What I've been reading

Life After Life
by Kate Atkinson

"What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?"

I found this book fascinating once I'd worked out what was going on. It is about a particular individual who is reborn at the same instant, in a snowstorm, every time she dies. So the same period of time is revisited a number of times with different outcomes, and it seems that in later iterations she has flashes of remembrance of a previous life which often propel her to make different choices. As time went on I became more interested in how the book would end, what point might be made, what conclusions drawn, and to be honest I was a bit disappointed when it fizzled out. I'd love to create my own version and see what I could do. I'll have to add it to the 'Things To Do When I Retire' list.

Peter Pan
by J. M. Barrie

narrated by B. J. Harrison

"One starry night, Peter Pan and Tinker Bell lead the three Darling children over the rooftops of London and away to Neverland - the island where lost boys play, mermaids splash and fairies make mischief. But a villainous-looking gang of pirates lurk in the docks, led by the terrifying Captain James Hook."

Always interesting to revisit classic stories that you believe you know, because there's usually something you've forgotten, like Dorothy having white shoes in the book of the Wizard of Oz. In this book it was the degree of brutality including the children actually killing the pirates, Mr Darling living in the dog's kennel until the children come home, and then the finale when Wendy is grown up with her own daughter.

Barchester Towers
by Anthony Trollope

narrated by Timothy West

"The rather incompetent new Bishop, Dr. Proudie, led by his formidable wife, and ambitious chaplain, Mr. Slope, begin to create turmoil with their desire to shake up the church establishment in Barchester with new policies and practices. However, the established clergy of Barchester led by Archdeacon Grantly are equally determined to keep things just as they've always been."

This was a good book and an excellent reading by Timothy West, although I would say that Trollope doesn't write love affairs very well. I was glad that the right people got married in the end but I never felt the attraction, and it made an interesting contrast with Galsworthy who makes me root for his lovers from the first. Then I wanted to know whether the authors were contemporaries, and they aren't because Galsworthy started his Forsyte saga 50 years after Trollope wrote this, but then I discovered that Daniel Deronda and Uncle Tom's Cabin were written in the same era as Barchester. Such utterly different books - Eliot's set in the towns and cities featuring squires and Jews, Trollope focusing on provincial clergy, and of course they have nothing in common with the situation of slaves in North America. It almost makes me want to study a bit of history, and that has never happened before.

Under the Net
by Iris Murdoch

"Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’ he once presumptuously dared to interpret."

What a peculiar reading experience this was. No doubt that it was well written - I didn't experience any heartsink moments and let's face it, it's Iris Murdoch and she's supposed to be good. But I couldn't follow what was going on - or rather, I understood what was happening, but not why. And the number of times people happened to bump into one another made it feel as if it were set in a village rather than London (or at one point, Paris). You don't go to a Bastille Day firework display and happen to catch sight of the person you're looking for, follow her into a wood, pick up the shoes she leaves at the base of a tree - and then lose her, never to meet her again? Well written yes, but it makes no sense. I enjoyed reading the scene about the four drunk friends swimming in the Thames at midnight, or releasing a large dog from a cage, or escaping from a police raid on a Socialist rally in a film studio (really?) but none of these fitted together or helped the plot to progress. It was my first Iris Murdoch, and her first novel too. I'll read some more on the assumption that she gets better.

The Soldier's Wife
by Joanna Trollope

"When Dan Riley returns to his adored wife, Alexa, and their children, his army life still comes first. Alexa thought she was prepared to help him, and the whole family, to make the transition to normal life again - but no one had told her how lonely and near impossible the task would be."

Easy reading in a tent in a field. I liked it even though it was fairly shallow. Probably because it was fairly shallow.

The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka

narrated by B. J. Harrison

"The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a large, monstrous insect-like creature. Gregor attempts to adjust to his new condition as he deals with being burdensome to his parents and sister, who are repelled by the horrible, verminous creature Gregor has become."

An interesting short story - very famous of course, and as peculiar as can be. There is no explanation of why the metamorphosis had happened, and nobody in the story questions the transformation, they just react and respond to it. If I could be bothered I would research what the author might have intended to convey, or the meaning that scholars have suggested subsequently. But I probably won't.

I work a bit harder for a change

My life recently is contained neatly in just five categories: LTRP, Badminton, Garden, Buddhism, and Work. I don't think there's much else gone on in the past week except eating and sleeping. Note that Music and Running do not feature - Music starts again in September, but Running may never make a further appearance. Holidays, Camping and Travel are imminent though - I'm looking forward to several trips coming up soon.

LTRP

I met the kitchen man Ylf again, hopefully for the last time. I have selected and specified everything I can think of - plinths (I do love that word), units, doors, handles, worktops, 'upstand' (where the worktop extends a little way up the wall), 1 hob, 2 ovens, 2 sinks, 2 taps, 2 draining board arrangements, 1 dishwasher. I'm keeping my current fridge/freezer and washing machine. Ylf has provided a floor plan, a final quotation, and some computer-generated pictures of how it might look.

Meanwhile I have approved Ulf's chosen LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tile) supplier and he has partly broken down his quotation for me. We will have to talk more because (a) his quote for the flooring was supposed to be cheaper than the alternative Karndean but it isn't, (b) Ylf not Ulf needs to be responsible for the whole kitchen installation because Ulf doesn't have a fitter for my preferred worktop, and (c) I still don't have an overall comprehensive picture of what Ulf will be doing and how much it will cost. However, at this stage I can probably construct this for him, which is what I may do to save time.

As you can imagine, every other aspect of the LTRP is on hold until the kitchen project is done, except for trying to sell various unwanted white goods and the terracotta wine rack with capacity for thirty bottles that has never held more than about five. I'm not even thinking about what could be done next, although when the stairs are replaced (part of Ulf's quote) perhaps it will be time to consider the upstairs hall... so maybe I am thinking about what could be done next.

Badminton

Always evolving, my Monday club now only has three female members. I'm there for the full two hours every week without fail, and another lady regularly comes but for only one hour because she has childcare issues. The third lady turns up once in a while and swears that this time she will keep coming every week, then we don't see her again for months. So I spend a lot of time playing with the boys, which is fine, but it would be nice to have more women.

I tried to arrange a summer barbeque for the club. When will I learn? They all encourage me by saying what a good idea it is and won't it be fun, so I set a date and time and place and construct a welcoming and enthusiastic email, and just three people respond to say they can come, one of whom is bringing a child. So we abandon the BBQ and I book an Indian restaurant which turns out to be unsuitable for the mother/child combo and has to be un-booked, and we go to Pizza Express. At the last minute we did get three more, so there were eight of us in the end. It lashed down with rain throughout, so a good thing we didn't stick with the BBQ idea. And I so rarely get to eat pizza.

Garden

Nasty, thorny, back-breaking, stupid garden. I don't even spend much time sitting in it, not even back when the weather was good. Day 1: I hacked it back by at least a third and left all the debris on the lawn and paving. Day 2: I filled ten bags with non-thorny stuff (wisteria, forsythia, sage, spotted leaf plant whose name escapes me, other one with the scented white flowers), left the rest where it was. Day 3: took ten bags to the tip, returned and filled them again with the remaining thorny stuff (rose, berberis, pyracantha, holly, hawthorn) and more non-thorny stuff, took another ten bags to the tip. Another couple of bags still waiting, and the lawn needs mowing.

When the indoor LTRP is done I'm coming for you, garden. You'd better watch out.

During Day 3 a head popped up over the wall from my neighbour's garden. It is a gardener, who reports that he visits twice a year to hack back my neighbour's plants in much the same way as I hack back my own, except she has a much smaller space with much less in the way of thorns. I invited him to come and attack her overhanging shrubs from my side of the wall, which he did, and I now have his contact details. If this flirtation proceeds to full engagement then he may join the ranks of my named tradesmen, and I may never again have forearms that look as though I have been fighting with cats.

Buddhism

My Thursday badminton club doesn't play over the summer, and the Buddhist Centre in Birmingham has a Thursday night event. So at the beginning of the summer I thought I'd go there on Thursdays, except that I kept finding lots of good reasons not to. My local Tuesday Buddhist group doesn't happen in August either, but eventually I made it to Birmingham last Thursday. Conveniently, they were holding a Bake Off activity so there was a lot of cake, followed by a talk about how baking might complement Buddhist practice which didn't do much for me. But I enjoyed the cake a lot, and met some more new people who were also very pleasant and welcoming. I might even go again on another Thursday.

Work

There is a Health and Well-Being event scheduled for mid-September and aimed at staff at my hospital site, and the Dietitian who used to work in Public Health and 'cardiac prevention' has moved on to Weight Management. So I've been called upon to create the Healthy Eating stand, together with the two part-time ward Dietitians. (Almost immediately, and for reasons that are not connected with the Health and Well-Being event, one of them resigned.) I have made a few phone calls to a couple of organisations and with luck I'll receive a poster or two and some leaflets about fat, fibre, salt etc. in time for the event. It will not be an impressive display, and hopefully someone more competent will be appointed soon so I won't have to do it again.

I've also agreed to do an ante-natal clinic which is my least favourite clinic in the world, and I'm covering another clinic to help out the team because our Team Leader has gone, and I nearly covered another two clinics because of staff unavailability but I wasn't needed in the end. Look at me, volunteering for extra stuff. Maybe I am starting to work a bit harder than before. And my very least favourite patient of all time has decided that I can help him if he sees me on a regular basis, which is sufficient punishment for all my previous sins.

Names

Krakow Botanical Gardens, July 2016

There are going to have to be some naming conventions for all the LTRP tradesmen yet to come, and this is one aspect (the only one?) of the building project that I'm quite looking forward to. Of course, my first builder is called Alf (which is his true name), then there was Elf who fixed the leaking roof of the hallway, and Ilf the handyman who continues to be a delight to work with, and finally Olf who sorted out the garage. The architect is escaping without official nomenclature, but the latest builder is going to be Ulf and the kitchen guy Ylf. If I have any more work done we're going to have to start on consonants, which will be only marginally less satisfying. I'm slightly sorry that Electrician Bill somehow ended up outside this scheme.

I think I'll give subcontractors numbers or prefixes according to their branch of the tree. There will be a worktop man, maybe he will be Worktop sub-Ylf or Ylf 2, and there may be Plumber sub-Ulf, or Ulf the Wrench. Or Firstborn Son of Ulf the King. If the plumber has a mate, he might be Plumber sub-Ulf (a). I will probably need to keep a reference table somewhere. We'll see who turns up and how I feel.

I've managed to get hold of Ulf since he came back from holiday, and the start of the job has been put back by a month. Rather than being annoyed I am slightly relieved, because there have been several issues that rely on having enough notice to arrange, and it was starting to look as though things were moving too fast. If a swift decision were ever needed from me in order to avoid certain death, I think I would have to ring a few people to say goodbye. Anyway, I have some more answers from Ulf and I have spoken to Ylf and I am almost back on track. Maybe I'll be able to get a proper night's sleep soon, if it weren't for the pesky patients.

In between worrying about patients and building works and gradually moving out more of the kitchen contents, I have ferried dad and mum to one of dad's hospital appointments where he seemed to enjoy meeting a Clinical Psychologist while mum and I ate egg sandwiches and chatted in the waiting room. There has been a family gathering for Sister D's birthday, and I have watched the Oscar-winning film 'Moonlight', which was very moving. Other than that, nothing to report.

Birthday treats

In the last blog post I left you with my soggy tent at the end of Famfest. There was more to come in my birthday week because on Friday I headed down to London for further events, staying with Lola II and Mr M as usual. There was a concert in Islington and a picnic in Regents Park. Or, as I discovered, The Regent's Park.

On Saturday I slept very late while Lola II did exercise at the swimming pool, then we had brunch at a fancy brunch spot, did the shopping for the picnic, ate some more and went to the concert. The Indigo Girls are from the South of the USA, and are a duo singing what I suppose I'd call Folk Rock. Here's the one that always makes me cry. I was a little overwrought. Got something in my eye.



They are MUCH older now than when these videos were produced. But so am I. Here's the one they do before the encore (I have no idea what the visuals in the video are all about. Ignore them and just listen):



And the closing number, which had the whole venue singing at full pelt:



I could listen to them forever. And sometimes I have to, given Lola II's propensity to sing whatever's in her mind at all times. On our camping holiday during the walk around the reservoir she started to sing the sound of the squeaky gate. She does cashpoints and pelican crossings too. Unbelievable.

It was my birthday on Sunday, but I knew that work loomed on Monday and I'd need to wake up a lot earlier so my plan was to set my alarm for 8 a.m. Lola II and Mr M seemed a little put out by this, but I thought nothing of it until about five to eight when they arrived in my bedroom to sing Happy Birthday, a ritual not performed for me for at least 20 years. No wonder they were a little disappointed out at my choice of an early start.

I was presented with splendid and practical gifts - a road map, because we had experienced together the uselessness of satnav in the lanes of Devon. A mug painted by Lola II to represent the 'jazzy drop' fake chocolate sprinkled with hundreds and thousands that we enjoyed 30 years ago. A plastic toothbrush cover for travel protection in the washbag, from Mr M I think. Half a bar of chocolate left over from the hazelnut, plum and chocolate birthday cake that Lola II baked the day before. And jars of homemade (by Mr M) plum jam and grape jam. I couldn't have asked for better presents.

On Sunday I'd arranged for a group of friends to meet in The Regent's Park, near the bandstand in case it rained, but it didn't and everyone came and we had a lovely picnic. I found out some fascinating insider political facts by grilling my friend who works at the Home Office unmercifully about Teresa May, Amber Rudd, Boris, Brexit, the last general election, the next general election and anything else I could think of. I don't see him very often and I have to say he delivered quality information. There was also a brief conversation about another skiing holiday. Yay!!

My birthday was also celebrated at work on Monday where we routinely give each other a card and a cake and some flowers. On returning home my sleep patterns have reverted to regular insomnia again, so on my usual day off on Tuesday I was determined to sort out some of the LTRP issues that have been on my mind. It took three hours to get to the bottom of my options for hob, dishwasher, ovens and taps, and another hour to consider floors and other matters relating to the overall project.

I went out for a walk in Kenilworth with my ex-team leader, on the same day as the interviews for her replacement. Her job was in the midst of a team which is entirely dysfunctional and everyone in it is trying to find work elsewhere. None of the applicants was appointed, not that it makes much difference to me as I wasn't really being managed before either. The reason given to one internal candidate was that she lacked management experience, which makes me believe I may well have been successful if I'd applied for the job. But although I have management experience I know that I am not a good manager, and I am trying to make my life less complicated and coast down the slope towards retirement. I get entirely enough responsibility and leeway for service improvement in my current job, and the extra money would not make up for the stress and unpleasantness of the team leader post.

Kenilworth Castle, August 2017