BLOG 2020

 Rosie Victoria Brown was born - 21st May- she is the second child born to our son Tomas and his wife Aimi and our second grandchild.

New jobs this year for both Tom and Sam, they continue to work for the same firms, Tom as a Fraud Investigator for Bet365 and Sam as a Technical Lead with Space 48, line managing developments in an e-commerce firm. Higher responsibility, more stress and money!

Sam and Andrea sold their houses in Manchester and moved into a very large, old house in Newcastle which once was part of theTrentham Estate - very salubrious.

 A Pandemic of Covid 19 struck the world. It’s effects range from, very mild to death. It generates different categories of risk. DB is most, highly vulnerable/shielded. GB only slightly less at risk, as she has  a fully functioning immune system and all of her lung tissue (as well as being two years younger - drat !!**!!)

This old, long married couple’s decision, with bags of ‘risk assessment’ experience, was to go into full ‘lockdown’ earlier than national requirement by government. This was tough as Rosie hadn’t been born yet and it was difficult to support Tom and Aimi at arms length, no hugging, kissing, stay two metres apart, wear a mask, stay at home, wash your hands while singing the whole of ‘happy birthday’...... take it seriously, because other people’s lives are at stake.Will the NHS be overwhelmed? Instant Nightingale hospitals, lockdowns, ‘circuit breaker’ restrictions, shortage of Personal Protective Equipment, care homes compromised, unrest, unease, basic freedoms challenged, the rights of the individual..... and all the while thousands, around the world, died.

We stopped watching the News at Ten.

Instead, recording ‘The News at Six’ and watching it when it suited us - oddly this seems to generate a feeling of calm and being in control.

The First hundred days were the worse for Gill (she just couldn’t come to terms with the radical changes that the pandemic had brought about, the Second hundred were worse for me - anxiety/ fear/and tears called for a bit of chemical management from our GP. I write this in late November, Gill is agonising about losing the notion of a ‘family Christmas’ (something of a tradition with us’) due to government restrictions on who can and cannot meet over a nominal five day relaxation of rules. So far we have survived it, and there’s talk of a vaccine in the next few months.......we shall see.

I am gently moving forward, trying to complete a written ‘life story’ (n my defence, this is not a vanity project but is a result of being asked to recall interesting stories from our younger days by DAST, the mesothelioma support group we belong to and also the notion I have,  that I wish my Dad and Grandad had written such a thing. I would love to have read them).

We met with my thoracic specialist, at Leicester, after my ‘drain site’ which had ‘healed’ but decided to burst again, leaking infected goo. Gill did her usual perfect nurse role, cleaning and bagging the new wound site.We asked for advice from the specialist nurse and were granted an appointment. The outcome was a choice, no time constraint, of two operations/procedures or the option of doing ‘nothing’ and perhaps let it become an infection/‘breaking waters’ cycle with the risk that any infection brings. We have a meeting with my oncologist in January so we will delay a decision until we know how the futures of chest cavity and cancer overlap or otherwise. Hard choices, but we have already done better, in survival terms, than expected.

Health-wise, this year has been good to moderate, Gill has taken the reins of our joint life. She brilliantly involves me, but my contribution is very limited. Physically, I’m as weak as a kitten and I am easily breathless, clumsy, sleepy, cough like a ?. (please insert a suitably humorous image here.)

But for me, little projects, which are manageable, occupy most of my time, making model ships, writing bits and pieces, working with photos and videos... keyboards whether connected to a pad, a Mac or a games machine are all pleasures, We talk, incessantly sometimes about important things sometimes to be comfortable in our bubble (a phrase/idea which has been in family use for nearly forty years)

Gill’s pleasure this year has been the garden which has been a glorious display from Spring to Autumn. 

Trees have been felled, tarmac has been laid, two of the cottages have been open since August and our gardener and house- keeper have been fully employed, during the pandemic. The felled trees have provided the materials for a new raised bed, dozens of logs and perches for two ‘big birds’ which have taken up residency in the garden. If you wanted to idle away a few minutes then birds, garden and tarmac are captured in short videos on our YouTube channel.

windyarb,YouTube

If you had more time to spare..... well, Gill and I wrote a pantomime, together. This is a first!

‘Cobblers- the story of the elves and the shoemaker’ was performed to ‘sell out’ audiences at Denstone Village Hall in February this year. Gill, directed and choreographed the whole thing. I helped with set design and artwork.

Even our sons got involved. Tom created a DJ who linked the various sections together and Sam vectorised our back cloth designs and took videos of the performances. We were delighted with the results and ever so slightly pleased with ourselves. The performance and rehearsal footage is on the Denstone Players YouTube

You Tube

Denstone Players’ Archive

......that took us through to the beginning of lock down at the beginning of March (we started on 13th March).

We devised a Timetable, early on in the pandemic for cleaning the house and to keep ourselves amused/sane, to give our lives a bit of structure. Lots of materials were streamed live, or free to air so there was plenty of choice. Gill started knitting and then discovered bigger projects that she could ‘get her teeth into’.

Sam, don’t you wish he’d propose to Andrea, they are just happy being partners.... both sold their houses in Manchester and bought jointly a mansion of a place in Newcastle under Lyme, with enough spare cash to do it up into something very special, a delight the way they both look to Gill for some advice,  good parenting vibes for both of us.

Pauline Marsden, my cousin, on my mum’s side, and her partner Tony, celebrated with a Civil ceremony on 21st October, which took place in Bakewell.

Our Niece, Amy was due to marry Tom, the son of one of our friends from the days of ADAPT, support group for Alton Holiday accommodation on 5th April. The Marriage was postponed until 31st August but has since been put back a year and moving into their new house similarly delayed.

Gill, worked with Sam and Andrea on ideas for ‘taming’ their large, new park- fringed garden and on shelving and fittings for Sam’s’ work from home ‘ study.

We followed the Indian Premier League 20/20 cricket competition, on television, avidly. Each member of the family supporting a different team. The highest finisher won a prize. Replica kit shirts became my ‘ must have’ birthday present - Sam’s team came highest (second) - he won a bottle of wine ( other prizes included, two bottles of the same poor wine and three bottles of the same.

Gill discovered ‘ Call the Midwife’, so for the first time in our lives we are ‘binge watching’ all the episodes for both that and ‘ All Creatures Great and Small’ and thoroughly enjoying the guilt free experience. I am listening to the audiobook versions of the Patrick O’ Brian series of books called Aubrey/ Maturin- they based the film ‘Master and Commander’ on one of them. I think there are fifteen volumes in the series, so plenty to go at.

My model ship this year was HMS Terror, lost in the Arctic looking for the North West Passage along with HMS Erebus. 300 hours to build but I decided then to ‘distress’ it into an Arctic context with modelled ice and snow....  steep learning curve! But I was delighted with the  results.

Shared pictures with kit makers, OcCre- a firm based in Barcelona - some interchange of ideas in terms of model building as therapy - involved DAST, our support group and there could be a crafting competition, sponsored by OcCre and hosted by DAST. ‘Hands across the water’ and thank goodness for Google Translate. I enjoyed being able to facilitate this.

Competitions.....I entered a photograph of young swallows being fed, in a competition themed around the idea of ‘Support’ and it became the cover picture for a 2021 calendar.

Actually, it’s been an eventful year...... I wonder how history will remember it?

Motivation to do anything, for the whole year has been difficult. But, in the last few weeks we have begun discussing ideas for a pantomime  based on the story of Pinocchio, looking at possible settings and listening out for appropriate music.... perhaps the stirrings of new growth and the excitements for all our futures ?

Our Christmas, this year, could be  the smallest version of the family ‘bubble’ that we have experienced since we were married, nearly fifty years ago.

.......and yet, with mobile phones, the internet, ‘Zoom’, ‘Face time’, ‘Whatsapp’ and thirteen thousand channels of Sky, Amazon  and Netflix.....it could also be one of the widest reaching.

A merry Christmas and a peaceful and disease free New Year to you all.

Dave and Gill.

November 28th 2020.