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Shepherd's Dene and other things.
Jun. 13th, 2008 09:21 pmI had a lovely Poetry Awayday on Monday. It was a glorious warm day and Shepherd's Dene is a beautiful old house, full of panelling, stained glass, and lovely polished wood floors. It's very simple and partly in that Arts & Crafts decorative style with touches of Rennie Mackintosh. There are lovely views from the garden and the terrace and large grounds. It's all a little bit neglected because it belongs to the diocese and I daresay they don't have funds to make it picture perfect, but it's a lovely place to sit and gaze into space and dream. I might even go to one of their monthly quiet days sometime.
I used to love spending the day quietly at Nashdom or the Cenacle, even if I wasn't actually on a retreat, and I think Shepherd's Dene might turn out to be that sort of place, too. I shall have to see.
The food and drinks, biscuits and cake at tea-time were all home-made and simply delicious.
I didn't write a great deal, but we all had a great time together with lots of fun and laughter and I have quite a bit of material to use later.
I arrived home 8 hours after I left and felt rather exhausted. I had a dreadful night with knee pain but had a good long rest on Tuesday so as to be recovered in time for cardiac rehab on Wednesday.
Cardiac rehab was fine and I managed everything quite well, but felt extremely tired in the afternoon. I had a dreadful night on Wednesday with a lot more knee pain and didn't manage to get any sleep until about 5.00 am, so didn't go to my writing class on Thursday. I spent all day asleep and all last night asleep and I still feel exhausted now.
Something horrid has happened to my digestion, too. I don't feel at all hungry, in fact I feel slightly queasy and anything I eat, no matter how simple gives me indigestion. I haven't felt able to cook anything for anyone for days and am relying on Charles to provide me with little scraps of very plain food. He has taken it as an implied criticism of his cooking and isn't very happy.
The cardiac nurse at rehab has recommended that I get a prescription from the quack for quinine to prevent the awful cramp I sometimes get at night which often wakes me up. I never had cramp in my groin before and it's difficult to know how to tackle it - I don't know what to stretch or which way to stretch it! So I shall try the quinine and see if it has any effect.
Sadly the new medication is either not as effective as the one which gave me such awful side effects, or it's cumulative and hasn't fully taken effect yet. I do hope it's the latter.
I still have the horrid cough, although it's nowhere near as bad as it was and doesn't prevent me sleeping, thank God.
It's been a horrid overcast cold day today, so much so that I turned the heating back on for a while, but it has cheered up and warmed up a little now so I've turned the heating off again. It seems to be building up for a windy night. I can hear a drinks can rolling up and down the street.
We had a letter from the City council informing us that they are going to start restoring the pavements in our street on Tuesday, which is fine, and well overdue, but they want to do all of it at the same time so none of us will be able to park outside our houses for four weeks. That will be the least of it - it seemed to take them three months to do the other half of the Triangle, which was a shorter street than ours. That's all very well, but I can't walk too far to get to my car and I really don't fancy parking it outside the back gate for four weeks. Someone is bound to damage it. I feel quite worried about it. I wish we had a garage we could use. Lots of people in our street have garages they don't use, so presumably they can just clear them out and use them, but our yard is just too small. We could fit a garage in, but there would then be no room for anything else.
Oh bother! If it's not one thing, it's another! At least we don't have anything much we have to do this weekend, so if it's nice we can get on with the yard and/or the front garden.
Good grief! It's suddenly started to pour with rain!
I used to love spending the day quietly at Nashdom or the Cenacle, even if I wasn't actually on a retreat, and I think Shepherd's Dene might turn out to be that sort of place, too. I shall have to see.
The food and drinks, biscuits and cake at tea-time were all home-made and simply delicious.
I didn't write a great deal, but we all had a great time together with lots of fun and laughter and I have quite a bit of material to use later.
I arrived home 8 hours after I left and felt rather exhausted. I had a dreadful night with knee pain but had a good long rest on Tuesday so as to be recovered in time for cardiac rehab on Wednesday.
Cardiac rehab was fine and I managed everything quite well, but felt extremely tired in the afternoon. I had a dreadful night on Wednesday with a lot more knee pain and didn't manage to get any sleep until about 5.00 am, so didn't go to my writing class on Thursday. I spent all day asleep and all last night asleep and I still feel exhausted now.
Something horrid has happened to my digestion, too. I don't feel at all hungry, in fact I feel slightly queasy and anything I eat, no matter how simple gives me indigestion. I haven't felt able to cook anything for anyone for days and am relying on Charles to provide me with little scraps of very plain food. He has taken it as an implied criticism of his cooking and isn't very happy.
The cardiac nurse at rehab has recommended that I get a prescription from the quack for quinine to prevent the awful cramp I sometimes get at night which often wakes me up. I never had cramp in my groin before and it's difficult to know how to tackle it - I don't know what to stretch or which way to stretch it! So I shall try the quinine and see if it has any effect.
Sadly the new medication is either not as effective as the one which gave me such awful side effects, or it's cumulative and hasn't fully taken effect yet. I do hope it's the latter.
I still have the horrid cough, although it's nowhere near as bad as it was and doesn't prevent me sleeping, thank God.
It's been a horrid overcast cold day today, so much so that I turned the heating back on for a while, but it has cheered up and warmed up a little now so I've turned the heating off again. It seems to be building up for a windy night. I can hear a drinks can rolling up and down the street.
We had a letter from the City council informing us that they are going to start restoring the pavements in our street on Tuesday, which is fine, and well overdue, but they want to do all of it at the same time so none of us will be able to park outside our houses for four weeks. That will be the least of it - it seemed to take them three months to do the other half of the Triangle, which was a shorter street than ours. That's all very well, but I can't walk too far to get to my car and I really don't fancy parking it outside the back gate for four weeks. Someone is bound to damage it. I feel quite worried about it. I wish we had a garage we could use. Lots of people in our street have garages they don't use, so presumably they can just clear them out and use them, but our yard is just too small. We could fit a garage in, but there would then be no room for anything else.
Oh bother! If it's not one thing, it's another! At least we don't have anything much we have to do this weekend, so if it's nice we can get on with the yard and/or the front garden.
Good grief! It's suddenly started to pour with rain!
