I've added two pics from today and I can't work out how to separate them. Sorry for being endlessly confounded by this [writing on wordpress] - especially as Journalscape is still there - maybe Kenny changed his mind about closing it.

Well I copied and pasted it but it hasn't come out. I am here here now, with pics.

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The first pic is from today's walk, creeping west along the coast again, now that all the tourists have gone and a person can park their car without having to sell their house first. I found a fantastically huge piece of broken off sea-defence and dragged it back to the car to be used in some way. Firewood or shelves or something. I must be getting stronger. Although I've had a pain in my foot that I finally looked up on the internet - it seems to be Plantar fasciitis, or hurty foot, ow ow ow. The treatment choices seem to be a) shut up and take painkillers or b) stop doing so much walking or c) stop wearing flat shoes. WTF?

The second pic is of the allotment that YD has taken on and invited me to share. I used to love the allotment I shared before. Until my co-allotmentee, when I was feeling suicidal and called her to ask for some support, told me to stop going on about ED and just get my head round the fact that she was dying and that I didn't deserve to have a great bloke like Bloke. It took me a few days (and a suicide attempt) before it struck me that I could manage better without a friend like her, which I do, but I have missed the allotment. However, that one was on the side of a hill so steep we had to make terraces, with about four inches of topsoil before you hit solid chalk and it was shoulder high in brambles over the entire plot when we took it on. This one has only recently been given up by a keen but aged gardener with (sadly) failing health. It is flat, with beautiful friable soil* and boarded beds. There's a three-section compost system already set up, a shed, gooseberry bushes, strawberries and a thornless blackberry. There was a fruit tree, apple or pear, but the guy came and dug that up, along with the rhubarb. Fair dos, they were his. Today we did a bit of digging out of weeds and some planning. On Tuesday YD and I will go to the stables where Sis keeps her horse and bag up as much manure as we can, to spread on the beds. The worms can do the rest.

*I note that we use the word soil for the earth and dirt for something unclean and American English does it the other way round. It's hard to read about someone digging in the dirt and not think it horrible.

Tomorrow morning we Take ED to see the urologist. I am terrified but have been doing good distraction. I know I have to agree to the operation - she can't carry on with a massive kidney stone and apparently seeing off septicemia in the way she did means she as tough as old boots. They say. She doesn't look it. This afternoon we listened to Under Milk Wood, which is just fucking awesome. In fact I'll go and find it for you, in case you need something to listen to that is beautiful and hauntingly poetic.



I am grateful for: a beach to walk on; an open fire; a roast chicken dinner (which I cooked for once and which was delicious though strikingly beige - bad choice of veg - potatoes, parsnips, celeriac, cabbage (mainly white) and only a few orange carrots trying to bring a bit of a zing to the view); having known dear Stepfie - though I keep getting stabbed with the fact that she's gone - she won't be reading that I managed to cook a meal again, nor will she be snorting at its beigeness - but I am so grateful to have known her and laughed with her.

 

Sweet dreams xx