June Japes in Scottish Meanderings

Here I am sliding in at the last minute as usual!

No different in health this month - still lots of bad days and very few periods of feeling better. I'm grateful for them when they come though.

I almost had two pretty good days together on the Jubilee weekend and the weather was fantastic that whole weekend so I was very grateful for that. On the Saturday I was well enough to go round to Enrica's (Italian teacher) for lunch - she has all her classes on Zoom now because she travels a lot and I hadn't thought about how much that has impacted her in that she doesn't see any of her students in person any more. So any time she’s back in Aberdeen she’s been having groups of us round to her house for drinks/light lunch. She loves to cook and entertain so I think she really enjoys this and of course loves to see us all properly. She's on the left of the photo below.


There were just a few of us that day as Enrica hadn't sent the e-mail when she thought she did so by the time it went out, folk had other plans organised. And I suppose it being Jubilee weekend as well didn't help. We sat out in the garden the whole time and it was really nice. Good food, good conversation - I had to leave after a couple of hours as I was feeling the strain but I was just grateful to be there even for those couple of hours. And when I got back home it was still gorgeous weather so I grabbed a rug and cushion and went off down to the beach to sit in my favourite spot right at the end and wrote my (paper) diary for 3 hours accompanied by the peaceful sound of the waves gently lapping on the sand.


And then the following day I went to the afternoon tea one of the local community trusts were putting on for the Jubilee in the village Nikki lives in and we were very impressed with it considering it was all free. They have a lovely garden area at the front of the café and you had the option of sitting inside or out so they made up cardboard boxes of food with polystyrene cups of tea/coffee/juice. I wasn't expecting much but we were amazed to find in each box there were sausage rolls, mini quiches, a scone, butter and jam and 5 delicious cakes - with gluten free and veggie options as well. They'd really gone to a lot of work. And then there were stalls with chocolate strawberries, candy floss, craft making, a drumming workshop and a 'critter' guy who had brought along half a dozen of his critters for the kids to see.


There was also hair spraying/stencilling where you could get your hair sprayed red and blue for the Jubilee colours or get stars - I was bullied into getting mine done but it did look kind of cool - until the wind blew it askew and I had to stonk round Tesco afterwards doing my shopping with weird bits of blue and red in my hair! Here's all our colourful heads - I had a red star on the other side as well as that blue one but we didn't get a good photo of it.


And do you know it was so nice to see all the kids just being 'kids' - playing without toys or staring at screens - they had a whale of a time climbing trees, playing hide and seek, tag, etc - all the things we used to do in the playground or after tea!


One of Nikki's childminders, Kate, had just had a baby (Freya) a few days before so when she popped in for a visit while passing on a walk, Nikki was beside herself with joy! Talk about broody!


She was holding her for so long I actually wondered if Kate was going to get her back!😁

So it was a really nice weekend and feeling better for most of it was definitely a big part of that. I haven't watched any of the televised stuff but isn't the Queen amazing? If ever there was anyone just born to do the job she does it's Queen Elizabeth II. She may be seen as stuffy and out of touch to some folk but she's never wavered in doing her duty by her country or given us any cause for shame - unlike some of her family!


And I was also able to go to another outing with the Italian class later on in the month - rather more of us this time - we had a lunch to mark the end of our classes for the summer and I was grateful to feel well enough to go to that as well. This is pretty much most of us - there were a few folk away or working.


I'm going to have to be disciplined and do some Italian homework in the holidays - I used to be good at doing stuff in between classes and it definitely made a big difference but I got out of the way of it when I became so ill so I need to get back on top of that.


Nikki and the kids are all fine apart from Lilah and Lily catching chickenpox two weeks apart which restricted activities somewhat. Lily got it far worse than Lilah - she was absolutely covered poor kid - even had spots in her ears - and felt quite unwell with it. However I saw her on Monday and she was a lot brighter and seemed to be over the worst. Nikki is currently examining every mark she sees on Ruari at the moment though!

I’m quite worried about Ian, my oldest brother, though just now. As I mentioned last month, he got Covid just before our family get together at Blairgowrie last month but he’s definitely not bounced back from it at all. And the balance problems he had before that which were fairly manageable have become much much worse - he’s had a few falls where he’s not been able to get up again and they’ve had to get the paramedics out each time as Margaret is unable to get him up either. It got to the point he wasn't even able to get to the toilet unaided or pretty much walk anywhere in the house without Margaret helping him.

It’s all getting investigated but I’m seeing a decline in him each week. We’re still doing our weekly video chats and he’s more slumped when sitting now - plus he often nods off during the chat. Margaret says he’s very fatigued - has a lot of naps during the day and is sleeping downstairs now to have easier access to the toilet as their bedroom is upstairs and the stairs were becoming a problem. He’s naturally very frustrated with it all poor guy and I’m so glad Margaret is in fairly decent health and is able to take good care of him - even if she gets little thanks for it!

I felt sorry for him yesterday - we’ve been badgering him to do some exercises while in the chair - just stretching or flexing - anything to keep his body moving but he’s resisting (which also worries me - I’m not sure if he’s so fatigued the thought of it is just too much or what’s going on) and I think he was getting fed up of it all. I’m just very aware that we are now the oldest generation in the family - in the UK at least - and I know how things can change fast in your seventies and eighties (he's 76). If you stop moving that’s a slippery slope no-one wants to go down. So I'm really hoping it's just some sort of after effect from Covid and not anything more onerous.


The back garden's suffered a bit of a setback. The Landscaper was recently in a car crash as well as having undergone surgery for a torn bicep and he’s so booked up he now can’t do the work until next year which is a real bummer. And of course me procrastinating about everything obviously didn’t help. But I’m not sure what to do as I doubt my fence will last through another winter so I don’t know whether to just take it down altogether or get someone else to put up a new one and just get him to do the paving and summer house. I would just rather he did the whole thing. I’ve e-mailed him to ask what month next year he would be available - if it's in the early part of the year I might still go for it - and for advice about the fence.

Of course any sensible person would probably just look around for someone else but with my health issues that's not so easy. It took me literally years to get round to contacting one company never mind several (although I haven't told him I'm not getting quotes from anyone else). It would give me longer to get rid of the stuff in the shed right enough but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not - having a deadline sooner rather than later might have pushed me to get going with it! I'll see what he comes back with.

I’m very grateful I can still manage to maintain the front garden now though - it’s really nice to sit out there when the sun makes an appearance.


When I do I often take out my paper diary and write it out there but I wasn’t finding it very comfortable in the garden chair and was invariably ending up just sitting on the front step because I could balance the book easier on my knees. I almost threw the chair away the other week because of that and am so glad I didn’t because I decided to take out the little stool I had and put my feet up on that which put my knees at the right level to write and that worked great.


And then I discovered that corner seems to be a real sun trap so when it’s windy it’s still very warm so a double positive!

And now and again I get a visit from this handsome guy from two doors up which just completes the picture :)


If I ever get to a point where I'm feeling much better I'll definitely think about getting another cat - I do miss having a pet but just don't have the energy to deal with one at the moment. It's a future thought in my head though :)