May

Flowers from Jaqueline

Ginger

Kalanchoe from Katerina still going strong

Neighbour's laundry. They're a lovely elderly couple. If the neighbour below spots this he'll go mad.

Tommy

April

St David's Day.

St David's Day, 1993. Begin Hill School, Llanelli

Happy St David's day, well, sort of. This photo, 20 years old to the day, tells the story.

We left Grimsby in September 1992  to join World Horizons, a christian mission organisation based in Llanelli preparatory to joining their outreach base in the inner city in Northern France 6 months later. We'd already left our jobs as teacher and social worker 2 years previously for a 5 month training programme with YWAM on the Mercy Ship, The Anastasis. What an adventure, more about that another time. Back in Grimsby we got supply jobs until joining WH.

I liked living in Wales. I joined a choir. They weren't too keen on having such a short stay member so I had to sight read like mad to make sure I could keep up to justify my presence. I had to be able to say I sang in a Welsh choir ! My looks felt at home too. My father is Liverpool Welsh. My granddad Jones sang in the Liverpool Welsh Male Voice Choir. Now hows that for a name drop :-) 

Finding somewhere to stay was an adventure. On a trip to France we met someone who had been to Llanelli on a visit and had met a blind lady who wanted to go to a blind children's school in the jungle in Zimbabwe for a few months to teach braille but couldn't go because she had no one to care for her cat and dog while she was away. To cut a long and highly unlikely story short we ended up living in her one bedroom bungalow while she was away. The lack of space inside was made up for by the view from the picture window out over The Gower, the fun of having a dog despite being a family on the move, and the distinct advantage of moving from a house where you had to plug the vac in in every room to one where I could plug it in in the middle and reach all the edges.The draw back was the fact that cat and mistress were in the habit of waking in the night. We didn't know this till the first night when at 2 am it woke the daughter who was in the one bed by pummeling her in the face with it's paws and demanding to be fed. This happened every night. 

The 1st March 1993 was our last full day in Llanelli, the girls' last day at school there. Already sad to have to say goodbye to her friends our younger daughter did not want to have to get dressed up as well, but all the other children were already in costume and mum being there with camera at the ready it was an obligatory rite of passage. We had to give the dress back at the end of the day, but I still have my homemade felt daffodil brooch I bought and wore proudly on the 1st March for several years after.

The Thursday, 2nd March we loaded up the car, all 4 went to prayer day, were "prayed out" together, left like the Von Trapp family, got in the car, picked up a few last things and drove out of Wales, stopping off in Cardiff to have lunch with relatives. We over-nighted in London, drove onto the ferry first thing in the morning on the 3rd and arrived at our new home in the North of France, 7 flights up, 8 different nationalities in our stairway. Our furniture arrived in a lorry the next day. On Monday morning we settled the girls in their new school then went into Lille on the Mongy tramway to queue up at the Bureau d'Etrangers to start the process for getting a Carte de Sejour residency permit.

2 weeks later we were at a conference in Paris. We slept on a church hall floor and looked for free things to do and see. I will never forget walking along the banks of the Seine, the children skipping and singing Happy Birthday to you in English with their Grimsby accents, Welsh and French with no English accent and wondering if I was dreaming !

Sunday Morning

I wake up several times. I feel like I've done a lot of unaccustomed gardening yesterday. I wish. Every muscle - even the odd ones I never think about like in my eyebrows and behind my ears.

I love my walk with the dogs by the river bank two minutes from here (if you're well, five for me). Once a week is enough. Any more than that is sheer self indulgence with too big a price tag, and it's not just me that pays it.

As I walk out of the door I have a healthy feeling of being naughty. I too feel like shouting "Onion Sauce" at the rabbits in the hedgerow but unlike Mole I'm not a young male just abandoning white-washing, so even if I do meet Ratty the water rat I will still turn round and come home again to my charges. There is more to life than boating after all. Mind you I'd love to row again. It's one of the things I dream about.

I feel like I could walk all day. I possibly could if I had nothing at all to do for the rest of the following week. The word walk is perhaps exaggerating. I've found a way I can sort of roll - So long as I don't really use any of my joints I just sort of keep going. I so love being out. Love it. Exhilaration. Freedom. I used to walk or bike everywhere. I feel like I'm going someplace.

On Sunday mornings in the summer there's always someone around. On this crisp frosty day there's no one. I can sing. Memory not too good so I don't sing songs, I just sing ditties made up of what ever's going through my head at the time. Odds on God will be in there somewhere - I prefer cheerful subject matter. Lots of gratefulness. We may have some grotty things in our lives, but still an awful lot to be thankful for.


I get home and jot down some of what I can remember of those lovely thoughts, then get a drink. Now I start to feel like I ran all the way. Nausea. Instead of changing out of my sweat drenched clothes I lie down. It's revolting being this limited. The feeling of stale dampness blinks in and out as I try to concentrate on listening to the radio. Another thought takes over and eventually drives me into an upright position - a desperate hope that if I think hard enough I'll come up with something that the poorly appetites can eat, enjoy and be nourished by. Failing that at least something that will keep them going for a few more hours anyway. But occasionally in among all that comes the flicker of a memory of a bird in a bush - a mere flash of white wing bars as it hops from invisibility to invisibility (I must wear my glasses more often). There's the happy thought too of the vague sense of red fast fading in my wind-stung cheeks. I really did go out. I made it. I'll do lunch later, I'll lie here for a bit.

Actually, before the reality energy accountant finally takes me in hand I don't get a shower but I do manage to summon up enough lingering adrenaline or endorphins from the walk to get changed into fresh clothes before collapsing properly. I don't quite come up roses, but I don't end up as the mulch we'd put at the bottom them. 

Would you leave such a person in charge of 2 even sicker people ? A world in it's right mind wouldn't, but the current arrangements will have to do until we find one of those. 

I will look back and not remember it as an unpleasant day. No major crises. I feel fairly peaceful. I listen to the rest of my book on the MP3 player that my daughter named Petunia. I spend a long time on the computer because I feel too blobby to do anything else. Quietly sort out my sewing pics into a blog so I can remember what I've done. I mud wrestle my brain to do a couple of words on Scrabble and Words with Friends.

When I have my sandwiches I look at the bread and I think of the people not on line because they've been able to meet together for church, or go out or get together for Sunday lunch and am glad.

I spend a few minutes with the girls when I take them their meals. Later on I hear them chatting together. One of the loveliest sounds in the world.

Another Sunday.