Too many emergencies this time
Dec. 7th, 2020 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashlymeThe weekend was a bit pants.
My dad was sick through Saturday evening, so we had to call an ambulance after midnight. He had an operation for an aneurysm seventeen years ago, has a pacemaker and an enlarged prostate gland, and his guts haven't been great in two decades. They took him into Heartlands overnight (I kept out of the way, but heard the paramedics talking about a muntjac they'd seen in the headlights at the top of the lane). He was back by ten am. Nobody had slept well that night, but he was so dazed he thought it was still Saturday. They think it might be problems with his gall bladder. It's not the first time we've had to call 999 in the night for him - but the first time in quite a while. My relationship with him (and my mother, if we're being honest) can be complicated; he's usually a sarcastic codger and it often winds me up. There's a very good reason I'll never have the gender conversation with my parents, and why being here this long has not done my mental health much good. I'd still rather have that gruff bastard than the frail old man we got back yesterday.
Don't mind me if I write about more frivolous things. My nerves are still ragged.
Just up the road from here is a curious old semi-detached house. One half of it's done up as a mock-castle, complete with a stubby crenellated "tower" and fake window slits. I hated it as a kid but fond of it now. The other half's more trad late Victorian/Edwardian* redbrick shaded by two fine old birches, and more and more I've wondered what it would be like to live in. It has finials too: abstract flower or pineapple forms. The other morning I looked up and could have sworn one had taken the form of Pan sitting on the roof and playing the syrinx. I've walked past since and can still see the satyr from the corner of my eye. These sensory tricks are getting more common lately. A recent wet night I was walking back from the postbox. I expect to hear rain burbling in the street drains, but not an animal mewl with it. It could have been a rat, or someone's nearby pet and a quirk of acoustics, but it sounded more like a child. I didn't think of IT so much as Morlocks.
There are more black-headed gulls inland than I've seen in a good while. They make suspect line-ups on the telephone wires. I heard there was a cormorant in a Birmingham suburb a few days ago and would dearly like to see it. What does it know that we don't? Perhaps it's waiting for a new coastline.
My dad was sick through Saturday evening, so we had to call an ambulance after midnight. He had an operation for an aneurysm seventeen years ago, has a pacemaker and an enlarged prostate gland, and his guts haven't been great in two decades. They took him into Heartlands overnight (I kept out of the way, but heard the paramedics talking about a muntjac they'd seen in the headlights at the top of the lane). He was back by ten am. Nobody had slept well that night, but he was so dazed he thought it was still Saturday. They think it might be problems with his gall bladder. It's not the first time we've had to call 999 in the night for him - but the first time in quite a while. My relationship with him (and my mother, if we're being honest) can be complicated; he's usually a sarcastic codger and it often winds me up. There's a very good reason I'll never have the gender conversation with my parents, and why being here this long has not done my mental health much good. I'd still rather have that gruff bastard than the frail old man we got back yesterday.
Don't mind me if I write about more frivolous things. My nerves are still ragged.
Just up the road from here is a curious old semi-detached house. One half of it's done up as a mock-castle, complete with a stubby crenellated "tower" and fake window slits. I hated it as a kid but fond of it now. The other half's more trad late Victorian/Edwardian* redbrick shaded by two fine old birches, and more and more I've wondered what it would be like to live in. It has finials too: abstract flower or pineapple forms. The other morning I looked up and could have sworn one had taken the form of Pan sitting on the roof and playing the syrinx. I've walked past since and can still see the satyr from the corner of my eye. These sensory tricks are getting more common lately. A recent wet night I was walking back from the postbox. I expect to hear rain burbling in the street drains, but not an animal mewl with it. It could have been a rat, or someone's nearby pet and a quirk of acoustics, but it sounded more like a child. I didn't think of IT so much as Morlocks.
There are more black-headed gulls inland than I've seen in a good while. They make suspect line-ups on the telephone wires. I heard there was a cormorant in a Birmingham suburb a few days ago and would dearly like to see it. What does it know that we don't? Perhaps it's waiting for a new coastline.
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Date: 2020-12-07 04:04 pm (UTC)I know that 'gender conversation' with parents. It got me kicked out one Christmas when I was fifteen...........
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Date: 2020-12-07 04:55 pm (UTC)Thank you - he seems better today. Fingers crossed.
*It got me kicked out one Christmas when I was fifteen...........*
Urgh. I'm sorry. *hugs* if okay. I'm not sure I could even explain the concept of being non-binary to them anyway. I'm queer and Goth; they can get that bit and it's true. The people who know are the ones that really count. I wish there was a bloody handbook for these things. :-)
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Date: 2020-12-07 07:20 pm (UTC)It could have worked out worse- an aunt took me in and I eventually fetched up working in Belgium before getting into uni.
It also pushed me into early transition which is something I have never regretted.
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Date: 2020-12-08 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 12:15 am (UTC)*hugs*
Time is hard on people, and it's hard on the people around the people. I am glad that even if you'll never have the conversation with your family, you've been able to have it at all.
The other morning I looked up and could have sworn one had taken the form of Pan sitting on the roof and playing the syrinx. I've walked past since and can still see the satyr from the corner of my eye.
I wonder at what point it stops being an optical illusion and simply becomes a satyr.
I heard there was a cormorant in a Birmingham suburb a few days ago and would dearly like to see it. What does it know that we don't? Perhaps it's waiting for a new coastline.
Paging Robert Macfarlane!
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Date: 2020-12-08 12:12 pm (UTC)Thank you. *hugs* I should remember those times, and when I've been heard - and accepted. They've been drowned too much recently by a voice telling me I was a failure as a man and too much of a coward to be a woman. It's just working out how to turn off the Muzak, you know?
*I wonder at what point it stops being an optical illusion and simply becomes a satyr.*
"He wants to be goats but you make him finials"? *ducks*
*Paging Robert Macfarlane!*
I need to get hold of Underland! Thanks for the reminder.
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Date: 2020-12-08 07:34 pm (UTC)It's really hard, but it's such crappy Muzak.
*hugs*
"He wants to be goats but you make him finials"? *ducks*
You are an international treasure and also aaaaaaaaagh.
I need to get hold of Underland! Thanks for the reminder.
Welcome! Am I correct that you are also one of the lucky people in the right country to have already read Harrison's The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again?
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 09:05 pm (UTC)I'm sticking on a mixtape of Derbyshire, feminist post-punk, and cheery hauntological goodness.
*You are an international treasure and also aaaaaaaaagh.*
Hey, I'll happily take both! I can't be too grim if I'm making bad jokes.
*Am I correct that you are also one of the lucky people in the right country to have already read Harrison's The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again?*
You are, and it. Is. So. Good. You know my love for Course (which has been tested a bit by writing an essay on the thing - FOR GOD'S SAKE HARRISON WHY DIDN'T YOU NAME YOUR NARRATOR YOU SELFISH GIT) but Sunken Land? You can tell he's having fun writing it. It's enigmatic and creepy and also downright funny at times.