Powertry

 I did something unusual (for me) (of late) last night.

Well, being out at night was the first bit of unusual - we will check PASSED against the "being able to drive at night" checkbox for our post cataract operation checkbox.

And even though it WAS our anniversary - the traditional gift for sixteen years (I know, that is a BIG number) is apparently NOTHING because its no longer special - V did give me the gift of going out without him last night.

Last night I went to our beautiful little local(ish) bookshop that has some lovely community events.  One is the Book Club that I am part of and meets the last Sunday of the month - and another is the Budding Poets Society.

This image was advertising last night's poetry, not of last night's poetry.  A picture of the organiser and a few enthusiasts in the bookshop.

I used to HAUNT poetry nights.  Back in the day - the day was very, VERY long ago (last century) - I could be found at a poetry afternoon or night or two per week.  In Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane I spent many an hour listening to poets speak their (and occasionally other) words and spoke a few myself. 

Younger me even went to FESTIVALS to listen and speak.

But children - and work and life - came along and the muse took a nap.  I drive a mean spreadsheet and my macros could be called poetry, but my spare time is sparse and bereft of inspirational sparks.  And even were there sparks, the light and energy to capture them is so fleeting that I stopped seeking them out.

So last night, I ventured out.  'Salina is a regular at this event.  She does not write poetry (yet) (she does wield a mean journal though) but has read one of mine there before (The second one in this post - I had forgotten I even went to the workshop!)

The little space was fairly full - probably up to about 20 people - and some beautiful new words being trotted out.

I only have my old work to lean on.  'Salina did "My Addiction" - a poem that used to be one of my standards and a bit of a party piece (oh, my wild days of youth when I knew how to party!!)   

'Salina didn't grow up with her mother dragging her to poetry dives, and so didn't grow up with me reciting this and other things around her, so it was a clean palate that the poem landed on, and she did it justice - and hearing a poem that I know so intimately read with another's interpretation was refreshing.

Everyone got to read up to 2-3 poems, and there was a list for people to put their names down - pre- and post- intermission.  Intermission was nibblies in the room we normally use for the Book Club.

On the list was was a grizzled older poet who had a full life a tales; a (very-nearly) former English teacher; a woman retrospective about life turns; someone who asked for divine guidance in a library to guide her to a book of poems (she found an absolute beauty by a refugee); a man whose health issues have forced symbiosis with poetry; a first-time reader with a lovely snapshot of a relationship end; a lady reading some classic Australian poetry; a woman who interwove some classics with her own.

I read "Drought Breaking" and "The Spinster Song" before intermission, and "Powertry", "Ode to the Dishwasher" and "Fanta Boys" after.

It was fun.

Who knows.  I might even write again.

Thursday in the Key of B Major

 I really think that this wind should blow off to next week.

It's been days since the wind began. It just tuned up Sunday, foxing a pleasant breeze and promises of a paradisical day.

Monday it added raspberries, a soft jazz riff and a hint of cowbell.

Tuesday it turned up the wail and added wah-wah to the mix.

But I didn't mind. I was ensconced in air-conditioned rooms at a workshop for work.

Wednesday the upper layer of the planetary husk started lifting, and a Beethovenic manoeuvre by the local big smoke's Puffing Billy (we are imagining the puff in this electronic era) (and the Billy is really a misnomer too - it is called creative licence) by the local big smoke's Puffing Billy's rail signal network deciding "nah, stuff it, Red it is. We THINK that there might be a train." Right at the crescendo of the peak hour symphony.

The last movement. Today. A westerly came in with Dad to see what all of the fuss was about. It whipped up and down the boulevards of the local big smoke, snaking shortcuts through the coffee shop we dined at. The reverberations rumbled as we manoeuvred bureaucratic bundles and toe curling action.

 Then Dad headed back, his guidance was the ever blackening sky an. 

Lightening and thunder and waves of squalls werr our dinner music and then the rain steadied for a few beats...

Whoops in the Nor-Westerly, swinging the woodwind section in and the house now thrums with piccolo.

Finale.

The Colonisation of Jeanie

 I have always grown up with stories.

There's the ones that Mum and Dad and grandparents and neighbours and classmates and siblings would tell.

And there's the ones that school and radio and books and the telly would give.

Of late I have invested time and money - and a small amount of saliva - into teasing the truth from family  narrative and weaving it with the weft of history.

However history has a way of moving around when you put it under the microscope.

When first I got my results it advised a good dose of Scotland with the rest a brew of basic white girl - the family lore was "English, Scottish, Irish, French, German and whoever else decided to invade ".

But my grandmother always said that her family came from "outside Glasgow".

It was discovered many years later that her family name was on an American college building during a tour my aunt made. She discovered the contribution for the building came from a wealthy local family who had several generations before come from Londonderry. Technically yes, outside Glasgow.

And this many years later, I learned that many Scottish families traversed the sea for generations, following the harvest and being bodies for hire between the geographic boundaries of Scotland and Ireland.

And I learned that my grandmother's mother - a mythical creature even for my grandmother - had a mother born to a Lanarkshire stonemason come publican in Newcastle and an Aberdeenshire lass who had eight children and at least five lived to adulthood.

And my grandmother's grandfather was six years old when he and five siblings and parents travelled from Old Monkland, Lanarkshire   to the brand new world of South Australia, which was apparently in greater need of coal miners than their homeland (and cheaper to send than try to keep alive during famines caused by weather, crop failure and being at the behest of an uncaring class structure - far more common than sanitised history books had me assume).

(LATE EDIT - I had put "possibly on the same ship as two uncles and their TEN children but no wives or mothers" but worked out it was a census when my great-great-grandmother was 18 - her father and uncle had these 10 including her aged down to 4 with no mother and she was the oldest.)

And then I discovered that another forbear may have come indirectly via Ireland during the plantations experiences of the 18th and 19th centuries and have done a deep dive into podcasts about that on a few long drives of late.

Hooboy. 

No convicts. No royalty. Just a lot of callouses in this tree.

And then - Ancestry have had a good hard look at the data collected vs the data assessed and the imaginary lines that used to often move as fealties and armies waxed and waned and have "upgraded" and my brew of basic white girl is now more English than Scot. 

(And Danish, Dutch and Icelandic touches rather than the previous tones of Norway and Wales)

Still callouses. Still white. 

Bloody colonisation happening even to my DNA.

Still. Outside Glasgow!

The land of the long weekend

 We do love a long weekend, and thanks to Bonnie King Charlie we got one.

Mind you, I still give kudos to his Mum. I always do that with birthday greetings since motherhood arrived upon me - it's the anniversary of them being your parent - the birthday person had very limited control over the matter, whereas the giver of birth had time ahead to anticipate the occasion.

We had a lovely one to, with a few unspoken milestones reached, a successful social outing and a wonderful genealogical breakthrough or two.

I awoke this morning and contemplated my paternal great-great-grandmother, who has long been a bit of a brick wall. She was a Jane - I have a few - and her surname is relatively common. I had her father's name - a John - and very little detail regarding the mother apart from her first name.

I did not even know if she were a colonial, a migrant or a convict. Just that she married my great-great-grandfather and they had 3 sons - 1 who died in childhood and the other 2 who were migrating north as she entered old age.

I googled the parent names and the area that she married and a very peculiar and Australian name appeared. VERY peculiar and Australian.

Apparently not that far from where my great-great-grandparents lived. And they had a Facebook page for history.

So I asked the question. "I was wondering" I said, and "would you know".

Not only was a local historical receptacle of information able to answer my query, she was a direct descendant of the sister.

The same 13 year old sister my great-great-grandmother had brought out with her when she was an old maid of 26 from a pretty dire economic situation in Northern Ireland.

And apparently the same sister who had married at not too great a distance from where my Jane had found wedded bliss with her equally geriatric 27yo Cambridgeshire fellow that had swept her off her feet (I mean, isn't that what 19th century marriage was all about?)

And another poster piped up that at least 2 other sisters had migrated there either with Irish husband in tow or finding one pronto on landing.

In the space of less than one hour I had not just found a whole family for her, I had found a story and a tribe of sisters around.

And I love that she was a laundress. I wonder if she was a pegger?

She had a photo of their great-great-grandmother and, although a different age than my photo of ours, there was absolutely no doubt about their genetic link.

Blink Twice if you are okay

 So yes, Debby, the second operation was on Wednesday.

I am on the other side safely.

 

I would be holding a newspaper, but they aren't a thing any more around here.

Wednesday was, by all accounts, a beautiful day - I did wake with a slight niggle of a headache, but I thought little of it.  I had eaten my last food well before the midnight deadline, and was on water until 9am as it looked like I was a fairly late in the list.

Turns out, however, that the slight niggle of a headache was in fact the migraine fairy's gift, and by the time I thought "hmm, I should hit it with the good medicine" (as I now know from previous experience I am allowed to) it had amped up to the second cycle of migraine hell, whereby all within is evacuated.

By the time I got into the hospital, we were at the far end of this cycle, which means that the nurses could tell pretty soon that I was to be put in a dark corner to endure my misery without too much interruption.

Unfortunately, hospitals work on systems - and not all hospitals are equal.

The first eye operation occurred in a very old hospital in town - I have now had 3 operations in that one, and, while "very old" is the first expression that comes to mind, very organised and efficient can also be applied.

This operation is the second that I have had in the newer hospital - the other being the colonoscopy in 2020 linked above - and I don't know if my experience tainted by both being associated with migraines, but this go around was neither organised nor efficient - at least, not from the dark corner in which I lay moaning.

In their haste to get me through to this side of the waiting area, they failed to stash my personal belonging - that oversight required far more interaction than I could actually consciously navigate.

The other hospital has a nurse hand-off protocol to the pre-theatre room which has an extremely well-organised nurse's station.  This one had a row of chairs, a few beds and the nurse balancing files and pre-op requirements on a small desk.

They lost my file.  They failed to give me a shower cap (not so technical term for the keeping of hair out of ones eyes - or indeed theatre - when one's eye is to be operated on).  The man in the next bed droned on and on about his numerous surgeries at the hospital, casually throwing racist terminology about and using his deafness and age as an excuse for ignorance. 

The nurse was not the best at administering eye-drops - I mean, I may not have been the best at receiving eye-drops also, given the sheer effort to open my eyes at that point, but she was very short with my shortcomings in that regard and did nothing to up her own game.

Then they had a poor student nurse come around and check vitals and details - I advised the one vital I required - stat (I love medical terminology) - was an emesis bag (see, another medical term!) and the poor dear didn't have the time (or training) to pull the curtains closed before I used it.

The anaesthetic nurse then came down to see what was the go, and after a discussion with the Dr advised I could stay and have it or come another day - given the 100% rate of migraines for operations in this hospital, I figured have it I would - and she put some drugs in the dripline to help me through. 

There was a short comedy routine about finding something to put the drip bag onto - I thought that surely there must be something attached to the whizz bang hospital bed to use given ironing boards in the 1970s had already dealt with similar requirements - holding something high attached to the hot thing moving around on the horizontal surface - but finding such a thing was outside their scope.  When the orderly finally arrived to wheel me down to the corridor outside the next waiting area before theatre he proved my theory right.

I remember absolutely NOTHING about the operation.  

The usual sandwiches (one meat & pickles, one ham, tomato & cheese) and the cup of coffee for post recovery that they gave me (instant, white) were A-MA-ZING (after I removed the plastic cheese)!  I think there is extra chew in the crusts of hospital sandwiches or something.

I didn't really come out of the migraine stupor until about 8pm that night.

The general routine for my ophthalmologist is to do checkups the next day, and they have found a little bit of a pressure issue in the second eye, which, while it is not entirely unusual can be a concern when you have an added layer of WTF with your eyes, so that means closer monitoring - and the joy of some sulphur tablets for two days.

The side effects of sulphur tablets (besides, hopefully, fixing the pressure in the eye) is it is a diuretic (so more weeing), may make me feel nauseous, my food taste awful and possible headaches.

The good news is I can see distances without glasses!!  I still need something for reading, but was able to, for the first time in my life, go into the chemist and buy some cheapies from their stand.  They all looked ugly, so I bought the ugliest (and cheapest) pair that I could.