In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back - Charlie Brown

Robbie is a fan of Charlie Brown, he particularly likes Linus. Linus always reminds me of my son, not just because of his attachment to his security blanket, because he is clever, spiritual and a deep thinker. He has his own view of the world and it doesn’t seem to bother him that other people see things differently. I guess there is a bit of Linus in Robbie too, but instead of a security blanket he has a rucksack!

The one thing that both Robbie and my son have in common is that they don’t always understand me. This week has been a bit of an uphill struggle for me, my asthma has been playing me up which makes everything so much more of an effort. It makes me feel scared, struggling to breathe is horrible. It felt as if I was plodding through the week with diving boots on! My son, who probably hasn’t noticed that I have been feeling off colour this week, added to my burden by breaking the habit of a lifetime and delivering all his washing to the washing machine without being asked  - how many clothes does that boy have!! Later on he saw me trying to compare an old photo with the present day image on Street View. He asked what I was doing and I explained that I was trying to work out exactly where the photo had been taken. He was quiet for a minute or two, then he posed a deceptively simple question, “why does history matter?” I think the answer to that could be a blog post all on it’s own, but it gave me plenty to think about.

Robbie did his best to cheer me up, he made me a lovely meal on Wednesday evening. Unfortunately his efforts to cheer me up tonight fell on stony ground. He sat at the side of me with his ipad, he wanted to show me train pictures. I thought it was quite sweet until I realised the grim story behind what he was showing me. He made a hasty retreat to the other side of the room with my words still ringing in his ears!

The only person who knew instantly without being told that I wasn’t feeling very well was my best friend – and we were only speaking on the phone. It made me realise how lucky I am to have her. It is the strangest thing, it was a very odd situation that brought us together and no one would have expected us to become friends because we are very different. I think it surprised us both, but there was an instant connection between us from the very first time we met. It feels as if we have been friends forever.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart & can sing it back to you when you've forgotten the words

A room without books is like a body without a soul - Cicero

I had such a good time on Saturday. For me it was a Robbie free day because he was out playing trains - nothing new there! A couple of months ago my friend took me to visit the most amazing place, it is called Astley Book Farm and it is the largest second hand book shop in the Midlands. I loved it and I promised myself that I would go back when I had plenty of time to brose. I told my daughter Emily about it and she wanted to go as well, so we planned our trip for Saturday. To say that Emily shares my love of books would be an understatement, I have never seen anyone so excited about visiting a bookshop! 


It was a nice morning and we had a nice drive to the book farm, we got there fairly early so that we had plenty of time to explore every section of the shop. It is an amazing place, just when you think you have got to the end of the shop you find a doorway or turning opening on to another section. Emily soon found the English language section and she was in her element, crouched on the floor looking at every book that took her fancy. I wandered off and soon I had found two or three books that would make perfect Christmas presents. I was having a great time and I felt virtuous too, it is only September and I have started my Christmas shopping! 

Emily was still sitting on the floor reading text books when I wandered past ten minutes later. She excitedly offered me a book, it was a dictionary of vulgarity in 
old English, that girl is passionate about language. I left her surrounded by a pile of books and headed up to the children's section in the hayloft. Who needs anti wrinkle cream when you can visit a place like this. Soon I was sitting on the floor rediscovering treasures from my childhood including Sam Pig, My Naughty Little Sister and many more. Emily came up to join me and we rekindled memories from her childhood too. 


Considerably later I made my way down from the hayloft and headed for the transport section clutching the pile of books that I intended to buy. There was a whole section on railway books so I happily whiled away another half an hour looking at some amazing books. I selected a book about the railway companies pre nationalisation, it is a lovely book and it was very reasonably priced.


By then my friend had arrived so we paid for our books and put them in the car before going to the coffee shop for a cup of tea and a natter. Afterwards we had a last look around and we bought a couple more things before going back to my friend's house for a while. I really enjoyed the whole day, it is nice to spend some quality time with my daughter, and I always enjoy spending time with my friend. The added enjoyment of the bookshop turned it into a perfect day. I must take time to do more things like this.

The Meaning of Life

In my experience life has a habit of creeping up and smacking you around the face when you are not looking. In the last week or so there has been a whole collection of worrying and upsetting things, but one thing has pushed all the others into the background. A very special friend of mine is terribly ill and the outlook has been bleak in the extreme. It made me very sad and every time the phone rang or a message arrived I expected the worse, but yesterday afternoon there was a tiny hint of hope and I am clinging to that.


The thing that makes this friend very special is that she has a very different take on the world because she has a learning disability. We have had so many happy times together and a few sad ones too. When my first husband died she didn't struggle for words like everyone else, she said exactly what she felt with tears rolling down her face, that meant such a lot to me. Mostly I remember the good times and the crazy moments that always managed to bring a smile to my face. There was the time when she got a new chest freezer, among all the usual items she froze a whole cucumber and a tinned steak and kidney pie. We laughed so much when I told her they would make excellent weapons but they would be useless if defrosted! 


I remember one day when we were out shopping she queued up in Boots to pay for some shampoo and when she got to the counter she announced to the cashier "If I hadn't been a twin I would have been a triplet" it made perfect sense to her but the look on the cashiers face was priceless. One day we went to London by train, we travelled on the underground, we went to Madame Tussauds then we looked at the shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street. By the time we were heading home on the train I was exhausted but she was still full of beans. We had seen and done so much, but when I asked what she had liked most she said "I liked that man in Mc Donalds". Then there was the time when she got a new budgie, she wanted to name it after me, but since she and I have the same name she wanted the to give the budgie a different name so she called it Nissan after my car! Not long after we first met she got very upset with her work placement because they listened to the wrong radio station. I tried to tell her that it wasn't such a big deal, but she was in a bad mood and she said "anyway there is too much f---ing bad language in that place". We laughed so much about that and in a strange way it made her feel better about her work.


She asks very little of life, she accepts people on face value, she doesn't judge or tell people what to do but she takes great pleasure in her friends and in the simple things in life that so many of us take for granted. I hope with all my heart that she will get well again, the world needs more people like her.

What Planet is He On?

I know Robbie can be a bit random at times but on Friday evening he looked up from his laptop and started talking about the Clangers and why they didn't fall off their planet. I have considered many questions about the clangers over the years but I have never given the atmospheric conditions of their (imaginary) planet. I have wondered how Major Clanger acquired a military rank when the clangers do not have an army and I gave more than a passing thought to the soup dragon's reproductive habits, apparently there was only one soup dragon so where did the baby soup dragon come from? I was very tempted to tell him that being knitted allowed them to cope with the sparse atmosphere of their planet, but I know Robbie too well and such a comment would have led to him talking about Clangers all weekend. So I just asked him what made the Clangers pop into his head, he explained that one of his friends had commented about it on facebook, apparently her son had asked why Clangers don't fall off their planet. Obviously kids go for the easy questions these days. When Sam was little he liked to watch Coronation Street with his Grandma and one day he asked "How did the doctors make Hayley into a girl?" I would have preferred a nice safe question about the Clangers!!

A Moment of Panic

I was just getting ready to go to work yesterday when the phone rang. As always I had to sprint downstairs from the bathroom before the answer service cut in. A worried female voice at the other end asked if it was me, then she identified herself as Emily's friend Fi. Panic set in as soon as I realised who it was because Emily is away on holiday with a group of friends including Fi, if Fi was ringing something must have happened to Emily and her boyfriend. As it turned out Emily and everyone was was fine, they had all decided to cycle the Camel Trail from Padstow to Wadebridge, but Fi and her boyfriend were a bit slower than the others and they got lost. They did not have their mobile phones with them so Fi rang me from a pay phone to ask me to contact Emily. The others had to do a lot of cycling to find them, but in the end they were all reunited. I guess it is hard to keep a mobile charged when you are camping, but it shows how important it is to have a phone on a trip like that.

A Day We Had Been Dreading

This turned out to be the day that we have been dreading for what seems like a very long time. Robbie's friend Chris died this morning. We knew that this would be the ultimate outcome, and no one wanted to prolong his suffering but when the time comes none of that makes it feel any better. This is a terrible loss for his family and for his friends.

Chris was a very good friend to Robbie, in fact he probably understood Robbie better than anyone else ever will. They shared an interest in music, they would often go into Birmingham at lunchtime and come back with vinyl records and cds. They had a similar or at least an overlapping taste in music and they liked to go to gigs. Their shared interests didn't end there, they both shared a passion for the railways. For Robbie, Chris was the sort of friend who comes along once in a lifetime, he will be deeply missed and he will never be forgotten.

Perspective

Life has a way of putting things in perspective. It seems as if one thing after another has gone wrong recently, a broken shower, a nail in my tyre, my mobile phone has given up the ghost and worse of all my laptop is apparently beyond repair. Last week I had a painful reminder that they are all just things and in the end none of them matter a jot. We heard last week that Robbie's friend who has been ill for some time has taken a turn for the worse. It is a very difficult time for him and his family and it leaves everyone feeling completely powerless.

Not a Good Week

It is a week since we got home from holiday and there is only one thing that I didn't miss when we left Cornwall – the narrow roads! The Cornish roads around Padstow are not very wide and if you meet a vehicle coming the other way it can be a hair raising experience. The roads are beautiful with high hedges and wild flowers growing along the verge, they may look harmless but they demand respect. The hedges are built with earth and stone, they are made to last, so when you have to pull in to the edge of the road the innocent looking vegetation may conceal sharp edges ready to scratch your paintwork. It feels good to be driving on normal roads again!

It has been a horrible week. After a fortnight of Robbie 24 – 7, I was quite looking forward to sending him back to work, but I really missed him and I hardly saw anything of him during the week. I missed a school reunion when I was on holiday, I was glad of an excuse not to go. I am not a going out sort of person anyway, but after this long I convinced myself that my former classmates would be younger, thinner and smarter than me! Despite my misgivings I was keen to hear news of the reunion and I contacted one of the people who had organised the event. I was expecting the usual inconsequential stuff about people I knew a lifetime ago. Instead she told me that someone who was a close friend during my school days had killed herself. It came as such a shock, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I have perhaps encountered more than my fair share of illness and loss, but I had never been confronted by suicide before, I can't imagine the despair and distress that would lead someone to take their own life. I wish life had been kinder to her.

Robbie also had bad news, he has been worried about his friend's health for months and last week his friend was finally diagnosed with a brain tumour. Robbie is a typical man, he is not good at feelings and all that stuff, and he found the news very difficult to accept. At first Robbie's anxiety and shock combined with an inner rage because he felt so powerless to help. I felt pretty useless too because there was nothing I could do or say to make him feel better. His friend has been foremost in his thoughts all week.

Tears

On Saturday lunchtime I answered the phone to find Emily sobbing on the other end. It was difficult to make sense of what she was saying and a ripple of fear ran through me, obviously something very bad had happened and as she and Laura were both at work my first fear was that something had happened to Laura. Through her tears Emily managed to tell me that one of her co-workers had died and Emily was so upset by the news that she had been allowed to go home. I dashed out to pick her up and by the time I found her she was a little bit calmer. Karen, had only been off sick for three or four weeks and the news of her death had come as a terrible shock. Emily liked her because she was a bit 'dizzy' like Emily and she was always helpful and friendly at work. She had young children so her death was especially sad. Cancer is such a cruel illness.

The previous day we had been delighted by the news of a new life and so soon afterwards we were reminded of the sadness of death. It is the way of the world, but the pain is especially bitter when someone dies so tragically young. It certainly pushes our own trivial worries back into perspective and it reminds us to make the most of our own lives.

Robbie went to a gig last night, to see The Breeders, so I spent the evening trying to stay awake because I had to pick him up from the station at 12.40am! He still managed to get up for work at 5.15am, but as usual I thought Monday morning had arrived far too soon.