annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hot on a hill Sometimes it feels like the end of days. I opted out of the news for a while because it wasn't doing my mental health any good so I don't really know how it's got to where it is now, any of it. But fucking hell - how are these people in charge? It hasn't rained forever and it's getting to the point of serious consequences for food production, as the reservoirs are running dry. I can't manage that information - I don't know what to do with it - none of us do, do we? So we stroll on and hope someone else is on the case, sorting it out. I went outside just now to see if I'd see any meteors as it's the Perseids tonight. I remember in 2017, when we were camping near Glastonbury (with out festival gang as we hadn't been to the festival due to Sammie being in the hospice, though she did come out) and sat round the fire in the evening leaning back in our chairs watching the skies, seeing meteors like in the cartoons, flashing across the night sky. Too much light pollution here. There are street lights that don't go off till the sun rises, one right outside my bedroom window and a full moon. Nada. I could go out again now, but I mustn't, I must go to bed, got an art course in the morning. But first, last night I went up onto the high point of the downs to watch the sun set with C, a woman I only know from the zoom Tuesday art group. So she's attached to the mental health support thing, vaguely, like the rest of us. They've closed it all down apart from the Tuesday art group, but that's now only on zoom, run by a volunteer from her own home, so not actually anything to do with the place. She's got cancer, C, has had it since we started on the zoom, now spread to her bones. I feel remarkably detached from this, not engaging with it in my head, able to listen to her talking about it without saying much. Maybe because she's 74 (not that old, I want to live longer than that), not young, she's had a life. And she's cheerful, in the moment, out in the wind on a warm night. We took camping chairs and the dog and set up facing the sun as it headed down, getting more and more orange. As well as having cancer itself, it turns out that C lost her youngest daughter at the age of 42. I hadn't known that and she hadn't known that I had a daughter who'd died, at the age of 41. So we just sat and talked and talked and talked and it was good. We laughed more than you'd imagine two bereaved mothers would, and went to the pub when it got dark as we hadn't finished. Other things have been good and not so good. The raspberry ripple ice cream was delicious and I've eaten it all already. And made some more, which will probably be frozen by now. I'm kind of done. There's something breaks my heart about the Facebook memories. I know, I could turn them off, but I don't mind having my heart broken. In August 2019 we didn't know where we were heading - well, we did but we didn't know it was coming round so soon. There we are, in pictures, living our lives, smiling. As we get closer to her birthday there'll be memories from 2018, her fortieth, preparations and so on. Then there are the memories from 2020, the first anniversary, a photo of Sam every day to drum up sponsors for the walk I was planning, before I broke my ankle. 12:43 a.m. - 13.08.22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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