CHICKEN LITTLE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE

I recently returned from Toronto having replaced Sister for a spell caring for our father, Crotchety Pensioner.  CP remains crankier than ever.  He can't help it.   He's never seen a silver lining in his life.  He will remain this way until he dies.  But I am placing bets he will never die.  At ninety-one he was out shoveling snow for five hours.  You couldn't stop him.  You'd have to tackle him to the ground, drag him into the house, and tie him to a chair in order to contain him.  It's tricky... how do you stop someone who is physically able from doing something they want to do, even if it's something that might hurt them.  It's a fine line, protecting someone versus holding them prisoner. 

One day I prevented him from going out to throw compost in the back yard to start off the gardening season.  Three feet of snow blanketed the ground and the temperature was minus 40 with the wind chill factor.  He's like the Energizer Bunny. 

Mr. Leszczynski

View From The Gulag  

If you picked him up his legs would keep moving.  CP had a very tough winter. When he's trapped inside everyday seems endless, and CP gets crankier and more negative.  Sister and I are wary of his dour disposition,  admire his tenacity, and hope it's those latter genes that will help us in the long run.

Next Year it's Aruba

Sister had a lovely break in L.A.  But it was a short lived foray into warmth.  Winter refused to leave Toronto.  The day of Sister's return a blizzard hit with snowflakes the size of chipmunks.  Cars skidded on city streets like bumper cars at the CNE's Kiddie Midway(that's the Canadian National Exhibition for you non-Torontonians).  I was petrified navigating Lakeshore Blvd. in white-out conditions with drivers trailing me by inches.

Red Alert!  Red Alert!

I managed to crawl back to CP's house by late afternoon, driving twenty miles an hour for the entire thirteen mile journey from Queen and Ossington.  Not only had the blizzard stopped the city in its tracks, but our rental car had no snow tires.  Fortunately the snow didn't last long, it morphed into freezing rain.  Sister's plane was due in at eight pm that night.

By the time I got home, the house was in black-out.  The entire neighbourhood was in blackout.  Actually, a good chunk of the city was in black out.  CP was unaware.  He is nearly blind and navigating in the darkness is a natural occurrence.  Besides, he is used to black outs, relishes them in fact, they might lead to catastrophe.  I lit candles. 

Exploding Transformers

In the kitchen I am distracted by a series of alarming flashes outside the window, otherworldly against a sickly greenish dusk sky. Only later did I learn the fireworks were exploding electrical transformers.  In the meantime I wonder how this black-out will affect the airport, just a couple of miles away.  Is Sister going to be diverted to Cuba or Florida.  She should be so lucky.

In order to determine Sister's estimated time or date of arrival, I dialed the ancient Rotary phone CP uses, and called Brother-In-Law; a man in California possessing both power and the internet.  Brother-In-Law could monitor Sister's progress from afar and call me on my cell if she'd been diverted.  Miraculously, Sister's flight was on time.

 

It's The End Of The World

CP loves disaster.  Long winter days trapped indoors turns that love into obsession.  With not much else to do he is glued to the news.  During the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis he was practically giddy.  "It's WW III!  It's WW III!  It's the end of the world!" he reported, "I won't be missing much when I'm gone," he laughs.

Later as I head out the airport to pick up Sister, he tells me, "You couldn't find worse weather to fly in.  You wouldn't catch me in an airplane today... they're just machines.  They fail.  They drop from the sky."  CP built planes for a living before he retired to spread his message of joy throughout the world.  

  

Giving myself forty-five minutes to travel the eight minutes it normally takes to get to the airport, I set out.  Ten minutes to de-ice the car - done!  Icy slush covers the roads.  Icy sleet falls from the sky.  No traffic lights.  Car rears careen right and left and right again, like big metal Kardashian butts, while taking corner's at a snail's pace.  Vehicles lie abandoned in ditches waiting for tow trucks that won't arrive.  

As I crest the bridge over Highway 27 I see huge lights in the distance, massive lights.  Pitch black all the way to the airport, then these brilliant lights shining in the murky atmosphere.  The airport is on a generator.  Inside the place is jammed; packed with people whose flights never left, people waiting for friends and family delayed by hours or even days.

         

Sister finally lands, one of the 'lucky' few to arrive in Toronto that night.  The terminal lights flicker on and off with the power fluctuations, like some outpost airport in Kathmandu.  Sister comes down the ramp with her luggage.  A calm, robotic, end-of-the-world voice reminds us over the PA system that much of the city is without power.  "Welcome back!"  I hug her. 

   

We arrive home.  CP is seated in the living room in the dark, (candles extinguished for safety's sake.)  He's all bundled up, staring out the window, into more dark, aware of the storm, certain his daughters are dead.  He seems more surprised than anything when we pull up.  Once the shock of our survival wears off, he heads upstairs to turn on the news and check in on what fresh mess has hit the world.  We remind him there's no power and he'll have to wait for the next disaster.

Sister and I sit on the bed wearing pajamas and sweaters, down vests and socks, under mounds of comforters, clutching glasses of Merlot.  Outside ice pellets ping against the window.  CP has retired, happy that his 'girls' are home.  Sister and I sit in the dark, with no heat and no power, pondering this peculiar fate of ours.

In the middle of the night the power is restored, but the weather remains foul.  The next night I head back to the airport to return to the UK. "Let's hope you get home alive," is CP's farewell. 

The Joy of De-Icing

As the plane is de-iced on the runway I replay CP's encouraging words about air travel and airplanes.  With power restored he will watch the CBC and wait for news of my aircraft falling from the sky.

I return to England to find that spring has sprung.  Walking the streets of London I am acutely aware that I have freedom again... that my life is my own.  The luxury of spending time with Dear Friend brings me joy.  When you care for someone elderly your life is not your own.  While CP may feel a prisoner of the elements, Carer feels a prisoner of CP. 

Spring Sprung

It's miraculous the change in outlook that fine weather can bring.  CP has long been invited to live in Southern California where he would have warmth and a year round garden to tend, but he refuses change.  Yet another case where you wish you could do something against his will that might be good for him; an abduction perhaps.  Back at the Pink Cottage the sun shines and the flowers are shooting out of the ground.  Still, there is drama.  I return home to care for three other irascible, willful creatures of nature, Penny and the Pea-Chicks, and encounter another unusual family dynamic... but I will save that for next time, and for now just enjoy the daffodils.    

A MESSAGE FROM THE GULAG

Husband is content at the Pink Cottage feeding the muster (yes this is a correct term for a collection of peafowl) of birds, revising his novel, breathing in the fragrant spring air and watching the daffodils nudge their way towards sunlight.   

Contented Husband 

Wife, that would be me, isn’t quite so ecstatic.  I am relocated temporarily from Somerset to Toronto; fulfilling my tour of duty tending to the most Crotchety Pensioner (forthwith referred to as CP) in the GTA (that’s Greater Toronto Area.)

Recently the Economist named Toronto the World’s best city to live in.   Perhaps from April to October, but from where I freeze I beg to differ.  I contemplate heading out in temperatures hovering around -25, or with the wind chill factor, -40.  The Friday before I left the UK the sun shone down on Somerset, the robins, blue tits, and chaffinches sang joyously, and even the jackdaws greeted us en-mass out the back of the house, clamoring for breakfast.  The hillsides were so green they looked photo-shopped.  The day I flew out the verdant countryside was lousy with leaping lambs.

Then....

....And Now

 Three hours of shoveling snow can shrivel the bloom off the rose that is Toronto.  The neighbour next door flaunts his fancy snow blowing machine, the newly blown powder drifting down onto the driveway I’ve just finished clearing in order to make my escape.  CP doesn’t believe in newfangled machinery.

A Nice but Frigid Stroll  By My Alma Mater

Out on the street the beauty of pristine white snow is fouled by splotches of dog urine, then stippled with motor oil and sprinkled with salt.  As reluctant as I am to venture out into this subarctic hell, getting out of the house is a necessary ordeal.  It takes fifteen minutes to layer on enough clothing to protect against the elements.  Then bundled up like a Siberian Cosmonaut ready for a space walk, I realize I’ve forgotten something.  I pull off salt chewed boots and tip-toe back into the house to retrieve a bag of garbage that I will ferry out into the world and deposit in one of the many public garbage cans that Sister and I have identified throughout the GTA. 

No Words Needed

Refuse must be removed from the house covertly, before CP gets hold of it.  It seems as time slips through his hands, he refuses to let anything go.  One characteristic many elderly folk acquire is the inability to throw anything out.  When the pensioner is also a World War Two survivor, you can ratchet that trait up a gazillion fold.  Nothing should be tossed out, ever… because you never know when you might need it; no can, plastic container, nor their lids, no piece of foil or defunct car battery.  My father has lived in this house since I was ten…. he started collecting things on the day we moved in.  If it weren’t for diligent culling by my mother…  well, I wouldn’t be able to find the back door.  When our mother passed away, or escaped, as some have said, her daughters took over.

In his dotage CP has become McGyver. “Don’t throw that out!” he shouts when he catches us removing blown light bulbs, TVs old enough not to work but not so old as to be vintage, ancient tinned goods, prescriptions that expired a decade ago, emptied paper towel rolls, shoes that fit no one which begs the question where did they come from, used cat litter and a fake Christmas tree from which most of the fake boughs have mysteriously disappeared,  “I can use it!” 

Vintage Fruit Cocktail

He once fashioned a winter hat from a section of our mother’s discarded leather coat.  It was red with a black fur lining and trim.  The hat was pointed.  CP looked like an insane elf when he wore it.  Now he wears multiple hats underneath it.  “Have to layer for the cold,” he says.  Yes, I agree, but he wears so many layers it's like he's mummified.  Perhaps he is pre-mummifying himself for us.

CP has shrunk with age, as one does, as I will and you will.  He’s also partially blind and partially deaf, and moving pretty slowly.  This makes it easy for us to race past him unnoticed on garbage days with empty boxes, cans of solidified paint and six foot long rolls of decomposing carpet.  Had he noticed us he would have claimed there was some use for every one of these items.  In years gone by everything removed, upon our mother’s request, was scrutinized.  Sometimes CP dragged things up from the bottom of the driveway, and then relocated them in the basement, or the family room or the garage, and there they remained, unused and gathering dust. 

 

Before we started our removal program, under our mother’s direction, the family room and the garage were unusable.  To this day the garage is the repository for an un-drivable car, an un-floatable boat, fishing poles, nets without bottoms, tents and other remnants of a former sporty life.

Stuff

Sister and I filled a dumpster with unusable detritus several years ago.  We personally hauled 1.7 tons of formerly used lumber.  It was during a heat-wave.  She and I were out in the driveway wielding a chainsaw.  The city had ordered CP to remove this build-up from his property under threat of fine.  Even so he tried to squirrel away bits and pieces of rubbish for future use.  The garden is now usable, at least when it’s not buried in three feet of snow.  

Thanks to our endeavours the family room is now perfectly habitable, but not in time for our mother to enjoy.  The two family cats have taken it over as a refuge; a necessity since CP’s diminished sight means he routinely sits on one or the other of them as they nap in the living room.  

Don't Tell Him Where I Am

 

There’s still no room in the garage for the rental cars Sister and I have when we’re here.  CP was hoping we could use his un-drivable car with its manual choke, different sized wheels on front and back, and engine the size of a skidoo’s.

In The Driver's Seat

 Come Rain or Snow or Sleet...

Disposal of things broken and useless is a Sisyphean task, and we are mindful of not removing items which have real emotional meaning to CP, but we’re pretty sure he won’t miss the box of ancient rubber bands which decomposed upon touch or the carpet sweeper that fell apart when CP picked it up or the copies of the Etobicoke Guardian dating from nineteen-eighty-three.  I haul these things across snow banks the size of Somerset sheep making my way to random dumpsters in windswept parking lots.  This is my battle.  At home, CP has his own battle; a daily one, to hang on to his memories and his mind, and wonder where the hell that box of elastic bands disappeared to.   

Meanwhile.... Back in Somerset

   

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015.... SIGNS IN THE UNIVERSE AND CLOSER

Another year bites the dust.  Happy New Year and Welcome to 2015. 

Christmas and New Years are always such a weird time. All kinds of emotions swimming about.  This was Husband and my first Christmas in the UK together.  Out with old, in with the new, letting go of stuff we'd rather forget, looking forward to...

Here at the Pink Cottage the holiday is especially tinged with emotion.  Four years ago this week Husband's sweet and eccentric sister, not yet out of her forties, passed away, starting a train of events that ultimately led us here.

Heather

 

Sister-In-Law was a bit of a collector, and among the things she collected was Christmas paraphernalia.  She loved Christmas, like a kid loves Christmas.  She decorated her home so there was barely enough free surface space to put down a coffee cup.  Trinkets bobbled and tinsel glittered.  If she could have she would have left the decorations up all year round... sometimes she did.  It was always Christmas in her heart.  So, we decided our Christmas ritual will now include leaving our decorations up until January the 8th, the anniversary of her death.

I Love Christmas!

 

Christmas day was stunning.  Blue skies with voluptuous clouds floating across the horizon.  We walked up to the top of the Polden Hills to the Hood Monument lookout and Husband drifted some of her ashes to the wind in a spot overlooking the Glastonbury Tor.  Sister-in-law was made for Glastonbury, she would have loved it.  Now a little part of her will always have it in view.  When we come back to Somerset after a trip, the sight of the Tor is a sign that we are not far from home.  Now it has other meanings too.

Husband and his Sister

Aren't we always looking for signs, little signals portending good things, giving us a feeling that luck is on our side, or that someone might be watching out for us somewhere? That beautiful blue Christmas morning made us feel good in our hearts and we thought of Husband's sister and took it all as a sign that she was with us. 

A few months before we changed our lives and moved here Husband and I went to Canada to scatter the ashes of his mother, father, and sister in Georgian Bay.  We were en-route to pick up his Aunt and Uncle when Husband announced, "I need a coffee."  I pulled into the nearest mini-mall.  
Husband stood in line ordering. 

A Sign on A Sign

I gazed out the window not looking at anything in particular and noticed where we were: Heatherwood Square.  Sister-In-Law's name was Heather Wood.  A sign on a sign.   

The morning we were to scatter the ashes Husband first went for a drive alone.  Well, not alone, exactly.  He took the ashes in their urns for a final visit to the place that had meant so much to his family.  

They had grown up skiing in this area, and it was at the old 'chalet' that they had their very best times.  After a few moments of contemplation, he drove off and suddenly had the feeling he was not alone.  He looked out the driver's window.  A deer ran along side of the car.  In all his years at the chalet he had never seen a deer this close.  Another sign?  That's how he took it: they were sending him off as he was sending them off. These kinds of signs are comforting and stay with us.

We read many things as signs, and unfortunately some are discomforting. This first week of this New Year began grimly with the murders in the offices of Charles Hebdo in Paris.  The parade of woes around the world is depressing, and seemingly growing.  This burst of violence is a sad introduction into 2015.  We might take this as a sign of more bad things to come, of people becoming increasingly cruel to one another, of the dissolution of human relationships.  How do we keep from becoming overwhelmed by the sad, bad news?  Sometimes it's so powerful it feels like there isn't room in our heads or hearts for the good news.

Maybe by acknowledging small things every day and performing tiny kindnesses whenever we can, we can see the world in a better light, make some kind of difference, make our own signs for others to interpret. 

Husband and I choose to seek out signs that the world is a good place.  Little things.  The robin that perches on a branch and sings at us through the window, or the other one that hops in our back door for snacks. 

Please Miss, May
I Have More

A glorious morning.  A blue sky.  The deep chocolate brown of fresh tilled soil, the hike up Lollover Hill behind the house, long Skype calls with dear friends deeply missed, meeting and finding a commonality with new people, the sight of the first spring lambs (last week!), the ringing of the church bells next door, and the new lemon yellow daffodils blooming in January.  

It's That Time Again

A smile is a sign of happiness and sometimes just smiling at people and saying hello can spread good will.  Although some of our grumpier neighbours take this brazen act of congeniality as an assault, or just a sign of our suspected madness. Bitter Man and Scaffolding Man (see previous blog) do not take kindly to broad smiles and good mornings, but they're getting them anyway.  And in two short weeks my ability to spread kindness will be tested as I head back to Toronto to care for the most cantankerous man in the Western Hemisphere.  I hope for a sign that all will go well.    

A robin sings outside my window.    

A Good Sign

          

THE WORST PUB

A village's pub is the soul of the community.  It's where you catch up on gossip, have a pint after work, meet friends and neighbours.  Not here.  Not in our village.  Even before our pub was condemned and closed it wasn't very inviting.

When we first looked at living here we were forewarned. "If you're looking for a village with a good pub, it's not this one.  Our pub is crap."  Point taken, but we loved the area and a pub was not going to make or break our decision, besides, we learned there were at least seven good pubs in a six mile radius, who cares if our local stunk.  "But you've got to pop in for a pint anyway," we were advised, "it must be visited."

Don't Go Here

Soon after we arrived we decided to check it out.  I've written about this place before... the low ceiling Husband cracked his head on, the dim lighting, the complete silence when we walked in the door, all eyes on us as we sat on the ancient cracked bar stools, the fire-place you could pitch a tent in. When the murmur of conversation resumed it became apparent that each and every one of the regulars knew who we were, while we had never laid eyes on any of them.  A guy at the end of the bar quoted Thomas Hardy's A Trampwoman's Tragedy at great length, then leaned in to us conspiratorially and announced in a beery, cheery voice, "There's wife-swappers up on your hill."

Husband and I weren't sure we'd heard what we thought we'd heard.  We looked at each other for corroboration.  Yes... he'd said there were wife-swappers on our hill!  Who among the elderly church-goers, the hard-working farmers, the sheep and the big black and white dairy cows, swapped wives? From then on we looked at our neighbours wondering, but never knowing.

Do Go Here

A man sitting next to us struck up a conversation.  A commuter, an outsider like us, he told us he pops in for pints every day on his drive home.  Within moments we realized he was a Man Who Knows Everything; the history of the old Bristol Road, where to travel in Albania, everything you never wanted to know about the Imperial measuring system, the body count of the Monmouth Rebellion, the best recipe for Spotted Dick, the origins of the Somerset accent, the meaning behind village names like Compton Pauncefoot and Nempnett Thrubwell, and on and on and on and on.  Husband reminded me of an imaginary commitment.  We excused ourselves and left. 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com
/recipes/2686661/spotted-dick

The next time we dropped into the pub was many months later.  "Where have you been?" the barkeep said, like we were regulars who'd somehow slipped off his radar. 

My cousin in the Midlands called.  'So, I read about your pub in the paper while I was doing research for our trip to you,' she said.

What?  We immediately Googled it.  There in black and white in a local Somerset paper was the down and dirty on our publican and his wife.  Seems they had a neighbour, a recent widower suffering from dementia.  Seems they were assigned power of attorney over said elderly pensioner, and then pilfered funds for a splashy wedding for their daughter, and proceeded to drain his bank account.  They were charged and found guilty, and yet remarkably, they were still running the pub and not in jail... only fined.  However, we were told, they were running the pub accessorized by House Arrest Ankle Bracelets.

Evening Wear Ankle Bracelet

It was at this time we learned the difference between a Free-hold pub and a Lease-hold.  Free-hold means the publican owns the pub outright and can serve whatever he wants to serve.  Lease-hold means they have a lease, usually from a corporation, usually from a brewery.  Our local is a lease-hold, which means some brewery somewhere let ankle-braceleted felons pull pints.  

Beasts! we thought, how dare they roam free, well, semi-free, and serve the public.  Not for long.  One day we saw a big notice plastered across the pub's sign offering anyone with a pulse the opportunity to live the dream of running a pub.  The place had been shut down.  Again gossip filtered to us.  Turns out the pub's kitchen was a nightmare.  A real nightmare.  An unusable nightmare.  

A Business Opportunity

The publican was a large man who traveled in an electric scooter.  Unwilling to let the minor detail of a condemned kitchen hamper his food service he came up with an ingenious way around it.  There was a perfectly good kitchen in his home on the other side of the street; a major street, more like a small highway.  So the answer was simple.  Customers would place food orders at the pub.  Food would be prepared at his kitchen across the street, then the publican would ferry the orders to the pub across the busy main artery that connects this area to several other towns that actually have wonderful pubs.  He did this on his mobility scooter.  We were told that once this was discovered, it was the nail in the pub's coffin.  

A village without a pub is like a day without sunshine.  So this summer saw notices everywhere announcing pop-up pub nights on the cricket pitch.  What a perfect way to spend a summer eve, on gorgeous green lawns sipping a glass of wine, and watching a cricket match... all proceeds going to the club.  It was the best antidote to the bad taste left by the pub-that-will-not-be-named.