Life on hold

When your parents reach their late nineties, you fall into a feeling that they'll go on forever. That somehow the accidents and illnesses that befall other people's parents have totally overlooked yours.
Obviously it's not so, age catches up with us all, and a month or so ago we made the tough decision that my mum would actually be better off cared for in a residential home. In part, we'd been expecting this day to come, but we still weren't really prepared for it. We hoped though that some of the difficulties and worries of the past months might be behind us and a little stability return to our lives.

But no. My mum had hardly moved in to the care home before my dad fell ill, necessitating a week in hospital. Nothing really serious, apart from, as I've said before, EVERYTHING is serious when you're in your late nineties.
Now, Dad's back home, and, although living alone for the first time ever has definitely been a shock to him, after a shaky start he's settling into his new routine with lots of visits to see my mum, and possibly a day out each week at an old folks day centre (though the 'old folks' there are twenty years younger than him!)
What's slightly taken me aback though, is how I feel at sea. Before I've managed to cope with this sort of dashing about, here, there and everywhere. This time I didn't. At the end of a day, I was exhausted, more emotionally than physically I think.

The heat this last month has probably not helped. As temperatures hit the high twenties, day after day, week after week, I just gave up hope of doing anything. Apart from a curtailed visit to Timber Festival, we haven't gone out anywhere. I abandoned the gardening and housework. I couldn't find the energy to cook dinner. I cancelled evenings out at gigs, and a weekend at Curious Arts Festival. Life outside of looking after my parents ground to a halt.


Hopefully we've started to turn a corner. Care-home visiting is time consuming, but, although my mum doesn't always recognise us, my dad wants to visit her as much as possible. At least we're past the chaotic settling-in phase, so maybe now life will return, not back to normal, but to something a little more predictable.

Timber Festival 2018 - an oldie's viewpoint

I've already written a round up of the fun I had at Timber festival, but back in April when I was looking round the local festival scene, I was looking for an event that would appeal to all ages, or perhaps more accurately my mid-life age group, so I thought the weekend was worth revisiting with that in mind.


I'm a relative newcomer to festivals, particularly the camp-in-a-field sort. I'd tested the water, so to speak, with visits to Hay Festival and the mayhem that is Edinburgh in August, taking in both Fringe shows and Book Festival events there, but I only really took the plunge with a proper festival a couple of years ago at Curious Arts Festival - and really enjoyed it.

So, what is a more mature festival-goer looking for? Primarily, like anyone of any age, to be entertained and amused, with, certainly for me, a little bit of intellectual stimulation thrown in; at Curious Arts there were author events; at Timber, discussions about the importance of woodland, sustainability and environmental concerns.



This was something that immediately appealed to me when I first heard about Timber Festival, and why I was so delighted to be asked along as a 'Timber Pioneer'; although there would be musicians on the two stages pretty much constantly, it wasn't primarily a music festival. Instead it wanted to spread the word about the benefits and pleasures of spending time among nature in general, and woods in particular, there would be entertainment for the younger festival goers, and interesting talks and debates for the older ones. Excellent for an old tree-hugger like me! I'm certainly not looking for a retro 70s/80s pop extravaganza, or a nostalgic look at the good old days of my teens. I want something relevant to now.

up close with Museum of the Moon

I never found time for everything I wanted to see and do (we were hampered by a family crisis), and there were lots of wood-related activities I would have liked to investigate more - pole lathe turning, carving with a spoke shave, willow weaving, wreath making, discovering how charcoal is made. On the other hand, it's only fair to say that I really enjoyed some of the 'children's' events as much as they did - the Seek, Find, Speak performance, the campfire storyteller, finding my way through the maze - and many of the art installations such as the Museum of the Moon and the night time Fire Garden appealed to everyone.

 at the top of the hill, in the
shade of a hedge, 
with the Nightingale
stage below

Down to the practicalities.

The festival took place on a 70 acre site, divided into smaller hubs of activity, and with quite a slope to it, which might have caused a slight problem for us more mature folk, as the car park and campsite were situated at the top, with much of the festival happening at the bottom. We made the mistake on the first day of dashing straight down the hill to the Field Notes tent to catch a discussion I particularly wanted to hear, and later walking directly back up, which was dreadfully steep. The next day we found a more circuitous route that wasn't half as tiring, and, also, that if you didn't dash straight down there was plenty to see and do before, or even instead of, heading down the hill. 

art from rubbish

Attracted at first by a turtle made from old tyres, we ended up chatting at length to the Greenpeace rep, but there were other equally interesting informative stands there, from Derbyshire Wildlife, the National Forest, and Forest Holidays, plus pop up shops selling goods from wicker sculptures to clothing. Forest bathing was situated not far away but in a more secluded area of the site, a horse-logging demonstration off to another, and at night Jony Easterby's Tree and Wood drama and song lit up a small woodland clearing. With a variety of food and drink stalls in this area, and the natural acoustics bringing the music from the Nightingale stage drifting up the slope, you could almost have spent a day without venturing down the hill.

Moving round the site, there were plenty of seats here and there, especially by the food stalls but due to the hot dry weather sitting on grass under the shade of a hedge was an attractive alternative. Folk singer, Ewan McLennan, performing on Sunday afternoon, commented on how odd it was to find people at a British festival huddling in the shade!


As for the food itself, the choice was excellent. Everything from pizza, fries, burgers and posh hotdogs to burritos, halloumi fries, and curry, lots of vegan/vegetarian options, plus cakes and ice creams so you could be as cautious or adventurous as you wanted. Something else I liked was that the food stalls weren't all crowded together in one spot, but distributed across the various 'hubs', so that you didn't have to walk a long distance for food, only to walk back again - I'm old, so I believe in this sort of energy-saving :)







There's just one thing I've not covered ...  mention festivals and most people (particularly of my age group) will ask about toilets, expecting horror stories. They'd have been disappointed though. Timber actually had some of the best mobile loos I've seen - wood-effect laminate cubicles and real running water in the hand basins! OK, not all of them were this good - at various points around the site there were more 'normal' portaloos but there were plenty of them, well-spaced around the site, and I didn't find any that weren't perfectly clean. As we weren't camping, I didn't see the showers, but I imagine they were up to the same high standard.
As the sun set, strings of lights came on to mark the pathways, to help you find your way around the site.



So, if you're a mid-lifer like me and considering a little festival style adventure, would I recommend Timber? Without doubt, especially if you've an interest in the outdoors and woods. You've obviously got to be of the right mindset - if your interests are solely fast cars or computer games this isn't for you :)

As a Timber Pioneer my entry was paid for, but not my opinions, they're all my own!

Next year's dates have now been announced - 5/6/7/July 2019 - and early bird tickets gone on sale 
Sign up for e-news at www.timberfestival.org.uk

A "Half-full" Week - despite parents' health problems

Since the beginning of the year we seem to have been in a loop of disruptions, and just when I thought things were settling down, after earlier-than-expected grandson, colds, my daughter's move, and then the snow, something else came along to throw everything pear-shaped. This time it was health problems for my parents. Something comparatively minor really - apart from the fact that if you're in your late 90s NOTHING is ever minor, so when a younger person would be nipping to see a GP, older folk end up in hospital, and when one goes in hospital, the other goes into respite care. So we've had a week or more spending all day out, dashing, or sitting stuck in traffic queues, between hospital and care home, getting home with barely enough time to walk the poor dog (who's definitely feeling neglected), grab a takeaway/frozen dinner, and collapse on the sofa, numbly watching old Star Trek Enterprise and Big Bang Theory, before falling asleep.
Nothing prepares you for having to turn into carer for your parents, and it's been a week that's left me physically and emotionally drained. Sadly, such weeks are bound to become more frequent.
It's too easy, though, to fall into the glass-half-empty mindset, so instead I've decided to list all the good things that also happened this week.


Firstly, a competition prize arrived. A Taste of Arran gift box won through CalMac ferries in the run up to Christmas. It's taken a while to arrive as e-mails got mixed up, but it's here! And filled with cheese, chutney, oatcakes, and (my Scottish favourites) haggis, and tablet (sort of like fudge but better).

Making time on Mother's Day to take Dylan the dog out for a special walk at Shipley Country Park, with new places for him to sniff, oh and daffodils and snowdrops for me to admire.

Later that day, tea with our eldest daughter to celebrate her first Mother's Day, and look, a wonderful 'first' for me too, a card from my baby grandson.




Retail therapy and discovering a fab new (to me) clothing brand, Lily and Me. FB has been showing me their adverts for a while, and this week I thought, Why not? Let's try them - and these first two tops are great.





Food - yes, we've eaten a LOT of frozen dinners and takeaways, but one day we treated ourselves to lunch at IKEA - hardly gourmet dining but it was different (Moroccan chicken), self-service so quickly picked up, and, most importantly, on the route from care home to hospital.


Our new armchair, on order for six or seven weeks, arrived.








More food! Lemon muffins from Morrisons. I don't often shop there but we were restocking my parents' food cupboards with cake, amongst other things, and I thought it best to test these myself.




The garden daffodils have survived the beating they took from the snow, and are now in flower.









And don't forget social media. I know lots of people knock it, but at times like these it reminds me that there IS more to life than sitting in traffic queues and hospital wards