Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 77 Comments

Slice of life and a cake

I bravely ventured out to a store in one of local villages It’s not what you would call very big…

“Do you sell any floor cleaner?”

“No not been asked for that in ages. I thinks we sold the last one to Janice when she bought the Grandfather Clock from a vicarage three years ago. She wanted the room to look nice for when it arrived.”

“Ok” – it’s always a bit of an out of body experience in the shop. No idea who Janice is!

“Would you like to try our new cake it’s a Lavender Sponge”

“It looks lovely but no thanks. I’m on a gluten free diet.”

“Oh that’s nice. Those clever scientists come up with some great inventions these days. Did you know that Bill has switched to contacts.”

“No I didn’t” – no idea who Bill is!

“So can I give you a bit of our Lavender cake?”

“No thanks I’m on a Gluten Free diet and I can’t have wheat.”

“That’s nice. Mary has become a vegetarian and she lives next to the farm. I wonder how that works?

“Oh” – Who the bloody hell is Mary!!!

“Did you see our Prime Ministers face yesterday. I voted for her at the last election. She seemed like such a nice person who would get things done. Last night she looked like she was chewing a wasp. She is a mean spirited, selfish idiot. If she had any decency she would have resigned by now.”

“I certainly didn’t vote for May but I completely agree with you. She is a complete embarrassment.”

“Did you vote to leave?”

“No I voted to stay. I asked my son what he wanted and I let him decide for us. It effects his future the most.”

“I voted for Brexit. It’s not that I wanted to leave Europe I just wanted to make a protest. Didn’t think that we would win”

Deep deep sigh – bite bottom lip before I say something.

“I can wrap the slice of cake up for you, freshly made this morning. That must be the same diet as that really famous Male Tennis Player is on, he was on the tv last week, oh what’s his name”

“Novak Djokovic I got the idea from an article I read a few months back.”

“No that’s not him”

“Andy Murray”

“No”

“Roger Federer”

“No”

“Rafael Nadal“

“No, oh it will come to me.

“Do you sell anything like cleaning wipes?”

“No but we do have a special offer on. You get a free bag of bird seed when you buy the local paper”

Bizarrely I came out of the shop with some bird seed, a paper, piece of Lavender cake and a sensation which is probably similar to a frontal lobotomy.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 94 Comments

Ashes

This is another photo from Whitby. For some reason the WP app for the IPad refused to accept it yesterday. Maybe it’s my not new iPad but the app is becoming almost unusable. Anyway today the photo seems to work and it will get its moment.

My partners ashes are still in the house. We have a sort of make shift shrine in a room overlooking the garden. Now she has been joined by 3 energetic gerbils. She would like that. At some stage we will start to scatter the ashes but not yet. It just hasn’t felt like the right time (for both of us). My mums ashes have been scattered in a cemetery (with the help of a squirrel – see earlier post…)

I asked our Son about if he was ready to start the process.

“Not yet Dad. Dad do ashes go off”

Don’t think so. They urn doesn’t have a use by date on (don’t think badly of me, but I did check). But an urgent google check confirmed no safety time pressures. But it did reveal some additional factors to consider.

  • The Vatican has issued guidance that Catholic remains should be buried in cemeteries rather than scattered or kept at home. However this clearly doesn’t apply to Quakers.
  • Ashes containing bones don’t decompose so they shouldn’t be scattered around plants.
  • UK Law is fairly easy going when it comes to scattering ashes. Nothing specifically exists to prevent scattering. You only need to secure the landowners permission.
  • In Germany cremated MUST be buried in a cemetery. Switzerland are quite relaxed as long as it’s not for profit. France does open up a few scattering options.
  • In the U.K. it is legal to scatter ashes in water or the sea. The only restriction being that you need to get the permission of the water stretches owner. In the US you need to scatter ashes at least 3 nautical miles out (and inform the EPA)
  • Currently you can take ashes out of the U.K.. The Tunnel and Eurostar are the most relaxed. However Brexit may change all this.
  • In the U.K. it is ok to bury a pet in your garden if you own the property, it has domestic use and (if I’m reading the legal stuff correctly) the pets have not been declared as Hazardous Waste.

So for the for the time being I suspect my partner won’t be going too far. So I can give her the daily updates about our son. As my partner was so very organised I strongly suspect that if roles had been reversed then I would have been out of the door within months not years.

I hope this all doesn’t sound a bit too matter of fact or flippant. This post could so easily have been extremely dark. I vividly remember driving my partners ashes back from the crematorium. It’s burnt into my sole. I was fine until I got back into the car. I put the urn on the front seat and quietly said “time to go home my love”. Suddenly the Dam broke. I completed collapsed into a deluge of tears and despair. Didn’t stop for hours. My lowest ever point.

Deep down I am worried. I am not sure the brittle foundations that my new self is built on are strong enough to cope with another one of those final car journeys to scatter the ashes.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 104 Comments

Helpful Brexit

An advert on the radio caught my attention this morning

A very helpful sounding person speaking for the Government asked “If you had started thinking about Brexit yet” and helpfully suggested that “it may be worthwhile if people and businesses started to plan for it.”

Thank you very much.

Just a couple of teeny weeny points

  • It might be a tad late to remind people that as we are potentially only just over 20 days away from it,
  • Pot calling Kettle. Why don’t you shove that up your collective governmental backsides. Why don’t YOU start doing your job (rather than look after your own self interests) and actually make some decisions that allow people to know exactly what is going on.

I am putting forward our 3 gerbils as the new team to get us out of this Brexit mess.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 86 Comments

Being stupid

Son accidentally knocks something off a shelf and it’s smashed. Son is mortified but I try to reassure him that it’s fine. These things happen to everyone. But he’s not happy.

“It’s because I’m stupid. It’s the same as why I am in the bottom set, it’s because I’m stupid. It’s the reason the teachers don’t spend much time with me, it’s because I’m stupid.”

Poor kid. It is so difficult for him. His logical mindset cannot fathom out school politics. He can see kids he consistently gets higher marks than sitting in sets above him. He can see teachers focusing on other children in class – often the disruptive ones. He hears me and the health professionals complaining to school about them not recognising his potential – but nothing happens.

Today homeschooling is looking a likely option. Practicalities still to be worked through. Finances will be a challenge. Maybe looking for a switch in the summer. This allows for one final push with school. Months to sort out the details – plenty of time.

Piece of cake. Talking of a piece of cake.

Our Prime Minister is still telling us that we can do Brexit in a few weeks. Really.

She assures us that they have the best people handling the process. Really.

My Dad wouldn’t have trusted them with a stick of rhubarb never mind the keys to the country.

But our Government does have it uses. They give us so many examples of real stupidity. I told our son about how our Government had decided that we needed extra emergency ferry capacity. The Government decided to give the contract to a company which has never run any sort of transport service and unbelievably doesn’t have any ships….

When our son heard that he smiled and said “Now that is properly stupid. Maybe I’m not as bad as I think I am.”

Son you are brilliantly gifted. Unfortunately the Government is not…..

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 90 Comments

Countries gone mad

“Dad if we won the lottery could we buy a deserted island and live there?

It’s kinda sad that an 11 year old thinks that way. But I fully understand why and YES I would jump at the chance. I remember a time when I loved my country. Those days have sadly gone. Like many folk from Yorkshire we would happily declare independence. York becoming a capital city sounds cool. The national dish could be the Yorkshire Pudding. Our national sports would be cricket and being grumpy. The national animal would be the Ferret. Instead of having a nuclear deterrent we could threaten people with our rhubarb sticks.

You might think this is daft but trust me this is off the scale sensibility compared to the stupidity of modern Britain. Nothing sums up the state of the union better than just one single news story. Given all the potentially catastrophic events circulating around us (and there are many) – the attention of the media and a good proportion of the population has been on …… the horror of a bakery introducing a vegan sausage roll across its 900 stores. The likes of Piers Morgan (one of the not funny loonies and self pronounced TV Star) went into meltdown saying things like “Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage you PC ravaged clowns”. The news story is everywhere, you just can’t get away from it. I use the term news story very loosely.

I waited with anticipation for our son to return. He would cheer me up, bring much needed sensibility to my world. Unfortunately not this time.

“Dad the school want me to either write left handed or type left handed until my right hand gets better, that includes trying to do exams with my weak hand. I told them that I struggle to coordinate my left hand and that’s the reason I can’t tie knots. Told them that the Doctor was trying to help me with it but the teacher said I just had to do it”

“Dad did you complain about the behaviour in our bottom class”

Yes….

“Well they did something”

Please let it be something positive

“They moved a really well behaved girl up a set because she was struggling with the behaviour in our class and they moved a really naughty boy in to replace her. It was a lot worse today”

Only thing left is to go and buy a lottery ticket. That remote island is calling. Anybody fancy joining us.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 10 Comments

Isolation trip

School summer holidays are in full swing and we have mainly been home based. Some splendid isolation. Summer holidays reinforces how much of our social connections are based around school. Without school my son has hardly seen any of his friends or spent any time with other children. Without the daily school drop off and pick up, my contact with the outside world has dried up completely.

So after three weeks of home based isolation we decided to make a break out. Just a small one to start with. We had a day trip to beautiful Northumberland.

DUNSTANBURGH CASTLE

LINDISFARNE

It was my son who pointed out that after our splendid isolation we had decided to go a place which is cut off twice daily by the tides. Let’s visit a splendidly isolated place. At least we got to see some people in the real world, especially in the queue waiting to cross the still flooded causeway.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 14 Comments

Uplifting rain

Yesterday was a strange day. Started very warm, dry and still. Finished very wet, cold and stormy.

It was also one of those moods swing days. It started really well with my son in great form. Then one Family movie later it had suddenly swung to tears and dark hearts. Movies which clearly advertise bereavement in the description can be planned for or better still avoided. It’s the ones which suddenly drop these on you without warning which cause the trouble. From a happy family on a trip of a lifetime to suddenly a young family trying to cope with the sudden death of the mum. I can’t remember seeing that bit in the synopsis. It really hit me, lord knows what it did to my young boy. It makes you feel like a completely incompetent parent … why didn’t we opt for the Scooby Doo movie.

But yesterday we had an unlikely saviour, the rain. After two months of completely dry weather the heavens opened. Stood outside in the rain, being almost blown off our feet in the wind. It just felt great. Seeing my son getting drenched to the skin and loving it. Today I just love the uplifting rain.