I woke up this morning feeling a wee bit lighter. I made a coffee and now I’m sitting in my moger of a kitchen with my braw big dug. I love my dug. I often think of all the pets caught up in the wars of this world just now. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Last night, me and the dug went down the shore and she swam in the sea whilst the sun set behind Arran. It was so peaceful. I am so lucky.
I’m sitting here as if I have nothing to do. I actually have umpteen things I could be doing. I’m great at procrastinating.
I was a nurse for 25 years. Quarter of a century. That’s a long time. But I gave it up last year, feeling I was always failing to meet the demands no matter how many extra hours I put in.
So now I’m a dug walker! It was slow at first, but, I’m getting there now. I walk a Yorkshire Terrier, a Lhasa Apso, a Pointer, two Shar-pei’s, a wee shaggy mongrel, a Cocker Spaniel, a Cockapoo, a Labrador pup and a French Bulldog. My dug walks most of them with me. I charge peanuts but hey ho. I’m skint, but at least I don’t need to write notes.
Due to my high levels of skintness, I also deliver pizza most nights. I’m still grieving for nursing, I was good at most of it, but I’m getting used to my new life. Nothing is forever.
I work mostly with guys. The kind of guys who give guys a good name.
Stevie, in his Doric tongue, makes me laugh whilst we do the dishes and mop the floors. He tells me of his childhood in Fife, picking berries and tattie howkin, running from the Social. And that he doesn’t eat tuna or salmon because of the way it is farmed, that the fish are riddled with lice which pollute the rivers. He tells me of his old job hanging the chickens and having to kill cockerels and of being exploited by the so called gentry. He’s done jobs most of us avoid thinking about.
Him and Chris are kind and wink at me when I’m feeling down. I think they can tell when I’ve been greetin. Ashok too, is kind. One time, on my way to the car with a tower of deliveries, my legs started to buckle under the weight. Ashok screeches his car to a halt, and, like a knight in shining armour, is beside me, sharing the weight and opening the boot of my car for me. After his shift, he goes to work in the all night garage. His wife works in the pakora factory.
Eric, like me, has a memory that is failing him and is my fellow caffeine addict. Him and his wife are not long back from Arizona, where they saw the eclipse. Eric has a blue car, but gets mixed up and will go into any blue car. Khan is new. He started during Ramadan and used a cardboard box as a prayer mat in the cupboard. We complain about the pot holes here, but he says there were no roads in Afghanistan, so driving here is a result for him. Aaron takes a size 13 in a shoe. The council threatened him with an ASBO (not because of his shoe size) but have arranged for him to busk with his ukulele instead. Yalcin is sad because his house is too cold for his son to visit and his wife, who is an English teacher in Turkey, can’t get a visa. We have all felt despair at some point. It makes us laugh harder and be kind to each other.
Time for coffee no. 2. I am addicted to anything caffeinated, just to keep me going.
My partner is still sleeping. So I’ve got the kitchen to myself. We have a tangerine chaise longue and I’m lying on it, checking my phone. I have a message from my daughter, saying she’s not been well and had to go to the on call doctor. My daughter has 3 weans and little help from me at the moment due to my working hours. I am riddled with guilt. When they were wee, I worked part time as a nurse and was off weekends so I was able to watch them. I didn’t know when I was well off.
Covid and lockdown changed me. I take risks and make different decisions now. Life is not permanent. I knew that before, obviously, but feeling it is different.
My future might be better, and it might not. I hope I will be able to work less and be with my family more. I hope the wars sort themselves out and that families and pets are re-united. For me, hope is not so much a thing, as a feeling, an experience, a sensation. This morning I woke feeling a bit lighter. It is getting easier to lift one foot in front of the other. I sleep better. I don’t worry about missing things and someone dying and it being my fault.
Anyway, the dug has her bouncy ball in her mouth and my pizza delivery uniform is not going to hang itself out, so I better move.
I hope it doesn’t rain.