ADVICE

Sitting chatting most amiably the other day with an old friend of the family - one I thought I knew his manners - when he launched into a discussion of my blog. 

• Jolly interesting and all that.
• Don't get him wrong, super, most informative, très amusant and all that ~ but ...

Proceeded with full gall to lecture me on some of the 'content'.

See that face over there? Don't mess. 

I gave him the lecture:

• In a country where I dont speak the lingo
• No-one to go home to and bore with the crap of the day.
• Five years eight months dutiful (and unpaid) caregivery in the face of being taken for high-handed granted.
• Thieved from: property, time, confidence and self-respect.
• On-tap under-gardener, chauffeur, secretary, labourer, health monitor, butler and having to attend the meal and sit with the guests atop that.
• All hours punch-bag for blah blah flahr blucking dementia repeatia dronings on - you guessed it -  effing gardenry. 

* I used to ask around what if any research anyone knew of the long-term effects of this sort of battering. Now I'm living, morale-crippled evidence, but I write on so my girls will know and so their eventual husbands will have a first-hand account of why and how my girls inherited not one memory of their dad.

I'm told not to look back but I'm a writer, I live to interpret 'back'.

Reduced to pen and paper, I had a chance to read my early notes and diaries. So close. 

The box i kept my jewels in. A prescient photo, seeing
as how I never thought I'd not see it again.
The other side of the wall was my bed. So close.



In my american Will, i identify each cuff-link
with a photo of the daughter to whom it's intended.
The jade were given to me by a close friend on my
passing into Oxford. The chinese-charactered links for Anna
are my family name, given by someone even more special 

• Thursday, March 9, 2006 - arrive London from Seattle, stay in my mother's London flat. Seek job.
• Tuesday April 4 - find job, complete papers, prepare to spend time in accessible Berkshire soaking up fresh air and friendship before joining the grind.
• Closing door on London flat to catch bus. Receive call from vicar's wife in Corfu ref mother's health. Cancel everything, call employer and grovel apologise.
• So close: once in sunny Berkshire I would have been persona non pester. Get back to London and start job. Safe.
• Same language, money, familiar city, five more years' pension, reunite with friends, strum guitar. New life. 
• No fronking way would I have given that up: save up for sunshine hols, maybe take out a companion. Re-invent myself. So close. 

Fifteen more seconds and I'd've closed the door and left for the bus station and been gloriously obliviously incommunicado.

Not a flipping hope in hell would I have submitted to the solo grind of a care-giver: find a local to do the job.

Theftee ~ After the theft, I drafted in mind tempting want-ads to lure some unsuspecting carer to replace me as I made my getaway. In each, I insisted on including a  caveat about the danger of being thieved from.

As Anna and I drove around we'd joke about the beefy-armed bruisers we'd see, picturing their  thwack round the chops in swift retaliation for any filcheroo tried on  them. Good times.

• There's a story there, perhaps I'm telling it.