Thursday 22 August 2013

Life's Lemons

Thursday 22nd August, 8.57am: The journey seemed endless and yet it was over all too soon.  A tiny bead of sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades; my face and hands were cold and clammy.  Men and women sat ashen faced in cars, some biting their nails or twiddling keys.  Others paced nervously or just stared into space.  Young people ran about squealing, hugging and crying.  A tall girl with long blond hair walked towards me.  I turned to hug my mum for the last time and my body shook with nerves as she held me tight and whispered 'Go!'.  The tall girl and I turned and walked towards the building that held my fate.

Yep, it's GCSE results day!


Seconds after Pea and her friend walked into school, I became one of the nervous parents sitting waiting in my car.  I had intended all along to go with her but apparently a skirt, top and heels was far too dressed up for the occasion, so I was forced to stay out of sight.  Five minutes of tension disappeared like smoke on a breezy day as I saw Pea running across the car park towards me.  Her hair was flying, she ran with a spring and had a smile of pure relief and happiness on her face.  I shot out of the car and before we hugged she blurted out her results to me, then I held her and told her how proud I was and how she deserved it.  She felt a little faint, I think and I reminded her to breathe, then get back in there with her friends and enjoy the moment.

Half an hour later, I was getting bored in the car on my own, so I broke my one rule and got out.  I behaved well though and didn't speak to anyone or draw attention to myself in any way.  Soon after, Pea and her friend appeared with friend's mum, who clearly hadn't been banned on account that she was wearing jeans.  Pea showed me her results file and then said she would be a while as they were being given a talk on life in the sixth form, and having their photographs taken for the newspapers, so she would be driven home by her friend's mum later on.  I am bursting to tell my family her results, but I think she should be the one to break the happy news and bask in the glory.  She did all the hard work and her success is entirely her own doing.

As I walked back to my car, bursting with pride and love, a young man and his mum passed me.  She was obviously not impressed with his results and let him know it.  She told him she was very disappointed and felt let down.  His response was,'What are you let down about?', I think his mum felt it more than he did!

The saying goes, 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade'.  On finding eight languishing lemons and a wizened lime in the bottom of my fridge this week, I made two large jugs of lemonade, (the lime is still there and becoming more wizened by the day).  But life can give us metaphorical lemons too.  Sometimes these are minor, like when I stood on a bee whilst hanging out the washing in bare feet and sometimes they are a bit more inconvenient.  One day recently the laptop hadn't charged up, further investigation revealed a small hole in the charger cable; a hole about the size of Puppy's tooth.  I think we know what happened here, but it meant that we couldn't use the laptop while we were waiting for the computer man to get us another cable, hence no blog posts for ages.

And sometimes, Life's Lemons are more drastic.  On returning home from a lovely walk on Tuesday afternoon..OK, let me start again: after a thoroughly boring walk where H2 moaned the whole time that his wellies hurt and his legs ached and he was thirsty and the boys argued and gave me the mother of all headaches, we returned home tired, irritable and fed up.  I thought I'd just hang the washing out before getting a cup of tea and sitting quietly in the garden and hopefully removing my headache.  Puppy was playing happily in the garden and just as I had finished, I heard him cry.  I turned to see what he had done and saw something sticking out of his side.  He grabbed it with his teeth and pulled some away.  I realised it was a pampas grass stalk.  If you don't have pampas grasses in your garden, keep it that way!  They are vicious plants with razor sharp leaves and stalks like thick sticks.  I thought the stalk had pierced his skin, so I grabbed it to pull it out quickly.  As I took hold of it, I felt resistance and Puppy cried again.  I let go and to my disbelief, I discovered the stick had gone in from his ribs along under the skin and was trying to poke out above his shoulder blade.  I yelled for H1 to come and hold him while I rang the vet.  I really didn't think we could get him all the way to town without him coming to some harm.  He hates the car and gets travel sick and usually he wriggles about and tries to climb out of the window.

Of course in the end we had to take him as I knew he would need an operation to get it out.  The vet removed the stick which was 15 centimeters long, and worse still it had an earwig in the end!  They operated that evening and he stayed in for 24 hours.  He is doing well now but gets tired quickly.  We have to clean his wound every day as it is a bit yukky and he is having antibiotics for any possible infection.  I think he was jumping up to pull at the feathery fronds of the grass.  They are about 2 meters above the ground and as he came down from that height, he landed on a very sharp, solid stalk.  Nasty.  The vet said he is a very lucky boy as it could have easily gone inside him, rather than just under the skin.

Sorry these pics are a bit blurry, he was moving about in excitement as H1 had treats!

The Lemon giveth and the Lemon taketh away.  In the midst of not so happy events, there are small compensations.

H2 found this fossil on a walk through a forest.

An unexpected perfect sunny day.

A beautiful sunset after hours of rain and fog.

Oh and of course, these!
Pea came second highest in the school with 5 A*, 2 A and 2 B grades.  Pretty impressive but entirely well deserved.  Llongyfarchiadau Pea, we love you very much.

Good luck to all the other young people out there on their special day. xxx

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