45 Homecoming

We're no sooner home from Wales than Daughter arrives on the doorstep.  I'd like to think her presence is due to a burning desire to see her doting parents, but know full well that it's more to do with 'a good ground swell with light offshores.'  Within ten minutes a wetsuit is hanging, dripping, in a macabre fashion over the bath and the new surf board is lying gracefully outside the back door, waiting to trip up the unwary.  What with that and the instant recoil hose (which doesn't) snaked across the patio to the greenhouse, the garden is a positive health hazard.  Husband disappears up to the allotment, promising me a cauliflower for supper and returns dismayed, having found that the cauliflowers have turned into cabbages.  He mutters darkly about the manufacturer's incompetence in mixing up the seeds.  I say nothing and dutifully chop up the cabbage.

I've now got to get my act together to plan my Macmillan coffee morning, part of their World's Largest Coffee morning camapaign.  Strictly speaking it should have been ten days ago, but that was my last day of radiotherapy and the day we went to Wales, so mine will be an exclusive breakaway event intstead.  It was also of course meant to be have been held with Experienced Chemo Friend.  I rope in one of her closest friends to give me the names and addresses of everyone she would have invited and we'll all just have to squeeze into our rabbit warren cottage somehow and hope everyone breathes in.  I approach a local artist friend who gives me some prints, which Experienced Chemo Friend's husband says he'll auction and I decide to hold a raffle, though what of, I'm not quite sure.  My next door neighbour, whose passion for baking has become almost a full time hobby, offers to run a stall and I jump at it.  Her Christmas tree gingerbread biscuits are exquisite, so I know her goodies will go down a treat. 

Literary Friend (Dovegreyreader) and I go to have lunch with Wig Advisor Friend.  Husband is sent packing to another room for his lunch and I feel a bit sorry for him till I realise he'd have been bored rigid as we spend the first hour talking shop.  (We're all three of us health visitors)  We moan about the current reorganisation of the NHS, approximately the 463rd in my estimation.  Primary Care Trusts have gone and the aministrative boundaries have been redrawn.  This has huge implications for community staff in large rural areas and poor Dovegreyreader is aghast at the amount of travelling she'll now have to do.  Wig Advisor and I nod and sympathise, both mightily relieved we've retired.

The next hour we spend poring over an advance copy of her father's book which is being published this week. At the outbreak of the second world war he joined the Royal Marines and went to sea at the tender age of FOURTEEN as a bugle boy, whose job it was to sound the watches.  For years she'd been nagging him to write down his memories and at last she wore him down.  Thank goodness she did.  His stories are amazing.  Having such a unique perspective of the war has earned him a forward by the Duke of Edinburgh and we all predict it'll be a Christmas bestseller.  As I get home it suddenly occurs to me that it would be wonderful to have him at the coffee morning selling and signing his book.  When I ask Dovegreyreader she says he'd be delighted and will also put a copy in the raffle.  That gives me an idea.  Instead of the usual unwanted bottle of plonk and sad tub of bubble bath perhaps I could aspire to a literary raffle.  Much more upmarket.  What was that lovely line of Alan Bennet's - 'How well I remember Virginia Woolf's Sunday morning musical soirees!'  Will the town soon be talking of my coffee morning literary soiree?

Comments

[Juliet]

Hi - I found your blog via Cornflower last night and spent ages reading it from the beginning. My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer in May. Her treatment is a little behind yours, as she had a short break in chemo while she got married last month. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences - you write so well and I'm sure that it will help many who find themselves in a similar position. I am merely a helpless bystander, but it has certainly helped me. I shall be back to catch up with more of your posts and keep up to date with your news. With warmest wishes from the Muddy Island, Juliet.

[Karen Howlett]

As an extension to BAFAB week, could I donate a book to your raffle (time and Royal Mail permitting)?
A link to my email is on Cornflower.