20.04.2022 Coping is an uknown variable.

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 Wednesday 20th 34F sky brightening. Up at 5.30. I have a wet, involuntary cough.

 I have to load the five, large bags of my newly discarded clothing into the car. To be taken to the charity shop in the village. I'll drop the rear seats forwards to make more room in the car. 

 Hatch backs have serious advantages in this regard. My "active" clothes, which, I have sorted into tubs, can go in the bottom of my wardrobe. The same one I cleared out yesterday.

 Then I'll go around looking for more scrap metal in the garden. Which will go in the trailer to be taken to the recycling yard in the same village.  I must admit to slacking on the indoor tidying. My motivation has dropped to zero. 

 My stomach aches have been reported to the doctor by their private messaging system. I am supposed to meet. To discuss how I am coping with my wife's sudden death. 

I may have ruined the balance of the beneficial flora in my gut. By changing my long term diet. The sudden absence of The Head Chef. Meant that my evening meals had been reduced to "something on toast" rather too often.

 I also started eating potato crisps with my lunch time rolls. This was an attempt to stimulate my flagging appetite. I also dropped active yogurt in favour of organic cream with my lunch time, sliced banana. Yes, I am a creature of habit.

 Depression and PTSD can/will both affect the flora of the gut. My sleep patterns have changed drastically since my wife first fell ill. I have been getting up at ridiculously early hours. 3-4am. My trying to compensate by napping during the day. Isn't the same thing as sleeping solidly at night. 

 The body/mind has circadian rhythms. Which feed back to all the organs of the body. Even worse, I wasn't able to sleep during the day. My mind would start going round in circles. Just as as it does to force me out of bed in the early hours of the morning. 

 My overall tiredness catches up on me. As I drift off, my head flops backwards, while I am on the computer. Very unnerving! Driving while being so tired is obviously more challenging. 

 And no, I am not about to start pill popping! I am certainly getting more than enough exercise. In fact I am quite shocked how well I am holding up under the loads I am placing on my bod. I am lifting and carrying ridiculous weights! Repeatedly. Often involving the very steep stairs. 55º. I was suffering from knee pain on the stairs for months before my wife fell ill. Now I don't notice a thing. 

 I still walk every morning. Getting replacement Scarpa boots, under guarantee, has given me the ability to go off-road again. I have already been up to the woods twice. This was after months of repetitive walks to the lanes. Keeping firmly to the asphalt. There was a slight delay in extending my range while they broke in. 

 Getting back to riding my trike has been far easier than I anticipated. I seem to have retained far more fitness than is imaginable given my long hiatus.

 6.45. Not too early for muesli. I don't want to run out of steam. Before morning coffee and a toasted roll with marmalade. 

7.00 I have just removed the black, cloth bag from my wife's urn. She was never "a morning person" but couldn't easily object. The urn consists of a sealed cardboard tube. Decorated with butterflies and out of focus plants. It is resting on an old coffee table in the living room. [Lounge?] A table which she had moved to the corner of the kitchen. To permanently lock in her mystery cupboard. [Now demolished!] Containing little more than two, Vax, vacuum cleaners and some old paint.

 I thought of lifting her urn onto her "tall boy" chest of drawers. Which would put her [ashes] at her former eye level. At the moment she is situated in more of a seated position. She liked her 3 seater settee. An expensive purchase way back in our youth. It was covered in golden peacock feathers. The matching chair is still upstairs on the landing for TV watching. The settee is no more. It had to be demolished to get it out of the lounge. To make room for her hospital bed.

 With the kitchen sink window now clear, I can see her golden daffodils. Glowing amongst the countless, bright blue flowers in her front garden. This is the first time this window has been opened as far back as I can remember. 20+ years? It is far too early in the year for any of her other flowers to be out. A greenfinch was wheezing its song nearby. As I took a snap out of the open window. 

 She had denied herself that view for well over two decades. Due to the "blinding sun" when she was washing up after lunch. Another tragedy! She decided she wanted the window to be covered in a clear, net reinforced tarpaulin. "To keep the ants out." The ugly window covering quickly discoloured and became opaque but still allowed light through. 

 The same held true for the tarpaulin over the bedroom window upstairs. Thereby denying us the view up the hill to the woods for many years. Though in this case it was to protect her privacy from the racist drunk neighbour. Who would light a bonfire and stand around shouting with his drunken mates. While staring up at our bedroom window. A misfortune which led to a ridiculously high hedge obscuring their view. By which time the racist drunk had walked away from his mortgage and moved on.

 7.42. 41F. Time for my walk. Just my usual walk to the lanes and back. My old clothing is now safely in the car boot. The charity shop doesn't open until 10am. Nor does the recycling yard.

 9.20 53F. Bright sunshine. I have been collecting more scrap metal. Stuff which was set aside for potential use but never really was. Some of it was for projects. I was going to build a tadpole trike for years. The tubing and frame parts are finally to be scrapped. Some of my wife's large, metal pots have rusted badly and will go. My Hifi stands are going too.

 I hope to get the staff to park the JCB somewhere near the scrap metal container. So I can more easily place the entire trailer load into the huge bucket. Then I needn't climb the steps to the top of the container with every single item. I'll see what they say. They aren't allowed to actively help people unload their trailers. For fairly obvious reasons. [Damage or injury.] I was told to leave any heavy metal objects on the ground.

 12.30  60F. A second, mixed trailer full taken to the recycling yard. 

 13.00 Just finished lunch. No more crisps. I bought some yogurt to go with the banana while I was in the village. Organic honey replaces one of the cheese, half rolls. Raspberry jam on the final two halves. My stomach hasn't felt so bad this morning. 

  Some say that the beneficial yogurt bacteria are killed by the stomach acid. The trick [allegedly] is to eat the yogurt on an empty stomach. This way the yogurt joins a fast moving flow away from the stomach. Rather than being held up and destroyed as a large meal is slowly digested.

  13.15 Now I can't stay awake! Tried to nap but I didn't sleep.

  16.30 Just back from another delivery to the recycling yard. An oak, filing cabinet has been acting as my headboard for years. No longer! It went out of the window and down the ladder. The gap between the central chimney and the sloping ceiling is now twice as wide!   

 18.15 Yet another overflowing trailer ready for the recycling yard. I am worn out! I had to come in for a rest.

~~

19.04.2022 And finally, home again.

 ~~

  Tuesday 19th 36F. Bright start with a fair bit of cloud. Up at 6am after another disturbed night. Two trips to the bathroom. Then waiting to get up at a more reasonable hour. I use a torch to see the clock.

Google tells me that poor sleep is commonplace with the recently bereaved. As are all the mixed emotions which cartwheel through my day. The anger, guilt, sorrow, sadness and loneliness. All are deemed healthy [in moderation] and must be faced and accepted if I am to heal.  

 My stomach ache only showed itself for the first time as I drank my morning, black coffee. I had already consumed my muesli. So it may have been coincidence. The coffee was neither hot nor strong. I always mix my hot drinks 50% with cold water from the tap. This saves having to wait to drink it and avoids possible burns.

 The shops are open again after the Easter closures. I will probably tricycle there. It was very therapeutic getting back on the trike yesterday. Until I could no longer see where I was going for the tears. I was rehearsing all the things I was going to tell my [late] wife when I returned. A difficult habit to break after so many years. 

 I want to increase my fruit intake. I am reduced to only a daily banana with lunch. I was slicing an apple to go with the banana each day. However, the organic apples are very poor. Hard and green inside the colourful, red skins. The cherry tomatoes are awful too. Most of them taste rotten. Like the smell of yesterday's street market. Pears? Pineapples? What else is there?

 I ate a small tin of mandarins yesterday. I had bought them for my wife. To try and stimulate her appetite. She couldn't manage them. Like so many other tasty treats that I tried to find her. I haven't had any potatoes for weeks. The last lot were green inside too. 

 Perhaps I ought to start eating salads again? Lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber with boiled, new potatoes. Mostly water, a bit of roughage. Add boiled eggs? That would help to use up the large packages of eggs. I have lots of tiny tins of tuna. These could be part of a salad.

 Which vegetables could I face? I eat [frozen] organic peas about once a week. I ought to make a conscious effort to expand my diet away from so much toast and bread rolls. 

 8.00 39F. Time for my morning walk. I get so much benefit from walking in the countryside. So I must not succumb to inactivity.

 8.15 to 9.15 52F.  I walked up to the woods by going in the opposite direction to normal. This involves a greater length of main road but the traffic wasn't too awful his morning. Five geese were resting on a roadside field. Later I saw two deer grazing on the crops.

 After the steep climb I was going to return by the direct descent. However, my way was blocked by brambles at a half way hedge. So I had to climb all the way back up to the top of the hill to find a gap through to the next field. Then I descended on that side. The sky was streaked like huge vapour trails. Taking the edge off the sun for most of the time. 

10.00  The undertaker is calling at noon. I had better get some shopping done. The list is growing by the minute. So I had better take the car. I have managed to find all of the salad components in organic wares.

I was outside collecting scrap metal for the recycling yard. When the lady undertaker arrived on schedule. We had a long and wide ranging chat outside in the warm sunshine. From her own experience it usually takes a couple of years. To come to terms with the loss of a close partner.

 Shirley's ashes are now resting on the living room floor. Though not quite that literally.  Housed in a neat, compact, black cloth bag. With matching handles and a zip-up top. The inner, cardboard, tubular container [The Official Urn] is designed as a dispenser. No, not with a ring pull! The top has a perforated cardboard circle to push inwards. Or to tear out, according to personal choice.  

 My wife hated having her picture taken. So I shan't be sharing any photos of her urn. For some reason I haven't reacted to her being delivered back to her former home. I'm not really sure that it has sunk in yet. Was that an unintentional pun? 

 It would be no problem to fit the whole thing in a cycle saddle bag. To be carried safely to the seaside. Where the contents are meant to be spread on the sea. Prevailing wind sensitivities must obviously be observed. Failure to reach the beach might be caused by an inadvertent, headlong trip in her garden.

 14.00 60F To my shame I still hadn't done the washing up from yesterday. So I had to do that before preparing lunch. My daily cheese and raspberry jam rolls lunch was replaced by one half with cheese, one half with honey and two halves with jam. Followed by organic banana and cream. I am trying to get away from eating so much cheese.

 17.15 57F. Wardrobe attack! I managed to almost fill five 100L bags of unwanted clothing from my single wardrobe. Much of it not worn, nor even looked at, in many years. Since turning 75 I have become allergic to cardigans! Not that I ever wore any of them. No more suits or Harris tweed jackets and matching trousers.

 It is too late to go to the local charity shop now. So I'll take it tomorrow. All the scrap metal in the trailer will be headed for the recycling yard. Do I even need a wardrobe now? I suppose it keeps the moths and dust at bay. Though it's mostly air in there. I could store my music CDs in there. All 65 film DVDs are now boxed and can go to the charity shop too. I never want to watch a film twice. 

19.00  First salad of the year. I had to look up how long to boil the [organic] eggs. They were only slightly soft at eight minutes. I pre-boiled the water in the kettle to speed things up. Organic heart lettuce, loads of organic cucumber slices plus tomatoes. With JW tinned salmon providing the fish. Salad cream is a bit naughty but I need it. Lettuce is too bitter without. My stomach is complaining even more now! I haven't had anything to drink. Organic apple juice might help.

 If anyone is interested am taking 30mg of Zinc Picolinate, 1000mg of Vitamin C and three 20mcg capsules of D per day. When I remember. My psychiatrist is Dr Tracey Marks of YouTube fame. 

~~

18.04.2022 Seriously flawed but surviving.

 ~~

 Monday 18th 33F, a bright start. With all day sunshine promised again. Up at 5.45am after a very restless night. 

My wife took this image.
So I left it up as our screen saver.

 6.00  I have no re-organisation plan again.

 I do have ADHD, OCD and lie somewhere on the Autism spectrum. I can clearly remember having all of these "problems" back in my school days. 

 Nearly 70 years later I still have severe problems concentrating and organising. I lose things. All of the time. Yet can tell you the origin of the thousands of dismantled items in my lifetime hoard of "stuff." The remaining detritus from far too many hobbies. Going back to my teenage years.

 My useful memory is absolute crap and always has been. It always felt as if my memory was far too small and was constantly being overwritten. I'd leave classes without a clue about what had just been discussed by the teacher. Homework? Was there homework? Dates? I can remember a tiny few. Less than six in total. I cannot remember jokes to save my life. Well [literally] one or two. Or is it one? My mind wanders like a sheep on a mountainside. It always has and always will.

 Most would say I have a highly selective memory. I can remember worthless stuff but nothing very useful. I do have some practical skills if I can avoid losing inspiration. Usually the project is part of my lifelong OCD. My wife called me a butterfly. I would change hobbies at the flick of a switch and completely lose interest in the last one. Often after studying library books for weeks or months. Even after investing in books, materials and tools.

 My own library consists of 5 or 6 book cases stuffed to overflowing with non-fiction. Mostly bought secondhand. Mostly "text or reference books" for particular subjects. The sheer number of books is an indicator of my hundreds of pastimes, scores of interests and a dozen or so lifelong passions. These books are/were my missing memory banks. If I needed information I knew where to go. I even proved reference books "worked examples" were wrong once I got deeply into a subject.

 Having reasonably high intelligence doesn't work. Not without a functioning memory. People would say I was bright but it didn't help. I was "always overqualified" when I went for job interviews. Despite using maths, geometry and trigonometry all of my life I cannot remember the simplest rules. Using Sin, Cos & Tan to solve a triangle? Nope! I'd have to write the simple formulae down first before I can use them safely. Do you know I still cannot add a column of figures and get the same answer twice? It was the same in junior school.

 I cannot do simple fractions without working out a simple example first. I can no more do percentages than walk on water. You should not be surprised to learn that I have not a single educational qualification. Yet I wrote computer programs in BBC Basic to design astronomical telescope objectives to twelve decimal places. 

 I wanted to make a lens of my own and needed the exact radii of the four surfaces. I need hardly mention that I built a series of successful grinding and polishing machines. From scratch and always using scrap materials. I have man years invested in scrap metal yards. You can learn a lot from wandering about looking for something specific.

 My optical design software proved that a classic optical design textbook had flaws in its worked examples. It showed that the published design of a new lens type was completely wrong. They had to publish an update to say they had no more exotic glass left.

 So the design was changed to match what was commercially available. I then proved that the new design worked fine but was not as good. The designer went on to become world famous [in amateur astronomy] for his high quality APO telescopes. With waiting lists often running into years. The Chinese build lots of APOs now.

 Being so mentally flawed I had to take humble jobs. Where my poor memory didn't matter too much. Humble jobs do not pay well. So I had to learn to DIY everything. My first car was an old Ford. I tuned the engine and rebuilt it using only the Haynes Manual. That was the beginning of maintaining and [often] tuning my own cars to save money. 

 I rebuilt a secondhand fibreglass kit car from scratch. I completely rebuilt and tuned the engine. Rebuilt the gearbox, brakes, inlet and exhaust manifolds, carburettor and racing filter systems. Changed the camshaft, fitted belt drive, lighter flywheel. Clutch, suspension, redesigned the bodywork, rewired it twice. When I found a better loom in a scrapyard. Built a completely new cooling system and oil cooler system. All just from book learning.

 I couldn't afford to employ a carpenter. So I built triple glazing units for one of our homes. I went on to design and build our own, gravity heating systems. Did all the plumbing, drainage, doors, windows, floors, kitchen units and boarded the ceilings in our present hovel. I even put a new, super-insulated roof on it after a storm. A lifetime of so many hobbies gives me skills I can turn to my own benefit to save huge sums. I would buy the tools I needed from the savings.

 Do I really need over a hundred screwdrivers? Dozens of different pliers? More spanners, sockets and drivers than most mechanics? I have flat, Ikea storage tubs full of them. I have repaired, designed and built my own bicycles all of my life. Even worked on and redesigned a few motorcycles in my youth. It is all valuable experience which can be added to the sum of the whole and turned to a new project. 

 I love writing but cannot remember the plot and characters from one day to the next. In my youth, a Job Centre employee once told me that I should have been born rich. Then I could play with my projects. Without needing to make a living like everybody else. I proved him wrong.  I played with my projects anyway. Despite being working, but poor, for most of my life. How my [late] wife put up with me I have no idea.

08.15 45F. That's enough about me. Time for a walk! Lots of birds about. I fell into despair in the lanes as the tears flowed. How was I going to cope without my wife? I dare not even glimpse into the chasm of everyday life without her. Every sound I hear at home is of my own making. The myriad verbal exchanges are so painfully absent. I am completely devoid of training for my new life. 

 9.30 52F. I can't get it together again today. So I'm going for another ride on my trike. There is a small, village supermarket which might be open on Easter Monday. It's a lovely ride along the rural lanes. They might have some rolls. I checked whether they'd be open before leaving.

 11.45. 58F. Just back from my ride. It was a perfect morning for it. Cool but with light, easterly winds. I bought both kinds of wholemeal rolls. Where the local supermarkets had only had one kind in stock. Only 16 miles but I was going remarkably well. Regularly dancing on the pedals on the climbs. 

 I sought out the steepest local climbs and was hardly breathless. Went by one beautiful route and returned by another. The landscape is filling up with solar panels. Whole fields of them! I couldn't share what I'd seen today. Because She is not here. 

 13.15. 58.3F. I managed a nap before lunch. Now I need a plan. I am still getting odd stabbing pans in my stomach. So I had a normal lunch. I forgot to buy cream to go with the daily banana. Down to the last two jars of the special, raspberry jam. I would order it online but can't remember where. That was strictly my wife's knowledge base. 

 It seems that crisps are highly processed foods. My starting to eat them with lunch, as an appetite stimulant, coincided with my stomach pains. I don't need the crisps and shan't buy any more.

 I spent the afternoon on one of my favourite hobbies. Taking close-up pictures of the sun in my home-built observatory. This is relaxing but takes some concentration. This is not avoidance but gets me out of the [untidy] house. Which reduces the stimulation from being constantly surrounded in triggers to memories of my wife's presence. 

 The clear, plastic tubs are now being used to sort my own clothes. Not the most practical arrangement. Because larger items get wrinkled unless I am fastidious with folding.. It just seemed like somewhere to start. If only to ensure I knew where things are and how many are left. Before laundry alarm bells start ringing. 

 I haven't dared to look in my wardrobe yet. There is so much to discard I don't know where to start. I haven't worn a shirt formally in many years. Nor any other jacket but casual, weatherproof or down-filled for the cold. Jeans are smarter than fleece but rarely get an airing these days. I could go formal for the village shops..

 Does that mean I can donate all the rest to the charity shops? Without a second thought? Clothes can easily be replaced at low cost from the same source. Only if needed. New clothes don't cost the earth. So why hang onto any of it? Why am I avoiding the process? That leaves me confused and undecided.

 It feels as if I am abandoning a former life. One which ended abruptly 25 years ago with our move to Denmark. The entire wardrobe, for UK living, is still hanging unused or still neatly folded. Frozen in time. The very last bridge yet to be burnt? Emergency kit for a full retreat? Do I really want to go back to Blighty? That question feels very weird indeed the more I think about it.  

 Denmark is far more relaxed when it comes to dress code. As a pensioner, with zero social life, I have no need of formal anything. In fact I have no real need of a "wardrobe." I have been fighting with this wardrobe for 25 years. It gets in the way of my computer chair. [Or did, until I finally moved it back] Shelves and a few hangers, on a short rail, would easily cover my needs. I had better start looking for the clear dustbin bags!

 Denmark feels very safe. As far as my very rural bit of Denmark is concerned. I don't know about the cities and would not want to live there anyway. Britain is a nation of thieves. Top down and bottom up. Every house, in every street and road we ever lived in, had a burglary. Both city and very rural. Going back for over half a century. 

 This was what finally triggered us to move over here. My workshop was broken into and my car stolen, on the same weekend, two hundred miles apart. A near neighbour was hospitalised by the burglars. When he came home to find them there. The police knew who the thieves were but had no proof. We never felt safe again.

~~