of 3 line paragraphs:

My mother ran out of energy before lunch on Saturday, so we made the trip up the stairs to their bedroom. I had the privilege of taking off her surgical sandal and of putting the fleece blanket right over her. I pulled it up to her chin and wrapped it around her feet as she asked. Sweet moments.

My father is suffering with a horrible cough. He also flaked out in bed instead of having lunch. Even though they have such fancy food normally, they were grateful for half a banana each, bread and home made jam, plus tea. I hope they liked the spinach and garlic soup I made later.

My brother and I had such a laugh. I asked him for advice and told him more than I should have done. No more the wise older sister! We found a tapas bar and shared sardines and wine. The more we get to know each other the more there is to know.

I finally fall asleep properly after dawn. When my mother knocked on the door and tried to wake me up it was like all those times she'd tried to wake me when I was 19 or so. I was so asleep, but could hear her and felt vaguely guilty for not moving. She said later she'd just been able to see my hair!

Even though I have children and have adored the hopeless task of trying to wake them, I can't quite imagine that my mother also feels this. Yet why else would she, who can barely walk up the stairs, go right to the top of the house to find me, just to see my head while I am semi-conscious and motionless?

I tried making a cheese thing out of yoghurt overnight. They were game to try this and scoffed the lot for breakfast, asking me exactly how I'd made it. We tried to make up a name to give it. We put lots of pepper and pink Himalayan salt on it. I wasn't expecting them to be so enthusiastic.

After I said my goodbyes on the doorstep my mother started to go to the cafe across the road, so I wound up walking her over the road. Then I sat at a table in the sun to reserve it for her. Then when she asked, I gave her a big smile, 'Yes, of course I'd like a cappucino with you!!!' So much for leaving.

We have a new family phrase: 'We have got to get there before the Gloria.' My father said this as they finally climbed into the car to go to church. I like being able to reach around and pull the seat belt out for my mother. She slots it in herself, but at least I have helped a bit.

Fixing, controlling, being generally annoying

My brother and I were discussing our current lives. We wound up looking at times when we have let things happen. Chaos caused by others can simply carry on being in chaos. As he said, look after your own chaos, don't get involved in fixing other people's!

I let a lot happen this weekend. For example when the big family lunch took place, the order in which the steaks were cooked, who served up the ice cream, what walk we went on, who came to sit at the table, where everyone sat and plenty more I didn't even notice.

Get Up Stand Up - Bob Marley

Medicines

I have a range of harmless medicines which work well.

Bread pills are the oldest one. My mother made these for J and I when we were little. Just a bit of white bread squished up into tiny blobs! I only ever make them when the patient is at just the right stage.

My newest one is to decide that one yellow Skittle is the correct help for immobile legs. I had immobile legs too, so I had to make up a medicine from the other side of the room from the items I knew H had on the chair beside him! That went down well.

Dvds help a lot. The Bond films are great and so is Hitchhikers' Guide to the Universe.

Chat

My brother J and I decided that if I were to write a book it would be titled "Don't poke the swan". His would be "Stress doesn't exist".

We swap philosophies and stretch out on the sofa and chairs.

The cat makes an appearance and manages to be in the kitchen at the same time as some defrosted steak I carelessly left covered up on a counter. We all know what happens next. So no steak for us now! I have put a note in at our neighbours' door and hope the cat is ok...It was my fault and I should have known better after all the years of having cats around.

We went for a walk in the village, sat on a bench a couple have decided to put outside their front door. Then picked blackberries and chatted to a woman and a dog doing something complicated with a long, white tape in a field for horses.

Fun

My brother J is here with us. We went out to the cafe and did a short stop motion film of a doughnut being eaten away.

Later they went out for a pizza and came back to some new, red and still warm play dough. We made a couple of films on the table. A red thing with sharp teeth being alive. Then a flower growing and turning into a man.

T and J looking at the new computer.