Lesser known facts #1; when a house is truly cursed, there is no getting rid of it. And the Old House is the gift that keeps giving (stories).

Did I mention that I'd sold the (definitely cursed) house?  Yes?  Yes I did.  I sold it to a property developer.   I sold it to them, and I  moved my stuff out, and I cleaned the place, and I handed over the keys. And the Old House was now the property developer's.
This is such an important fact.

And for the first week or so I woke up every morning, happy that I was finally out of the old house.  It was only when I moved out that I realised just how much I'd hated being there. A massive weight was lifted off my shoulders.  In fact I loved being out of the old house so much, that I developed an irrational fear of being told I had to move back.

So the irrational part of me was already expecting the knock on the door when it came.  Ruth, the woman from the property company, appeared on my doorstep on a Saturday afternoon; Could I accompany her to the old house?  there seems to be some kind of problem, and she doesn't know where the house is.

Lesser people would have claimed amnesia, and muttered that it was so long since they had sold the place, they too had forgotten details... I am not a lesser person.

Let's cut to the chase.  The "problem" was that a tank or a pipe, or something that normally carried (a lot of) water had burst.  For the past week water had been pouring down through the house. Not dripping, not trickling, but full scale pouring from the roof downwards. As we stood at the back door, we could only peer through a sheet of water upwards to the very roof itself, for the  flood had brought down both the bedroom  and kitchen ceilings.  Wires were hanging where the kitchen light used to be, for the light fitting and the rest of the ceiling was on the floor.  Pipes which had previously been under the bedroom floors were now visible, holding up what remained of the bedroom floors.

Ruth and I could get no further than the back door without hard hats, heavy duty raincoats and a squad of emergency plumbers.

..........

It's been two weeks now.... two weeks when I've reminded myself every day that I sold that house, and this is someone else's problem.

I always hated the old house.  What can I say? I bought it in a hurry, because we needed to move from Glasgow to Cheesetown before the (then) Cherub moved to high school. And most of my money was still stuck in Glasgow.

People tried to be nice.  Believe me, a lot of faint praise has been lavished on this place.....

• You get a nice view from here.  Yes things are better if you look out.
• Garden's easy to maintain Yes for it is tiny
• Nice you've got an en-suite.  Yes because the shower in the bathroom doesn't work.  At all. Ever
• So quaint.  Yes because nothing has been done maintenance wise since the last century.

And this house defeated me. The windows and back doors leaked in heavy rain.  And it rains a lot in Scotland.  Half of the upstairs windows were jammed closed.  Conveniently the other half never closed properly, but rattled in the gentlest of breezes.  The double glazing was shot. Even in high summer the place was freezing.  In winter we hugged the radiators (literally) or the dog or both.

And I'd had enough.. There's only so long you can happily remind yourself "At least it's cheap"

The problem was - how could I honestly sell this house in good faith to someone else? How could I fail to mention the strange smell from underneath the garage, and the recent spate of car burnings in the village?  How could I look any buyer in the eye and not mention that the house is on the way from the pub to the housing estate and you get woken up regularly in the wee small hours? I might be a drama queen, but I'm not a good enough actress to smile and mutter about being so sorry to leave this..

And so it was that I found a property developer who would accept my house in part exchange for a new house being built in a new development.  And they only had a huge five bed roomed place left. And I only had.. my house.  And so the deal was done.

And we both thought we'd got the best of the deal....

Which as any fule kno can't be the case...

Yo!! I'm here.. see what I did?  Not there anymore... HERE.  Here in the new house.  That's right, the NEW House.  I did it.  I got out of the old place  The place where my feng shui was definitely fucked.  The place where people and dogs died... or had terminal diseases.  Which is technically the same thing...eventually....

It was down to just me and the kid who can no longer be known as cherub.  We needed out.

So I'm here.  I'm in a house that's brand new and miles away from graveyards - metaphorically or literally. Whichever way you want to put it.  We're not facing the graveyard anymore.  Even better, the wind doesn't come through the windows, and  the plumbing doesn't back up, and the double glazing isn't shot.
We don't look out the back window directly into Bob Next Door's - we look across fields to the Forth.
I've got a double garage. and a huge kitchen, and five bedrooms. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen just to remind myself how fantastic it is.

And it's all taken time.  Between selling the old place, and taking the kid who's no longer cherubic on holiday, and then packing, and then the sale falling through, and then packing again... and then sorting the boxes.  Oh yes and looking into internet dating...  I've been busy.

But there are stories...there will be stories... bear with me...


What can I say meanwhiles?  Merry Christmas of course!!

It has not been a good week.  It's been a bad week.  In fact it's been a stinking week when I've been driven to ask major life questions such as would it be wrong to kill my new boss given her terminal levels of stupidity?*

And since the answer to this  question, of course is a great big emphatic "Yes Macy, killing your boss is wrong", let's ask another question.

Let's ask if Buddhism has anything to help this situation. Because this is a question we haven't asked before,,,

Becaue my yoga teacher is a fan, and because yoga is a Good Thing, and becaue as far as mad ideas go I've had worse, let's get in the car with the Cherub and head for the hills; where, yes, Scotland does have a Buddhist centre. If you want to head there yourself it's conveniently located in the middle of nowhere.

Let's head off out the house in a hurry, with only Google map instructions as a guide, and Cherub as reluctant pilot....Let's start worrying that we are heading the wrong way after heading off the Edinburgh by pass and failing to see any road numbers that match Google's.
Let's spend the best part of an hour driving through small villages with no maps but friendly locals with no idea where the Buddhist centre is, before washing up  in a Starbucks in a service station beside the M74
Let's get a Starbucks and  wonder if this is really worth it, before heading off, this time with a map.

An out of date map as  it turns out.

Let's, in other words, spend the best art of four hours traveling to the Kagyu Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist centre in the west.

And having turned the prayer wheels, and walked through the herb garden and sat in the temple -  let's give up being a smart arse and cynic, and general know it all. Let's hear it from the Dalai Lama

“If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.” 

It's better isn't it? It's great.  Be assured, on Monday New Boss can expect to be positively cudgeled with compassion


*
(For yes Penny has been replaced, and never have so many been so quickly reminded of the old addage "Hold onto Nurse for fear of finding something worse...")

Good morning blog world! How are YOU doing?

This morning I'm looking at my nose.

That's right.  My nose. I have been studying it very carefully in a good clear light.
 I know, I can can hear you asking, what's wrong? What's the problem with your nose Mace? To which I can only reply. Nothing. There's nothing wrong with my nose at all - that's the problem.

See, it was a thought I had.  There I was, applying a newand  incredibly expensive engineered skin serum, when it occurred to me that I never put this stuff on my nose. I don't know why not.  Laziness? Cutting out an extra 30 seconds from my morning routine every day? Misguided economies? With the price of this stuff who can afford to do their whole face?  Just basic wilfulness??  Anyhoos, the fact stands, that in all my thirty-odd years of dutifully applying face serums, creams, moisturizers, youth lotions and what not to my face I have never applied any to my nose.

That's right, for whatever reason, my nose has never had the benefit of moisturiser, serum or youth dew.

So this must show right? Since my nose has not benefited from peptides, Retinol A, wrinkle reduction, or revitalization of its epidermis, it should by definition look a good couple of decades older than the rest of my face which has benefitted from such miracle creams.

And it doesn't.

Unbelievable I know.  But I can see no difference.

You know your input is valued on such major questions. Feel free to advise....

What do you know.  Turns out that three deaths* in just over three and a bit years is my limit.
Turns out I'm a lightweight that way.
Turns out a retreat under a metaphorical duvet was needed after the second deathbed, and the second body, and the second funeral and the second choosing of coffins, and readings and cremations and it all just brought back everything - and I didn't even have the bloody pills I was prescribed after the dog died.

But let's skip to the good news. There's a limit to how long I can spend in a self pitying fog.

Which is lucky because The One Remaining Aunt (TORA!) has also had her problems. My mother has been visiting her in her dreams.  No really.  TORA is quite insistent on this.  And because TORA is not the most sensible person on the  planet, well maybe she is psychic, so you know, hang in with me here.  Anyway, apparently my mother is annoyed, and exasperated, and trying to tell TORA something. She's shaking keys, and walking away.
And she's doing this on a quite regular basis.

TORA reckons she's telling us there is another will. Without saying anything to TORA, I suspect that if my mother is creating in psychic space it's very likely to be because her remains are still out at the crematorium and she wants to go home.  Actually, come to think of even if there is no such thing as an afterlife, my mother's remains were definitely overdue for collection from the crematorium.

This is a long preamble to me saying I collected my mother from the crematorium.

For those who have never held human remains, let me tell you know, they are surprisingly heavy. And it's impossible not to feel the person with you as you hold them.  So it  felt only right to fasten my mother's urn into the back seat with  a seat belt. What you going to do? Put your mother in the boot?

Then the problems started. I didn't know where to put her.
She couldn't come back to mine, because I still have W's ashes and they hated each other in life.  In death there would be one unholy conflagration. Cheesetown could be annihalted.

So she had to go back to hers.
 But where at hers?

It seemed too Norman Bates to leave her urn in her old seat in the living room. A wee bit odd putting it in the window.
Odder still to put her urn on her bed..What you going to do? Tuck it in?
She couldn't be in the kitchen.  We still use that.  That would be wrong.
And what kind of person would put their mother in the hall cupboard? With the shoes? When she only had one leg?
And she couldn't go in the garden; it's going to rain till Christmas

Sigh.  She's in the back of the car for now. I'll figure this out later.


*If you count Ned, which my god I do.

It's the breathing init? Whoever said "don't sweat the small stuff" was wrong. Get the small stuff right and it all falls into place. And, take it from me, sometimes just keeping on breathing is a start...
That's why I go to yoga.
It stops the voices in my head.

I'm a late convert.  No way am I ever going to be one of the world's bendy people not now, not starting from here. That's me at the back of the class trying not to  snicker during the omms, trying not to fall over during the postures (whee! I'm a tree!) and hoping nobody notices when my sun salutations sink slowly behind everyone elses.  I love my yoga class.
I started off going to reduce my blood pressure and ended up staying for the mediation and peace. At the end of the evening I float out of that class on a karmic cloud that lasts through until the next day.

Except I haven't been for awhile because stuff happened. That was my first mistake.
And I didn't book into this evening's class.  That was my second mistake.
Assuming I could cruise into my yoga class just because I really, really need some inner peace might have been the final mistake.  The receptionist was having none of it.
Nope the class is full
But..I'm a regular
But I really need to go. It's been a terrible couple of weeks. I'm stressed, and wound up and look, it's a Yogic Emergency
The tears in my eyes might have been overkill...but I wasn't going to do it, I wasn't going to play the winning card. I wasn't going to say "my mum's died and nobody needs meditation more than me right now in the whole of the West Lothian area. Bump bendy girl in the pink leotard instead of me".

Hell. I'm not that cheap.  I can breathe at home.

She didn't believe in God. Most definitely not one that would know better than her about anything.
My mother took advice and guidance from no one.

But she did believe in Estee Lauder. She did believe very ardently in the power and efficiency of Ms Lauder's Time Zone day cream. Following her last admission to hospital I was, in fact, sent out to get more supplies since The One Remaining Aunt (Tora) forgot to pack any in the rush to admit her.
Turns out she stock piled it.  I might have doubts as to its ability to "dramatically reduce the signs of ageing", but it looks like I have inherited several jars of this miracle cream, unopened, still in their original packaging.

If I were to believe the blurb on the boxes, my skin should be dramatically transformed. I'll let you know how that goes.

I spent years as a vegetarian, whilst she believed that a every evening meal needed meat or, at least, fish.  Her last shop was on the second of March; turns out I've also inherited a freezer full of cuts of meat; sirloin steak,  pork sirloin, frying steak, pork chops.  Stuff I have no idea how to cook, but I can read the price tags and I simply refuse to throw this away, and who else would want food from dead people?

So I am perusing recipe books; I'll let you all know how gingered pork roast turns out.

And she believed very, very firmly in the superiority of doctors.  My mother would have as soon poked a priest with a stick as question her GP about anything.
And on this last point I very, very definitely disagree with her. Because I'd been wondering for some time about why it took so long for her to get referred through to a specialist. Why it seemed that she only got referred after I phoned her GP directly.  And why it was that everyone in the same ward, getting treatment for the same condition had been referred at a much earlier stage.

On the 6th May I sent her GP a letter, questioning why it had taken so long to diagnose my mother's condition, and why her family were not kept informed of the prognosis despite my phoning the practice repeatedly.
They still haven't replied, so I've taken a deep breath and sent a polite follow up letter.

I'll let you know how that one goes too.

A big thank you to everyone posting condolences and supportive comments on my blog.
You know who y'all are.

It hasn't all been grim though.  It's amazing what you can find when hunting through an elderly lady's cupboards.  Looking through her papers for her birth certificate, I found a brown envelope...with photos... and a covering letter to  explain the photos.

That's me in 1964! That was our house in Glasgow! Nobody ever told me that I'd had a modelling career for the South of Scotland Electricity Board.

The grey dress from Hobbs, is my first choice. But it's a size ten and despite a week long diet of coffee and air...it still doesn't fit. Which is illogical.  Because by the fourth day my jeans were needing a belt to stay up....
How little do you have to eat to get to size ten? How fat was I before?

In my black suit, I'd be mistaken for the funeral director.

My black work dresses are...worn...
This leaves the blue flowery dress or the purple silk.
The purple silk was worn to Wayne's funeral and is, frankly beginning to accumulate too many bad memories.

Sigh

Reflect it makes bugger all difference.

Reflect the Glaswegians won't be expecting much sartorially from anyone from Edinburgh anyway.

Reflect it would matter like hell to my (Glaswegian) mother.

Sob the hell out of the blue dress.
Which sort of decides things for the purple.....

This is the first day in my whole life that my mother hasn't been somewhere on the planet.

It feels lonely







Nan Mckay 16th January 1933 - 4th May 2012

It was delivered last Friday.  Two days after they amputated her right leg above the knee.
Her wheelchair.
It was black, and shiny, and smaller and sportier than I'd imagined it would be.
And it was really light, and easy to handle.  Supposing you could find a sixpence, it would turn on one.

I know this, because when she had no interest in it, when she wouldn't even try it, I got in and started road testing it.
I've dealt with toddlers, I know how this generating interest thing works.

"Yay! Get me! This wee thing's really nifty! Look at me cornering the ward! I'm turning.. I'm turning back again..look at this!  D'ye know the Cherub's gonnae want a go too!  Look I'm away out the ward! Gonnae do a circuit of the ninth floor"

Made her smile.

And it worked, because by Saturday she was in the chair.  And we made it down to the cafe on the ground floor, and we did a tour of the hospital.  By Sunday we were talking about getting the new wheels across the road to the wee tea shop opposite the Kelvinhall.


And I'm not thinking about the old saw about them burning bright in the last week. Because that is as west coast depressing as it gets.

But on Tuesday we had A Setback.
On Wednesday I had to Have A Talk With a Doctor.

The new wheelchair's been put away for now.

Last Saturday it was, I decided I'd had enough. Enough of the gloom and the rain that wanted to be slush, and the  Cardiovascular Ward, and the worsening prognosis and the ongoing misery.
Enough already.
It's meant to be the Easter holidays..

So I've booked a holiday.
The Cherub and I fly out of Edinburgh International Airport first thing on Thursday.

We are going to warmer climes.
Climes with funny money and lots of foreign food
And if the locals don't understand, we'll just speak slowly till they do.

Yep.  Two days in London coming up.

I have no idea if Glasgow's Western Infirmary was built next to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery through accident or some strange Victorian high minded design for All Round Improvement.
But it is.  The hospital where my mother has been laid up in cardiovascular surgery is bang next to the Kelvingrove. She's on level 9 of the Western, and you can look our over the turrets towards the park and the university in one direction, the river and the science museum in the other.
Bang tidy as the Cherub would say.

And five years or so ago, one of my favourite pictures was returned to the Kelvingrove.
The first time I saw Dali's Christ on The Cross According to St James, I would have been about twelve. I can't remember why I was walking around on my own, but I do remember seeing this picture at the end of along corridor and getting it.

You're looking down at Christ, you're in God's place - maybe this is a religious picture that says there's no god? Earth and the fishing boats looks better than that dark lonely heaven; except that there is a heaven, because there is this wonderful Christ figure. And there is a deep peace coming through the dark.
Hey I got it so much, I even remembered the name of this picture even though at the time I had no idea who St James was, or why he had anything to say about Christ.

With an hour to kill before visiting time last week, I went to revisit the picture.

Turns out I'm not the only one to love this picture. Christ on the Cross etc is no longer at the end of his long lonely corridor. He's now part of a popular display.  Ensconced in a small cubicle, with a bench for onlookers, and a video explaining the wonder of the picture and its history. Including the time it was attacked by a local Glaswegian. There's longer explanations on the walls of the restoration process, and Dali's inspiration. And crowds.  There's a queue to get in and sit and look.

And somewhere along the line, the peace has been lost.
Buy postcard of it, go see mother, don't tell her you've been looking at religious pictures in case..

Okey dokey, I've done it!
I have exercised my rights under section 80F of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Yes indeedy.  Settle down at the back there.

For those who aren't already in the know, section 80F gives us little people the right to ask for flexible working arrangements which will help care for a kid or an elderly relative.

It also gives the employer the right to say no.

See what they did there??

I can ask, and they can say no.  A full blown cynic would say that being given the right to be told no wasn't that much of an advance in workers rights.  
And a half hearted cynic would agree.

 But.. but ..but this doesn't have to be a complete waste of time.
What about you place a bet?
Go on

It all started last April; and , yes pedants, I know it actually started long before that, but (hint) this isn't a medical textbook.

It started last April when she was complaining about an ulcer on her heel.  And my mother had a long and bitter story about a man who had banged her heel with his airport  trolley. And I didn't ask too many questions. I just changed the subject.


I did wonder though when by May, the ulcers were spreading, but I wasn't getting a straight answer out of my mother. She's not good with answering questions.

By June she had trouble walking, in July she fell and couldn't get up and I called her GP, because it looked like she couldn't manage on her own anymore. And I did ask the GP questions, and he prevaricated and referred her to a specialist.

The specialist gave us a couple of long words to be going on with like Peripheral Arterial Disease but was short on detail, so I consulted Google instead.

Which was frightening. I've given you a link to a page without pictures.

The operation didn't work.
The drugs to fight the infection aren't working
She's been already lost toenails and  muscles - and now she's got gangrene.

There's been one question I've been scared to ask for awhile.

Last Thursday our new babyfaced consultant finally mentioned the amputation word.

Now I've got a lot of questions I can't ask in front of my mother.

• How far up will you amputate?
• Will it be both legs?
• Can you teach someone with early stages dementia to walk on a prosthesis?

Naples.  And  I'm sat on the bus from the airport doing some rough calculations It's nearly 15 years since I last landed in Italy.
Last time it was in Sicily. I was with Wayne and we had an 18 month old cherub in tow.  We landed in Palermo Sicily; our plane had been delayed, our luggage had got lost and we were driving a rented car through the rush hour traffic.
The Cherub was still in nappies, and with the luggage lost I estimated we had 12 hours until meltdown.
I was fretting about the nappy situation.
Wayne was blaming me for directing him the wrong way down a one way street.  Things were was going badly, and I was swearing that I would never ever, not in this life or the next, drive through Italian traffic.

But the Cherub was a joy.
He loved his kiddyseat, up high in the back of the car, he loved the oncoming flood of headlights.  Turns out all he'd really wanted in life so far was the sound of 500 car horns tooting loudly around us.

How could you argue with this happy wee chappy in the back seat?

Turns out things have changed a lot in the intervening years.  I've got him loads of oncoming Italian traffic complete with tooting horns and flashing lights... and all the Cherub can focus on is that we're lost.

We're on the wrong bus.... we're headed in the wrong direction... my navigation skills have been found wanting again....

No, really! It's possible! I've just done it! You really can  book a holiday by accident.

Watch this....here's the recipe..

Start with one large part of self pity. O poor wee me.. used to travel, used to do stuff.. stuck here, best years of my life ebbing out. blah blah and yadda.  Don't have any self pity?  Have some of mine.  No really. I've got plenty..

OK now add alcohol to the self pity. White wine always works for me, but apparently whisky or gin is quicker....

While you're waiting for the alcohol to kick in, fire up the PC and start trawling through  a cheap travel website.

You'll find it.  You'll find the holiday which is
(a) unbelievably cheap
(b) actually still on offer during the school holidays
(c) somewhere new, and unexplored, and somewhere you should see
(d) really, really, cheap. 

You can always find these holidays when Under the Influence.
No.  I have no idea why you can't find them when sober.

Now for the last and final piece of the jigsaw, what you really need is to live near to a provincial airport *, an airport which has so few direct flights to anywhere interesting that finding a direct flight to my cheap holiday destination of choice means that I Have To Click.  This is a sign! I am destined! I can do this!

See.  Just bought a holiday by accident.

Last minute....

To Naples.


NAPLES????


*Don't tell Alec, but Edinburgh International is a wee bit provincial

Cough....cough...cough... hak! hak!

Macy - Mumble....


Macy - Sigh...



Macy - Vast amounts of overtime!

I know.  Isn't this ridiculous?
Ms Macy is indisposed.
Indisposed indeed....  (sniff) frankly  the terminology is the only elegant thing about Ms Macy this morning.

She is unwell
And that's before she even gets to her mother's to eat Steak Pie.

Rather than contemplating the Mother's Steak Pie.. we leave you with a new year song - and bestest heartfelt wishes for 2012