June Sunshine in Scottish Meanderings

Which seems to be a very distant memory right now as it pours with rain outside and has been all day!

I've been struggling quite a bit these last few weeks - I'm only active for a few hours in the afternoon so it's difficult to pack enough in to keep on top of things which results in an overall feeling of nothing at all making progress which is horrible. I feel like I’m slowly drowning a lot of the time. My sleep is also really disturbed just now - I sleep for two or three hours then am awake for another few hours and can generally drift off again in the morning but wake feeling absolutely ghastly. But if I don’t do that and just get up I also feel awful and can’t make it through the day. It seems to be misery either way.

Most of us going through this awful journey have major issues with sleep and some have found improvements with a low histamine diet. It seems very complicated though and varies from person to person and I just don’t have the energy to investigate it right now so I feel a bit stuck. It scares me having to find the strength to keep going with this when it wears me into the ground so much.

And then I feel ungrateful saying that when one of my friends who used to be in the Italian class but left came to our last class before the summer break in May and told us she had Stage IV perineal cancer and it had spread. She has 4 kids in their teenage years/twenties and has been through the mill with her daughter in the last couple of years with very bad mental health. I just can’t imagine what she’s going through right now. I want to reach out but am struggling to find the right words. I’m going to do it though because I know there might come a day I’ll regret it if I don’t.

I did manage to read a very short book in June so I took great hope from that. It's been so distressing not being able to read when it's always been such a source of pleasure in the past - not to mention information and education. I can well remember when I finally got the hang of being able to read silently around the age of 7 and the world which that suddenly opened up to me. To be able to read anything without having to wait for someone to read it for me was nothing short of bliss to my then young self.

I've posted this photo before of Mum spontaneously joining in my Hopscotch game but am just popping it in here again to show the white shed/playhouse in the background (top left of the garden) because it was my secret reading spot due to its sloping roof. I could climb up from the gate post at the back and onto to the coal shed behind it then onto the roof itself and lie there reading without anyone knowing where I was. Well unless they were upstairs I suppose .......😄 The roof was tarred felt so it got lovely and hot in the summer and I spent many blissful hours up there reading the latest Enid Blyton or Jennings and Derbyshire.


And then when I thought more about it I realised that the books I have managed to get through in the last 8 years which I can remember have actually been quite significant to this journey. I wonder if it's true that you find what you need when you need it? Like someone significant coming into your life at just the right time or picking out just the right book when you need to read it? Thank goodness I downloaded the Goodreads app to keep track of them because I can see from that that I actually had a good reading spell for a few months 2 years ago before I began coming off the second psychiatric drug and I'd forgotten about that.

Looking through that list it was books about other people's experiences of keeping going in the face of adversity which I leaned towards and which kept me going but in the last two years there have sadly only really been 3 books I’ve got through. They've been significant though.

The first was a re-read of Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott which I can hardly remember but what I took from it was when things get overwhelming just take it step by step and you'll get there. The second was Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl about how he had got through his time in the concentration camps and the importance of meaning and purpose in life but especially in suffering. And the third last month was On Life After Death by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross about how in the course of her work she had plenty evidence that this life isn't all there is and there is a Bigger Picture. It gave me great comfort because I was really struggling when I read it.

So I'll keep persevering and try another short one again sometime - see if I can up the score on my 'books read' list this year!




It looked like we had most of our summer in June - July has been pretty abysmal which has been a bit depressing. But I was grateful for the sunshine when it appeared and sat out in the front garden when I could. There were a couple of hot days when I took my diary down to the beach in the evening and sat in my favourite spot at the end and wrote and there was one lovely day when the girls were at their Dad's and Nikki, Ruari & I went down to the beach for a picnic tea - that was so nice. There was a cool breeze off the sea so it wasn't too hot and I was feeling a bit better that day which makes such a huge difference to everything.


I did actually take those socks off and roll up my leggings and paddled along the seashore with Ruari looking for pretty shells for our sandcastle while Nikki had a well deserved rest. The water was deliciously cool on my feet - it’s ages since any part of me has been in the sea!



Heading home. We were there until 8.30 at night and only left then to get Ruari to bed but it was still really warm. I was sitting out in the front garden at 10.30 p.m. that night and it was still warm!




One weird thing which happened this summer was crows pecking at the windows. I knew this happened but had never had it happen in the 15 years I've lived here. Apparently it occurs in the mating season and they think their reflection is a rival hence the pecking but it's really loud - I was on the phone the first time it happened and couldn't believe the racket! They do fly off if you appear at the window but that's no help when they do it at 5 a.m. in the spare room which means I have to get up and shoo them off which of course wakes me up! Seems to have stopped now though thank goodness.

My current stress is flies. Not flies coming in open doors/windows but a lovely outbreak of maggots which I found in the bin a couple of weeks ago😱 I hadn't realised they were there at first and changed the bin bag then when I picked up the full bag to go out to the recycle bin there they were all over the kitchen floor. I got them all out (apparently I can't kill anything - even maggots) but then started to wonder how they'd managed to get through the double bag. It dawned on me they were probably at the bottom of the bin and sure enough, when I took the new bag out there were another dozen down there so I tipped them out into the garden.

And then the plague started.

About a dozen flies each day in the kitchen/sitting room when I came downstairs. I was thinking in the delay of putting the full bag out, some of them probably wriggled away before I caught them. But it's not abating - it's actually getting worse. There must have been over 20 today - same yesterday. My new Dyson has been dead handy for hoovering them up on a low setting then I just empty the canister outside but we're talking nearly two weeks now and I don't understand why they’re not dying off!

In my pet days that would have meant an undiscovered carcass of some poor mouse somewhere but I can't blame that nowadays and it's only been happening since the maggot incident so it’s clearly related. I'm starting to get paranoid when I hear any buzzing sound in the house but thank God I was still shutting the sitting room door (only door which leads to upstairs) at night - a throwback from shutting the cats in downstairs after I got Trooper and slight PTSD from being burgled 9 years ago (they got in through the back door and the only reason I was alerted was the sound of the sitting room door being opened) - so they were contained downstairs and only one or two ever escapes upstairs.

Any words of wisdom or advice on dealing with it will be gratefully received.


My dentist visit went fine - I got an injection without epinephrine and there was no reaction this time so I was very relieved. I have to go back on the 7th August for another filling then we'll discuss two broken teeth which she thinks may be as well adding to my plate because there is so much bone loss and if we did root treatment it may work out very expensive and not last very long. I don't like the thought of losing more teeth but also don't like the thought of treatment at the dentist so I'm kind of stuck deciding between the two.

And I finally bit the bullet and got back in touch with the landscaper after 2 e-mails from him since April saying 'he'll be with me in the next two weeks' and nothing happening. I asked him for a firm date so he says he's on holiday this week coming but will be out to do the base for the summer house the following week. I'd rather the paving was done as well but at least if the base is done then I can contact the summer house guys and hopefully get that done before summer disappears altogether!

Well that’s another sleepless night under my belt - didn’t even get an hour’s sleep this time before I woke but at least I felt well enough to finish this off in the early hours (started it yesterday) so if I don’t manage to do anything else today at least I've already achieved something!

And for light amusement look up the word 'askew' in Google - quite clever I thought!