Oh, My Days!

Part of my Counselling Skills course involves having to record a role play session of me, the Counsellor, talking with Andy, the Victim - I mean, client - about a made up problem during which I demonstrate my accrued counselling skills. I then send the recording to my tutor so she can check that I’m not making a complete pig’s ear of things by telling the Client to Get A Grip and Pull Yourself Together. Anyway, the plan was to record the role play yesterday but yesterday was a major drama in itself involving Flora Bijou Mybug, which meant that neither myself nor His Lordship Malarkey were in a fit state to fanny around with recordings, so we deferred it until this morning by which time Flora was markedly improved and we both felt in a better headspace.  The Grand Recording Process unfolded thus:  1) we had a chat about the format of the made up problem.  2) we had a practise run of the made up problem to make sure that we hit the minimum of the 5 minutes required and that we got over t

A more detailed investigation of Flora’s heart scan has shown she has a bulge - an enlarged heart - which means heart disease. It’s not great news, but it’s not tragic news, not just yet. She’s now on diuretics to bring down fluid congestion and then, if all goes well with that, she’ll be on medication several times a day for the rest of her life.  This morning, as Andy was rushing back to the hospital to get her a change of medications, I sat with her on the bed, watching over her as she hunted for breath, her little chest heaving and wheezing with such gargantuan effort. I couldn’t believe how quickly this disease has manifested in her, and I was tearful because I don’t want to lose her, not just yet. She’s been with us since she was 2 weeks old, almost 8 years now. She is such a charming creature, and she is much loved by both myself and Andy.  And I sat and tried to be objective so I could give more healing energy. Thank you to everyone who has sent their healing thoughts, too, and

  My little Flora Bijou Mybug isn’t very well at the moment. Over the last three or four weeks she’s become  wheezy and just not quite right. You know when you can sense these things with your animal companions? She’s just not quite right.  Last week she had blood tests which came back normal. Yesterday, Andy took her back to hospital so he could check her heart and lungs. She was sedated and scanned - heart fine, lungs fine. But a wash from her trachea brought up evidence to confirm what Andy and his colleagues suspected, and that is that she has chronic bronchitis, otherwise known as feline asthma. Steroid treatment, then. And the possibility of a little asthma pump, in case things get worse. Still no evidence to suggest the reason she had that weird epileptic type moment two weeks ago.  Today she has been very wheezy still. Purring and responding to us, but not interested in eating or drinking. Wanting to keep herself to herself. I’ve sat with her every day this week and tried to ch

 In recent years especially we have been encouraged to be individual, to express our differences, to - in the paraphrased words of the Mamas and Papas - ‘make our own kind of music, sing our own special song.’ Uniqueness, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? We are none of us the same, are we? It is demanded by society (and by society I mean media, politics, law makers, The Guardian newspaper, ‘woke’ celebrities keen for a career boost etc etc) that we accept each other for who we are, where we come from, where we’re going, our unique hopes, aspirations and dreams, and the fact that some of us might eat a chocolate digestive upside down and there is NOTHING weird about that at all.  And ‘hurrah!’ for that, I say. I’ve never seen anything wrong with being a stand-out from the crowd. People are people are people as far as I’m concerned. Just get on with expressing your peopley lives, people, and let the people live in their own people-person ways. Follow your intuition, do what is right

 It’s been a funny old week. Flora was taken to the hospital on Tuesday by her personal physician, Dr A Hunt. She had a bit of a peculiar moment last week, what I can only describe as some kind of ‘paralytic absence’ so Andy decided a check up and blood tests were in order. Check up and tests all came back normal, but Flora was not impressed by her day’s internment, although she did manage to force down half a tin of tuna on her return home. We shall just have to keep an eye on her; it may well not happen again - who knows?  Two funerals, too - one in Derbyshire, one via live link to a service in Kent. Neither death related to Covid, before you ask. The live link one was both a lovely thing and an odd thing. It was lovely because it meant we could share in the experience, Kent being out of bounds for travel at this moment in time, yet at the same time it felt oddly voyeuristic. I don’t know. My jury is out on live link funeral services.  However, via the live link of Zoom, Andy and I h

  Ahead of my official healer training beginning on 28th February, I’ve been digging into some reading and research type studying, or what we affectionately call here at Damson Cottage - ‘the book learning’. And once again, m’learned and beloved companion, Mr W Shakespeare, was spot on when he made this declaration in ‘Hamlet’, that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’  It started off with my asking my tutor if there was a book she would recommend to me, to get me into the swing of things, as it were. Yes, she said, pointing me in the direction of Jack Angelo’s ‘Your Healing Power.’ So I sent off for it, it arrived, and I began to read it.  I began to underline certain passages with a pencil (who else was told as a child it was BAD to deface a book by scribbling in it?) and then I thought, no - I need to make proper notes on this and to add my own questions in response to what I was reading. And then I got distracted into connecting some

  There been a lot of this recently - great dollops of starlings swirling around the skies and fields surrounding Damson Cottage. When they land, they look like writhing masses of insects, you know, like in the Indiana Jones films where Dr Jones insists on taking his leading lady into inhospitable caves (she is, of course, suitably dressed for the experience in high heels, a tight sequinned frock and full make up), and the cave walls and floors are invariable smothered in all sorts of heebie-jeebie insect and reptile life. Eeeek!!  That’s what these thousands of starlings look like when they are swarming across the fields. Thank goodness we aren’t in a cave, that’s all I can say. Anyway, a rather irksome side effect of this influx of starlings is that some of them have realised there is a rather tasty birdie feeding station in the vicinity (5* reviews in ‘What Bird?’ magazine restaurant reviews) and their little bird brains have decided that rather sticking with their flock, they would

 Two weeks to change a pathway, that’s all it has taken. Well, two weeks plus 30 years, as I have now come to realise. Two weeks ago I was researching qualifications on The Healing Trust website. I can’t remember what took me to their website, or indeed why I went to their website - just an urge. Or a push from entities more wise than I. That’s more likely. And then I found myself phoning their central office, to chat to a lovely lady who sent me an application form. And then I was asking my good friend, Jane, to act as referee for my application. And then I was contacting tutor healers, having been drawn to one in particular, who happened also to be the first to respond to my email so I was glad I’d trusted my instinct in contacting her, and then I met her in a Zoom chat, and filled in more forms and experienced a healing session. And then I was chatting to the student support manager for Region 8, which covers Shropshire, and being given information about supportive local healing gro

 It was always my intention to be a writer for the entirety of my working life. That was the game plan. That’s what you did, wasn’t it, when you were released into the wild from school? Chose a career, worked at it for 40 - 50 years, retired and either embarked on non-stop cruises, learnt to play bowls or grew runner beans for the duration of your retirement until death did you part.  And yet here I am, three quarters of the way through my working life (because the goal posts for retirement keep being moved and currently stand at age 67 and not the 60 it was when I started paying into a pension) having jumped from job to job like some indecisive moth bashing my head against a light bulb that keeps flicking on and off just to confuse matters.  Meanwhile, Andy qualified as a vet over 25 years ago. It’s all he has done. There is no sign of him doing anything else. So, you see, it can be done. Sticking to one thing.  I’ve worked on a farm. I’ve worked in shops. I worked in a pub - for two

Despite producing six children - three girls and three boys - my maternal grandmother wasn’t really interested in being maternal, and despite also having sixteen grandchildren, she wasn’t really that interested in us, either. She was a distant grandmother and I didn’t know her very well at all, apart from, in her later years, her developing penchant for sherry and her insistence that there was a man living amongst the chimney stacks of the house opposite hers.  Luckily though, following the departure of the incumbent Nurse Morris (carer of Children 1,2 and 3), she had the foresight to employ, on the arrival of Child Number 4 (my mother), the services of one Nannie Porter, who not only became a live-in asset to the family for many years, but also a surrogate Nannie to us grandchildren. I had a great fondness for Nannie Porter, my third grandmother.  Nannie Porter hosted her own ‘Farewell’ birthday party every year for many years, started during her mid sixties, when she became the longe