'You are old Father William' the young man said

May the spirit of happiness and health bless your lives this year. May you feel love for others and from your nearest and dearest. Why has it taken me 23 days to give you a New Years greeting? Well that is because on 2nd January I was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery and it has taken me three weeks to have enough energy to sit at the computer. Although 'rush' is a relative term when all ambulances in the area are busy with other calls and take 5 hours to transport me from one hospital to another. No life threatening moments, but still not ideal. A whole day of surgeons umming and aaahing over me, x-rays and CT scans and only then did the team cut me open and sort out my problem.

I shared the ward with a lady who had stabbed herself with a carving knife while cutting up a pumpkin. Another lady who was injured in a head-on car crash and a woman who had a serious heart and embolism problem that she insisted was not an issue and refused treatment. I lay there in the bed, not being allowed to eat or drink ... not that I had been able to keep anything, including water, down since the end of 2019 ... when the doctors said, 'So when was your last meal?' I thought it was funny to say 'Last year.' Of course they did not share my mirth. And not that I was capable of laughing ... much too sore. Anyhow surgery was successful and I was battling my way through the nightmare of waking up through the fog of anaesthetic, when I felt the warm bodies of my two cats happily purring on my legs. I thought 'how kind, someone has brought my cats to keep me company.' Well we all know that there are no cats in the hospital and it was in fact that massage machine thingy that they put on your legs to increase circulation. I remember nurses telling me to breathe ... because apparently my oxygen levels kept dipping. I would think, 'Of course I am breathing, otherwise I would be dead.' When I was finally allowed food after almost a week without anything except a drip or two ... I was excited to eat. Yes, folks, I was eager to eat that lovely hospital food. Nothing with roughage in case it got caught in my hernia repair ... so no salads on the menu for about 6 weeks ... and worst of all, no nuts! But I am home. My children have been amazing. They have cared for me, played taxi for me and insisted that I put my feet up and not do much of anything. Today is my first 'alone' day and its not really an alone day at all because a home help lady will descend after lunch to change my sheets and hang my washing for me. So I am wishing myself a healthy and happy 2020 and no more hospital visits in my future. Well I can only hope.

The beginning of the year always brings refection on the year gone by and goals for the year ahead. I wouldn't say it was resolution time, because resolutions don't always happen, but goals are good. I was eager to attack the weeds in my garden and two young missionaries from our church came to help out. Granted that one of them had never done any gardening before ... but I let him loose on cutting back leaves on my grape vine to allow sun and air to reach the bunches. He took my instructions to heart and cut off every single leaf. Yes folks, there is not a leaf left on the vine .. none, nada, nix and nothing. The vine now looks naked with these obscene looking grape bunches hanging like a gathering of nudists at a convention. Not exactly how I would have done it, but thanks guys, at least I will not have to fumble through the foliage to find my treats. Why didn't I slow the decimation of my grape vine down? Well I was not feeling quite up to it and sat on a deck chair while I conducted the orchestra of gardeners ... instead of patrolling the field like I should have been doing. The other missionary was more garden savvy and weeded the flower beds without disturbing a single flower. This is a feat worth mentioning because I have previously had 'help' where flowers were removed and 'pretty' weeds left standing. In South Africa we had a gardener that would routinely rip out my rose bushes ... yes, flowering at the time ... and I would have to walk behind him and replant and hope that they would survive. Then this particular gardener would mow over shrubs. I would hear the lawn mower labouring away and screeching in an awful way ... when I arrived the young school boy (because that is the only garden help we could afford) would be holding the mower at an angle to better destroy the plant. Truly, cheap is not always worth the savings. Then there was the man who stuck his finger into the whirring blades because he wanted to resign the job but thought if he was 'injured' we would be obliged to carry on paying him. He moved on to another home which had a swimming pool ... and the owner and her daughters would sunbathe around the pool on a warm day. Well he mowed the lawn in their vicinity so well and neglected the rest of the large garden so badly, that he was fired by the irate husband and father. But we did have an amazing gardener at one stage. That man was legend. He trimmed all the bushes and hedges into topiaries that would boggle the brain. Him and the 'finger in the mower' guy were brothers and sadly when the topiary man was killed in a car accident, we hired his brother in the hope that he would be similarly blessed by the gardening Gods ... but no, he was terrible. The gardener was paid for by my husband's employer at the time. The salary was peanuts and the 'perks' of the job were 5 litres of milk ... with cream on the top ... A DAY. A gardener, a night watchman and a house maid who did the cleaning. The nightwatchman would fall asleep by 8 pm and Barry would go out about 9 pm to give him a milky hot chocolate drink and to wake him up. Because what is the use of a night watchman if he is not watching? We also had a huge Pyrenees dog that was the real hero of the night watch saga. And his payment was to be allowed to sit in our fish pond and cool off during the day.

The gold fish loved Rolux, the dog, and we had hundreds of little gold fish babies in the years he inhabited that pond. The house maid had a business on the side, breeding guinea pigs that she would sell on to her fellow farm workers for protein. And these guinea pigs would co-habit with her in her little unit. We visited once or twice and you really had to watch where you stepped in case you stood in something unmentionable or hastened the end for some poor little creature. She also loved our cleaning products ... you know those harsh ones that you would use in the shower to remove mildew? Well she would add a few tablespoons full to each batch of her bean meal ... and assured us that it softened the beans in half the time it normally took to boil them up. How she found out this little trick baffles me to this day ... and how she could stomach that soupy taste, well that is debatable. Barry would say that years of using this product had burnt off her taste buds ... it was either that or the copious amounts of alcohol that she consumed. She would arrive so drunk that I would need to guide her to her job for the day ... like washing or ironing ... and then hope like hell that she did not fall into the tub and drown when I wasn't looking. All of these servants were geriatric and this job was supposed to ease them into retirement. Many of them had no homes or places to go to live out their old age and so they lived in units on the farm and the farmer supplied all their food and care as a way of rewarding them for years of hard labour in the sugar cane fields. Yes, some of you first world folks do not understand this concept, but it is how it is done in Africa.

What else am I setting as my goal for the year? Weight loss ... of course, Writing books ... yes. Doing workshops and lectures ... yes, I have a few set up already. But I have two unexpected projects in the pipeline. A happiness or hauora journal. Hauora is a Maori concept of health and well-being where each wall of your 'house' represents a different aspect of life. Such as social well being, physical, mental and emotional and spiritual. The theory is that you need all four 'walls' of your home to be balanced and equal to be stable. I know that when my mental and emotional well being is not healthy then my physical body suffers. I have to really work on the social side of things at times because I am a bit of a hermit. My daughter, Nix and I will work together to give tips and guidance and challenges to steer people through our journals to find happiness. Yes, I will be challenging myself along the way. We both feel that we need this concept more than trying to sell it to others ... but that is the best way. To understand depression and sadness, health issues and mental challenges from the inside gives us insight into what needs to be highlighted in our journal. As usual I will do the illustrations and work on the pithy sayings along the way. We are also looking at t-shirt design ... lots of ideas and dreams and goals for 2020.

Then I am doing an in depth research project that will culminate in a book about Halloween and its origins. This has been an on going interest of mine for about a decade and often people will ask me where I get my information from. So this will tie it all together and give me a physical manifestation of my mental pictures and thoughts around the subject. Watch this space for the next thrilling instalment. And then of course, I need to put a gravestone on my husband's grave. So my goals for 2020 ... are basically nose to the grindstone, head down, bum up and get things done. Who said that retirement was meant for sitting on a rocking chair and watching the world go by? I hope to even do a bit of travelling in the year 2021 and just need to get my health and finances back up to where they should be. Paris is on the agenda. I looked at hotels in the city and you can go from a room for thousands of dollars with reviews that say 'bed was uncomfortable but ambience was great.' to the hundred dollar hotel rooms that complain about faulty toilets and no wifi. You get what you pay for folks. But each hotel has a distance monitor next to it saying 3 km to the Eiffel tower and 5 km to the city centre. Or similar measurements. Of course the further out of city centre you go, the cheaper the rooms. Not that I speak French, so I am guaranteed to get lost at some stage. All I can say is Bonjour and Merci ... which might or might not be helpful. But onward and upwards and positive thoughts abound.

You are old, Father William," the young man said,

"And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head— Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door— Pray, what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box— Allow me to sell you a couple." "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life." "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose— What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father; "don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"