Dad

It's six months since her man died, and she sometimes remembers, sometimes not.
He died at 96 of the cigarettes that he quit fifty years before. The cilia in his lungs were too damaged to waft away the infected mucus and the 30% oxygen level in his blood could not sustain his fragile life. He died in his sleep. It was time anyway. Everyone said he was a gentleman, and never complained, even though he couldn't walk from the pain.

Bossy e-mails

Has anybody else noticed that e-mails that have "Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail" added at the bottom actually take two pieces of paper to print instead of one?

Scotland

And so for The NY Times to Edinburgh and on with journalist Abigail Saltmarsh to Fenton Tower, an East Lothian castle destroyed by Cromwell in 1650. Ian Simpson and John Macaskill realised their childhood dream of rebuilding it in 2002.
Then to Leith's harbourside, to The Shore, a gastro pub long before the word was invented, to meet fisheries expert and long time friend Crick Carleton for good conversation and fresh fish beautifully cooked - nothing better.

Airport

Bristol Airport, 4.45am, an elderly lady who doesn't walk well has to put her shoes through the X-ray machine twice, but the three radio triggers in my camera bag go unnoticed.
Departure lounge, 5.00am, a family with five kids has to go without breakfast because the queue of men waiting to buy pints of lager at the same counter is too long.

Subjunctive

Latin lessons decades ago, French too, included how to avoid the subjunctive. For forty years I didn't really know what it was until a Michel Thomas Spanish tape churned out in that wonderful accented voice "It is important that you be here". "You be" - subjunctive. "You are" - not subjunctive. Wow! I've used the subjunctive all these years and didn't know.
But is the "are" slipping back when it should be "be"? Is the subjunctive dying out? I think we should be told.

Dear Subjunctive, I really want that you be here when I need you!

Crying

Some days she cries in her room until late afternoon, then emerges to tell the other residents it's time for them to leave her house. Others she packs her suitcase and announces that her family are coming to collect her.
The doctor's prescribed a mild anti depressant, but won't allow it to be put in her food, and of course she refuses to take it. She thinks we're trying to kill her. I take my turn to telephone to persuade her, but she gets very confused to hear me on the phone when I'm not there, gets even more confused trying to find out where I live, and then descends into paranoia, thinks something awful is happening to me, and then to her, "Somethings going on here, and I don't like the sound of it. I don't know what it's all about."
It sounds as if she's holding the phone upside down, but I hear her say to the carers "I'm not taking any tablets". She's too polite to accuse them of trying to kill her, so she says "I know you all want me to go to sleep."
It's like the last dark days of trying to keep her in her own home when she lived in a bed in the corner of the living room, trying to starve herself, thinking she had been captured and taken away, accusing her family, abusing her frail husband, wetting the bed, looked after by all of us and streams of carers.
I come off the phone depressed.
Later the doctor relented

Not another sunset!

Driving over Wexcombe Down a few nights ago, I had to stop and record this.

Titanic

To a nursing home in The New Forest on Saturday to photograph the last survivor of the sinking of The Titanic. Millvina Dean, now 97, was only nine weeks old at the time, so doesn't remember too much about it, but she does remember the recent past.

A song thrush, blackbird and chaffinch were all singing from the ash tree tonight - deafening - but reassuring.