Deirdre Geraghty

My friend came for coffee yesterday and we talked about the new victory by UKIP. She was telling me that besides their racist views they also have some pretty dreadful opinions when it comes to the fate of women. It has taken such a long time and hard work to progress public opinion to where we are today and then people go and vote for such a bigoted and fascist party without any intelligent thought for what they are doing. It is so disappointing and frightening.

Some panels of fencing on both sides of my back garden came down in the winter storms and when I was away over Easter the children to my right and the children to my left made friends in my back garden and they have been playing in the 3 gardens ever since. Alan, the handyman, is fixing my fencing today. I don’t think I am going to be very popular.

For the past few years I have been having my eyes checked every year and my appointment was yesterday. My glasses are very expensive as I am long and short sighted and have cataracts so I have to have varifocal and transitions lenses. I was hoping my one year old glasses would last another year but no, my astigmatism is a lot worse so I need new glasses. Oh well!

There was an incredible piece of footage on the news yesterday. A 4 year old little boy playing on his tricycle in his front garden in California was attacked by a neighbour’s dog. The dog had him by the leg and dragged him off the trike. Tara, the little family cat, comes racing up, attacks the dog and chases it off down the road. The little boy had to have 10 stitches in his leg but it could have been a lot worse. Hurray for Tara the cat!

I spend too much time on my own. I know I am very sensitive which results in me picking up the slightest little thing from others and thinking they don’t like me anymore or they’re cross with me or something. It might be that they are cross with the situation or have something on their minds but I always believe it is down to me. This makes life very difficult and painful and has been the same since I was very young.

One of my good friends popped in to change my light bulb which my poorly should will still not allow me to do and she showed me that she has lost 3 stone.  That has given me great encouragement (I have put on quite a bit) so I have altered my diet again in order to lose weight. I have altered portion sizes and stopped eating between meals. Also I have stopped eating real naughties. Hopefully that will do the trick.

My two cats who have always woken me very early have stopped waking me. So I am not waking until 6.00 or 7.00ish. By everybody else’s standards that is still quite early but to me who was waking at 4.00 or 5.00 this seems really late. Strange what one gets used to.

I haven’t done my daily walk since before Easter. I like to do it early in the morning like my hour on my exercise bike and the physio on my shoulder but it hasn’t been warm enough to walk around the block as many times as possible. I build up the number of times throughout the summer. It is nice to do these things early in the morning and then you have the whole day ahead of you for other things.

I developed a sore throat and cough over Easter but when I came home it felt a whole lot worse when I discovered somebody I knew of had died after a short illness who also had emphysema. It was a bit of a shock and made me feel so much worse. I thought about myself and my own vulnerability. That was very selfish of me to be thinking about myself.

My good friends Mary and Dick looked after my two cats whilst I was away and while they were here they also hung a new mirror for me in the bathroom. It is really good to have such great friends.