Friday 17 April 2015

Comfortable in Sydney

I went up to the nursing home to see mum today and stayed for lunch, which was beer-battered fish with chips, although I had to leave the table before the women had finished because I had an appointment back in the city to get to. Mum is looking a lot better. She appears to be her usual self, which is comforting. It is one less thing I have to worry about. I can let my hair down for the weekend and relax.

At lunch I spoke with an elderly lady I have eaten lunch with on one occasion previously whose husband, who died some years ago, was in the military. I will call her M. I told her about the military medals that I received from an organisation called Lost Medals Australia which matches recovered medals with living family members. I had the medals framed in 2012. But added to those, recently I found among my father's records photographs of William Robert Ralph Caldicott, my grandmother's brother, and their father, William Henry Caldicott, in uniform. Both men served in the military, the first in WWII and the second in WWI. So I took the photos and the framed medals to my framers in Annandale a few days ago and asked them to match the photo with the medal(s) and frame the items together as sets. So the WWII medals will be framed with the photo of my grandmother's brother, and the WWI medal will be framed with the photo of my great grandfather.

M said it was a great idea.

I am having a few other things framed that came to light as a result of my continuing sorting through my father's records, a process which has been going on now for the best part of five months. My mother approves. She has always liked pretty things. Although for some reason she had taken down from the wall a photo of my father, and the picture hook had fallen under the bed. I put the photo back in its regular place on its hook.

This morning when I was talking with mum I occupied her bed. This was because I have had a poor nights' sleep for the last few nights due to a flare-up of my psoriasis. I went to see the local GP this afternoon and got a referral to a dermatologist. Hopefully they can treat the ailment adequately. I have been living with the ailment since I was a teenager so I am resigned to occasional bad patches, but at the moment it is keeping me up at night with the itching and sometimes it is almost unbearable. We'll see how it goes.

I plan to go back to see mum on Sunday.

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