Yesterday morning I seemed to be a little ahead of myself so I thought I would at least make a start on preparing the words of eulogy which I am to deliver. at an appropriate point, in Meg’s funeral service. The priest has allocated me a time slot of 3-5 minutes so I intend to use absolutely the whole of the 5 minutes allocated to me. With hardly any searching, I managed to find a program on the web which give a timing for the words that you specify with options for a slow, normal or fast reading speed. Utilising this, I ascertained that 650 words should take exactly 5 minutes so I need to ‘cut my coat according to my cloth’ to use an old fashioned expression. These speeches or a mixture of biography on the one hand and a highlighting of the achievements achieved in the life being celebrated and so I started writing knowing that I should need to be economical and concise in what I was to write.

The day is my normal shopping day and I managed to get off in plenty of time as I do not wait until carers have come and gone. I must say that the experience of today was nowhere as painful as a fortnight ago (I missed out shopping last week) but there were still a few ‘pangs’ as I wandered up and down the middle aisle where I used to buy bits and pieces that I thought might be useful for Meg. My son helped me to unpack the shopping after I got home. He also looked at the first draft of the eulogy and suggested useful refinements and one or two corrections of fact. I dare say that it will be tweaked quite a lot before eventual delivery. I will have a text copy and my son can read it out if I get overwhelmed with emotion. I have also received the excellent news that our ex-Erasmus student who managed to get here on time and have a few last words with Meg is also flying over for the funeral. I have asked her if she can prepare a few words of her recollections and appreciation of Meg which she can share with us at tea time before we all have a sip (gulp?) of Cava, the Spanish champagne. In the late morning, I drove myself down to our local Health Centre where I do my Pilates because I had booked a session for myself with a physiotherapist as I fear that my back has had to bear a lot of the strain of caring for Meg over the past year or so, Actually, her assessment was that my back was in fairly good condition but some regions of it need a bit of working on it to restore mobility. She is going to recommend some sessions fo me which might take some time to arrive but in the meanwhile she has agreed to request the doctor to authorise a back X-ray to ascertain that I have no nasties lurking and to help to direct any treatment options. The doctor has already agreed and I should await an appointment some time. After I got home, I cooked myself some decent lunch and started on my afternoon tasks.

About a week ago, I had ordered a duplicate marriage certificate, as required by the Teachers’ Pension Agency. This arrived this morning so I could complete the form, scan it to have a photocopy of it and then include with the application form a copy of the death certificate and the duplicate marriage certificate. This was then sent off using the ‘Signed For’ service from the Post Office and I set about my second task of the afternoon, which was to dispose of a specialised little plastic container of ‘sharps’ (used syringes deployed by the District Nurses to give sone final injections to Meg) The first two chemists I tried refused to accept the container, one even telling me I should go the hospital to dispose of it but eventually I was steered towards another GP practice (not my own) which shares the same building where after a fairly lengthy wait in the queue as their computer system was down eventually the container was accepted with, I felt, a degree of reluctance. But I was anxious to finally dispose of it as it was the very last item of medical equipment that remained as un unpleasant reminder of the way in which our half of our lounge was converted into a bedroom. But our domestic job has done a magnificent job in re-arranging the pieces furniture to their former locations and the whole room now looks and feels so much more orderly (as some clutter has been removed) and I will continue with my efforts to bring the rest of the room into good order as well. But I did find time to write a special text of thanks to our domestic help ho had done such a good job in restoring our living room to rights it, one half of it having been a downstairs bedroom for the past year. There are times in your life and this is one of them when needs a trusted friend to help you sort things out and, of course, later on we will Meg’s clothes to sort through and eventually to throw it. But I am determined not to push this too far into the future because it is not a job to be delayed for too long so that we can all move on, as they say.

Being life-long cricket fans, Meg and I used to enjoy the highlights of the current Test Match which was often broadcast under the title of ‘Today at the Test’ generally from 7-8 in the evening. Now this time just about coincided with the time that Meg’s care workers arrived to pout her to bed so I have not sat down and watched this for well over a year. Yesterday, though, I watched England play Zimbabwe whose team is not in the top flight of cricketing nations and the Zimbabweans were put to the sword with England finishing the day at 498 for 3 at the end of the first day. The whole transmission was a succession of boundaries as three English batsman scored centuries. Later in the evening I had a good chat with my University of Winchester friend on whom I can always rely to cheer me up if I feeling a little morose. I have actually not watched much news or TV in the last week or so as other things have occupied my attention.

A night or so ago, I received a surprise phone call from our chiropodist who wished to make the following request. A near neighbour was in contact with an old lady whose husband had died and she was in receipt of all kinds of medicines and dressings and did not know how to dispose of them. I gave the chiropodist my telephone number and the lady then contacted me so that I cold tell her about the way in which I disposed of all our excess medical supplies to aid the Ukraine. I passed on the email contact that I had and I trust that my chiropodist’s neighbour will manage to make contact with the Ukrainian lady so that even more unwanted medicines can flow to a place where they are needed and appreciated. I have told quite a few people now how we managed to dispose of these medications and how happy it made me feel (and probably Meg as well if she can observe from a better place). Yesterday morning, my son and I had allocated ourselves the time and space to utilise the government ‘Tell Us Once’ service whereby all government departments with which an individual mainly has had transactions are informed about their death. A special reference number was given to us by the Registrar when Meg’s death was registered and this is the key that starts to unlock the process. In practice my son and I found the site to be well designed and easy to navigate but we did appreciate that ‘two eyes are better than one’ when it comes to supplying critical credentials. Meg did not have a driving licence but the two key numbers were her National Insurance number and her Passport number. The whole process was completed in about 20 minutes and we were pleased that that this went without a hitch. I walked down to town to collect my newspaper and the staff at Waitrose let me have a bottle of cordial for free as well as giving me a lemon drizzle cake for my elevenses and yet another bunch of flowers. The staff at Waitrose have been overwhelmingly kind and sympathetic to me and I am so appreciative of all of them. Last week when our domestic help was here, she and my son did a sterling job in clearing out all of the impedimenta associated with a bedroom downstairs and so the task this week was to give the carpet a through hoovering and to restore the furniture to the position that it used to occupy so that we now have now reclaimed all of our Main lounge. It is true that a coffee table-top of clutter has been left for me to process but this will be a labour of love and I will set to it with a vengeance.

When we held our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations, these were split into three so that my family in Yorkshire could attend one, family and friends in the Midlands attend the second and finally our Spanish friends and some cousins and friends to attend the third held in Spain. I have a videoclip of Meg making an off-the-cuff speech to our family in Yorkshire in September, 2017 and most of the clip is Meg speaking although I did join in with some observations about how proud I was of Meg (as well as some jokes) towards the end. When I was up during the night, I constructed a short and memorable link to the website where this videoclip is located and thus I was able to show it to our domestic help whilst she was having her mid-morning coffee. This, of course, was Meg at her absolute best speaking without notes and without hesitations and with a clear memory before the cruel manifestations of the dementia were to appear a year or so later. I wanted our domestic help to have a wonderful memory of Meg at her most fluent and most typical and we were both so very pleased that we could enjoy this videoclip together. There ere various little games and pastimes I had bought for Meg which I hoped (in vain) that she could enjoy but our domestic help was pleased that she could utilise them on the residential home in which she worked. After our domestic help and son had departed, I did not feel particularly hungry so wondered if I could squeeze in a visit to the Bank in order to close down Meg’s account. This flying visit proved fruitless as I needed to see some personnel who were at lunch and it would, in any case, take some time. So I returned home and awaited the arrival of our hairdresser who, of course, only has me to process. Her own brother had died a few months ago and she is busy disposing of unwanted effects and trying to sell his flat so we empathised with each other that we were both fully cognisant of what we were going through with the processes that take place after a bereavement.

When I eventually got to our bank for the second time that day, the person who saw me could not have been more sympathetic or kindly. For a start she had two close kin who had dementia and her own husband had died, very quickly, of throat cancer. The bank official had managed to locate a really old savings account which was almost 30 years old and which we had totally forgotten about with £28 in it. This was ‘rescued’ and then the other trivial amount of money in Meg’s main account will make its way over eventually into our joint account whilst Meg’s individual account will be closed down. I had a briefcase full of documentation but all that was necessary was a death certificate (which was photocopied and then handed back to me) and my own ID (driving licence, passport) The procedures seemed quite thorough and meticulous with lots of checking along the way and I was in the bank for an 1hr and 20 minutes. But as I walked back to the car, I realised that Meg, in the eyes of the state, does not officially ‘exist’ anymore as this morning’s and this afternoon’s procedures will have closed down all of Meg’s financial dealings with the state (and the bank) On the way home, I spotted my Irish friend doing some gardening so I gave him a quick update on all of our news to date.

Yesterday was quite a full day and we seemed to get quite a lot done. Our first priority was to get to our solicitors in Kidderminster in order to pick up a copy of Meg’s will which went without a hitch. My son and I had to take along ID but our driving licenses sufficed for this purpose and although we had taken along a copy of the death certificate, the solicitors were quite happy just to take a photocopy of this which meant that we preserved one of the several copies we had purchased yesterday. We also received the good news from the solicitor that we did not need to apply for probate so we can now get cracking on us the ‘Tell Us Once’ service tomorrow morning. We treated ourselves to a coffee in Marks and Spencer and then got home and I prepared myself for my next meeting which was with the Eucharistic Minister from church and the Parish priest. This meeting, too, ran smoothly although the Eucharistic minister and I were not quite sure how things were going to be. I now know the time allocation for the Eulogy for Meg which I am to prepare and the priest has allowed me a maximum of 5 minutes. Actually, he said between 3-5 minutes but I can use the facilities of Windows 11 to read out the text I will prepare and this will help to get the timings correct. My intention is to have a fully prepared script and if, on the day, I am rather too over-whelmed with emotion, then my son can always read it out on my behalf. But we had done a lot of preparation beforehand so this made life easier for ourselves. Then at home my son prepared some home-made soup for both of us and then very kindly ran me down in his car to the Pilates class. This was just an enjoyable an experience as it proved to be last week and to provide a rather special little end to the morning , one of the class had brought along a little bottle of blackberry vodka which she had prepared and distributed to the class last Christmastime, probably knowing that I would not be able to distribute my bottles of damson gin which I have been in the habit of doing over the years.

After the obligatory large cup of tea (after all, what else to do in the days after a loved one has died, as I remember when my grandmother died in 1960), I had another pleasant surprise. The Eucharistic minister and her husband called around in order to collect the rather superior camp bed which they had let me have on loan for practically the whole of a year. I have slept alongside Meg during the past year and we lowered the hospital bed so that it was the same height as the camp bed. If Meg were to experience any distress in the middle of the night, then I would be able to proffer an arm to comfort her. Fortunately, the number of occasions upon which proved to be necessary were very few but had I been upstairs in our normal bed, then I would not have known if Meg needed any assistance in the middle of the night. So it was excellent to return the camp bed to its rightful owners and this is the last piece of furniture that needs to be removed before our domestic help and I can actually turn our living room back to its former state. I also received an email from the hotel across the road asking me to supply some details and choose some options for the afternoon tea they will provide on the day of the funeral. This too proved very simple and straight forward to do and we are catering for about 50 people to attend, all in all. My final task in the afternoon was to circulate details of Meg’s passing to some of the ‘Old Fogies’ dining club in Winchester who did not appear in the ‘Contacts’ section of my phone and would therefore not have known about Meg’s death. I have already received one sympathetic response from a very old friend who had severe health issues of his own a few years back and remembers well some of the conversations that he had with Meg about her tennis playing days and how one was encouraged, (wrongly) in the 1960;s to ‘play through the pain’

In domestic politics, we are now seeing quite a dramatic shift in the tone of the Labour party leadership over the current situation in Gaza. The policy of only allowing the merest trickle of food into the Gaza strip and a program that seems to seek to remove much of the Palestinian population has caused the patience of some of the traditional allies of Israel to snap. Keir Starmer is evidently coordinating statements from both France and Canada condemning the present Israeli government and calling for an immediate cease fire. The dread word ‘genocide’ has not yet passed the lips of the present Labour party leadership but the back benchers have not shown any such restraint in using the word. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the Netanyahu government in Israel needs the support of one or two really extremist right wing parties which are needed for the Israeli government coalition to survive. The UK government has suspended negotiations for a trade deal with Israel and also ‘sent for’ the Israeli ambassador to convey the strong disapproval of current Israeli policy. Apart from international affairs, there are very strong rumours that the ‘Winter Fuel Allowance’ payments should continue. Two options are being entertained and which view will prevail it is too early to say. One option would be to ‘tweak’ the benefits by raising the ceiling so that more people will be able to keep their fuel allowance but the political benefit from this might be minimal. Another option would be to restore the status quo and keep a universal benefit but this would be expensive and it would involve a massive ‘U’ turn. In addition, if this were to happen then the government would undoubtedly ‘lose face’ and be forced into an admission that they had got it wrong in the first place.

When we first moved into our present house some 17½ years ago now we could not fail to notice a modern hotel situated some 200-300 metres away from us on the other side of the main Kidderminster Road. This was then known as the Bromsgrove Hotel but older residents of Bromsgrove knew it by its previous name which was the Pine Lodge Hotel. It was built in the style of a Spanish hacienda and we enjoyed many good Sunday lunches all of those years ago. It had facilities such as a small swimming pool and my daughter-in-law with whom we shared our house at that time negotiated a special family-rate membership of the sports facilities there, of which we availed ourselves only once or twice. I think it is fair to say that the fortunes and the reputation of the hotel have waxed and waned over the years and within a few years of our acquaintance with it, it was taken over and became the Holiday Inn. Approximately seven years ago, my sister-in-law and niece stayed there when they came to visit me after I had been in hospital and their stay was comfortable enough. To bring us up-to-date, our long established ex-Erasmus student who has become a life-long friend stayed there when she caught a flight from Madrid and managed to see Meg an hour and a half before she died, which was excellent I feel for both of them. The day after Meg’s death, I attended a pre-arranged birthday tea party there and the level of service proved to be excellent and we even took away six ‘doggy bags’ of left-overs. hen I was having a brief chat with my very friendly neighbours, they suggested that we hold our post-funeral refreshments, otherwise known as a ‘wake’ in that hotel as they themselves had recently attended a funeral party there and they thought it was excellent. Hence my son and I immediately walked over the road and saw their Events organiser and were delighted to be able to book our slot for Wednesday June 11th and were even shown the room which was to be made available to us. I am not sure why this did not occur to me immediately – a case of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? But the advantages are legion as it is so easy to find being on the main Kidderminster Road, there is ample car parking and some of my ex-colleagues who are attending the funeral are already booked in for the night. There are all kinds of details yet to be worked out, but we know that these funeral events they have organised many times in the past and therefore will put on ‘a good show’ for us. The slightly romantic or nostalgic part of me is repeating to me that Meg would have loved these final celebrations of her life in quasi-Spanish style surroundings given the style in which the hotel is built and of course its proximity to our house means we can easily walk home and/or invite people in to spend time with us. We are awaiting further contact to be made with us so that we can give numbers and supply further details but this is another part of the jigsaw that is falling into place.

After my son and I had formally registered Meg’s death and picked up our copies of the relevant certificates, we popped into the adjacent building which now houses our GP practice and I tried to make an appointment to see the most senior partner in the practice for whom I have a great deal of respect. I particularly wanted to see this particular doctor because it was he whom we consulted at the very start of Meg’s final illness some 6-7 years ago now. In addition, he attended me when I was discharged from hospital and very skilfully dressed my post-operation wounds when I was too ill to attend the surgery. In addition, I used to help out with the training of young medical students from the University of Birmingham to whom they wanted to expose a ‘real’ but to some extent model patient so that they could develop some skills in dealing with patients as part of their medical training. But this particular doctor seemed to be mysteriously unavailable with nobody on the reception desk quite knowing what his movements were or how we could make an appointment. This seemed very strange to me so I had to settle for the doctor who had discussed the details to be entered on Meg’s death certificate with me but she was on holiday for at least a fortnight so this too will have to wait until she returns. There are just some details about Meg’s final illness which I need to clear up to my own satisfaction as there are some things in Meg’s medical records the full significance of which I was unaware. However, I have to reflect that Meg’s quality of life was pretty high in her last year or so of life and I am pretty convinced a lot superior to conditions experienced by other dementia patients when nearing the ends of their lives. In particular, Meg experienced completely what is often termed a ‘good’ death, surrounded by family, friends and even ex-students. Upon reflection, what I rather tremendously dubbed as our ‘Music Lounge’ meant that Meg could enjoy some magnificent music via the excellent concerts provided as result of our YouTube subscription and we tended to play some Mozart, and latterly Fauré practically every day. Also, we did manage to locate some classic Joan Baez concerts and Meg certainly derived a lot of pleasure from listening to these which reminded us both not only of our student days but also of the Joan Baez farewell concert which we attended in Birmingham a few years ago now. Incidentally, we showed some of these Joan Baez recordings to some of the young carers who had never heard anything like it in their lives before. In Meg’s final months, she received some excellent care and was always handled with tenderness and respect. The 4-5 young carers developed a deep affection for Meg, (and she for them I am pretty convinced), and they certainly enhanced her end of life experience. When Meg was being made comfortable in her specialist chair, the young carers used to put around her a blanket in my possession which was a deep blue on one side and a white faux fur on the other side. It looked for all of the world as though it was a robe that had been requisitioned from the House of Lords itself and so after they had put it carefully around Meg they used to call her ‘Queen Meg’ which she enjoyed tremendously. So taking a long view, I am constantly being told that no husband could have cared for Meg more that I actually did and, thank goodness, I have managed to achieve before my own health gave out. Otherwise, to quote the great political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, then Meg’s life would have been ‘poor, nasty brutish and short’ but instead I think it was the complete reverse of this and I am so happy that she did enjoy the end of life in some peace and comfort and not an anonymous hospital bed/ward which we managed to avoid.

Yesterday, after I returned home from my Hampshire trip, I naturally unloaded the car and was delighted to discover the black tray-style purse which I had mislaid for at least a month now was now found. This was a classic case of how things get lost/mislaid as it is made of a shiny black leather and had slid completely and fitted snugly in between the (black) upholstery of the car and the (black) fabric of the front seat. Aware of the fact that ‘black on black’ is a fatal combination, particularly in the case of cars, I always tend to buy new phones that are a vivid and non-black colour to ensure that this not reoccur as I have been fooled before. Upon retrieving the purse, I decorated it with a few coloured ‘dot’ style stickers to make sure it does not go wandering again. It did not contain any house keys but did contain one or two small keys which I could deploy to lock a rather fine leather briefcase which I keep in the study to house things like recent medical records and hospital appointments. After I had made myself a cup of tea, I thought I would rummage through the contents of another briefcase which I knew contained some medical and other files pertaining to Meg to see if I could remind myself of the exact day upon which had retired and when she had first to leave work because of her back problems. I did discover something that I really did not wish to know. In the briefcase was a medical file which detailed some blood pressure readings sone of which were taken at least eight years ago and one set that dated back eleven years. Apart from one or two solitary prescriptions, this seems to have gone largely untreated because at the time Meg was suffering from other apparently urgent problems such as her recurrent back pains and quite frequent and crippling migraines. I did then go on the web and discovered some research papers that indicated that untreated hypertension in late middle age (Meg would have been in her late 60’s) could be the precursor to dementia but, if caught and treated in time, could delay the onset or the severity of symptoms in anything from 30%–50% of cases. This troubled me greatly and I had to think through all of the implications of what I had just discovered. I did go next door to inform the neighbours that I had returned from Hampshire and they, very kindly, regaled me with a glass of sherry and made some very helpful suggestions as to where we might hold the wake that will take place after Meg’s funeral in just over three week’s time. I think it is fair to say that after I had read in Meg’s medical files, I was rather a sombre and reflective mood for much of the evening.

My son was due to call around today and we have been quite busy with a round of engagements that we need to fulfil today. However, the Hampshire trip has shown me how cluttered a house can become and, returning home to my own domain everything seems to me a model of neatness and good order, which of course I intend to continue. Yesterday morning I did arise at 6.30 am then sat in my friend’s lounge until he appeared some time after 9.00am. I entertained myself by ‘liberating’ a book summarising great philosophers and their systems of thought but after two and a half hours of such reading, I was contemplating writing a note to my friend and then leaving the house without saying goodbye. Fortunately he appeared and we had a long and leisurely breakfast and I left at about 11.30 and the threatened road works/closures on the A34 did not manifest themselves so I had an easy a journey back as the journey the day before was fraught.

Later on in the morning, my son and I walked over the fairly adjacent ‘Holiday Inn’ to enquire about its availability for post-funeral refreshments and eventually we saw the Events organiser. The really good news is that they are available for an event on Wednesday, 11th June so we have booked our slot and seen the room in which our refreshments will take place and we think it will be excellent for us. This particular inn is built in the style of a Spanish Hacienda in any case and we used to eat there quite regularly when we moved to our present house nearly eighteen years ago now. In the late morning, my son had a formal ‘slot’ booked with the undertaker. The lady who dealt with us was sympathetic and practical and I thought she handled things beautifully. My son and I had the slightly strange experience of choosing not only a favourite dress which Meg is to wear but also some underwear as well. To my mind, this is a little strange as after the funeral service in the church, Meg’s body is to be cremated so she will not be wearing the clothes for very long. Also I want to remember Meg as she was and not as she is now so I certainly do not wish to see her dead body in which bad memories might drive out good ones. But I am very inexperienced in such things as I have never had the occasion to make the practical arrangements of a deceased wife – one every 57 1/2 years is quite enough. My son and I did all of the formal registration of a death in the early afternoon so we are relieved to be at this stage in the process. Later, I telephoned a very good ex-University of Winchester friend who I actually saw the other day and will see again in about three weeks time and as she is so much more experienced in these matters than I, she was a great source of sensible and practical advice. Then I popped around to see my next-door neighbour to thank him for the suggestion of the ‘Holiday Inn’ for our post-funeral refreshments. We are delighted that we followed his suggestion of a choice of venue and I am sure that we are doing the right thing at the end of the day.

Knowing that I had a journey down to Hampshire to make this morning to attend the wonderful birthday of my ex-colleague’s 80th, I arose at 6.00am as I have been wont to do for the past year or so, mainly so that I could be prepared for when the carers called around to get Meg prepared for the day ahead. But when I return from Hampshire, I may start to revise my daily routine and get up at 7.00am rather than 6.00am which has been my custom over the years. On the other hand, there is something to be said for arising early and getting things like a daily exercise routine in place as well as domestic concerns such as keeping abreast of emails and financial records. I had the experience today of packing an overnight bag in preparation for my one night stay away in Hampshire but this experience was not entirely novel to me. At the time that I was preparing papers for my PhD, I occasionally had an overnight stay and this was sometimes extended for a few days if it was a trip to a European city on the conferences organised by a professor/entrepreneur who is now a lifelong friend. So I suppose I can exercise my ‘conference mentality’ memory and I will recall the habits associated with packing an overnight bag. The only large item which remains in our main lounge is the camp bed which the Eucharistic minister and her husband let me have on loan throughout the last year so that I could be at Meg’s side should she experience any distress in the middle of the night. Fortunately, such occurrences were quite rare but if I had slept upstairs and Meg was in distress, there was no way in which I could have known about it. So it has served its purpose admirably and now I am sleeping in my conventional double bed and I think I am getting a better night’s sleep as a result. The other day when we were preparing the ‘Order of Service’ and not quite completing our task, my friend asked me to consult my family bible. I grabbed this and the book next to it and this turned out to be a missal (Catholic prayer book) When I looked at the flyleaf, there was a dedication from Meg which read ‘With my love and prayers’ and was dated May, 1966 and so must have been a 21st birthday present from Meg and not long after we had decided to marry.

The latest mad idea has emerged from the Trump regime (or should I say ‘cabal’). Up to a million Palestinians could be permanently relocated from devastated Gaza to war-torn Libya under plans being worked on by Donald Trump’s administration, NBC News reports. The idea has been discussed with Libya’s leadership, sources told Sky’s US partner network, and would potentially see billions of dollars in frozen Libyan funds released. The North African country remains divided in two – nearly 14 years after the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi sparked a civil war – with two rival governments fighting for control. By any stretch of the imagination, this has got to be ethnic cleansing and the term is now being openly applied to what the Israelis/Americans seem to have planned for the Gaza strip. It is one of the most incredible facts of the history of the last century that the Israeli peoples, having been subject to ethnic cleansing in the Holocaust are now said by many to be guilty of ethnic cleansing themselves in their policies towards the Palestinian residents of Gaza.

I set off for Hampshire in plenty of time and at just after 12.00pm. I was in danger of arriving half an hour early for the party. So as I had plenty of time, I stopped in a lay-by for a breath of fresh air. I noticed a little gap in the hedge and proceeding from this was a little beaten track down quite a steep little slope. I think this was an excellent opportunity to answer ‘a call of nature’ but I soon found myself propelled through the air in a rugby scoring type dive and landing full length in a huge bunch of nettles. I have to say that I was completely unhurt but when I examined what had occasioned my fall, there was a bit of a beaten down wire fence about a couple of inches above the ground and a trained saboteur could have positioned a trip wire more expertly. The rest of the trip was a bit of a nightmare because the SatNav took me not on the route I was expecting but on the M27, then off it, then on it again on roads totally unfamiliar to me. The SatNav failed to locate the address of my friend which is a large farmhouse in a track obliquely of the road and I had to stumble about trying to find it. To cap it all, the telephone number had friend had supplied had just that morning been disconnected but when, in desperation, I stopped to ask for help I was only about 50 metres away from where I needed to be. The garden was pretty full when I arrived but I was soon joined by a couple of close ex-University of Winchester friends and we finished off having an excellent afternoon chatting with each other and with guests invited to the celebrations on my friend’s 80th birthday. As I was staying the night, I spent the evening in long conversations with my friend and his new ‘squeeze’ who was somebody with whom he had re-established contact from his postgraduate days. I managed to play them a little bit of a video clip of Meg’s address to our Harrogate (family) party some seven years ago before the ravishes of Meg’s final illness had intensified. Perhaps because of the WiFi connection this cut out about a third of the way through the clip but at least they were able to see Meg ‘at her best’ as it were. Because my University of Winchester friend and his new ‘amante’ had both experienced the death of their own partners in recent years, they understood why I felt the need to share the videoclip of Meg with them. We ended up talking until after midnight but had some late night supper of quiche and salad to sustain us.

Yesterday turned out to be quite an interesting day. After I had got up and written a bit of my blog, which I generally do first thing in the morning, I engaged in a bit more of my tidying up activity. To help Meg n her last few years and months of life, I acquired a variety of walking aids including a sort of triangular walking aid that I have seen many elderly frail people utilise in the nearby park. But unfortunately Meg never got on with this and when I tried it out with her, she tended to steer it into the side of the path so it had to be abandoned. So now I have stored a couple of these walkers in an upstairs walk-in wardrobe were they are out of the way but accessible if and when I ever need to use them myself. In Waitrose, there were more hugs from the regular members of staff who had seen me for the first time since Meg’s passing and I treated myself to one of their ‘free’ cups of coffee as I had actually taken my mug with me so that as a card holder, I could have one of these. On my way back up the hill, I called in at my Italian friend and we spent a pleasant half hour in the warm sunshine, drinking coffee and reminiscing about the lives of our respective spouses. After I returned home, I received a phone call from our solicitors so after I have collected the death certificate on Monday, we can make a journey to the nearby town of Kidderminster to collect the original of Meg’s will on Tuesday morning. For lunch, I did not want to do any cooking so had quite a healthy lunch of a tin of tuna, enhanced with ‘Thousand Island’ dressing and some mayonnaise and then eaten on a base of rice biscuits. When I am on a more even keel, I intend to cut down on carbs quite radically and I think rice biscuits are a good way of doing this.

I knew that the Ukrainian lady with whom I was in contact to dispose of spare medicines and dressings was due to call around at 2.00pm. She appeared very promptly and she was accompanied by a friend who was herself a refugee from the Hungarian uprising of the 1950’s. I think that apart from the fellow feeling, she came along as the Ukrainian lady did not speak English particularly well. I raced around getting whatever medicines of which we still had some supplies both in the bedroom and also in a downstairs kitchen drawer so we finished up with a bag full of medicines as supplied by the District Nurses, a bag of medical aids of various kinds such as slip sheets and my final collection of the pills that Meg has taken over the years. To cut a long story short, the two ladies were absolutely delighted to accept all three bags of supplies and one item they thought they would find particularly useful. Meg had developed a pressure sore on one heel which had developed what is called a ‘deep tissue injury’ and the District Nurse had supplied two large boot-like appliances that protected the whole of the foot. These had proved to be very comfortable for Meg and she actually slept in them for the last week or so of her life. The two ladies thought that they would prove excellent for injuries to wounded Ukrainian soldiers amongst whom I suppose foot injuries can be quite common. So they left my house more than happy with what I was able to supply for them and they were actually to be loaded onto a van and would be winging their way towards the Ukraine as early as tomorrow morning. In exchange, they insisted on giving me a jar of Ukrainian jam and we promised to keep in touch so that as and when extra medical supplies come our way, we always have a good home to pass them onto.

Knowing that I was going to be away for the next couple of days, I thought I had better mow at least one of the lawns. I did the first one in two tranches, treating myself to a choc ice on between the two cuttings of the first lawn. Refreshed by a bit of a rest, I managed to cut the back lawn as well so felt I had done a good afternoon’s work. I must say that as I mowed the lawns, I experienced a great deal of happiness that I had managed to get these medical supplies into the hands of those who desperately needed them. I also enjoyed telling Meg’s departed spirit what had happened to some of her now redundant medications, and I am sure that she would be so happy that these were not just thrown away but were to be utilised almost immediately. I have been promised some photographs to ‘prove’ that the medicines have got through to the correct places but even if the photos fail to materialise I am sure the medications will be put to excellent use.

I have to ensure that I am well and truly loaded up with gifts and goodies for the birthday part celebrations when I am to leave tomorrow, I have a plant, a large cake, wine and some other comestibles to donate to my host tomorrow and I am looking forward to meeting up with old and loyal friends. The journey is of the order of about 135 miles but I know it very well and I will just toddle along giving myself a break at the half way point. Yesterday evening, I had a video chat with my sister in Yorkshire and after the funeral is over, I am going to go up there to spend a few days with members of the family not seen for years. I was also delighted to receive a text message from the Ukrainian lady thanking me for the donations of medicines and dressings. She indicated that she was going to send me a lost of the things that are particularly needed and this will be useful because some of these items I might be able to spare from this house as I carry on with my de-cluttering efforts.

Yesterday, as we had anticipated, the crew made their appearance from the NHS Equipment Supplies agency to collect the various large pieces of equipment that has populated our house over the past year. They were a friendly and business-like pair and had a huge white van at their disposal so that it was quite easy for them to stow way the various pieces of equipment. I told them how during the course of Meg’s illness, I had found the occupational therapists, physiotherapists, wheelchair specialists and district nurses little short of excellent whereas,in my opinion, the various doctors were as useful as chocolate teapots. What was so interesting was they absolutely agreed and indicated without going into details how they could tell exactly similar stories of their own. I was left with a fairly large bag of NHS supplies, some still in its unopened packaging, which they indicated they could not take away but they did take away one or two things where they indicated they could throw it away for me. I informed them how glad I was to see them and how removing all of the NHS ‘gear’ would help to restore a sense of normality. After I had breakfasted which is now quite a quick affair I made a phone call to the Occupational Therapy team to see if they would like to collect any of the unused equipment. Very apologetically, they explained how they were unable to accept the return of any of this material citing ‘infection control’ and it was agreed between us that to throw it away seemed a criminal waste of scarce resources but those are the protocols in place. I followed this up with a call to the care agency that had been looking after Meg and they indicated that they could certainly use some items such as slip sheets so I am retaining these until a care worker calls who can take some of these supplies away. This afternoon, I am due to be paid a visit by the Ukrainian lady with whom I made contact the other day and I am hopeful that a lot of the excess medicines and dressings can wing their way towards the Ukraine where they are desperately needed.

Our Eucharistic minister called around this m morning, by arrangement, as we were going to put together the elements of an ‘Order of Service’ for Meg’s funeral, a task for which she is eminently suited having done it for other parishioners and members of her own family. When several years ago, Meg and I had planned out some of the elements of the music that we would like for our funerals and which our daughter-in-law had kept assiduously, we had only specified music tracks which were mainly drawn from Mozart’s Requiem and some Handel but had not specified any hymns – I think it is true to say that neither Meg nor I were great hymn aficionados in any case. But we quickly settled on one hymn by John Henry Newman (‘Lead, kindly light’) as he is practically a local saint. While there is no definitive record of St John Henry Newman’s formal visit to Bromsgrove, his life and work were intertwined with the broader region of the West Midlands, where Birmingham and surrounding areas are located. It is therefore possible, though not explicitly documented, that he may have briefly been in Bromsgrove at some point during his ministry and travels. and his connection to the region makes a visit plausible but unconfirmed. As well as this, we chose a processional hymn and two pieces of Bach which are particular favourites of both Meg and myself. So we are probably going to have three particular pieces of music which were actually played at our wedding in September, 1967, so this seems entirely fitting. Our planning was rather attenuated by the arrival of the BHS Equipment Supplies team which had to take my full attention but the Eucharistic minister has most of the essential elements in place. And, as a sort of bonus, I have managed to locate, pay for and download a copy of the ‘Lacrimosa’ from the Mozart requiem that we will need to play through the Church’s sound system. The remainder of the morning was taken up with a series of to-and-fro telephone calls where in order to arrive at a date for Meg’s funeral, we have to coordinate the availability of the undertakers themselves, a ‘slot’ in the crematorium and the availability of both the church and the parish priest. But we now have a date of Wednesday, June 11th at 12.00pm (late in the morning to help those travelling a long distance) and although it is the best part of four weeks away, it is a good to have a date agreed so that we can spread the word far and wide. In fact, I spent most of last night going through the ‘Contacts’ list on my phone to make sure that anyone would needed to know would have a good prior intimation of the date. Our planning was rather cut short by the arrival of the NHS equipment team but the essential elements are in place and plenty of time for any ‘fine tuning’

After a quick lunch, I sallied forth to take a bag full of teddy bears and other soft toys to the Salvation Army store on the High Street, from whence many of them had come in the first place. Whilst in the vicinity of Waitrose, I bumped into a very old Pilates classmate who I do not see regularly now as she now attends a class on a different day of the week. But out mutual Pilates class teacher had informed her of Meg’s demise so we agreed to make contact again after she had returned from a cruise upon which she was shortly to embark. In the evening, I had a telephone consultation with my son informing him of the appointments made with the undertakers and also the Bromsgrove registration office where I have a ‘slot’ on Monday next allocated to formally record Meg’s death (some nine days after the event) I received a mild scolding about doing the undertaker’s work for them but I am not skilled in such matters as the sequelae of the death of a family member. I paid a brief call to my next door neighbours to inform them that I would be away in Hampshire next Saturday and Sunday and they were not to worry about my absence – in the event, I was glad to have done so because, in the absence of any other information, they would have been worried about me.

Later on today, I am anticipating that the Equipment Agency part of the NHS will call around and reclaim all, if not most, of the various equipment which has been supplied to us to make Meg comfortable in her final days. Thee include a special hospital bed, a specialised air-flow mattress, a hoist and slings, a specialised chair, a wheelchair and a host of smaller items. I have been looking forward to this as, once removed, I can restore our living accommodation to what I might term the ‘new’ normal. Anticipating this, our domestic help abandoned her normal duties and together with my son set to work with gusto reclaiming the one half of our main lounge which had been converted into a downstairs bedroom. They started by removing the temporary blackout curtains I had installed this time last year. As Mg started to be put to bed at about 7.30 starting late last May, the sun was still very bright so I bought and installed these as a matter of urgency. Admittedly they looked decidedly makeshift for the whole of the last year but they served their purpose in helping Meg to get swiftly off to sleep. Then the screen I had purchased to separate the room into ‘lounge’ and ‘bedroom’ areas was removed and, later in the day I was to deconstruct this but it took almost as long to disassemble as it had done to assemble in the first place last year. In fact much of the early afternoon was spent doing this and I finished off with a supply of screws (saved), and some plastic fitments and linen panels (junked) and a large number of metal poles which I un-slotted. My son and domestic help turned to their attention to a stainless steel trolley that looked all the world like a hospital trolley and practically the whole of its contents were discarded. Then some bedding was discarded, the blankets were saved and stored safely in a room upstairs and attention was turned to Meg’s day-to-day clothes. I have to admit that seeing these discarded including her favourite jumpers was painful in the extreme but had to be done otherwise they would have stayed there as a permanent reminder of Meg and therefore needed to go. So the ‘good’ clothing was bagged up so that it could be donated to the AgeUK and as well as this we were left with a huge bag of items for disposal, a huge bag of medicaments and specialised drugs and dressings brought along by the District Nurses so that Meg’s immediate needs could be addressed. We also finished off with a large bag of about a dozen soft toys, principally teddy bears some of which we had as ‘sleeping companions’ as she was put to bed. All of these came via charity shops or were donated to us so to the charity shops they will be returned. In the afternoon after I had dissembled the screen and was left with a series of metal poles, I thought these would not fit into our normal wheelie bin so I loaded up the car and set off for our local tip which is quite some distance away. So I managed to dispose of these metal parts appropriately and also the large bag of ‘rubbish’ items. On the way home, I called in at our local AgeUK shop and was delighted that it was still open and would accept my large plastic bag filled with clothing and other items. So at the end of the day, I was left off with the bag of medicaments as well as the bag of soft toys for eventual disposal.

My son phoned in the afternoon and was delighted with the progress I had made and then I had a welcome and surprise phone call from one of my ex University of Winchester colleagues who is immensely knowledgeable about these things having recently having to cope with the death of her mother and an extremely ill sister) My friend is really keen on recycling and made the most excellent suggestion upon I acted. She informed me that once the medicines were returned to the NHS they would just immediately be destroyed which she thought was criminal and suggested that I see if there was a local Ukraine relief society which would be desperate to accept the donation of drugs and medical supplies. I did find a person in a a village quite nearby and we established email contact – she is due to call around on Friday afternoon to pick up the large bag of medical supplies for onward transmission to the Ukraine. Naturally, I am delighted about this as I am sure that Meg would have been and I am sure my friend will be when I see her at the party organised in Hampshire on Saturday which I can now attend. When the room has been cleared of medical equipment, we can do a final deep cleaning and subsequent rearrangement of some items of furniture next week when our domestic help calls again.

The disposal of those items of clothing with which the deceased family member wore frequently is always particularly painful. Meg had two woolly jumpers one decorated with sheep and the other a wonderful design which made it resemble a cricketer’s jumper and in my mind’s eye, I shall always remember Meg in one of these two, obviously worn a lot in the winter months and on our trips out. But to be honest, it takes friends and family members to dispose of this apparel because it can be very difficult for the bereaved person to experience this final ‘letting go’. But as I think Lady Macbeth may have said ‘If ’tis to be done it is best done quickly’ so my son and domestic help have done a magnificent job in removing these frequently worn items from my purview. In time, wardrobe items and underwear will need to be cleared out but these do not have the same emotional pull as those items in which one pictures one’s departed one. To quote another expression that comes to mind ‘What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over’ and this proverb is found literally all over the world. It might have first been uttered in the 14th century by a certain St Bernard but I find it to be particularly true and apposite today.

STOP PRESS

Meg’s funeral Wednesday:11th June 12.00pm St. Peters Catholic Church Bromsgrove B60 3LU followed by a visit to the crematorium (brief) at 1.15 The reception afterwards will be held locally – details to be announced later.

Yesterday proved to be on of the most interesting of days but not quite as predicted. I am eager to get back to normal or more accurately to a ‘new’ normal and so thought I would resume my earlier habits of always walking down the hill to collect my newspaper. I was a little dismayed to discover that my physical shape is not good as a year of pushing Meg around in a wheelchair preceded by some 6-9 months in which I had to regularly pick Meg off the floor (on one or two occasions up to four times in the day) he taken an evident toll on my health. In particular, my daughter-in-law has now noticed that I walk with a slight leaning stoop and, what has been happening is that in pushing the wheelchair around I had been using at as a sort of huge walking frame and was evidently leaning into the wheelchair itself particularly when transporting Meg in the uphill sections on the way home. So although I completed the walk, I was pretty tired after I had done the round trip and, in some ways, more tired than if I had had a wheelchair in front of me. I am philosophical bout this and I do not regret for a single moment the efforts that I undoubtedly made to give Meg a good quality of life in which I have generally succeeded but now I have to think about my own health and fitness. My intention is to get a telephone consultation with a doctor, explain and situation to him and then request not pills but a course of NHS funded physiotherapy in the adjacent Catherine Adams physiotherapy centre. As part of the same efforts to repair my health and get back to a ‘new’ normal. I also decided to renew my participation in the Pilates class which I used to do each Tuesday but has. been abandoned for over a year. My son very kindly offered to run me down to the clinic in the car and to pick me up afterwards which offer I gladly accepted and really needed. What followed then was remarkable. My fellow class members were reduced from the customary four to three on this occasion but I knew each one of them well. There were hugs and kisses all round and it was indicated to me how much I had been missed, particularly for the jokes and humour which permeate the session. One of my fellow classmates is a veterinary nurse who works in a practice at the bottom of the hill and unbeknown to me had often actually witnessed me pushing Meg upon what was the steepest part of the hill so knew completely why I had not been able to attend classes. I thought it was going to very difficult to do the class exercises but it was. nowhere as difficult as I thought. Our teacher explained to me that my ‘muscle memory’ was. being activated so she was not surprised. At the end of the session, my teacher updated me with her own bad news as she had lost her own very active father first to a broken hip, then to bowel problems and finally a massive stroke so she and her mother had gone ‘through the mill’ as they say. Evidently e have a lot of fellow feeling for each other and even more than we had before. So by returning, I am boosting her income a smidgeon and she was so pleased to see back that she offered me the rest of the six week block at a 40% discount, I had obviously gone to the class for the physical benefits but left it surrounded by a huge comfort blanket of affection from my fellow class members (all women, incidentally). Needless to say, this is an additional source of motivation for me to continue the classes each Tuesday.

In the afternoon, I continued with the tasks of what my niece in a subsequent long conversation with me was to call ‘sadministration’ or, in other words, those procedures that have to be completed after the death of a family member. She remembered well what she had to do after the death of her father (my brother-in-law some two or three years ago now). I got through to the Teachers Pension Agency as. mall portion of Meg’s pension continue after her death but there is the inevitable (12-page) form to be completed. After I had completed as much of the form as I could, I needed to eventually supply the original of our marriage certificate although the documentation does refer to a certificated copy counter-signed by a relevant professional. In no way did. I wish to trust the original marriage certificate to a government bureaucracy so thought I would actually get an ‘official’ second copy. This proved to be. more complex procedure but I was directed by the government’s own website to anther application which would locate the year, quarter, district, volume and then page number where our own marriage certificate details could be found. This I managed to do and sent my application expecting it will take about week to be delivered. But the government’s own General Register Office reckoned that. this was the best and cheapest way to get me a replacement certificate so I trust. that when it turns up it is exactly what it purports to be.

Finally, the late afternoon and early evening were. to bring three wonderful surprises. The first of these was an extended and quite emotional telephone call with me niece in Yorkshire and this was to be followed by a surprise and unanticipated visit from my University of Birmingham friend. We discussed, inter alia, when the very first signs of Meg’s progressive illness had started to become apparent to us and it was probably at least six years ago and probably even longer. Then I received a telephone call from a very good University of Winchester friend who did not know of Meg’s demise. He was part of the birthday club of about five of us who all birthdays in May and his own is next Saturday. Hearing that Meg was. no longer with us, he promptly invited me to his party and offered to put me up for the night in his (large) farm house which invitation I very promptly accepted not least because several, other intimate friends will be there and so my presence will be a real surprise for them I would imagine.