UK Soon!

what kind of clothes work well over here? even umbrellas are torn up in the weather. I am soaked with the sleeves and shoulders of my sweater totally wet. The saving grace is that I wore a skirt and not pants, so that can dry off as it swings around more in the air.

Things are moving here and positive with jobs and I have been blessed. If you ever come to UK and want hospice work, they call it Palliative Care over here. In an interview today I was asked what it meant to me. I said I hadn’t heard the word used in such a way before I came here, but I described the work I wanted to get done in a job. Palliative means taking care of symptoms for comfort, not curing, and not necessarily in end of life situations like a hospice is. This could be with a long term chronic illness like chemotherapy or dialysis, finding out their needs for better comfort.

I have been a sucker for a long time for missing the way buildings and apartments used to be when my grandma took me around on the buses in Chicago. England looks about that old, and the social times at church and at people’s homes are slow, meals with tables, socializing into the evenings, times to meet for the weekends and cook at somebody’s house, great vintage shops, amazing flats decorated stylishly, not necessarily expensive. People collect different things, they knit, they have their babies in buggies or in the parks, dogs in church, fountains in the many parks. Plus it is safe here, people are out all times of day and night walking home from buses or jobs. Many people do not have a car. I really miss those days. Also home made cooking and invitations all the time to drop by and have a tea. One can find many times of peace, listen to the dogs barking or the tennis balls bouncing, sit in the gardens, watch children out and about with their parents more than in the US, playing with their parents in bookstores or streets. Health lies in balance. Time to feel spiritual, feel the wonder and awe, sunset, waves,gulls, walk by flats close to the streets and see people eating at the table inside or still cooking in kitchens.

It is the world I lived in and the world I missed for 30 years, now it is all over here.