Week note 6
Not an easy week. Cramming a week’s worth of work in 3 days. Dilys and her back and the looming neuro appointment. The US. My phenomenally noisy brain.
Work
Same old same old really. Nothing of major note.
A lot rattling round my head about the technology element of the Public Health Wales discovery. How to balance delivering what is needed with the reality of digital maturity across the sector. Which then just ends with me spiralling about the state of it all.
Not work
But this week wasn’t really about work.
Dilys
Dilys had her neuro appointment at Bristol Vet Specialists on Thursday morning, so of course everything else was just a distraction and an obstacle to getting to that.
She’s ok. Well, she’s as okay as she can be.
She’s almost certainly slipped a disc again BUT only very mildly and should recover well with rest, a slow return to activity and physio and hydro again.
We agreed there was no benefit to be had this time by doing an MRI, though the offer was there if we had wanted it. The idea of dropping a zero off the end of the bill was also some much needed relief.
We’ve already got her booked in with her physio therapist and will return to hydro in March. She has an amazing support team who care so much about her - we’ve had calls and messages from both in the week for updates and sending their best wishes.
She’s back out in her wheels [her Chariot of Wire] for the time being.
A relief but also it wiped me out for the day on Thursday.
Renovations
Started the week frustrated with the absolute lack of progress since the new year, but by Tuesday we were amazed at how much we could tick off the list.
Details are starting to drop in place now.
We’ve been able to see the view from the top of the stairs in the living room, through the picture window out to the woods. And walk down the (not yet finished) stairs.
Electricians in this week to do second fix and wire in the radiators. Heat!
We’re having a palaver with carpeting and have gone off piste from the original plan but we should get the carpeting laid at the end of Feb and in before 1 March.
We’re planning a handover from the builder the week of the 17th February. Then a three week pause before work starts on the house in mid-March. Current guesstimate is that it will be done by June [I’m not sure I believe that] - work will start upstairs to give us the bathroom of dreams, an actual closet and some minor changes to our bedroom (be gone horrible dark stained wood and pink ceilings).
The US
I’ve spent too much time reading too much stuff (how can you not?) about what is happening in the country of my birth.
It’s really getting to me. Each act of intentional cruelty cuts as deep as the last. And that cruelty just does not stop. And it’s not going to stop.
Part of me knows the US has always had this streak (wide and deep). I mean, the nation was founded on slavery, servitude and exploitation. But seeing it in full spotlight, right out there, so brazen and awful is quite something.
There’s nothing I can do. And I don’t live there anymore. Nor will I ever again.
But it all weighs heavy. And I see it happening here.
And all I want to to do is withdraw even further into my little piece of Wales. Hide in the trees and the garden and the stream. Hide from it all. But it’s here, and next year it may very well be our own reality.
A bright spot
I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to plant in the middle of a bed in the garden I had cleared. I’ve been toying with a magnolia stellata for a while. And I think this bed will be perfect.
I’ve been researching varieties, learning more about the stellata variety. Turns out some are highly scented. Turns out there’s an amazing specialist nursery down in Taunton. Turns out they are one of only 2 in the UK that grows and sells this variety.
Their website is...well...not much more than a list.
So I’ve been in email communication with the owner all week. It’s been a slow, lovely, thoughtful communication. An email a day. A few questions, a few thoughts and photos shared of my garden. The owner then going out into their vast nursery grounds to find a few options, sharing those, with her thoughts of how to position and plant one of the options.
So very soon a pallet will be on it’s way to me with a nearly 2 meter Magnolia stellata 'Scented Silver' that has been lovely grown from seed and matured in a field and is already covered in buds for spring bloom.
There has been something so gentle, so lovely about this whole process. This slow back and forth and the kindness of someone to find the right tree for my garden. It’s been a soothing background to a week of otherwise pace, fury and worry.