March

The big birthday

A bad month for teeth! It started with Teresa visiting the dentist on Monday 5 for the remainder of the fillings which had been diagnosed in January. The following week, on Tuesday 13, Helen went into hospital for a day to have two wisdom teeth extracted. Impacted wisdom teeth are difficult to remove, and the operation is usually followed by considerable pain and swelling. Eating anything solid is next to impossible for some days. Unfortunately, in Helen’s case, recovery proved to be unusually painful and slow, and a second visit to the hospital revealed that an infection had set in. A second operation was necessary to remove the abscess and some remaining roots, which meant a further week of painful recuperation. Only towards the end of the month did she start to feel better.

Teresa continued to have some success with her writing, selling a piece to an American on-line publication for real life experiences. Looking after Laddy is based on one of many incidents from our period of looking after my mother in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Later in the month, a poignant item on her grandmother’s musical interests was selected for publication in The Guardian’s ‘Playlist’ feature.

We managed this year to avoid any involvement in the Cheltenham Festival (racing, that is), which used to embroil us in its traffic when we lived in Prestbury. Teresa could walk to a coffee morning with the neighbours, and Roger’s bowls was in the opposite direction at a different time. On the Friday of that week (16) we went to a quiz in Broadway, in our usual team, and did quite well, finishing third equal. The quiz was run by a church, and we felt that the winning team, which included the Reverend Father himself, was always going to have a distinct advantage. But we surprised ourselves by scoring 9/10 on the biblical round – those sleepy Sunday Schools of long ago must have made quite an impression.

Towards the end of the month, Roger was beginning to scent the arrival of the bowls season. On Monday 19 he helped on one of the working parties to prepare the green, and the following week there was a men’s meeting to announce captains and teams.

Saturday 31 March. Teresa’s 50^th birthday. Congratulations arrive in the form of flowers …

… a large balloon with a quite specific message (if you look carefully at the ‘0’ on the balloon, the photographer’s reflection is clearly seen) and a magnificently constructed birthday card made by Juliet (with a bit of help from Clyde) …

We celebrated at home with an evening meal assembled from Marks and Spencer’s finest.

Finally, followers of this diary will be glad to know that another leak (unnoticed for some time in the gloom of the garage) has been found and put right. Meanwhile our Rover required its first MOT. Having lost most of the three year guarantee when Rover folded, we can at least console ourselves that it was not needed. However, the selling garage, which had changed hands last year, has now disappeared completely, and it seems we will not benefit from the final year of free servicing.

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