Sandra

Two years, three months

posts interesting only to me, Sandra
Published on Leave a comment on Two years, three months

For some reason it’s doing the shopping that gets me a lot, walking through the supermarket getting stuff for the weekend, nobody to take into consideration but the cats and myself. It’s been two years and three months since I last had to shop for anybody but me, and actually the two years before that saw me not needing to more often than not too. Sometimes that gets to me and I feel myself getting maudlin over by the sausage rolls.

Sandra’s toothbrushes are still in the cup on top of the sink in our bathroom. “Our” bathroom; I still find myself talking that way, or mentioning Sandra and then having to decide about to explain or keep sthum about the whole dead wife thing to coworkers when you’re just talking about Devon or whatever.

Keepsakes and reminders of her are everywhere of course, but you slowly see the character of our house change now she’s no longer here to put her stamp on it. It’s half in stasis, half turning into a slightly bigger version of my old student flat. I keep oscillating between wanting to keep everything as it was and wanting to change everything, in the end doing neither but letting entropy do its work for me.

To be honest, I’ve been running in stationary myself as well. The days go by and things change, but I’m just going along with the flow, no clear goals in mind. Living with somebody for so long, having been so focused on getting Sand better for the last five years, then having all that effort be for nothing, these past two years just have left me goalless. Living alone again after so long isn’t getting any easier. Not even after two years.

Can’t have those nurses smoking; bad PR you see

Numpties, Reefer Madness, Sandra, UK politics
Published on Leave a comment on Can’t have those nurses smoking; bad PR you see

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (not so NICE) wants hsopitals to ban smoking completely:

“We need to end the terrible spectacle of people on drips in hospital gowns smoking outside hospital entrances,” said Professor Mike Kelly, director of Nice’s centre for public health, which drew up the new guidance. It is a “contradiction” for the NHS, which spends £2.7bn a year treating smoking-related ilnesses, to let patients smoke and not do everything it can to wean them off their habit, he added.

It’s the smug classicism that puts the particularly rancid icing on this shit cake. There’s a place and time to get people to stop smoking and it’s not when they’re stressed out, tired and hurting in hospital. Removing smoking shelters from your hospital won’t stop people smoking, it just means that they smoke outside in the wind and rain. Sometimes there are worse problems than having people smoke, for example being a smug condscending prick who wants to take away what little pleasure people can get in hospital.

Reading this made me so angry because I’ve been there with Sandra when the VU hospital decided — over Christmas — to shut down their indoor smoking rooms because some cow took offence to them, so she had to trundle outside into the cold, in her wheelchair (or bed even) to get about the only bit of comfort she had during the two years she had to spent in hospital.

Mind you, it would get worse for the staff:

Under the proposals hospitals’ entire grounds would become non-smoking areas, smoking shelters would be banned and staff contracts would forbid them from “smoking during work hours or when recognisable as an employee, for example when in uniform or wearing identification or handling hospital business”.

This really is the enforcement of a priggish morality under the guise of health concerns, because why else would you be bothered by people smoking in uniform? NHS staff isn’t paid nearly enough to be this kind of role model.

Two years

posts interesting only to me, Sandra
Published on Leave a comment on Two years

sandra watering the garden

Today it’s two years ago that Sandra died. Not a day has gone by that she hasn’t been in my thoughts. So much of who I am has been shaped by living with her, so much of my daily routine has its origins in hers. A part of her will always be with me.

The picture above was taking at my brother’s birthday in 2008. He has a gorgeous, large garden and Sandra was always a gardening enthusiast, so no wonder she took it on herself to water the plants. That year was the last year she was in anything resembling good health; she would get ill at the end of the year and start dialysis the next. This is how I like to remember her.

Northern Soul – Keep the Faith

Music, Sandra, video
Published on Leave a comment on Northern Soul – Keep the Faith

The BBC’s economic expert Paul Mason describes the importance of Northern Soul:

I might be the only person who’s experienced both Wigan and, say the Taksim Square occupation in Istanbul this year, so this is hard to verify: but I think these very different atmospheres shared something in common. There was something overtly rebellious and subconsciously political about Wigan. Like with a riot, or an occupation, you could tell immediately, through eye contact, who was feeling the buzz.

What we were doing, back then, was rewriting the rules of being white and working class. We knew exactly what it meant to dance to black music in the era of the National Front and the racist standup comedian. Ours was a rebellion against pub culture, shit music and leery sexist nightclubs. Our weapon was obscure vinyl, made by black kids nobody had ever heard of.

The article accompanies a documentary on Northern Soul Mason did for the BBC’s Culture Show:



Paul Mason used to be a regular at the Wigan Casino in the seventies; the reason he’s gotten back into Northern Soul is a new Elaine Constantine feature film about the scene, which features lots of lovingly shot dance scenes:



As I said in the previous post, Sandra used to go to the Wigan Casino and other Northern Soul discos too in the seventies and remained in love with the music for the rest of her life. What with the second “anniversary” of her death being, well, today, this music is much on my mind. It’s maudlin and upbeat at the same time.