I glanced back over the earlier Purdey blogs and don’t think I ever said she turned out to be 5 years old when we checked her chip – so she’s now around the 8 mark, not slowing down noticeably yet. She still springs about in delight when either the harness or a food bowl appears, adores going for walks with guests, and has some friends in the village who take her on their hikes every now and then. Those are BIG outings for her, usually around 2 hours, and she sleeps like a log for the rest of the day. Until she hears me lifting down the harness or even heading towards the front door – ooh, another walk! Yay! I do walk her three times a day anyway but I boringly stick to the streets and rarely head out into the campo. Increasingly on those guest walks the guests are hailed by her buddies in the village who stop to say hello to her and to the person holding the lead . . . she’s become something of an asset, especially for guests staying here on their own, taking them under her wing and doing all she can to make them feel at home.
Right now she’s in the process of preparing for kennels as I am away shortly for a long weekend and can’t take her. She’s had a playday there, will have another this week, then a sleepover, to be sure we have a go. My last dog had been from a rescue shelter and hated all kennels with a passion, refusing to eat and losing fur at an alarming rate, and there will be no more coming back to a bald and wild-eyed pet if I can help it. She can be taken by one of her hiking friends if it doesn’t work out. She enjoyed the playday, I think, at least didn’t drag me to the car in her hurry to leave . . .
As always these podenco blogs are aimed at anyone considering taking in a working pod which has been abandoned. There WAS a sudden glitch or two in the last year which may or may not ever appear again – usually when I come home there’s the dance of delight but three times she has instead shot past me and gone, ignoring calls and whistles, although her recall otherwise is now faultless. Each time she’s been found poking round bins, or wistfully eyeing people eating at restaurant cafes, and each time she’s been happy enough to be brought home but hadn’t been heading back here under her own steam. The second time she was out all night. Somebody walking past whistling a familiar tune? A voice in the street she recognised? Weeks or even months passed between these odd involuntary excursions, and the last time was several months ago. In every other way she is a happy robust affectionate dog with friends and admirers and only now tries to nip people who walk unannounced into my private part of the guesthouse, (which I don’t have a problem with) and she backs off instantly when I tell her no. Would I still recommend a podenco? In a heartbeat.
She no longer steals food but if she did …Taking a guest for a walkBred to hunt down rabbits and hares, keeping a lookout
Not a public troll. Not yet. I mean I’ve made the occasional unpleasant crack over the years and afterwards been a bit ashamed but hasn’t everyone done that – hand up, other hand on heart, can you say you haven’t? Ever? We all do it. Open mouth. Insert foot. Open mouth. Change feet. It’s not deliberate. When it’s deliberate … we’ve let the troll out.
Okay, I’ve been snide lately but never, so far, too far. People laugh, or look a bit uncomfortable, and the steam drops back to where I’m back in control. So far. But now – when I find myself having to delete what I just typed, be it comment on something posted, or an email, or a message, again and again, because I simply cannot leach out the bile: when I catch myself one finger tap away from sending something so OTT in reaction to stupidity, or selfishness, or complacency, that I am shocked briefly back to normal: when I seek casual company, then catch myself whinging: and when, worst of all, the bile surges higher instead of the pressure abruptly dropping . . . this has to stop. I CANNOT be the only person refusing to let the troll out.
There are causes, but they don’t excuse or even explain it – I’m so angry, but out of all proportion to any anger that would be appropriate. I’m, this is not helping, so isolated – the reliable people I could usually safely vent to are out of reach, all at the same time, some involuntarily, some caught up in their own problems, some I suspect keeping a safe distance. Perhaps just as well, since venting feeds this beast. I’m so unoccupied – my life is usually busy and full, superficial stuff to be sure, but time-consuming and distracting. The normal little inner troll, the critical one we all deal with, all the time, keeps saying I was and am so stupid. I know. Shut up. No-one asked you. The abnormal canker, the one trying to take over, rolls about with jeering laughter. I’m getting toxic and there’s a growing niggle that if I don’t let rip, I’ll self-destruct. There’s a limit on how much toxic bile any system can take. Press send, the troll urges, SAY it, it should be said. It MUST be said – or I will burn you to the ground.
The internet is crammed with advice on how to deal with trolls but nothing I could find on defusing the troll inside. I looked at anger management. The causes – tick tick tick, all there. Suggestions for dealing with it – ah, bless. Already doing them, way beyond them helping. I looked up inner trolls. That’s all about handling self-loathing, not about the clawed monster trying to get out and wreak havoc.
I actually do know what I want, a rational quarrel for a rational reason where shouting and clean-burning anger would be appropriate, so I suppose I am looking for a righteous fight. Any volunteers, anyone also needing a violent let-off-steam argument, any subject at all? Because I don’t want to be a troll.
Facebook options when a family member or loved one is deceased include deleting the profile or switching to a memorial version. Today I was told by FBP that I’d been unfollowed by a family member. As it happened death / deletion of profile wasn’t one of the suggested reasons I could have been unfollowed. Anyway. Profile gone, photos gone, and, slightly shockingly, every comment she’d ever made on my posts, and she had made many, some hilarious, some pithy, some useful – gone. Wow.
If there had never been a Facebook account we’d likely have only ever communicated with chatty birthday and Christmas cards, and the occasional phone call – different countries, different lives. Facebook can be infuriating but for family it is a way of sharing news, photos, updates, and it was oddly chilling to lose all that history.
Okay, no fun whatsoever getting birthday reminders for someone lost a year or two earlier but when I go, I have just added to my very long list of instructions to my long-suffering daughter to please choose the memorial option. Is that narcissistic? Ghoulish? Don’t care. At least if anyone, ever, gets round to wondering whatever happened to old whatsername, they’ll be able to find out.
It’s coming up two years (in November) and time for an update on living with a podenco, the Spanish hunting dog used for running down rabbits and hares, for anyone thinking of adopting one of these lovely sighthounds, especially a rescued working dog which has usually lived out.
Purdey loves little rituals, which become cast in stone – when I return from shopping I unpack the bags against the door, then open it so she can charge out and leap into the back of the car where she waits, trembling with expectation, while I transfer the shopping inside. Then we go find parking and detour into a brief walk on the way home. Not exactly exciting, but she loves it. She loves life generally, everything except thunder and bangs, which bring her trembling under the desk. She was five when we found each other and all I know of her background was that she started life as a hunting dog and three of her owners were hunters. She’s had at least one litter, possibly every time she came on heat although if a dog is too insistent (they still are, although she’s now spayed) she sits down firmly, removing temptation, and snaps crossly at him. No way José.
It seems likely she was never a house dog before, and very timid about coming indoors, but she decided eventually that anything the cat could do was surely legal. Ideal homes for them are large busy families, not single old ducks like me, but I own a guesthouse so there’s usually something on the go. Occasionally paying guests bring dogs with them – she was utterly fixated by a visiting Chihuahua which was very patient about being sniffed from nose to tail every time it appeared. Another guest brought a miniature Doberman which adored her and wouldn’t leave her alone, I’d find her sleeping in a hiding place while the little visitor searched anxiously for her. The very first guest dog was a particularly massive Newfoundland – even I was taken aback by its size. When I let her out she charged upstairs to see what was happening, took one startled glance, and charged back down, but they got on well during his stay. He was a gentle giant, still very young, and delighted to find my last dog’s neglected basket of toys. Purdey hadn’t understood the concept of play until then and now has a favourite teddy. She’ll also now chase a ball (and sometimes bring it back). Mainly she loves attention. She’s not a pest, but is radiant when being stroked and as for grooming, would probably stand rock still to the end of time so long as the brush kept moving.
What am I supposed to do with this?
Sometimes guests borrow her for walks or even dawn runs, both of which she heartily approves. Some guests bribe her with scraps when they are cooking (strictly against rules), but some shout at her to go away when she pokes her nose round the apartment door, and she skitters downstairs looking embarrassed and avoids them from then on. I worried about taking on a breed which needed lots of exercise and company but the walks are good for both of us and she seems to enjoy the turnover in visitors. Sometimes when a favourite guest is leaving I fancy the glance she gives me says well, we tried our best, maybe next time but then I am a writer and have an over-developed imagination.
She leaps about like Tigger when I lift down the lead and harness, and is always up for adventure – if I get to my feet, any time day or night, she’s instantly alert, those enormous ears pricked, amber eyes glowing. She’s friendly, loving, eager to please, but when I’m busy she’s quite happy to head up to the patio to sunbathe, or to my bedroom for a nap. She hates baths and she hates the sea, fleeing in panic from waves. She’s swum (politely, with a guest) in the river, but generally loathes getting wet, possibly because her wiry coat takes a while to dry even with a towel. Rainy days are few and far between here but those are our shortest walks, and she’s turning for home with a pleading look even as I’m bending down with the baggie.
Because she has way more energy than I do, we worked on her recall until now I can let her off the lead to gallop in open areas. She’s even learned that if another dog comes into sight, especially one on a lead, she has to resist temptation and return to her own lead before introductions, if they happen at all, are allowed. That was essential, as Spanish dogs aren’t generally as sociable as, for example, UK dogs, and are usually on the lead for a reason, especially in the open. They react in different ways to a pod galloping up to say hello. Some stand rockstill, frozen in shock, some launch straight into an attack, and some are delighted and the two end up having a romp while we owners make laboured Spanglish conversation. She’s very, very, good with other dogs, and very firm, tolerating no more than a polite amount of sniffing before pointedly putting a stop to it. We were on a street walk, on the lead, when a very angry terrier launched itself teeth first from a doorway. She owned him in about four seconds flat and had him on his back crying out in fear while she stood over him making dreadful noises into his face. She was in complete control of herself and the situation, and didn’t so much as nip him as she terrified him into good manners. She’s never started a fight, defends herself with vim and vigour when another dog turns hostile, but doesn’t hang about, using her hunting speed to remove herself from danger. She can jump like an ibex, from a standing start, and is surefooted on high walls or rocky terrain while I’m still palpitating with shock. She’s in her element, of course, when back in the campo.
Hunting for rabbits – luckily, none around
That’s something to remember, anyone wanting to adopt a pod needs good fencing especially as they are the most inquisitive dogs ever hatched – she’s left in my apartment while new guests arrive, in case they aren’t dog fanciers, and can be seen through the glass door leaping up to five feet in the air while booming out her enormous challenging bark. When she’s let out to be introduced (as she has to be, even to the non dog fanciers since she has to know this lot are allowed in the house) she’s suddenly timid and diffident, then warms up to them by the day if they’re the right sort, and again that shared glance when they leave, as leave they must . . . she adores family visiting because they come into “our” space.
Family in “our” space are firm favourite
There were initial hiccups, to be expected. Even with 3 meals a day, she scavanged at first, still in “who knows when the next meal will come” mode. Although she has no animosity towards cats, anything darting away had her in automatic pursuit – she’s a sight hound, bred to chase. And she was and is stubborn when she thinks she knows best. I’ve previously nearly always owned bull breeds and know about bullheadedness but she doesn’t glower, she just – does what she thinks she should. This stubbornness makes some think them stupid but in fact once they have worked out what it is that you want, and why (logic matters to them) they are willingness itself. She is highly intelligent, clean in her habits, independent, loving, and far more protective of me than I’d expected from an initially timid dog.
I really wasn’t sure I was doing the best thing, for either of us, but she was in desperate need of a home and it turned out we needed each other. Thank you for reading to the end, perhaps you are doing so because you too are thinking of adopting a podenco. She is an enduring delight.
One side-effect of Covid19 changing lives was that thousands of teachers internationally switched to online work, and another significant chunk of the English-speaking population started teaching English online to keep the pennies rolling in. Many schools sprang up, and as many websites where teachers could hang out their shingles. I’d been with the same school, based in Hong Kong, since 2017, as one of their thirty thousand teachers handling Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese students, was ranked as a senior tutor and earning good rates, especially seeing my commute was from the kitchen, bearing a cup of coffee, into my study. Lovely!
Covid19 was a personal nightmare. The vast tsunami of competition turned cut-throat, with multiple websites advertising lessons to pupils for as little as $5 an hour, which meant us senior tutors earning up to 10 quid per half-hour class, 2 classes an hour, became unsustainably expensive. The school gave a thin scream of horror and cut rates drastically. Every other decent school had firmly closed their recruiting for the interim. Even those cautiously interested in taking on more teachers for the flood of new pupils pointed out gently that a few years experience and a TEFL hardly stacked up against fully, conventionally, qualified teachers with >twenty years classroom experience competing for the same few jobs. In September last year China banned online private tutoring for schoolchildren, which cut as big a swathe through the pool of available pupils as you can imagine. At least half of my pupils had been Chinese. It made a bad situation significantly worse. The school laid off hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers and I was assigned to the Taiwanese branch, where there weren’t always enough pupils to fill the 3 hours a day I was committed to the school. No pupil, no pay.
Another Covid19 side-effect – no guests, no income. I have a small guesthouse (the Casa Excéntrico tab) which previously paid my overheads, not only letting me live free but even contributing to its own maintenance, and ongoing renovation, in a very understated way. Lockdowns kept abruptly putting that income out of reach. Spain offered some (not much) relief to the self-employed but I was registered as a self-employed teacher and was still teaching, so – nope.
Well, we all have our Covid stories and most of us are still here, even if our savings aren’t, but it got me wondering whether this whole move to Spain thing had been such a good idea. I’d never have done it without the assurance of being able to earn my daily bread, as my Spanish was close to non-existent then and still, to my shame, relies heavily on the medium of dance and the vocabulary of a slightly backward child. If I was meant to be here, if the winds which had blown me through the last few years were dropping, what next?
Lockdown lifted slowly, first within Spain, then within Europe, and house bookings started pouring in. I think the longest I’ve been without at least one guest in the last eight months has been ten days – fantastic, wonderful, luck for me, and every good review, (I have lovely guests, who review enthusiastically) especially in another language, brought in more bookings. The winds have started blowing again – I had to coach for an international English exam, enjoyed it, and was useful. It started a trickle of pupils who are already pretty fluent, appreciative, and scattered all over the world. Ideally I’d have built that up a bit more first but the most popular hours are already committed to the school. However, my contract at the school is up for renewal this month… I’ve swallowed hard, and once again taken a leap into the barely-known by telling the school I’m not renewing. That’s it, freelancing on a wing and a prayer, gambling there’ll be no more lockdowns and enough ambitious students, and that the winds keep blowing until I reach the wonderful plateau of becoming a jubilado and can count on at least one source of income no matter what horrors still lie in store for us all …
Oh, and as for wondering whether Spain was the right choice – yes, I think so. It was a bit of a mad thing to do but I am definitely a bit mad. That may not be comfortable, but it’s interesting. The winds haven’t let me down yet so I’m trusting them to whirl me on along the right paths a bit further yet.
I’d say ever researching on your behalf, as I have in the past, but how to research a wind? Shut your eyes and go where it takes you, but so far so good, no regrets.
Got a dog, or even a cat? Here’s an experiment. Spend a week ranting at it, sounding angry, tearful, reproachful, unreasonable, or near hysterical, pointing in random directions. Note its reactions. My dog would be a nervous wreck. If I kept it up she’d doubtless adjust but she’d definitely lose her bounce. She’d even possibly start getting defensively aggressive or go off her food. I wouldn’t dream of doing it to her.
I don’t do it to myself, either. That’s not as easy as it sounds. I can refuse to watch the news, but there’s headlines bursting through on my phone, in the margins of my websites, trickling across the bottom of my screen whenever and wherever I’m online. There’s Twitter, Facebook, and those friends who message any news atrocities they feel I might have missed because I, you know, won’t watch the news. I do want to hear from them, I want to know what’s going on in their lives, but it seems all that is going on is the bad news authorised by the media for circulation and now I’ve hurt their feelings and they don’t message at all. Personal updates to people who know and like us are it seems binned because somewhere else someone you never met and will never meet has the media’s attention and is the only suitable topic for the day.
I keep up with local events because they directly affect the bubble in which I live my life. I am aware there’s stuff going on elsewhere that is pretty crappy for those experiencing it, in Africa, Australia, the Americas, the further reaches of this European continent, in jungles and tundras, in what should be the untroubled depths of the sea, and in little hellholes created by my fellow man to torture their fellow men or the animals with which we share this planet. If I can’t do anything but feel sick or angry or fret uselessly, I don’t want to know. I resist knowing. I won’t know. Fingers in ears, lalalalalala.
I know no man is an island, I know I should ask not for whom the bell tolls, I know a lockdown cuts off my income, and don’t even want to speculate what a war would do to it. I mean that literally. I won’t speculate about it. As a child I was told “don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you” so I try not to. Nearly everything bad in my life has happened without warning anyway. If I’d known in advance, could I have stopped it happening? No. Just been fraught in advance about that event, and about a whole lot of other stuff which actually didn’t happen, but not because my fretting stopped them happening. All my fretting did was damage me a little bit more. Well, that’s useful. Not. All about ME.
It can be all about you. Stick your fingers in your ears and cut out the world for three days. The world won’t end – or if it does, not because you refused to agonise. Just say no to anything outside your customised bubble. If constructive interaction, rather than useless, destructive, global, empathy, puts a wag back in your tail – re-stocking the world, one person at a time, with a little selfish optimism and cautious contentment might, just might, be healthier than flooding it with multi-attack negativity, if only for that one person. From tiny acorns … Worth a try. Three days.
I don’t think I have ever stuffed so many little sayings into one blog before.
Walking the dog on a mountain track before the rain sets in
That bit in Secret Garden where Colin says tremulously of the garden, “will I live to see it? Will I live to get into it?” and Mary is very impatient and down to earth and the moment passes. I now feel as Colin did, but about something which, for most of my life, felt as distant as the Milky Way. We’re all getting older, but now I’m getting a bit cynical about “age is a state of mind” and “you can’t stop getting older, you don’t have to get old” and “I’m not getting older, I’m getting better.” Fact is my warranty is running out and you just can’t get the parts any more. There are the first crackles and creaks and my vision is occasionally blurring just a little and my middle toe on my left foot aches on cold mornings (I blame the horse that stood on it more years ago than seems actually possible) and sometimes when I carry something heavy my hands don’t uncurl instantly when I put it down. I had a glorious wonderful Indian summer and I wish the same on everyone AND it lasted nearly 10 years, but autumn itself is slowly but inevitably drawing to an end, and winter is approaching. There is, though, that one tiny twinkling star hanging in that late autumn sky. Will I live to see it? Will I live to get into it?
My state pension . . .
photo CreativeMarket.com
In months, in less than a year, my seventeen years of working in the UK and another five years of contributions will pay out in glittering cascades of gold for the rest of my life. Will I live to see it? Will I live long enough to become a jubilada?
I bloody better.
Oh, the only point to this blog for you, gentle reader, is to stuff every penny you can do without into a pension plan. If this blasted pandemic did nothing else it taught us that you can’t always assume your own efforts will be enough because you may not be allowed to make your own efforts. Such a huge relief that something you never thought twice about is sailing in to the rescue – if you live long enough –
Tripped over another of those pious, infuriating, now-we-are-fifty “prepare for death good people” posts today which have irritated the crap out of me for years. Before I was fifty, especially in my tiring forties, I owlishly believed come the dread fifties one must take to a rocking chair and with good grace and gentle regret watch the sun setting on our lives. Sunset shmunset. Late afternoon is awesome, sunset is blazing with colour, and after that comes the evening and THEN, okay, prepare for the good night but that’s hours and hours away.
I’ll tangle my metaphors further, why not. Late middle age is autumn, not winter. Autumn can be, sometimes is, blustery and challenging, but it is also mellow afternoon sunshine, respite from the heat of summer, favourite season of many – as in the year, as in life.
Hands up if you love late afternoons, sunsets and the promise of the evening: if you think that autumn is spectacular: do you apply that to the context of your own life? Too many say, and believe, I’m old now. Losing my leaves. The light is going. Must be winter. Nope. Not yet. Enjoy the season to its full, and let winter wait its turn.
If at 30 we said sadly we had peaked physically, so it was time to give up all sport and exercise because what’s the point, we’d be howled at. If at 45, when we have reached our productive peak, we said that’s it, I shall stop trying at work now, those older and much higher up the corporate ladder would be aghast. And yet at 60, those who say I’m studying a new language, have taken up a new sport, am painting, am going to travel on my own because no-one else wants to visit the place I have always wanted to see, etc etc etc, our own generation ask if that’s wise, at our age, when there’s that nice rocking chair out on the porch instead.
If you, having read this far, have said to anyone (or even thought) they were too old, when they were clearly capable at least for now, did you really believe that, or are you simply groomed to fixed expectations by their age? Time is flying, yes. Older friends and relatives will have to start trimming their sails, yes. Tick tock. Now is more important than ever before, and maybe that’s why it is such a thrilling time and why, if you have the energy, the desire, and the funds, the freedom to do it, you should be cheered on, not anxiously cautioned. Carpe diem. The rocking chair will be there in 10, 15, years, when we can enjoy sitting in it to look at the stars.
Of course the motivated ignore the faint disapproval from family and even friends and go ahead and do it anyway but crucially don’t talk about it much because they are bored with being judged. Many are simply too busy to tell the burned-out forty somethings wilting in summer how awesome autumn will be.
I know the friend who reposted the pious ‘count our blessings as life nears its ends, we the over fifties’ has enjoyed a riotous autumn, meeting the love of her life, taking up cycling and winning races, running in half-marathons, and eventually uprooting and moving a thousand miles away where she is now successfully running a business with new skills learned in the last few years, and trying to meet kindred souls who are equally loving their so-called leisure years. She must have been having a pensive day, or be feeling a bit down. Of course there are down times as well as up – when not, in life? but remember, said good people, there IS up, bags of it, and more of those enjoying it should be grooming those following behind to know what to really expect. Autumn is awesome.
Quarantining and lockdown has created some understanding of loneliness but it has always been presented as temporary, even when temporary kept extending. Most of us cope, most of the time. But when loneliness comes with huge distances, when boats are burned and there seems to be no turning back –
Following the Dickason story (I didn’t want to piggyback on their tragedy, although it triggered this blog – there’s a comment with a brief outline for the puzzled) there’s been an accusation from another expat who had attempted suicide that there isn’t enough support for expats. I don’t personally see how there could be support. Strangers, however kind, are still strangers, and while yes yes a stranger is just a friend you haven’t got to know, that’s not an attitude that helps when one is surfing angst. In fact neighbours popping over to issue a friendly greeting can trigger the despair, if it’s obvious you’re never going to be bosom buddies because they are so “different”.
Perhaps the support is in recognising that stress is to be expected, loneliness is natural, and that all those brave letters and blogs and posts from expats talking about how interesting and excitingly challenging this new life is are genuine enough, but interest and excitement and overcoming challenges is a work in progress, and bad days happen. They aren’t brilliantly succeeding where you are faltering and failing – they’re having a better day. And you will too. Soon.
It isn’t actually about losing family or friends, because thanks to phones and emails and social networks they are still there, even if no longer close enough for an impromptu coffee. It is the whole fabric of life once taken for granted and now lost. We cut ourselves out of that familiar fabric and now have to stitch a patch for ourselves onto very different cloth. The minutiae of our lives – different shops, products have different names, favourite foods never appear on these shelves, where to buy wool, no librarian keeping back a book you’d like, no reliable mechanic who knows your car inside out, an awful haircut from even a recommended hairdresser, getting lost yet again on roads which never seem to have names matching the satnav. Stupid tiny things, but so many of them that at first the alienation is overwhelming. They are mastered eventually but the interim period is – daunting. Challenging, interesting, exciting, yes, and a little bit horrible, oh yes.
Douglas Adams, in the Hitchhikers Guide, says “in moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth”. (He goes on to say that as it is never possible to be more than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace on Earth the signals are too minute to be noticed by others, but Ford Prefect was born over 600 light years away and the barman was hit by a shocking, incomprehensible sense of distance.) Great books, love them, but he nailed it there and that sense of terrible distance may not be tangible to others, but does rock the soul in times of stress.
Support lies in realising that feeling like you made the biggest mistake of your life is NOT personal failure but known to many, most of whom refuse to talk about it because the fear of it is still too close and too real. It passes. It comes back, and it passes again. We’re NOT on the wrong path – just temporarily lost and afraid. Where, after all, is home? The place you were born has gone forever and exists only in memory. The last place you were truly happy? For many, that’s lost in the past too because who would have left behind true happiness. The past is a different country. Knowing we can’t go back to the exact place and point in time we want to be makes the difficult present seems briefly even more to blame.
Perhaps the tragedy, and the other stories which will be following of suicide attempts and despair, will bring new awareness to the stresses faced not only by those who have chosen to emigrate, but refugees who have had it forced on them. The awareness isn’t to make others more understanding, but so that the displaced can be more understanding and forgiving of their own bad moments. It’s a time thing. Alien surroundings become less alien every day. Give yourself time. Support, for this, I think, can only really come from within, but it’s comforting to realise others go through it too.
We’re idiots, what are we? If you have helpful suggestions and hacks please add them in the comments because I’m in week 3 and it seems there are months to go before I can whirl my left arm like a windmill and in the meantime life has to go on. If you also live alone, you too may have struggled to find advice. We can combine what we’ve learned!
Sleeping – sitting up against a pile of pillows is definitely the easiest. We can – and I occasionally do – sleep lying on the sound side or on your back but the arm always hurts more when I sleep flat. Sleep comes in slabs of a couple of hours. Don’t fret it, and don’t take pills unless in real pain. Restack the pillows or change position and go back to sleep.
Getting dressed
Luckily I lost weight some time ago and hung on to some favourite blouses which are therefore suitably loose-fitting.
Button-up type – feed the sleeve onto your hand, rest your fingers on a window-ledge or counter at the comfortable height, and feed the blouse up your wincing arm. Getting the other arm in is just wriggling. It’s slow and a bit painful. Meh.
Quick dressing – sacrifice suitable pull-on shirts for super-quick dressing. Cut off the affected sleeve and the side hem to just below elbow level. The head and sound arm pull on as normal, the crock arm is fed through the seam, on with the sling and Bob’s your uncle. Your beautiful bruise is on view to impress all who see it (useful for hospital checkups) but the rest of you is decently covered. Well – I say decent – If you do have access to a second handy pair of hands, sew press studs into the side seam so you can be closed up. But your immobilised arm and sling will keep you basically covered up.
For online teaching I have to present a normal pair of shoulders to the webcam, so I unpicked the sleeve seam and side seam to just below elbow level of my red polo-collar teaching shirts. Sorted and I’ll be able to sew it up again when normal mobility has returned.
My sling is the strappy type that goes round the waist as well as up and over my shoulder. I never undo the waist, just step in and out. The end of the strap over my shoulder goes between my teeth until my arm is fed properly in the pre-shaped sling and I can then Velcro the strap to the right height.
A year or so back I bought a light knitted cape which I never wore very much but is turning out to be the most useful garment I possess now . . .
Elastic-waist slacks are our friends. Lean against the wall to put on knickers and pull on the slacks. Prevents overbalancing completely – after all, sudden hopping hurts, and falling over is probably not advisable.
Pets
If you have a dog which was formerly in a harness for walks, because it needs more control than a collar affords, your best option is a slip lead.
In the beginning leaning forward or bending down tugs at the shoulder quite painfully so I feed her on the stairs. A saucepan with long handle has become the new dog bowl.
If you have a cat litter tray – my cat is old, drinks vast amounts of water, and pisses like a horse. The soaked sand sets like cement and is a bugger to shift one handed. I moved his tray to a compromise height both he and I can reach (that’s really a benefit with old Spanish houses, lots of deep window ledges at various heights) and lined it with a sturdy heavy plastic shopping bag with the handles and corners protruding from the sand. It’s easy to tug at either handles or corners to shift the sand around and then scoop out the clumped bits. A long-handled soup ladle is proving ideal for fresh sand out of the sack to top up the tray.
My favourite purchase has been a long-handled dustpan which proved endlessly useful for picking stuff up off the floor while bending or crouching down was painful. I seemed to drop everything at a rate never known before, that’s not happening so much now but the dustpan is still my go-to little helper.
Quite Contrary 