I’m In Spain

Wednesday 17 June 2009

Thank you for your really kind comments, both here and sent to my e-mail address.  It still hasn’t hit home yet, although the majority of the arrangements for mum’s funeral have been made.

Several months before mum became very ill Gordon and I arranged a Spanish trip to visit our friends Janine and Paul who live in Javea.  Mum was adamant we should still go as it’s the first time we’d been able to book ourselves a break from the farm together in eighteen years!  If she’d still have been ill we would have cancelled, but since we’ve done all we can for the timebeing we decided to go ahead. 

So, that’s where we are.  In Javea!  It’s very hot here but my friends have a beautiful house and we’ve just finished tea by the pool.  I’ve snuck away to catch up on my daily computer fix, but best go back now before someone comes looking for me.

I won’t be able to post photos as I didn’t bring anything to connect my camera to her computer, but will save them for when I get home.

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RIP Mum

Sunday 14 June 2009

Mum passed away on Wednesday evening following her twenty-month battle with cancer.  She slipped away peacefully in her sleep with dad holding her hand.  I know people say it’s a blessed release, and in her case it probably was as she was terribly ill at the end, but at the moment that doesn’t help too much.  I’ll be back when I’m less emotional.

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Tuesday 9 June 2009

The days are beginning to blur a little lately, I must admit.  They normally do when we’re silage-making since we do the same thing over and over until it’s done, but visiting the hospice on a daily basis has the same effect.  Every day we express amazement that it’s only been a little over a week since mum was taken there when it seems so much longer and every day she gets a little worse.

Yesterday morning we had no news from the hospice so decided to carry on with the silage-making until the afternoon then go for our normal visit.  I’d only just got into the field when my phone rang to say mum had deteriorated so much and could we go straight away.  Gordon and Daniel rallied to take over and we were off to Taunton, collecting dad on the way.  When we got there it was plain to see that mum was a lot worse so we sat with her until about 6.00 pm before coming home again.  Dad stayed the night after they moved her bed into a side room and this morning one of mum’s oldest friends is with them.  By all accounts, mum is still as we left her yesterday so we’re going to have another go at clearing one field at a time.  It looks like it’s about to rain, but if we don’t do it in instalments we’ll never get it done at all.

On a lighter note, I had to alter one of Lindsay’s comments on an entry a couple of days ago where she mentioned that the ball cock in her toilet was broken.  I made the two separate words one after an assortment of very strange spam comments, obviously picking up on the latter word!  Fortunately they looked like Russian or Greek words so I couldn’t understand exactly what they were, but the ‘addresses’ gave me quite a clue!  Of course, now I’ve included it in my entry I’ll probably get another batch!  Search engines are odd things really, aren’t they?

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Updating

Thursday 4 June 2009

I’ve been told off as apparently my blog is the only way my friends are able to see what I’m up to at the moment and I haven’t updated it recently.  So sorry.

Mum is at the hospice and getting worse by the day.  The doctors have warned us not to expect too much.

The forager went really well for two days then the clutch burnt out!  Gordon has spent the last couple of days fixing it, waiting for parts, etc.  It looks like it’ll be ready tomorrow.  The joys of buying a second-hand, unknown entity of a forage harvester!  When he stripped out the clutch it was severely cracked.

I’ll keep you posted.

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