Does anyone know?

Can anyone tell me about Carola Dunn?  I downloaded one of her books the other day because the title caught my attention, but for some reason  I couldn't find any reviews

TEE HEE

My daughter, Hannah and her partner, Andy are staying with me for the weekend, as they are going to a friend's wedding locally.
 I think I mentioned earlier, that I have Cerebral Palsy,  I waa born with it, (personally I prefer the word Spastic, but I get shoch horror and dirty looks from people these days when I use it, so I use it whenever I can)

I used to be able to walk.  It looked a bit strange, but I got from A to B.  Now I have decided that sitting down is a better idea.  Sitting down is good.  I have a broken right knee cap, and nerve damage in my left leg brought on by a hip replacement, and only one weight bearing leg.  Each time I fell over I crashed down on to my hip replacement.

 I was strictly ordered not to do this, as, if it dislocated, there was a srong possibility the medics would not be able to relace it, and the idea of being "hipless in Hampshire", or anywhere else for that matter, doesn't exactly thrill me, _oh, and I forgot to mention the ankle I broke in April which is still in a cast.  So I decided to take to a wheelchair.  It turned my life around.  My hip is relatively safe, and my face no longer gets rearranged by a pavement as often as it used to.

My family and I just minutes after a sky dive

in August 2010

The point of all this is that Andy (See Hannah's partner, first paragraph) was telling that the other day he read a report in the paper saying that the government was clamping down on people receiving disability benefits, because most of them were shamming illness.  It turned out that about 70% of claimants were doing just that.  Well I say to you out there, if you can sham my lot, you can have my benefit and my Equity card, but if it's all the same to you, I'll keep my daughters.  That said, I confess I can't help feeling a tad smug.

WHO ARE "THEY" AND HOW DO "THEY" KNOW? This aternoon, I listened to a play on Radio 4 about how grief can bring people together. I don't often listen to the afternoon play these days because I think that, for the most part, modern radio drama has lost its "edge" in the last two or three years. "Stream, River, Sea" by Peter Souter, starring Alex Jennings and Juliet Stevenson, however, held mey attention, and seemed to "tick all the boxes" in my experience, (my husband died four years ago) except one. When Juliet Stevenson said something like "They say it takes seven years to get over the loss of a loved one," I started to twitch. Who are "they?" and how on earth do "they" know? Did they just pick a number out of the air? (probably) did they do a national survey? (probably not) and who wants to "get over" the loss of a loved one, anyway? I don't; I'd like to be able to live with it calmly (rather like a scar; it fades and can be forgotten for a time, but every now and then, it itches.) Surely no one can put a time limit on grief. It's an individual thing which takes as long as it takes, and if it takes the rest of your life, then so be it. I sometimes wish people wouldn't pontificate quite so much. When my husband died, my sister who has phoned me nearly every day since he was diagnosed with cancer, gave me just one piece of advice which I've never forgotten. When a friend's mother died recently, I turned that advice into a poem and sent it to her and her family. THINKING OF YOU Come, share your grief, and if it makes you cry To tell the story of your loss and pain, Then think of a huge jar of grief, and try Imagining that those shed tears will drain The grief away, the level sink, and so Then, inch by inch, by month, by week by day, The empty space within the jar will glow With tiny sparks of hope, where grief held sway. Yes, it will hurt, but with your falling tears, The grief inside the jar will sink still more; And even if its ebbing should take years, Your grief will fall away and hope will score. So if grief looms, and hope’s a distant star, Then let your tears flow freely, and think…..Jar. Is my grief jar empty?  Will it ever be empty?  Who knows?

Wheelchair hazzards

I think I said to someone the other day that being in a wheelchair doesn't bother me in the slightest, (I was born with cerebral palsy.)  Well, I lied!  Unpacking and putting away the weekly shop is a case in point.  Yesterday I wheeled over my breakfast.  I felt myself go over something, and half way over it I stopped.  "Forwards or backwards," I thought.  Either way my cerial bars would be mush.
It was then that my driving instructor's words from many moons ago flashed into my mind: "Always look where you're going."  If I'm going to wheel over something, ten to one it'll be because I'm going backwards.  Have you noticed how many drivers look straight ahead when they're reversing?  It's not just me then.

“BUMMER” SUMMER

They say wind, rain and storming’s

The result of global warming,

Though, for the life of me,

I can’t see how;

With radiators blaring

And with all the layers I’m wearing,

I feel rather like

 A bloated cow.

They said we’d have a scorcher,

But this Summer is cold torture,

If only they could get it

Right or wrong.

This so called scorching Summer

Has been a soggy “bummer,”

So I think I’ll skip the country

Before long.

I Must B happy

                                                                          

I MUST BE HAPPY

(BEING LEFT BEHIND)

I must be happy and I must let go;

She’s young, she’s married now, I must move on,

But there’s an emptiness, I miss her so,

A dull ache deep inside me, now she’s gone.

No more the text, “Mums, can I come for lunch?

I can’t stay long, though, fancy feeding me?”

Her absence hits me like a silent punch,

And I admit, I miss her dreadfully.

How full of ups and downs the years have been;

This sometimes thankless job of parenthood,

Where “Mum, I love you” turns to, “you’re so mean!”

Yet I’d not change things even if I could.

Although she’s gone and left me feeling low,

Because I love her, I must let her go.

My elder daughter, Holly has just left my flat in Lymington.  She and her sister, Hannah, (left in the photo) were both born in Souhampton, and have lived in Lymington all their lives.

 Hannah now lives in London, but Holly who is a vet has worked in this area for 3 years.  On June 25th, she married and now she and her husband, Chris are moving tomorrow to High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. 

They are both blissfully happy and doing what hey want to do, so of course I'm happy for them.  I'm going to miss her so much, though!  I suppose I've been spoilt having her around here so long.  I promised I wouldn't make a fuss and I haven't, but now she's gone I feel somewhat bereft.  I feel like Eyor, and my flat feels "rather boggy and sad."

I do hope this feeling isn't going to last too long; unlike Eyor, I prefer toast for breakfast, not thistles.