I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘N’… Nurse ? More like Numpty... It’s been a painful week. Painful in every sense of the word. Let’s start with the physical pain element and get that out of the way. I nipped into my favourite bargain shop on the way home from work feeling quite smug and prepared for the cold snap that’s been screamed out of every radio station. It’s clearly time for 100 denier tights and I grabbed a couple of pairs for less than the price of a mega kebab with chilli sauce! Happy days!! And that was where the happiness ended. Fast forward 12 hours…stumbling round in the dark trying to get ready for work and I am knackered before I even run for the bus, wrestling into these bloody tights. I swear they must have been sized wrongly, as they wouldn’t fit an anorexic scarecrow. I look in the mirror (just to check I’m not severed at the midriff) and see a giant black pudding ring staring back at me – which reminds me that I haven’t got time (or ro...

Last week we said a final goodbye to Gramps, on what would have been his 67 th birthday. I’d never been to a funeral. I’ve been lucky enough not to have lost anyone from my family before, so this was a first for me, and despite the great sadness and sense of hollow loss, it was a beautiful service. I learnt so much about Gramps that I had never known. He’d had such a hard and tragic life that it was a wonder he kept smiling. He’d lost his Mum at 11 to bowel cancer, and then his Dad had died of a broken heart a couple of years later. He had two younger brothers who he’d tried to look after but they were eventually taken into care and he ran away, and stayed hidden until he was old enough to join the Army. He’d only found one of his brothers a few years before – he’d emigrated to Australia. They had reunited only once before Gramps left us. So sad… I remember looking at his memorial card with the dates of his birth and death. In the middle was this tiny little dash that signifie...

Life is an imperfect merry-go-round - plenty of ups and buckets-full of lows. This week is definitely in the arse end of life and one I hope I don’t have to experience again for a very long time. I’ve been off for the past week – well, I say off. I’ve probably spent more time in the hospital than if I’d been working! It started on Friday afternoon. Mum rang the ward (highly embarrassing; I remember when she rang the school to tell them I’d forgotten to put my knickers on that morning) to tell me that Gramps (my lovely Grandad) had been taken to A & E with suspected pneumonia. I wasn’t overly worried as Gramps has COPD and had become a regular visitor to the hospital. He usually got admitted for a few days while they cleared the infection and then went home, right as rain. I assured Mum that I would pop down there on my break to see how he was doing. She huffed and puffed a bit, but I was quite firm with her and she hung up in a bit of a mood.  I did as any dutiful ...