Skip to main content

Precognetic Dream?

When the conversation you’re having is destined to become a blog post, you know you’ve been on-line too long….


Me: Remember Sylvia? Well, she’s teaching drama at our old school now.

Slightly Dippy Relative (SDR): Does she do demonstrations?

Me: I expect so.

SDR: Karma – that’s that Chinese thing where they move slowly.

Me: Huh? No, that’s Tai Chi!

SDR: What’s karma, then?

Me: That’s the philosophy of how you reap what you sow.

SDR: (mumbles)

Me: Anyway, she’s teaching drama, not karma.

SDR: Oh, that’s no good, then.

***

I have just learned that a friend of mine, who is in her eighties, is recovering from a stroke which temporarily rendered her unable to speak. Peggy’s doctor has told her that her heart could give up at any time, but then she’s already been living with that idea for the two decades that I’ve known her. Her speech seemed fully recovered when we were talking over the telephone. The stroke has damaged one arm and one side of her face, she told me. The stress of waiting for the immanent death of her long-time friend and mentor isn’t helping her condition. Some of you may remember me posting a few poems written by West Cheshire Lad, which is one of the pseudonyms used by the gentleman in question. Well, he is currently – so Peggy told me – in very poor shape, being given blood transfusions every three weeks and being kept alive by various tubes and medical aid. Each time his health takes a turn for the worse, so does hers.


***


Some excellent news! My niece has secured places at two universities for next September. One is offering a BSc in Forensic Science, the other offers a combined Honours degree in Medical Biology and Forensics. She is still to hear from three other universities also. I am so pleased for her! She has had her heart set on taking Forensics for so long now.

Oh, and my nephew’s voice has broken. For a moment I wondered who this strange gruff, croaky, squeaky voice over the phone belonged to…!

My mother had an unsettling experience in the early hours of Saturday. She heard my father walk up stairs as he used to when returning from work in the early hours. She could smell the diesel from the lorries on his clothes, and the sweat and cigarette smoke. She half-opened one eye and could see him standing at the foot of her bed. He said, “Shove up,” as he used to when ready to climb between the sheets. She sat up and flicked on her bedside lamp, and could see nothing. The room was empty and all was as it should be. But she was very shaken as the dream had seemed so real. In fact she couldn’t settle until she visited my father in the nursing home later that day.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and myt...
15 comments
Read more

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist".  I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Diary...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine.  A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...
Post a Comment
Read more