Yesterday proved to be on of the most interesting of days but not quite as predicted. I am eager to get back to normal or more accurately to a 'new' normal and so thought I would resume my earlier habits of always walking down the hill to collect my newspaper. I was a little dismayed to discover that my physical shape is not good as a year of pushing Meg around in a wheelchair preceded by some 6-9 months in which I had to regularly pick Meg off the floor (on one or two occasions up to four times in the day) he taken an evident toll on my health. In particular, my daughter-in-law has now noticed that I walk with a slight leaning stoop and, what has been happening is that in pushing the wheelchair around I had been using at as a sort of huge walking frame and was evidently leaning into the wheelchair itself particularly when transporting Meg in the uphill sections on the way home. So although I completed the walk, I was pretty tired after I had done the round trip and, in some ways, more tired than if I had had a wheelchair in front of me. I am philosophical bout this and I do not regret for a single moment the efforts that I undoubtedly made to give Meg a good quality of life in which I have generally succeeded but now I have to think about my own health and fitness. My intention is to get a telephone consultation with a doctor, explain and situation to him and then request not pills but a course of NHS funded physiotherapy in the adjacent Catherine Adams physiotherapy centre. As part of the same efforts to repair my health and get back to a 'new' normal. I also decided to renew my participation in the Pilates class which I used to do each Tuesday but has. been abandoned for over a year. My son very kindly offered to run me down to the clinic in the car and to pick me up afterwards which offer I gladly accepted and really needed. What followed then was remarkable. My fellow class members were reduced from the customary four to three on this occasion but I knew each one of them well. There were hugs and kisses all round and it was indicated to me how much I had been missed, particularly for the jokes and humour which permeate the session. One of my fellow classmates is a veterinary nurse who works in a practice at the bottom of the hill and unbeknown to me had often actually witnessed me pushing Meg upon what was the steepest part of the hill so knew completely why I had not been able to attend classes. I thought it was going to very difficult to do the class exercises but it was. nowhere as difficult as I thought. Our teacher explained to me that my 'muscle memory' was. being activated so she was not surprised. At the end of the session, my teacher updated me with her own bad news as she had lost her own very active father first to a broken hip, then to bowel problems and finally a massive stroke so she and her mother had gone 'through the mill' as they say. Evidently e have a lot of fellow feeling for each other and even more than we had before. So by returning, I am boosting her income a smidgeon and she was so pleased to see back that she offered me the rest of the six week block at a 40% discount, I had obviously gone to the class for the physical benefits but left it surrounded by a huge comfort blanket of affection from my fellow class members (all women, incidentally). Needless to say, this is an additional source of motivation for me to continue the classes each Tuesday.
In the afternoon, I continued with the tasks of what my niece in a subsequent long conversation with me was to call 'sadministration' or, in other words, those procedures that have to be completed after the death of a family member. She remembered well what she had to do after the death of her father (my brother-in-law some two or three years ago now). I got through to the Teachers Pension Agency as. mall portion of Meg's pension continue after her death but there is the inevitable (12-page) form to be completed. After I had completed as much of the form as I could, I needed to eventually supply the original of our marriage certificate although the documentation does refer to a certificated copy counter-signed by a relevant professional. In no way did. I wish to trust the original marriage certificate to a government bureaucracy so thought I would actually get an 'official' second copy. This proved to be. more complex procedure but I was directed by the government's own website to anther application which would locate the year, quarter, district, volume and then page number where our own marriage certificate details could be found. This I managed to do and sent my application expecting it will take about week to be delivered. But the government's own General Register Office reckoned that. this was the best and cheapest way to get me a replacement certificate so I trust. that when it turns up it is exactly what it purports to be.
Finally, the late afternoon and early evening were. to bring three wonderful surprises. The first of these was an extended and quite emotional telephone call with me niece in Yorkshire and this was to be followed by a surprise and unanticipated visit from my University of Birmingham friend. We discussed, inter alia, when the very first signs of Meg's progressive illness had started to become apparent to us and it was probably at least six years ago and probably even longer. Then I received a telephone call from a very good University of Winchester friend who did not know of Meg's demise. He was part of the birthday club of about five of us who all birthdays in May and his own is next Saturday. Hearing that Meg was. no longer with us, he promptly invited me to his party and offered to put me up for the night in his (large) farm house which invitation I very promptly accepted not least because several, other intimate friends will be there and so my presence will be a real surprise for them I would imagine.
© Mike Hart [2025]