I'm a lot better

Didn't think I'd be saying this but I'm a lot better. Felt ill this morning and achy and couldn't make up my mind what was happening. Went out for a while locally to get food and look at the market that arrives here every year in the run up to Christmas. Got the food, took it back because I'm not far away from the shops, then went back to look at the market,bought two ethnic/hippy type t shirts from one of the stalls there and had a talk with the woman who owns it. We've both lost family members recently so that made up the bulk of the conversation. It really was better in both cases that the people had died when they did because it spared them a lot of pain but you still wish that things could have been different. I told her about playing a cd just before my relative died that I thought was just a relaxation cd and was expecting waves gently lapping on the shore and that kind of experience. It turned out to be a meditational journey up a river to a place of peace. I was a bit worried about it when I heard what it was because I knew the other person listening hadn't got long to live and I was afraid that it might be an unhappy experience for her. But she became transfixed and seemed to think that it was something especially for her and of great importance. She didn't realise that it was just a cd playing, she had dementia and often thought that the relaxation cds where there were animal sounds meant that we were near a farm, and if there were waves lapping she thought we were near the sea. This cd transformed the last few days of her life and she became much more relaxed and it was almost as if it had prepared her for the next few days before she died. It certainly changed her outlook from fear to relaxation.

The whole day has been interesting though, with interesting people to talk to. I went out to town and am late back because there was an incident on the line which meant that the driver had to be changed and we had to go back to the previous station to pick up a relief driver. I don't know if the driver wasn't well, or more likely I guess because someone drove as back to the other station eventually to pick up the relief driver, that there had been some kind of incident on the track where it was decided that the driver shouldn't take the train any further. I don't know what happened, heard someone ask a member of the rail staff but he couldn't talk about it.

I read some of my European Community book, but really need reading glasses for print that small in artificial light so didn't read that much. Actually read some of the Economist guide to the EC rather than Politics of the European Community. I found what I read interesting.

I had a book by Ann Coulter in my bag as well. Felt embarressed buying that, probably hadn't been as embarressed since buying a book of Pat Califa's poetry that I found in a bargain bookshop. God,I squirmed. This time I did balance the Ann Coulter by buying a book called What's Wrong With America, which presents the American right from a different point of view from Ann Coulter. As I don't know that much about American politics at that level I thought reading from both sides would help even if it did mean that I had to brave the pay desk with the AC book. Unfortunately when I bought Pat Califa's book I couldn't find a book that would negate the message of the book I was buying at the cash desk and had to squirm away for a few minutes.

Got in almost two hours late because of the train incident so had to explain why I had been out on a Sunday when I'm meant to be resting and not there when the phone rang. But this time I could truthfully say that I'm feeling a lot better, though that might not have been the whole truth when I set out.

Right, off to put the veggie chilli on.