my list of favourites has changed dramatically over the past 4 years: bear with me til I assemble a set of the mosre interesting ones!
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Tuesday November 25th 2008
Hello, again! Well news news news from the exciting world of heart nursing: really! I'm just back from many many shifts in a row, followed by a day's ECG analysis course. Nights again tonight. Then THREE WHOLE DAYS OFF! I am loving my new present as a nurse, and the future is incredibly exciting.
My current job is going to change so that I am in cardio-thoracic intensive care: the learning curve will be steep, but I love the challenge of learning. At 31 I know I will never be content with the level of my knowledge: at 21 I was spending my life smoking 20 marlboros a day, reading Patricia Cornwell novels and wondering about not an awful lot.
At present I'm waiting to start this job, so still in my current (temporary) job in the acute ward where people with heart attacks are taken to recover. All the talk is of christmas & new year shift patterns - which are you working is the mantra...I have no idea: but my god I'll miss being at home this year. My lovely Ma & I love to spend a long time planning stuffings, vegetable dishes and puddings while singing/screeching along to christmas music of all sorts. Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You is a favourite. Stan and I are having attacks of Christm-itis, where a scent, a sound or a sensation gives us goose-bumps of Christmassyness: the tree will be up for the 1st of December
Orkney Street Party: why are all the good things on when I'm at work?...
So the night of the 30th of December will be spent in Partick, planning our Christmas flat...at home in Orkney there's a street party to celebrate St.Andrew's Day. It sounds absolutely fantastic: bands, fireworks, celebration & hubub. When at home, my lovely Ma & Robbie love for all of us to head down the street to hear Shoot the Piper play in the Ferry Inn. The Chair are a band made up of many members of Orkney folk elite: god I wish I could be there! Some of the band members make up Saltfishforty. In 2004 my pal Mrs.D & I went to see them in King Tut's, where she said:
they're like a celtic The Darkness!
© Mrs. H Dearness
On the 6th were's going to see Cinderalla at the King's Theatre. Afterwards, we're heading to a folk music awards, where Saltfishforty are playing. So that's some consolation...but saturday night, when I clamber up to our 3rd floor flat with my bike after 12 hours at work, and another 24 to go, I shall think longingly of my lovely home island, buzzing and singing with party glow scents, sounds and sensations.
Tuesday October 21st 2008
Two years since last I updated this page: two years! I sit here now in the early morning darkness and think about what's come to pass over that time.
I'm now a fully registered nurse, working to care for patients who have had heart attacks. Graduation is this december, and it shall be my proudest moment to stand with Stan, my Mum & Robbie as I get my nursing school brooch pinned on me. Yesterday I found out I have been accepted on a Masters programme, which will see me study in depth for the next three years. What then?
Our allotment has become the most blessed, wonderful thing in our lives. Stan and I have spent many nights of late celebratng our wealth as we eat so richly from our own soil. Last night's tea was a beef casserole with our own celeriac, beetroot, onion and swede, with Italian cabbage to accompany. Watching or listening to the news, hearing about how dire some people's lives are just now, we are so thankful and happy that we have own own quarter acre which gives us so so much.
We've become really gripped by good eating - having so much in the way if wonderful ingredients, it's a natural progression. This is a great time of year to be trying the beetroot & cocoa cake. I will post some of our new favourites soon: squash and sausage lasagne; chickpea and pinto bean stew with chorizo.
Stan is now studying nursing too: he is in his second year of Mental Health nursing. He's so fascinated by how our minds' workings influence our succesful lives, and with his great intelligence and gentleness, he is going to do so well.
So it's been a good four years, this course, but it's been hard, personally, financially and intellectually. This website has suffered and so thank you to all the many people who have emailed me asking if I'll be writing some more. It's so touching. I will try. The site started when I felt really dissatisfied with my work: it was a way of showing myself I could think and be creative. Now life is so full of possibilities and exciting roads I can take: with some effort, writing my yarnings can be one of them too.
Til then, cheerio!
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