An offer

Wales, September 2025

Nameless Man fixed the plug socket; I managed to clean all the downstairs windows (which I thought would be the best thing to do to improve the look of the place) and there have been five house viewings. Mr Celery, as I suspected, is very prone to error but so far I have corrected the mistakes that I have noticed, none of which have been particularly egregious, but he managed to sneak one into the printed brochure by adding the excited statement "NO ONWWARD CHAIN." 

One offer came in at £75k below the guide price, and now a much more realistic offer has materialised along with one further request for a viewing. I filled in a form and went to the office of a solicitor just in case I needed conveyancing sooner rather than later. They say I must complete a second form stating the source of the funds I used to purchase my house 25 years ago - it's the Law. I continue to range around the house picking out things to get rid of that escaped previous purges.

One such find is a trove of letters hiding under past family calendars that I'd kept, and some more letters in a box in the loft that had travelled with me, unopened, through all house moves since, it turns out, 1975. That was when I seemingly started keeping every single letter I received, initially birthday greetings from faraway relatives and letters from family when I was on school trips and holidays abroad. In later years it included letters from school friends and then university friends when we all dispersed to our various jobs and travel. I'm scanning or reading most of them before putting them into recycling - it's difficult to prioritise this job over more pressing matters but it's intriguing.

In other news - there isn't anything interesting. I went to the funeral of the mother of my longest-standing friend from junior school - two years ago I was there for his father's funeral, and one year ago it was dad's. I went to Maternal Manor where we applied for mum's Blue Badge to be renewed, booked a Bulky Waste Collection with the Council for the sofabed and dismantled wardrobe, and I took lots of measurements of rooms and furniture. I took my new collaborative games to the U3A board games group, and as expected they didn't take to them especially well. I have officially handed over the finances of my Buddhist group, so now I think I'm free of any official responsibility there.

And there has been badminton and Buddhism and cinema and Muscles the Personal Trainer, who is aware of my plans to move away and says that before I leave he is aiming for me to be able to dead-lift my own weight. I started eighteen months ago at 20kg (just the bar without any weights on it) and I'm up to 50kg, so nearly there. And my core strength and balance are great. It's astonishing.

Overwhelm

Woodland Cemetery, March 2026

I've been focussing on friends and GRUHI while keeping an eye on the water issues and also negotiating with the painter and scaffolder. I have a date for Severn Trent to investigate further, and a start date for the scaffolding permit. It's been a bit overwhelming, to be honest.

Anyway, recent GRUHI success stories include donating another box of stuff to a friend who works in a charity shop, another couple of bags to Action 21, and actually selling my tenor saxophone for real money, to someone in my music group who is collecting instruments on behalf of a Scout group. It takes a long time to list things on eBay so I'm only using it for the things that are either easy to send by post or are worth something - so far I've sold a Chromecast Audio device and my Clavinova electric piano, which gave me such pleasure for so many years but realistically I'm not going to play any more. And Lola II has one if I do get desperate.

I've been trying to keep in touch with friends despite feeling as though I'm doing a full time job at the moment. With various people I have gone for walks, seen a film, gone to a comedy show, had a Zoom call and a telephone call, and a coffee morning. In the last week I managed badminton twice, Buddhist group twice, board games, a concert, U3A walking group and spent two days with mum, accompanied by Lola II and Sister D for a trip to the cemetery to see dad's freshly installed gravestone. It was an unusually hot and sunny day and the woodland cemetery full of daffodils, including some on the grave that we definitely hadn't put there. Lola II placed a beautiful boulder she has decorated on the grave, and then we nearly got locked in as we hadn't really taken account of the fact that the cemetery closes at 4pm.

UJ is back in town, although she's staying with friends and is not sure where or when she will settle. She came round to collect the few letters for her that had arrived; we went out for a meal and it was very interesting to catch up. The winter in Ukraine has been particularly cold and conditions are terrible; she thinks her parents may be coming round to the idea of leaving. Nothing can be relied upon, no planning for the future is possible, and Russia has gained from the war between the US and Iran. More than four years since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine and it seems no nearer to ending.

Up to date

May 2025

I'm about three weeks behind with blogging, but this week I'm volunteering at the usual retreat centre, leaving my regular weekly commitments behind. So, a bit more time in hand. 

Back at the beginning of May, mum, Sister D, Lola II and I headed off to the woodland cemetery where dad is buried. The idea was to plant some flowers on the grave and to think about what wording we'd like on the stone, but we discovered that the grave had already been planted - when and by whom is still a mystery. We added some daffodil bulbs and scattered some poppy seeds, and planted the primulas we'd brought on a neighbouring grave. Maybe that's how dad's grave acquired his plants? Anyway, it was a surprisingly jolly outing with plenty of black humour.

After a weekend in Nottingham the next item of note was the first of two periodontal surgeries to try and improve the chronic problem of my gum disease. As before, it was unpleasant and uncomfortable, but with little pain either during or after the procedure. I'm not convinced that the infection will not return, and perhaps it already has, due to the difficulty of keeping the site free of food debris. 

Then there was an online retreat over a weekend, when three of us took ourselves off to a luxurious house not very far away to do the retreat together. I rigged up the TV with a webcam and hooked it up to my laptop so we could sit together for the general sessions and we split up into separate rooms for the parts where we were in different groups. We cooked and ate meals together, had some deep conversations and generally looked at life in a different way for a weekend. We all agree that it's a fine way to do this type of retreat - I don't sign up to do the online ones at home because I'd be too distracted with all the things needing my attention in my own house.

The next event was a trip to London where I met up with Lola II and Mr M for a Nepali lunch and a walk around in Woolwich, followed by a film in a cinema which has a membership scheme a bit like a London club. Next day Lola II and I went into town for brunch, she went on to one of her volunteering shifts and I met an old school friend before going on to visit mum. Then came the trip to Manchester that I wrote about last time, and a busy week leading up to this stint of volunteering. I've mostly been in the kitchen, which is the work I particularly enjoy, often in charge of the meals for those with allergies and intolerances.

There's plenty more that I'm looking forward to in the coming weeks so I don't expect I'll be able to keep on top of blogging, but that's life and I'm making the most of it.

The aftermath

July 2024

The administrative processes around death and burial will be familiar to all who have experienced a loss, so I shouldn't imagine that what we experienced was unique. We made it harder for ourselves by wishing to conduct the funeral as quickly as possible. If we'd agreed a date the following week then I wouldn't have had to get quite so familiar with people at the GP practice, the Register Office, the medical examiner and the coroner's office, and we wouldn't have been at the cemetery 30 minutes before the funeral started still not knowing whether the burial would form part of it. But it worked out fine in the end, even giving us a few opportunities to smile.

Dad was a medical doctor through and through, and although his body could not be donated for medical science because he died at home, he managed to donate his non-Parkinson's brain for research into Parkinson's disease. He was strongly anti-religion, and we reflected this in our choices at the funeral. There were a couple of readings, an 'appreciation' of his life constructed by the remaining four of us and read by Lola II. The coffin went into the grave with another reading, and mum recited the Kaddish prayer for the dead, either because she wished to or for the Jewish people in attendance, I couldn't work out which. Maybe both. Then we went off for tea.

I was away staying with mum for very nearly a week, sometimes with Lola II and Sister D and their husbands there too. On the day after the funeral we'd long been planning to take mum over to Lola II and Mr M's for the day, and there seemed no reason not to go ahead with the plan, and we even persuaded her to stay overnight. Mum reviewed and gave her seal of approval to all changes that had taken place in their house since she was last there, and Lola II arranged to borrow her regular adoptive dog as a treat - for him and for us.

It was good to come back home afterwards, and I tried to recall the effort I'd put into reflection while I was on retreat, and my determination to change my lifestyle, but it all felt a little remote. I'm trying to take the steps I worked out then to make positive and constructive changes, particularly around food, exercise, Internet access and meditation. 

We had planned a day for the Buddhist group team to come together on Sunday at my house, and it couldn't have been a better time to meet. Since then I've done pretty well with my resolutions - there's been no chocolate or snacks, I've enquired at the local leisure centre about what I might do for exercise, I've meditated every day (which absolutely wasn't the case before I went on retreat) and I have set an alarm so I don't spend more than 60 minutes at a time sitting at the computer. Which is one reason why this blog post has taken so long to put together.

I also went to the doctor with my hurty arm, which (as so often happens) started to hurt a lot less as soon as I made the appointment, but I've got some heavy duty anti-inflammatory drugs to take for two weeks anyway, and a self-referral to a physiotherapist. I also joined an online meeting of the Comms team for the Warwick Folk Festival and I'm still pretty confident that they won't try to put me in charge. Then I went back to mum's for a couple more days to continue with the admin, and here we are, two weeks on. Apart from mum not being tied to the house any longer, everything feels very much the same as before.

Coming home

1987

I wrote the following paragraphs on Friday when I got home from the retreat:

"It was a very good retreat, partly because it wasn't part of the ordination process like the last two I've attended. Ordination retreats are hard work for me, and I've had to think about why this is, because on the surface they contain nearly the same elements - meditation, ritual, time for reflection - and the additional element of group discussion is something I welcome. This was an introductory retreat (so participants didn't even have to know about or practise Buddhism) which means that the common foundation of knowledge and practice is missing and retreatants can be quite challenging. It also included more of the outdoors and quite a lot of poetry, and I had a role as organiser so I had to do a bit of extra work to make sure the week ran smoothly.

"But despite the organising and poetry I found it much more nourishing and relaxing than the previous two retreats, and maybe it's because I was camping, but there's also something about not having to achieve a standard. I did a lot of thinking about why I'm dissatisfied about a few things, and came up with a few answers, and I have even put together a tentative plan. We'll see.

"My journey to the retreat was in stages - first a visit to mum and dad, then on to a friend in Dartford, then to Mr MXF and BL2 (their daughter was there too), and finally to the retreat centre in East Sussex. On the way back I stopped for lunch with a friend near Tunbridge Wells before the long drive home.

"The best part of coming home from a retreat is my own shower. Retreat centres are perfectly warm and comfortable but the showers are definitely only just good enough. The worst part of coming home from a retreat is all the routine stuff that awaits - shopping, cooking, cleaning, admin and tidying up."

It turns out that wasn't the worst part of coming home from this retreat. On Saturday morning mum phoned to say she'd had to call the paramedics because dad was unwell. On Sunday morning, holding my hand, he died, and we buried him on Wednesday.

2009

Sight-reading on stage

Adhisthana, May 2024

I've done two weeks of all sorts of stuff, and I don't like this blog to turn into a diary, so here are just a few highlights. At the retreat centre - the schedule of work I've been given that relies on other people is about two weeks behind already and I don't know when I'll be able to start compiling the information for the print programme of retreats in 2025. Everything that doesn't rely on other people is on time and going well, as I'm sure you'd expect.

I went to the Birmingham Buddhist Centre for two days aimed at those of us who lead or support the teaching of meditation on introductory courses. Only Order Members lead the courses at the Birmingham Centre; in our little local group we don't have any Order Members so we all have to step up and chip in. Both were good days, and I learned a few things that will probably help in future. There are more sessions planned and I'm looking forward to them.

Order Members from Birmingham do sometimes come and lead our group for an evening, and we had such a visitor recently. I usually invite them and the team who support the group to supper beforehand - they get a meal and also less stress of being delayed by traffic. This one was a diagnosed and very sensitive coeliac - no problem, you'd think, to an ex-dietitian. I made a Thai salad with tofu and a potato salad, and it went down very well. We went out to the hall, did the introductions, started the meditation, and it was at that point that my mind suddenly reminded me that there is gluten in soy sauce... He was very gracious and texted me the next day to reassure me that he hadn't suffered. The amount was so small that I was lucky to get away with it.

One of my very oldest friends is someone I met on my first day at school when we were both five years old. His parents live about five minutes walk from mine, and we were in and out of each others' houses quite a bit during our school days when we both lived there. We've kept in touch, on and off, for 54 years, and last week his father died. I attended the funeral, which was held at the Jewish cemetery next door to the one mum took me to (where she wants to be buried, or scattered, or whatever). I discovered that the prayers are etched into my mind after all those years of synagogue attendance in my youth. And, as usual, someone at the event knew my mother.

My music group is still going, although this term for some reason the clarinet group barely has enough people to cover all the parts. The sax group is better attended, but still not as many people as usual. Anyway, I was recruited into this group by a friend from badminton who plays baritone sax with me, but he also plays trombone in a soul band. He recruited the chap who leads the music group into the soul band when they were running short in the horn section. And this week the band had a local gig but were short of a person to play trumpet or sax.

So with no notice at all I joined them on stage and sight-read the tenor sax part! It was tremendous fun but extremely tiring - I'd already played for 3 hours in the music group in the afternoon, and we were still playing encores at 11.30pm. I shouldn't complain, the audience was terrific, they even gave me some money, but then there was all the clearing up and I didn't get home until well after midnight. My sleep pattern was thoroughly messed up for the next two days, but it was worth it.