I’m back

I’m back

I hope !

Posts may be a bit infrequent for a while but with good fortune and a following wind Scriptor Senex has the writing bug again.

  

A banana a day keeps the doctor away…
For fifteen days at the end of June, start of July, I lay in bed and hardly moved.  I didn’t read. I didn’t listen to music.  I just lay there, in pain, exhausted and depressed.  Gradually over the last few days I have picked myself up again.   But this is what it feels like.

And the steamroller stays on you.  It just lies on top of you defying your every effort to move until you finally give up and accept you aren’t getting up again.  Somehow the basic instinct not to wet or dirty the bed survives (thank Heaven) and you pull yourself along the wall to the toilet when you need it.  I tried having a bath a few times to see if that would enervate me but just ended up back in bed.

Then one day I went out into the garden in the early morning.  I was dizzy and disorientated, being up for the first time for over a fortnight.  I can’t recall how I managed to get up and ended up in the garden.  But the sun was just rising, the birds were singing and the garden was flourishing with flowers that hadn’t been out when I my body packed up in June.  I sat on the patio and dead-headed some of the flowers in the pots there.  Partner-who-loves-tea arrived with a cup of tea and life suddenly seemed a bit more copeable with.  (I know there is no such word as copeable, thank you Spillchucker, but it suits me to invent it for this purpose!)

 Since then I have een my counsellor.  I have had coffee out.  I have been to a garden centre and bought some plants and bird foods (retail therapy!).

 Passion Flower and Solanum – 

climbers for the new arch through the natural hedge.

And, more importantly in terms of contribution to the household, I have put a couple of washes on and dried the clothes in the garden on our new rotary airer.   Who knows what I might get up to tomorrow?

Richard was happy to cook me a dinner every day and although I did try to eat it I just found the effort too much on many days.  A shame after his kindness and hard work but I ended up living on bananas.  They are so easy to eat.  No effort involved though I did (seriously) find it hard to peel one of them!  I have now discovered that according to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.  An article in The Mind Unleashed in February 2014 gave a lot of other ways in which bananas can benefit your health.  It’s a shame that Jo is allergic to them!  Especially since Richard uses the juicer to make a super ice-cream-like dessert that is composed purely of banana.

Best wishes

During my time off-line I have had many good wishes in many forms from friends far and wide.  Postcards have arrived with cheering themes and messages.  Who could not smile when this arrived from Katya in Ukraine?

E-mails arrived and although most were not read until a day or so ago I already knew the people writing them would have done so.  It’s very humbling that folk from as far and wide as Barbados and Bulgaria were thinking of me.

And Washington Bear arrived.  He joins Teddy who has no name other than Teddy but is a much loved chap who sits on the landing watching us pass to and fro.   Teddy was a present from Jo a few years ago after I had commented that I had always wanted a teddy and could not recall ever having one.  This is Washington.   

As Washington’s donor said ‘Who can look at a teddy and not smile?’

He sits on my chair downstairs and helps me read the postcards.  At first I was a bit concerned that he couldn’t read properly but we’ve since discovered he’s slightly short-sighted.

One of the e-mails that affected me most is self-explanatory –

Dear John,

You don't know me. I just discovered your blog "Rambles from my Chair" while researching the line "Twould ring the bells of Heaven". I'd been re-reading the Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny, a Canadian writer, who used it in one of her books. (I learn more new things this way!)

Anyway, I subscribed to your blog and was sorry that my first receipt was "I'm Offline." I can't pretend to know what you are going through. We all go through "it" but the forms vary and you are visiting some hard times. I just wanted you be aware that I wish you well and will hold you in my thoughts. The world is such a rough place both physically and psychologically. But remember that our world is also in a state of constant flux so bad times change (eventually) into something else. Compassion and caring are out there.

No need to reply. Just wanted you to know that someone in the US is wishing you well.

Just reading that again as I put it in this blog posting makes my body tingle.  There are some very caring people out there!

So thank you everyone and I shall try not to worry you again for a while…