Category: ZOOM

The death of a spouse, a Zoom meeting on Joy

A day of death and joy

After a morning attending to domestic things I decided to go and perform gardening work for one of my clients who I knew had lost her husband a couple of weeks ago. I see plenty of videos and TV on people suffering in hospital but not so many ‘beginning to end’ stories. The widow told us in detail what happened with her husband

His wife Valerie said:  My husband started to feel unwell and was vomiting on the Wednesday so she told him to go back to bed and rest to see if the symptoms improve. When they did not she called the doctor’s surgery in the afternoon and a doctor came along.  He arrived without announcing his identity and examined him for a few minutes and said that if the problem gets worse he should call to surgery. 

Valerie was not happy with the diagnosis and called 999. The two women paramedics turned up 20 minutes later and decided to take him to hospital straight away, which was the RUH in Bath.

The nurse phoned on Thursday morning to say they were going to do tests. The nurse called again 4pm Thursday afternoon saying they have not been able to perform any test as there was not enough of an  interval between the vomiting to put in the tubes. There was nothing they could do so the only option remaining open was to make him comfortable.

Valerie and her son were invited to stay as long at they wanted. Valerie went with her son Thursday evening and they stayed with him until he passed on the Friday morning. 

Valerie was glad that she had been able to stay with him up to the end .

We did a good job in the garden and afterwards I went to thanks her and get paid.  I stepped up the level of service a bit and set that if she ever needed anything she should call. I said that as a coach and therapist I was very used to dealing with people who had passed, so we were not embarrassed or anything.

I meet my opposite in driving

So I was in a car park waiting for my partner to finish her shopping and I noticed a woman adroitly parking her car in one of the bays. She parked it right in the middle with only a deviation of a couple of inches. Me being me I had to tease her about not being perfectly parked. I admitted that I hated reversing in two parking spaces. At this point her eyes lit up and she said she loved reversing, and preferred it to driving forward. I laughed and said that we were definitely diametrically opposed.
Such gems come out of nowhere in an instant

A Time In The Working Man’s Club

Radstock has such a club populated almost entirely by guess who, working men, self-employed you name it they are there and as this was a Friday evening there were more of them and the laughter was more raucous. There is a great spirit of comradeship between working people with an emphasis on teasing each other, or as Londoners would say ‘taking the mic’. If you can’t take jokes against yourself then don’t come in. It is a dream of mine to have a big social organization of which a Working Men’s Club could spontaneously form itself in a pub somewhere. People could use the time together to swap useful information in other words gossip.

We were there to celebrate the gardening job and being paid. I had my usual half of Guinness and a double house whiskey, Françoise had a soft sparkling drink. Although I do not know many of them by name I get a friendly nod and smile from many of them.

My allotment in full bloom

I do not take any active part now in the allotment management that I used To run but I went there to strim my plot and I could not help being overwhelmed and moved by the profligacy of nature. How brilliant nature was in creating its many forms. The pictures below give just a small impression. If we only inhabit supermarkets how come we see plants in their full glory.

A zoom call on joy

I went home via a fish and chip shop that had on offer a very substantial piece of cod with very fresh chips. They were cooked in fresh batter, you can always tell. This was the Friday evening of the Scientific and Medical Network who have a virtual pub. It is theoretically the summer break but people missed it so much that a summer program was organized so there was no break.

There is a lot we can say about joy but I found a little piece that pretty much sums it up.

Don’t aim at joy.
Joy is dynamic. Joy is life.

You cannot find joy. There’s no path.
In fact, joy finds you when you no longer seek it.

It’s true.

If you seek joy, it’s because you don’t possess it.
If you let it find you, it’s because you trust life.

And remember,
not needing joy is a joy in itself…

During the session there came a time when we were invited to break into groups for more discussion on things that were joyful.  The host was a bit uncertain about the number of people per group, and suggested 10 people.  I who have had more experience suggested four people.  I said to the group that due to the subject matter that would not be enough time. Anyway, we went into the groups and sure enough at the end we found that we were all barely getting into the subject before we had to close.

I told everyone that you do not know what you know until you tell someone. That’s a little bit of a riddle but I found it to be very true over the years

Two things that have really annoyed me today

So I got up this morning and went to Wetherspoon’s for breakfast. I arrived about 8:30 AM and ordered my meal which was a traditional breakfast with coffee. To my surprise I was only charged £2.75 and I forgot that from Monday to Wednesday for some perverse reason the government is picking up the tab for half the food provided that it is below £10 ahead. I think that is to feed us crumbs of hope, the feeling that we are loved, as opposed to the dark things that are going on behind-the-scenes.

In the next stall was a young mother attempting to look after a noisy young child together with others who had left before my arrival. The mother left shortly before I did. On the way out I wondered why they ordered a traditional breakfast when in fact they hardly ate anything one person has had the bacon, half a sausage, and an egg and someone else has barely touched their plate. When I was young, my mother used to say to me “think of the starving Africans” as an incentive to finish with a clean plate. They say that people born during or after the war always clean their plates obsessively and I have largely inherited this habit. The fact of the matter is I can’t bear wasted food. If you were not hungry why order the food in the first place.

Today was hot, about 30°, and I spent much of the time populating my websites and watching videos. One of them was by Dr Andrew Wakefield talking about the damage that vaccines can cause and inviting us to watch a film which a rental charge is paid. I have put it in my relevant website if you are interested.

I visited a couple of new people might be gardening prospects. One of them has an infection of Mares Tails and surprisingly enough one way of getting rid of them is WD – 40. Another way is using Weedol.  The other person did not quite know what she wanted, was asking for tree pruning at the wrong time of year, and was ambivalent about how much she wanted to pay so I gave her what I thought was a reasonable quote by text and we will see what happens. Most of the people in Timsbury are very reasonable and do enjoy working there.

This evening, I was invited to take part in one of the ZOOM chat groups run by my local church. The vicar was slightly surprised to see me and when I said that he had invited me tonight he realised that he had sent invitations to everyone for the Tuesday as opposed to spreading them out between three nights, Tuesday Wednesday Thursday.

We started with some small talk and then he introduced a biblical text. We were barely into the conversation when one of his children made a sound. He apologised and said he had to go and put a dummy in the mouth his child. Evidently, his wife could not baby site as she had to go out to deliver some clothes for a sleep-in and she had not returned. He came back to the meeting and we made an effort to start again and were just getting into things when his wife arrived, batting in with some irrelevant information about the fact that one of the children had run fast down the drive towards the nearby vet.

I was preparing myself to say something and this I found a really violent interruption; I just wondered if the wife had any respect at all for what was going on. At this moment I decided that the meeting was not for me and I switched off my video and audio. It remained switched off for the rest of the meeting. I’m just wondering whether it’s me or whether it is asking too much for someone to actually be with us in spirit,  in focus and without interruption, for an evening session lasting one hour especially as if we have no other opportunity during the week due to the ridiculous lockdown.

What kind of psychopathic mind would say that no singing must take place in the churches? The technocratic mind is not interested in religion.

Anyway, after that mini rant back to the subject. I don’t know what is in the mind of his wife to think you can just batting any time she likes without being seen on screen. I do need or should I say prefer to have fellowship with like-minded people but it looks to me as if this portal is not suitable. My wife thinks I should have a word with him but do I really have to go to the stage of explaining basic professionalism. Maybe other people like it the way it is that it does not fit with my style.

I’m sitting here writing at nine o’clock in the evening minus a shirt and still very hot and sweaty. I can’t imagine what it would be like in a country with 90% humidity every day and temperatures of say 35°C like it must be in Dubai. Anywhere overall, a good day.

Second ZOOM meeting, lots of good feedback and thanks

There is no question in my mind that we are hard-wired to communicate together, especially if we have something in common. In my case, it is fellow Red Pill people who see the world in a different way. Yesterday I sent out 24 invitations to attend a ZOOM meeting. We ended up with 11 people including a very interesting and dynamic lady from California who wanted to buy land and grow food. Somewhat remarkable conversations ensued and I took the decision to record the whole event which took 846 MB, quite a chunk of the 1 GB of data storage allowed for my level of subscription. If I want to have 10 GB I have to pay £30 a month to ZOOM. I’m not prepared to do this so I’m going to give everyone a chance of viewing the video and then delete it next Wednesday when we make the next one.

I thought of streaming the next ZOOM meeting to the grand British public because it’s all very well sharing stuff that we already know – mostly – but it’s another thing to reach out to people who are not really aware of what’s going on. One of the most shocking things is the misallocation of nurses, the complete cancellation of operations (cancer goes on growing) and why oh why are dentists closed? Are they afraid of what the government might say? What about the people in pain? What do they do? This government has been an utter disgrace and I hope that they are made aware of the deficiencies sooner rather than later.

Another lovely day today. We were at the allotments and one of the committee, Will, had ordered a load of manure which he was busy wheeling to his plots. He wants to be dig-free by next year so this is the year to enrich the ground. Almost every plot is in good condition except one or two older people who should have given up their allotment some time ago but hang on and do the minimum to avoid being kicked out. It is very dry here in England at the moment so plenty of watering is needed during this critical spell of growth. Our lawns are already suffering and going dry.

We have recently bought a blender which can either be used for vegetables or fruit. My stomach is playing at the moment so I’m very much enjoying the zero effort of absorbing a rich nutritional mix of fruits both frozen and fresh. Last night I got so disturbed that I didn’t get to  sleep until about five in the morning. I was in pain, and suffering from a bloated stomach all night. My intention is to reduce the intake of food and indeed wine and tempting sweets that you can by in the supermarkets that have far too much sugar to do me any good. Today, so far so good as I write at half past nine in the evening.

We suffered from ‘the claps’ today. Everyone walked down the road and met together and started clapping at eight o’clock. In my view there have been completely conned by the government and BBC propaganda and have no idea that the nurses are standing around doing nothing having been allocated to COVID wards from other wards that should have been busy with  doing operations.  Incidentally it is quite shocking to read of the effects of the lockdown on people. In California they had a year’s worth of suicide in four weeks and has been a marked increase in the amount of child abuse not to mention depression and alcoholism. It just shows how little those who rule over us care about human beings.

We are considering making long term plans for food growing and storing. I don’t know how long we will survive without electricity because that does drive the sewage and without sanitation I think life could become unpleasant. I wonder if we should get a pot and dig holes in the garden. If the government has its way, our lives will never be the same again. Nevertheless, when I serve others I’m happy and fulfilled so that is what I intend to continue to do.