Philip Norton

Today I had some very sad news that my Gran died.

She had been living in a nursing home for about 15 years now (at least) and had been suffering from dimentia for a while, but had really gone downhill when my Grandfather died.  I think it was in the form of Alzheimer disease or similar as her body just seemed to give up.  I don’t think she had any quality of life, she simply existed.

I never once went to visit her in the nursing home, because I wanted to remember her as the kind lady I knew, although my dad did from time to time and brought back reports of a woman who didn’t know who he was.  I don’t think she even knew who she was.

Being an atheist I look at life in a slightly different way to what is considered normal, at least by some people.  The life you are living is the only life you will ever live, there is nothing else after you die except the chance to be fertilizer.  I live life by that philosophy and try to take many opportunities that come along just because they seem like the only chance I will ever get.  Life is the only chance you get at being alive so I live it.

However, there is vast casm of difference between being alive and being dead but still moving.  Although I am sad at my Grans passing I also feel a great sense of relief at her finally being released from the torment of memory loss.  I cannot imagine what it must have felt like, although I can guess as I have some bad days myself.  I would hate to live like that, not knowing who these people are around you, who you are or what you did with your life.  I find it very hard to believe that anyone can think there is such a thing as a soul when there are a number of diseases (like Alzheimers) that can take a perfectly healthy mind and completely destroy it.  Surely if the soul existed then there wouldn’t be such a thing as brain damage of any sort.  What is going on is very complicated (I don’t deny that) but we are just beginning to figure some of it out.  Explaining it away on a whim of an idea only goes towards belittling the person who is suffering.

I remember my Gran as this great old lady who used to make me ham sandwiches (the taste of which I can still remember).  I am kind of relieved that I never saw her after my Grandad died as all of the fantasic childhood memories that I had would have been tainted by the image of this confused and frail old woman, who wouldn’t have any idea who I was.

I can still remember when my Grandad died.  It was around 1994.  He had been ill for a few weeks and we had gone to visit him in hospital, as we had been doing since he went in.  We had just arrived at their home to pick up my Grandmother who didn’t drive and had no other way of getting to the hospital.  We never made that journey.  Just after we all sat down at their home the phone rang and my dad was informed that Grandad had just passed away.  That was one of the strangest nights I can remember as I had not had to deal with death on a personal level before, and still at school age I didn’t know what to expect.  You kind of think that they will be back next week and walk through the door and all will be fine.

So what about her life?  I wouldn’t say she had a career as such as she had lots of different jobs.  She used to work as a boiler makers mate at the Great Western Reailway works in Swindon, as a Sunday School Teacher, and at a photogrophers shop developing film.  My family once went into a hardware store where she had a job (this was quite a few years ago) and she looked at my dad straight in the face and said “Can I help you sir?”  I think we were there to pick her up or something.

Most of important of all, she leaves behind a legacy of family who will remember her.  Her and my Grandad had 4 children, each of which had children of their own, so the Norton clan is quite large really.  I haven’t seen some of then for years, but I’m sure that the memory of my Grandparents lives on in the next generation.

Every year (sometimes twice a year) my parents go to a small camp site just outside Rhyader, usually for a bank holiday weekend. This time we went with them. Some friends of the family who were already there and the plan was to meet up with them.

Phoneing up the camp site before hand we heard that it was very water-logged and that they had even shut down some of the site due to it being so wet. The weather forcast said that it would rain on the Thursday, but that it should be better on the Friday, and Saturday should be much better.

When we got there it was wet, and due to the activity of people walking about it was also very muddy. We booked until Sunday just in case the rain didn’t stop. Not being perturbed we set up our tents and hoped that there would be no more rain for a couple of days. It was muddy enough that some people went into town and bought wellington boots just so that they didn’t have to stand ankle deep in mud. I stayed in my trusty walking boots, which now need a good wash!

No such luck on hoping it wasn’t going to rain! It was sunny for just long enough on Friday night and Saturday to lull us into a false sense of security. By dinner time on Saturday it was raining quite steadily and any drying out that had been done was basically wasted. The ground just got wetter and wetter until everything we did or owned was just caked in mud.

Anyway, I had the plan that we would go Hay-on-Wye at some point during the weekend, so we went there on Saturday. We eventually decided that Mandy and I should go and Matthew would stay behind and go to the Rhyader “fun day”. Apparently the fun day wasn’t all that fun, and consisted of a few giant games (like a large connect four) and was very “small town” if you know what I mean.

For those of you who don’t know Hay-on-Wye is a town that has more book shops (mainly second hand) per mile than just about anywhere else on the face of the Earth. Just walking around it for a while you are hit by the amount of books that are present in the town. There are millions! Mandy and I went there with a certain number of authors in mind, but unfortunately found nothing. I was a little disapointed, but I realised that there are a few reasons why I didn’t find what I was looking for.

1. There are a lot of books. So therefore asking if anything is there just gets you blank looks. Most shop owners don’t know what they have in their stock, just due to the numbers of books there, but also due to the fact that lots of books also come in.
2. Looking through each bookstore takes a while and different stores have different ways of stocking and categorising books. I didn’t have all week to look through every store, but you could easily do that.
3. I assume that, although there are books coming in to the shops, there are a lot of people walking around and buying them. So the good and popular books go quite quickly and so finding them can be a little tricky.

I am back home now, and drying off. Everything in and around the tent is wet and muddy and I will probably spend tomorrow cleaning everything 50 times over as it is all caked with mud. Joy…

It would be nice to go camping and it not rain and spoil things. I’m thinking that we should just book ourselves into a hotel next time.

We have had our bikes sat in our shed for a good number of months now complete with rust and punctures.  So this weekend we decided to go and get our bikes repaired.  We phoned up a shop in Congleton that does bike repairs, but the guy was rude on the phone and not really all that helpful so we took them to Halfords.  I can’t fault Halfords for their service.  We had originally booked the bikes in for the 29th, but we got a call yesterday saying that things had been quiet there so the girl had done them herself.

We had to walk in order to pick them up, which is about 4 miles, but we needed to take Matthew with us.  He enjoyed riding on my bike (although he is a little small for it).  After getting home we put them back in the shed with the plan to go for a bike ride today.

However, when I got the bike out of the shed I found it had a puncture in the front tyre.  After getting quite angry, but still being able to repair it I then attached a bike seat so that Matthew could ride on the back of my bike.

Our little trip nearly started out as a disaster as as soon as I picked my bike off of the wall (with Matthew attached) it fell sideways and I had to struggle to bring the bike back up again from a funny angle.  I’m not certain that the seat is entirely safe as it makes the bike very top heavy and when I slowed down (for the hills) I ended up falling sideways.

Still, it was a plesant bike ride.  We went up to the cannal at the end of a lane near our house.  I didn’ remember, the last time I took that lane, just how hilly it was.  Plus, I am quite out of shape and so I wasn’t able to peddle all the way up in one go.  I just need to get more practice in!

I walked into the kitchen tonight and spotted a fox picking at the bread we had left out for the birds.  I think I scared him off to start with, but he was soon back for the rest.  We threw another slice out for him so we could take a couple of photos.  Here is a picture.

I think it is fantastic.  The garden to our house is a bit of an oddity really.  It was left overgrown for about 10 years and was used as a builders yard for a bit.  We still have a large circular saw in a cast iron base hidden behind a hedge.  I have been working on clearing it up for months, although I’m not making much headway.  However, one good thing about the garden is all the wildlife I see.  We have multiple species of birds, squirrels and I even saw a mouse the other day, but having a fox living nearby is just great.

The fox kept coming into the garden, cramming as much bread as he could into his mouth, and then leaving again.  So I can only assume that there are little foxes about somewhere.  I went upstairs to get a better view and Matthew was awake so I pointed the fox out to him.  He straight away identified it as a fox.  He must have learnt something from us reading him Beatrix Potter books.

This connects something I was thinking about the other day.  We usually put out some bread at night (try getting a 3 year old to eat crusts) and they are always gone by morning.  I just thought we had hungry birds!

We are teaching Matthew the alphabet at the moment, and he is comming along nicely.  Even though he is 3, he can count to 13 on his own (which is apparently very good) and is getting there with the alphabet.  Although he isn’t able to recite it much, he can spot the letters and tell us what they are.

Apart from two letters that is.  These letters are W and U.

When I say U he repeats back “me!” and when I say W, which I pronounce as “double-u” that is exactly what he hears and repeats back “double me!”.

How on earth do you get through to a 3 year old that it isn’t double you, but two letter U’s put together?  I’m sure he will work it out eventually!