Paula's Place

Paula's Place

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Just Visiting

I can't help wondering if the best use of £600 million at the moment is really providing all children at infant schools with free lunches. I am of a generation that was brought up on the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch, it now appears that there is.

Anyway, away from politics it has been a very busy few days one way and another. I have been down to Cardiff to spend some time with my Mother, and to take her to hospital for a pre op check up.

My mother is 92 years old, that in itself is something to be a little bit proud of, but she has lived a pretty special life during a pretty special period of history.   She chose the academic path when it was not easily open to women, she saw more action as a student being bombed in Sheffield during the second world war than my father did  in the Army posted to Africa; she taught the airmen, sailors and soldiers who fought for freedom in Europe, Asia and Africa throughout the Twentieth Century.   Inspired poets, musicians and computer programmers, and has painted pictures that would make Constable envious.
Yet she drives me mad!   I have had to take two days off work, I’m self-employed so any days off have a cost, two days off to take her to the hospital for a pre-op check ~ on my birthday, is certainly a cost, but it is nothing to what she has done for e over the years.   I just find myself running out of patience answering the same question again and again every 10 minutes, even more frustrating is when she forgets who I am or thinks I am someone else, she has imagined me to be my father, both my brothers and various other relations.   In amongst all this she is quite lucid, just confused.   My Mother has always made it quite clear that she always wanted to have four boys, she actually had three of us (I a the youngest)earlier today I did ask what she would have done if she had had a daughter? had she thought of any names? of course I had an ulterior motive for asking, but the answer, was that no, she had never even considered that any of us might have been girls.   I had already decided that it would be far too complicated t try to tell her about our marriage break up never my trans nature, this conversation just confirmed that.  

Next week Mum goes in to have a pass maker fitted I do hope it helps.

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