Post 442: I’ll have Kung Poo sweet and sour chicken and those little round wraps for duck.
We had a proper food fest today, and we’ll be having another one tomorrow.
With an easy Saturday ahead, I found myself more interested in everyone else’s plans than my own. As it turned out, we had the house to ourselves today, which meant we could do exactly as we pleased.
I woke with a quiet determination to help my Darling as much as possible without her really noticing.
That might sound strange, but I wanted her rehabilitation to feel as normal as I could make it. Not “rehab at home”—just me helping her out because that’s what husbands do.
I wasn’t quite sure where to start and was still wondering when the postie arrived, pushing a few letters through the letterbox with that familiar crinkling sound.
One of them was from Aviva.
Oh hell… not another blinking letter.
What now?
Thankfully, this one came from the account closure department. Apparently, all they needed was one final signature from me unless I wanted to keep the account open but empty.
No, I don’t.
Empty means finished.
As I stood there with the letter in my hand, all the thoughts of what I should have done with this catastrophic drawdown washed over me once again. I’d happily go back and do it all properly if I could, but that ship has sailed.
It’s time to finish this flipping thing.
I’d just cut up half a football-sized watermelon for our breakfast, but the letter delayed everything. The soft red chunks weren’t going anywhere, so I picked up the paperwork, signed it straight away and decided to get it back in the post before I could think twice.
Luckily, I still had a Christmas stamp tucked away in my little bag of stampy things.
Perfect.
I signed the form, sealed the envelope and admired the picture on the stamp of Edinburgh buildings.
Quite fitting really…
Well, it’s only going back to Glasgow.
Near enough.
As I wandered down the close, my left hand checked every few seconds that the envelope hadn’t escaped from my shorts pocket. Blue jeans really aren’t designed for carrying important letters on breezy mornings.
By the time I’d reached the little red post box across the road, I’d convinced myself the letter had vanished at least half a dozen times.
I checked the collection time.
Then, with one last look at the envelope, I pushed it through the slot.
In it went.
I’m at my wits’ end with letters these days.
Posting them.
Wondering whether they’ll arrive.
Wondering if I’ve done the right thing.
It isn’t a pleasant experience anymore.
I’d honestly rather have been sitting at home eating that tasteless watermelon.
Still…
Needs must.
The job was done.
I looked back one last time at the little red post box standing on its slightly wonky pole. There wasn’t a white envelope poking back out, so the rest was now somebody else’s responsibility.
Off I went.
Before I reached home, I stopped to chat with the newish neighbours at the bottom of the close. The elderly couple were happily trimming hedges and battling back the garden that nature had slowly reclaimed.
We exchanged a few friendly words before I left them to their mission.
Just as I turned towards home again, another gate creaked open.
Out stepped my other neighbour.
Extraordinary really, but I know P quite well now, so there was no awkwardness.
He was clearly in the mood for a chat.
Almost immediately he asked about my health, which soon led to questions about his own ailments and those of his wife.
It turned out he’d almost been waiting for me.
How nice.
We briefly circled my prostate cancer before moving on to the real subject of the conversation—his wife.
She’d suffered a stroke last year and, with plenty of help, is thankfully doing well.
That was lovely to hear.
What he couldn’t quite work out was how to think about the future.
And that’s where these last four years suddenly felt useful.
I tried to steer the conversation gently away from the medical details and towards life itself.
Not just her life.
Their life.
Their retirement.
Their hopes.
All the plans they’d quietly put on hold because life now moved at a different pace.
We talked about accepting change, adjusting expectations and learning that retirement sometimes becomes something entirely different from the one you’d imagined.
We went round in gentle circles, careful not to stray into territory that was too painful. I tried my best, not to tell him what he should do, but simply to let him think out loud.
After all, we’re still relative strangers, and yet there we were discussing some of the most personal parts of our lives.
We parted as friends.
Did I help?
I honestly don’t know.
I’d like to think I did.
I listened, I shared what these last four years have taught me, and perhaps that’s enough. Sometimes people don’t need answers; they just need someone who’s walked a similar road.
If that helped him, then I’m glad I was there.
As I walked back home, one verse came quietly into my mind:
“Some fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil…”
Perhaps a few seeds had landed somewhere a little more fertile.
I hope so.
The rhubarb yoghurt made the tasteless red stuff more bearable and the blueberries and last of the strawberries brought the bowl to life with colour and flavour. I quickly polished it off after making sure my Darling had something she fancied too.
She sat with me for a while, caught up with the gossip from number twelve, then retreated to the sofa with her leg propped high on a mountain of cushions, the TV remotes close at hand and Saturday’s tennis from SW19 keeping her company.
Here’s the health update from the perspective of a worried husband.
There are now black and yellow bruises spreading from both sides of her right calf and around her right ankle. The swelling has eased a little, but the pain is still excruciating and she’s relying on a walking stick to get around downstairs.
It looks as though this is going to be one of those injuries that simply takes time. There’s no fast-tracking a torn calf muscle, and I suspect it’ll be another week before she feels comfortable enough to think about driving again.
But that’s alright.
It’s my turn to look after her.
My Darling is in good hands, and somehow my own aches seem to fade into the background while I’m busy being her carer.
With my Darling safely settled, alternating between Candy Crush and the epic five-setter featuring young Brit Arthur Fery, our guests arrived for a wedding debrief and a takeaway later on. Exactly what a warm Saturday afternoon was made for.
I had Big Sis all to myself in the kitchen while my brother-in-law happily chatted away in the sports tv recovery room. We spent ages looking through the seemingly endless stream of new wedding photographs appearing online every day.
Gone are the days when you’d wait a week for the photos to come back from the developers, with only the bride and groom seeing them first. Nowadays everything appears almost instantly. There’s very little mystery left. It’s more like a feeding frenzy until the next family celebration comes along and steals the spotlight.
By the time the Chinese takeaway arrived, filling the house with wonderful smells, we could hardly drag our eyes away from the tennis.
In the end, food won.
Nearly ninety pounds’ worth of Chinese covered the table. Four of us somehow ended up with enough food for eight people and plenty left over for tomorrow’s lunch.
Nobody complained.
Every dish was delicious, and by the time we’d finished we could barely manage the slow waddle back to our chairs in front of the television. We had definitely over-ordered and certainly over-ate, but none of us cared one little bit.
Magnifique.
The evening drifted effortlessly from tennis to football and back to tennis again until the fading light over Centre Court finally brought play to an end.
Eventually our guests gathered themselves together, still pleasantly overfed, and we said our goodbyes in the usual fashion. I stood outside and waved until their tail lights disappeared around the last corner of our little close.
House quiet again.
I let Mr Vicious out for his nightly patrol, followed my Darling upstairs behind the stairlift, and eventually settled into bed myself.
Sometimes I think I need a proper time-out.
Instead, I write.
Perhaps that’s becoming my way of slowing down.
Good night.
Take care.
