Times-they-are-a-changing

I’ll be reducing the clutter.

By next season (October 2026 onwards) we will be in a new home.

It’ll prove to be challenging — leaving the home that I shared with MAnjula, that we created together. But it’s a positive change and MAnjula would approve.

We’ll continue to share our home with our community from around the world and new friends who find us.

A first step will be to reduce the ‘clutter’ here at home.

Already friends have been eager to pick souvenirs from our home. Furniture, paintings, and Knickknacks as their mementoes.

We continue to invite our community of guests and visitors to spot things they’d like.

Soon I’ll start posting specific things that are available to buy.

So …

Watch this space.

For details of our new home and things that may become available.

Or contact me with your requests.

Grumpy old man

One of my first clients as a student social worker was an old man.

He was seriously grumpy

We would joke about where grumpiness came from.

Was it inherent in the person? Was it learned through experience? Did it arrive with old age?

I now know the answer.

It’s all three

The key factor though is we can choose to be grumpy or not.

I was more grumpy, especially over the past few years, now I’m a bit less.

and I’ve not got the T shirt.

Footnote

As I can’t stop talking, writing, wording….

One flavour of grumpy is anger and I realise it’s derived from being sad. Another is post trauma and the impact it has.

Visit Manjula’s library there’s lots to discover that might help.

Me, I’m still working on it.

But I do have this one.

Should I be Retracing steps?

After meeting up with our mysore BnB family at WOMAD and knocking on a few of their doors I went camping.

I was apprehensive about revisiting the same places in Dorset where we’d had a family camp to celebrate Alice and Ben’s (eldest son) wedding and my 60th birthday during Manjula’s second U.K. holiday

I shouldn’t have been.

It proved to be a tonic.

I like Weymouth
Rachel and Simon of the lovely ‘hive’ cafe even remembered our visit five years ago.
Catching a ferry
Making new friends from Yorkshire
Who’s that bearded idiot?
Then back to Ruth’s in Bristol,

over to bee-man Stephen to drop our beautiful tent, return the fancy hire car and prepare to return home

In my experience, when grieving, we regularly get ambushed by memories of magical times together. They make me both happy and sad. I’ve learned not to run away but to face them, even create them, so it was ok to retrace my steps.

Thank you for joining my journey and your support.

MAnjula anniversary continuing

Sowbaghya did a wonderful job helping us remember MAnjula with assistance from Satish and Tanuja and guests, all friends of MAnjula.

Finally providing food on the roof for the crows who just might be Manjula’s soul looking for food on her journey to finding a new body.

We need to cover all bases, in case she hadn’t found a new home, as yet.

Another brick in the wall.

6C5A4AB0-09AE-47A9-995D-E9B564628A77.jpegHe’s lost his wife. Well she’s not really lost; she’s gone, Left him, Expired. Not here anymore, deceased

There’s another set of bricks to add to the impenetrable wall.

A guest innocently raised the question that Manjula shouldn’t Have died. Absolutely she shouldn’t. It turned out to be a raging tear-filled day hemmed in by the blasted wall.

There are so many, generally unhelpful bricks in the wall.

The death brick. No longer here brick. Then there’s the ‘what if’ brick, the brick that’s actually a hole, a chasm in my life. Then the feelings — the dirty brick. The what the fuck brick. What next? Remorse brick, guilt brick, I’m an idiot brick, the stress, the anxiety, the depression series of SAD bricks. The loser brick, brick, brick, brick, brick that actually creates a wall of misunderstanding, that blocks out the light, makes life dark, that shows you’re lost, smells like soil, crumbles like mud, brittle like my soul, the walls bricks are higgledly piggly, uniformity has no place here, there are abrasive bricks, sullen bricks, insensitive bricks, flying through the air hitting you on the head bricks, bringing tears to your eyes bricks, squeaky brick, thick as a brick. What about me brick? Lost my way, hitting my head against it brick, lost my love brick, disappears in a puff of smoke brick, unfair brick, didn’t get her to a British Doctor brick, meant to be brick, didn’t do anything right brick, let her go brick. What a brick. Went camping in the rain brick. Relied on the Indian doctor brick. I’m now lost brick. I love and miss you gap.

 

 

Manjula’s watching

Steevern

I know what’s happening.

Don’t for one minute think ‘out of sight – out of mind’ or that I’m not still with you.

I am here…… and you worry me

Have you learnt nothing?

I came as your maid, then nine years later, do you know what I’m going to say?

Yes, you’d become my maid.

That doesn’t mean it’s alright to lean on me soooo much. You should also stand on your own two feet.

I taught you how to manage things. All you had to do was copy me. Now look at what’s happened. The house is in a mess, the cleaners aren’t cleaning even when they manage to turn up, and you just hang around doing nothing in particular. (reading? I’ve told you its overrated) and the list of jobs, like hanging those pictures you’ve not done, just gets longer and longer. You seem to be specialising in self-pity. Now that’s sad. I don’t know about glass half full more like empty empty.

You’re a disgrace 😉.

Please get your act together.

Above all ….. realise that I love you more than anything and will always be with you.

Manjula more memories.

It’s eight weeks now. I’m in London and carrying with me a photograph of my beautiful Manjula.

We don’t have access to Mysore Market and it’s wonderful selection of beautiful fragrant flowers.

Manjula did however love receiving roses and the local Sainsbury’s has obliged.

Manjula is, of course, in my thoughts, every single minute but I also especially remember her by placing her photo somewhere prominent and displaying flowers on the monthly anniversary of that Saturday morning when she died.