U.K. Duty Visit - Day 20

I made the silly mistake this morning of remarking that despite the gloom it hadn’t actually rained for a whole three hours, so needless to say it rained pretty hard for the rest of the day. This area is truly saturated, standing water in fields & along roadsides.

Pam buckled down this morning to completing the sort out of Mum-Mum’s former bedroom, chests, vanities & wardrobe, with Nick & I helping when appropriate, which wasn’t often. She found it emotional and hard going, but did complete the exercise. She and Nick then made a run to the Charity Shop with all the usable stuff we knew Mum-Mum would never need again. Later she went off to lunch with Jane, a friend of very long standing & also Katy’s godmother. Nick & I left around the same time and dropped assorted stuff off at various offices, all to do with the family’s business. After that we went up to our usual parking place & took a walk in the gloom. The tide was way out, exposing the underlying chalk at the bottom of the beaches so we made a short side trip down to take a look “up close & personal”. In the end we almost made it back to the car before the rain but didn’t get too wet – in fact we got wetter walking from the nearest available parking spot to The Ship pub where we enjoyed a very nice lunch.

Since we all got back at the same time we went straight off to visit Mum-Mum, letting her choose the clothes Pam thought she might want now or in the summer, which was most of what we took. Pam again did some drawer & wardrobe tidying for her. She seemed well, was in no pain, but not exactly full of joie de vivre. Since Pam & Nick had a late afternoon appointment to view a potential investment opportunity once the nursing home sells, we left her watching her favorite TV program with her earphones on (to avoid blasting out her neighbors).

Recently we offered to take to her room a set of pictures (her father, brother, her family when she was young & a woodcut of Phil done by Lucy) that had always had pride of place in her lounge. She declined. Today she had us rearrange the pictures already in her room moving some into the more easily seen positions, and others to the background or windowsill. Later Pam reflected on her choice and we realized that she no longer wanted to easily see dead people (her mother, Freddy Priddis, Fliss, Phil, Roy, etc) and only wanted recent pictures of family members still around, with my formal portrait picture in pride of place, which we thought rather interesting.

In the evening P & N went out to have dinner with the Nursing Home co-owner/manager & his wife, and shortly after John had eaten his own supper Robbie Hartwell rang from the top floor flat & invited me up for a chat. We were both part of the Church Youth Group & social set in the early sixties, had last seen each other probably in 1964 and have spent 40 & 45 years respectively in the USA, both of us have lost our life partners within the last 4 years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.