Tag Archives: sleep

A Reflection on Age and Memory

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Today started with me examining the wreckage of my latest senior moment. However, the first thing I concluded was that it wasn’t a senior moment. It was just a mistake.

 

I’ve been worrying about making mistakes recently as i have made a few. I made the same submission to a magazine two days apart last month, forgetting I had already done it. Before that I prepared a submission and forgot to send it, which was a nuisance. Some months before that I sent the same poem to two different editors, which is a bad thing to do as it means writing to withdraw the poem as soon as you know you’ve done it. This is, I’m sure, irritating to the editor and makes me look like an idiot.  As I make more and more mistakes, I have begun to worry about my declining mental faculties and wonder about dementia. My mum had Parkinson’s and my dad had dementia. I don’t really want either.

In truth, as you get older you do get a little vaguer, which is why I have a pocket diary. I’m still not sure whether I had long COVID or not, which wouldn’t have helped. Then, as Julia says, I am disorganised and don’t get enough sleep. And I do submit a lot of poems.

Last year I made 78 submissions. This year I have already done 79 and will probably mange 100.  It’s not surprising I’m making mistakes. However, I am organising myself better. Apart from cutting out the mistakes this is already allowing me more time to write and, as a result, things are already going better.

Well, until today.  I was getting the submission together and called up the magazine’s website, as every magazine seems to have its own requirements. This makes submitting a touch irksome at times (particularly when they change them without telling you) I presume it makes the editing process easier. That seems fair. I have a handful of poems to cope with, they have thousands.

Anyway, when I checked this morning, I found I’d missed the submission date. It was last month, not this month. I presume it was a copying error when I was making the submission plan for the year. That, I think, is actually just a mistake and not a senior moment. And that is where we started.

Tomorrow I will give you my definition of “senior moment”.

Photos are wood turning by Julia – at least she goes from strength to strength in retirement. 🙂

Trials, Tribulations and Thoughts of Being Thin

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I fell asleep in front of the TV after lunch. Julia was down at the tea room and I was lost in a dream about breaking up a drug ring and had just been stabbed by the ringleader when I woke up to find Father Brown on TV. My first thought was “Ah! Last Rites!” but then I realised it was just a dream.

(The “t” key on my keyboard is getting worse, and just failed to register another one. Fortunately I saw it, but it may be time for a new keyboard.)

The panic about dying gave way to a panic about trying to work out what time it was, as I was due at the doctor at 3pm. At that point the alarm went off. I had set it for a reminder, but it was 2.15. It helped me focus and I was able to get ready and arrived at the doctor with nearly ten minutes to spare. Fortunately there was only one other person in the waiting room as, with my immunosuppressants, I don’t like being in a room with a load of sick people.

I had a magazine today through the post. About 18 months ago the editor appealed for articles. I sent him two, which he seemed to like, and then a third after he published the first one. A year later, neither of the remaining two have been used. I’m a bit irritated, to say the least. However, he’s a volunteer and is now resigning and looking for someone to take over. If I were younger I would have a go, but as I’ve been ill for nearly two months this year I don’t think I have he energy or reliability to do it.

I returned and found that te dustmen had finally been (a day late) it seems there have been a couple of breakdowns and they are short of transport. Fortunately it was he recycling rather than anything that would go rotten.

Julia then returned , I finished an article I was writing and sent it off. We then both fell asleep in front of the TV and on waking decided that a modest Chinese delivery might be in order as long as we eat modestly tomorrow. Oh! The trials and tribulations of trying to be thin.

Bah! That was a bad sentence to try with a “t” that sticks. At least I have a title.

 

 

 

 

It Started So Well

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For some reason I woke up feeling quite bright and cheerful this morning. I think it was probably the unexpected good night’s sleep that did the trick. I still woke twice in he night, but after each time I fell back into deep slumber and woke refreshed.

Gregg’s Vegan Sausage Roll

Lots of stuff has happened since my last post, but although I made mental notes, I seem to have forgotten most of it and can’t think of anything to say. Not only that, but the days has slid through my fingers like a Vaselined viper and I have, as yet, nothing to show for my continuing existence.

The rotary dryer in the back garden has now completely ceased to function. It’s about a year old and should have had years of useful life. Despite Julia’s undoubted talent at wrecking anything that moves I think we can put this down to the first builder we used, the one I tend to think of as The Expensive Mistake. He was supposed to source us a good quality dryer and install it. Normally, as I recall, you cement a socket into the ground. This one, which I assume is poor quality from the way it has broken, was set directly into a block of cement.

I don’t have an itemised bill, but I do remember from a rough calculation I made at the time, that i would have been cheaper to hire a lawyer to do the work. A lawyer would probably have made a better job too, as much of the work has already needed redoing. It isn’t worth the hassle of trying to get him to do the work properly, or get a refund, which is what cowboy builders rely on.

I am conflicted because I don’t like being ripped off and like to stand up for myself, but I just don’t need the aggravation.

We have had five tradesmen since we moved in. There was The Expensive Mistake and then the  Rip-Off Gardener. I asked Julia not to take him on, but she went ahead and it did not turn out well.

Fortunately we have then had the fencing man, the handyman and the conservatory roofers. The first two were very good and were reasonably priced. The third was very good but I was left with a feeling that I was funding a lavish lifestyle.

I’s hard finding trustworthy tradesmen when you are new to an area. It wasn’t easy finding them in Nottingham, though they tended to be cheaper than they are in Peterborough.

The photos are from March 2019 and they are pictures of things I am no longer able to eat under my new dietary regime.

 

 

 

 

A Post in Need of a Snappy Title

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I’ve not been 100% since the beginning of the week, and though I seem to have managed to do plenty, when I look at my lists, I did spend a lot of time sleeping.  I’d been a bit under the weather the week before and just thought this was my body catching up. However, I kept sleeping and started to have trouble sleeping, sometimes waking up in a fever. It was not quite time to seek medical assistance, but it was very close.

It can be very difficult, having been in hospital earlier last year I didn’t want to start panicking either. You can’t call an ambulance every time you feel poorly. I’m still a bit tired, but otherwise everything seems to be OK. If I continue to feel well I will do nothing. If I continue to be vaguely unwell, I will call the doctor. It’s very annoying not really having symptoms and not being able to call it anything.” Flu”, is good, “a virus” is good too, but “under he weather” and ” a general feeling of being unwell” are not so good.

Ah well, it’s old age and taking immunosuppressants. It’s just that I hadn’t though I’d be old so soon. My retirement, as envisaged until about ten years ago, was a lot of walking and sightseeing. The last few days, I have actually found it hard work walking round the house.

The good news (I always like to finish on a positive note) is that I really haven’t felt like eating for he last three days and am hoping that I am going to lose some weight. I’m hoping to continue that by working on lower portion sizes. I’m having porridge today, though I’m not particularly hungry – Julia thinks I need to eat, and porridge is healthy and I like it. Hopefully this will do me for today and she will stop banging on about me having to eat.

Breakfast – 3 fruits plus wheat

The pictures are Weetabix (or TESCO own brand Weetabix, to be accurate), not porridge, but it’s the closest I can get.

Rest and Recovery

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Well, Julia is back. She was released around lunchtime on Friday and my sister came to pick her up with me. It all went well – she was standing by the pick-up spot and we almost got a space. The lack of space didn’t matter as there was a taxi in front of me picking someone up and I slotted in behind him and combined with him to stop traffic. They must have hated us, but that’s how it goes. She had to walk 50 yards whilst bleeding from a neck wound when we arrived, but I fail to see why she should walk a foot further than necessary on the way back.

She has slept a lot since arriving home. Considering that her time in hospital consisted mainly of sleep deprivation and blood tests I can’t say I blame her. Not only did she not get a bed until 5am on the first night, not only was it noisy with someone listening to TV all night, but tey woke her up several times on the second night to check her and to extract blood. They seem very keen on blood tests, which seemed a bit strange as the reason she was in hospital was to try and stop her bleeding.

Anyway, you need to sleep while you are healing, so I have been making her go for a lie down now and again, plus making cups of tea, home made soup and easily chewable foodstuffs. She went out to the country park with my sister this afternoon and they toured the food stalls that are there this weekend, returning home with snack food for tea.

She enlisted my help in removing the dressing before she went out. It’s about the size of a small pillow, and not very convenient if you want to walk around.  The idea is that it applies pressure, and also reveals any new traces of bleeding.. However, despite our efforts yesterday with micropore, it kept coming loose and flapping about so today it had to go.

Imagine a dressing secured by four bits of sticky tape. Three of them won’t stick and the fourth is bonded to the skin by some mysterious chemical process and won’t come off. I tried several ways, including sneaking up on her and trying to surprise it, but it stayed stuck. It’s stuck to her throat and, as you may recall, her throat is badly cut, wounded, stitched, bruised and generally tender. The bruise resulting from all this is about 9″ x 4″. Fort hose of you who use metric that’s about the size of a paperback book. I’ve never quite managed to go metric for size.  For some reason I can do furlongs, chains, yards, ells, cubits and hands but never quite grasped centimetres.  Metres are easy, because they are about a yard, but the rest is a mystery.

 

We got three bits off and detached the dressing from the fourth so she is able to go out with just a light scarf for camouflage. Eventually, I’m sure, the other piece will detach itself, but for now it can stay.  If it doesn’t fall off naturally, I will just have to paint it the same colour as her neck and hope nobody notices.

Creaking and Complaining

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Two nights ago I made a special effort to get plenty of sleep, because it’s good for me. When I woke up I felt like I was paralysed. My normal creaky, slightly painful bad back (partly caused by our mattress – which will soon be replaced) ws locked solid, as were my neck and shoulders. Even lifting my arms was painful. It took me over and hour to get up and I spent most of the day in a chair with two hot water bottles. By the late afternoon I was much recovered and went to be early again, with the intention of not staying in bed so long. Six hours seems optimal. Eight hours tends to cause more problems than it solves.

We are having a new mattress delivered to the bungalow next week,so that will be an end to another of life’s little annoyances.

However, after a night of cold draughts, resulting in me grasping the bedding firmly and pulling it around me, I woke up with both hands aching. It’s only a minor ache in each joint, but there are 27 joints in a human hand and I can tell you where most of them are. It’s not actually painful, but if I ever need to write a passage about a robot spending a century underwater and then rising to the surface to flex his cold and corroded fingers I feel that I have done the research.

A creaking gate -both a metaphor and a way of stopping livestock escaping. 

Then I tried ordering some more bits for the bungalow. After half an hour and a “chat” with customer services, it turns out that although I am paying for the delivery I have no say over which day it is delivered. That isn’t, as I told them, a lot of use when I am two hours away from the delivery address.

Then the documents arrived from the solicitor – cost over £1,000. Typo on the first page, typo on one of the tax pages. Only small errors (though there may be more to the trained eye) but at that price there should be no errors.

So, after light at the end of the tunnel, another couple of days to add to my thousand cuts. But it’s moving.

And I have worked out a way to outwit the  delivery system at Dunelm. I will just have to see if it works next week.

Photos are random punctuation. I think I have some pictures of rust and creaking gates . . .

Snowy Detail

Sleeping . . .

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My life, at the moment, is like a science fiction film – I keep waking to find that significant amounts of time have disappeared.

It happened a few days ago when suddenly realised I hadn’t posted for several days. Then it happened again when another couple of days went missing. I know I was around as I wrote three paragraphs for a new post. Unfortunately, due to the nature of time, they aren’t relevant now as the “yesterday” they refer to is now “the day before yesterday” and to go through it all amending timings and using the correct tenses for things is more than I can enthuse myself to do. Fortunately, with it being in my normal rambling style, it’s no great loss to literature.

However, compared to this afternoon, this is nothing. This afternoon, having arrived home around 1.30 and sat down with a book to read about eels and ponder the progress of my afternoon, I regained consciousness three and  a half hours later to the sound of Julia’s key in the lock.

My afternoon, which had been meant to include a light lunch,  a little cookery, two phone calls and some note taking for an article I’m thinking of writing, turned out to be a blank interlude. I hadn’t even felt tired, so I’m not clear how I switched off so completely. I’m hoping it is to do with my urological problem, and the numerous associated nocturnal bathroom excursions. If that can be fixed fairly soon it will be a help.

I remember the three months of blissful, undisturbed sleep I had after my last visit to Urology. It came at the cost of tubes and bags (I didn’t even know there were “day bags” and “night bags” until then) but it did involve unbroken sleep so it was worth it. Well, almost unbroken sleep. There were a few nights when the tubes kinked, or I woke up tangled in the tubes, or, once, after a night of unrestrained tea drinking, I woke around 6am to find the bag was full and everything was backing up . . .

If it isn’t to do with this, it may be due to another medical condition and after looking several up (cyberchondria strikes again) I’ve decided that I don’t want any of them.

Photo by FOX on Pexels.com

 

 

 

 

Tales of Senior Moments

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My shoulders and elbows were aching last night. I first thought it was my arthritis playing up, but it didn’t feel right. Then I decided that I was going down with something fluish, but I didn’t continue to decline so it wasn’t that either. After that I started to worry about RSI, but I couldn’t see what I’d done to bring it on. The obvious thing, which came to me this afternoon, is that yesterday I’d walked quite a distance (for me) and it was  down to my use of sticks. It’s bad enough being ill, without having to work out what it is.

Something amusing happened last night, though I didn’t tell you about it at the time. I was seeking to expand my education by watching a programme on the Sky Channel about Mark Rothko. At one point I became very confused when they were talking about his early life in Ireland. I ws sure he’d grown up in Oregon. After a few seconds I realised that I’d fallen asleep and missed the end of the Rothko programme, wakening part way through the following programme on Jack Yeats. He did have an early life in Ireland.

I’m falling asleep too much. I fell asleep during the talk at the Numismatic Society on Monday night, though only two people seem to have noticed. I was listening to the introduction to the Roman coin hoards of Britain, then next thing I knew, I was struggling to keep up as the speaker spoke of several concepts I hadn’t noticed earlier on. That, of course, was because I’d slept through them.

I really need to get a grip.

Robin Hood lurking in the Forest

Still Sleeping, Recovering and Repeating . . . and Browsing

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Today has mainly featured me sleeping, recovering and repeating, as mentioned in the previous post. It hasn’t, unfortunately seen me doing much in the way of work. When the doctor suggested another week off I was happy as I was feeling quite ill at the time. I also thought I may get some time for writing. Unfortunately this hasn’t happened as I am still quite out of it. This is what I’ve discovered before – healing takes longer these days.

Tomorrow I will try a little harder. Julia is off tomorrow, so although she will find lots to do, I will be able to spend at least an hour or so with her, probably more if I act in a pathetically needy manner. The doctor did say that she would rely on boredom and daytime TV to drive me back to work and I can feel it happening. Even if it does turn into a discussion of my shortcoming and my need for exercise (we don’t see eye to eye on that at all) it will still be better than sleeping in front of antiques and makeover programmes.

Where, I ask, have all the decent quiz shows gone?

I found a really interesting internet site earlier on. It seems to be South African in origin (it features the letters “za” which I always take to indicate Zuid Afrika) but I won’t hold that against it. I still haven’t got rid of all the junk I picked up when using a South African family history site so I am always a little suspicious. However, it did present me with the snippet of information that some Roman Coins had been found whilst excavating a Japanese Castle.

The link is a different link so you don’t need to worry about the security. They are 4th century coins but the castle thrived  from the 12th to 15th Centuries, so they seem to have spent a lot of time travelling. Were they actually used as payment, or did Japan have coin collectors a thousand years ago?

I am distinctly short of suitable photos.

Japanese Quince – Arnot Hill Park

 

Sleep, Recover, Repeat

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Clara Butt – Obverse

Clara Butt Reverse

Sorry. They say sleep is essential to recovery, and I seem to have been concentrating on recovery (in a chair in front of TV) for the last couple of days. The good news is that it’s working, but I do seem to have slacked off on the blogging.

In the wakeful gaps I spent some time reading a book that claims it’s possible to write a novel in ten minutes a day.I must have bought it a few years ago, judging from its position in the pile. So far it’s proving to be a disappointment. I know it’s theoretically possible to write a novel in ten minutes a day (even Don Quixote, if your taste runs to that length) but I was hoping for more specifics. So far it’s been about how to manage time.

This is useful, but so far it’s more about time management than writing. However, the fact I’m writing this is proof that it works. I’ve planned a sliver of time to write and I am using it. later I will watch an antiques programme then, probably when I wake up, I will write more. Or eat then sleep then write more. I’m undecided on the exact order.

Leicester Base Hospital showing soldier in “Hospital Blue” Uniform.

The “Base Hospital” was also known as the 5th Northern General Hospital. In 1914 it was empty, having formerly housed the county Lunatic Asylum. In 1921 it opened as a University, eventually becoming Leicester University.

I can tell I’m getting better. Last night I went to bed after deciding I didn’t have the time or energy to do the display on fund-raising flags I was planning for the Numismatic Society. This morning I woke up with the outline in my head. The brain is a wondrous thing.

It’s  bit nippy now, despite supposedly being a warm day. I’m going to go into the other room now, put a blanket across my knees and try a spot of recovery.

Sir Harry Lauder Obverse

 

Sir Harry lauder Reverse

Sir Harry Lauder was a man of many parts and the first British recording artist to sell a million records. His son was killed in 1916 and Sir Harry spent much time raising money for the war effort, including his Million Pound Fund to help disabled Scottish soldiers on their return home.