I AM DESIGNED FOR HOLIDAYS!

OUR EASTER WEEK IN YSCIEFIOG

This family is unbearable! I got a bit fed up around midday and got up from the breakfast table to put the fish I had defrosted and cooked for the cats dinner in the fridge and I must admit my expression showed a bit of annoyance.

I was up before anyone was up to feed the chickens and change their water and collect their eggs and then once that was done to get the dogs out of their kennels and feed them, after that it was making Wendy coffee, clearing the dishwasher, washing some glasses, cooking sausages and bacon for James, cooking chicken sausages and bacon and scrambled eggs for Wendy and then scrambled egg for Louie and me. I laid the table and then when I called on the family for breakfast Louie was still in bed and furious that James had relished the opportunity to drag her out of it; James had been gaming all morning and Wendy vaguely watching him game.

I had been hoping I might have some time to myself in the morning and I must admit I was irritated, thinking surely at least one of them could do something productive and even more irritated that Wendy took so long to pour the children a drink each and put the sausages and bacon on their plates that the food was nearly cold before we sat down.

Anyway with my scowly face the family realised maybe I had been doing more than my share of everything, so Wendy conferred with James and Louie and came to inform me that I wouldn’t be taking to dogs to the hill and that the children would do the other tasks but I had done those tasks and I like going in the field with the dogs and Wendy and love going to say hello to Clover the horse. So that didn’t work out quite as Wendy had planned.

For maybe fifteen minutes Wendy looked quite downhearted and a little bit guilty but for the last four hours they have been taunting me unmercifully. Each time I do something, someone strokes my arm soothingly, at every junction I drive past someone praises my driving ability. Louie plays soothing relaxing music and sarcastically chants relaxing words while I drive. James and Wendy remain so sarcastic that every compliment and every statement about the day is a not very subtle piss take. When we were in Liddle and I got exasperated by their inability to choose their own holiday treats or remember what we had gone in there to buy, they decided to do the whole trolley at the checkout (very badly I must say!) and then insisted on carrying the bags to the car and finally when we reached Macdonald’s they decided to praise me for my ability to order the food and my willingness to pay for it.

I think this is one of the reasons I love my family so much. You can throw a hissy fit but you can be sure you will be teased unmercifully as a result and that that teasing will be full of love and humour and so funny that it really is impossible to remain fed up for any length of time.

Today I woke early again, I usually do but it was a lovely awakening. I had been having a long complicated and fairly sexy dream that involved Wendy and was luxuriating in the comfy bed. I slowly came to consciousness in this very, very, quiet house and more fully to consciousness when Charlie the grumpy cat pushed his way into my room. My right arm is very achy at the moment and I woke up with it achy. I think we have all diagnosed it with too much phone use which is another source of merriment even though I cannot lift a kettle with that arm now. So, for once, being sensible, I ignored my phone and read my kindle instead using my left arm. I finished off Fundamentally by Nussiabah Younis, which is a wonderful book. Everyone says it is very funny and it is funny but that is a scratch at the surface of the power of it. Having finished that I turned to my next book before falling asleep again.

And then it was my busy morning. I went to see Wendy who is sleeping on the remarkably comfy couch this holidays to ask her if she wanted to come out to feed the chickens, knowing she loves that sort of thing. But it is a time of the month when Wendy is exhausted and she begged for more time sleeping at which point the busy day for me began.

In between the teasing, we visited the miniature Mediterranean donkey place which was slightly strange because where we are staying is full of animals we can play with and stroke and talk to for free, but it turned out lovely. In the hills above Mold, we found a field with a few huge sheep with crinkled long hair which made them look like rasta’s and then met the donkeys; eight tiny donkeys being groomed and fed and stroked by two families with young children and our one with teenagers, I loved every moment. It is only on this particular holiday that I have had contact with horses and donkeys and much to my surprise they are much less frightening and much more fun that I thought they would be.

This is our main holiday of the year and it is wonderful. Now that Wendy has stopped work for a while, we need to save our money but Wendy is determined to find lovely things for us to do. We are signed up for a house sitting service which costs us £100 a year but to stay somewhere like this; a huge house, large grounds, would have cost us between £1200 and £2000 if we hadn’t agreed to look after it and the animals so the owners could go away on holiday. This time last year Wendy managed to get us to Japan for ten days which cost us £960 each for flights, accommodation and trains and a trip to a theme park. I do not know how she manages things like this but she creates cheap and wonderful adventures all the time, though I must admit I am already scowling again, now that I know I need to drive us to a theme park near Warrington tomorrow with pouring rain forecast. Inevitably I will regret my scowls and inevitably it will be memorable, even if we get soaked!

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And I am back! Gulliver’s World theme park did turn out wonderful and it hardly rained but was very cold. Once, years ago, we went to Bonbon Land in Denmark; Where you are greeted by sculptures of dogs going to the toilet and seagulls being horrid and all sorts of bizarre things. Gulliver’s World was sort of like that, sort of, which cheered us up immensely. Half the rides weren’t working and many of them were hardly rides at all. The dinosaurs had real anuses. One seemed to have drowned in the pond, others seemed to have sunburn so badly were they moulting their painted skin. The stone pillars had wisps of polystyrene falling from them and for some strange reason about half the visitors to the park that day were orthodox Jews which was nice but unusual. We had a wonderful time twirling along a waterway in a round boat that Louie had agreed to go into despite her fear of boats. We found high speed flying experiences, which were low speed, low to the ground baskets we lay down in and slowly wafted around in circles. We found the T cups which always make Wendy scream and we found he caterpillar ride which was such a tight squeeze we were fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to get out of it. We got hungry and I had a wonderful halloumi wrap, Wendy a falafel one, James nuggets and chips and Louie chips and cheese. We found the Wizard of Oz place which delighted Wendy, even though it isn’t working yet and on top of that the journey to and from the place wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be.

Back home Wendy and I found a new path to walk the dogs along. A narrow track between fields full of lambs and sheep, making a huge racket at the end of the day. It was bounded by wild garlic, and bluebells, ferns and holly and hedges just low enough for us to see across to the trees and the hills.

After the walk I collected three eggs from the hens, gave them an extra feed and soon I will go upstairs to make pizza sauce for the pizza bases that Wendy will be making. Charlie the cat has taken up residence in my room much to Louie’s jealousy and my slightly less than enthusiastic welcome. He was on my bed for most of last night which meant I was cautious about wriggling my legs but it was good to hear him purring.

I better tell you more about where we are and about what we have been getting up to.

We are staying in a big house on the edge of the tiny village of Ysciefiog .This is an area I have never been to before. We are in Flintshire; just inside the Welsh border, not far from Chester, not that far from Liverpool. The land here is hmmm? Quaint? Green certainly, hilly but tiny numerous hills, dotted with sheep and lambs. Lots of trees, lots of paths for walking along, streams and sometimes rivers. The roads near us are the narrowest I have ever driven along and unlike the Scottish single track roads they don’t often have passing places, they sink deep into the land and are bounded by high hedges and twist and turn all over the place. At the moment there is blackthorn blossom everywhere. Looking up from my lap top I can see vast white sprays of petals from the trees at the edge of the garden and beneath them a carpet of the blossom. The edges of the roads are full of bluebells and wood anemones and celandine and occasionally a lingering daffodil. There is bird song everywhere and just now the blue sky sets off the white blossom I was just mentioning. Many of the trees are still just in bud with their leaves still delicate, still unfurling.

This is an idyllic landscape, lush and welcoming and safe. Our house is set in a bend in the tiny road which is so narrow it is hard to get onto it without banging into its banks. The house is an upside down house, a huge kitchen, then a huge dining room with a piano in it and finally a great big siting room with an office off of it which we don’t go in. Downstairs is the master bedroom which we have gathered we cannot use and then another three bedrooms, a large bathroom and a conservatory. There’s also a boiler room full of outdoory stuff and a small kennel for the dogs.

The dogs? Harvey a large old lumbering golden Labrador, full of good humour and dignity and Dolly a small cockerpoo again golden and covered in curls, for a nine year old dog, she is still like a puppy; delighted each time she sees us; rushing up to us, clambering onto our laps for tummy rubs. Then there is Charlie, another golden animal but this time a cat who is busy moutling his long winter coat. In the grounds behind an electrified fence are the hens who are all rescues. They rush up to us with excitement when they see us, accompanied by Bert the duck who seems to think he is a hen too. Away past them in the field is the gentle white pomy, Clover and just to the edge is the vegetable garden and the greenhouse. Then in the opposite direction another field which the dogs love to rush around in. The land falls away from here to woods and a lake and in the distance are higher hills with a huge transmitter at the top.

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My time line for this piece is all awry, it’s a new day. We got up late, did our animal tasks and looked out at the blue sky. James got up very late for him and is now busy doing stuff with his Xbox. The games he plays are pretty gruesome from my point of view so I am downstairs while he plays away. Louie has just got up and it is already 1pm. She is eating caramel waffles, raspberries and pear slices. I claimed the waffles would melt and ruin the toaster but was wrong. I am often wrong!

Earlier I went to Holywell, to do the last of our shopping before we leave here and tried unsuccessfully to find BBC Wales on the radio to see what they tend to talk about here. In the Tesco’s one of the cashiers asked the person behind me if she could use her Tesco card to get me a discount as I don’t have one. That was lovely as I saved ten pounds! It was also a contrast to how some people seem to be around here. There are a lot of unwelcoming faces when we walk in Holywell. I don’t know why; maybe poverty, too much tourism, the colonial impact of nearby England?

We went to Holywell the first day we were here and walking down park land came across lots of dogs being walked. Back home people would have smiled and said hello whether they knew us or not, but here when Wendy says hello or greets a dog at least half the people we encounter not only don’t respond, they almost look angry which is a strange feeling.

The St Winifrede Holy well is based here. It is sited where Winefredes head struck the earth when an unwelcome suitor chopped it off after she rejected his advances. Her uncle was a saint and being a saint promptly popped her head back on her body so she came back to life. He also dispatched her suitor. She is meant to be a martyr but I am not sure how someone who then spent the rest of her life as an abbess in a monastery counts as a martyr? Surely she was only a martyr for a few seconds? Anyway, the well is like a small swimming pool and the water is meant to be healing. Apparently, many people have been healed of all sorts of infirmities, especially those with troubled minds. Immersion in the water is meant to be very good for this. I am not too sure what I would feel like if I suddenly stopped being mad. I am not sure I would feel any different to be honest because I have never felt mad at all despite my schizophrenia label. However, I was tempted to dip in the water and see what it did, but the people bathing in it looked very cold, so I didn’t. Wendy dabbled her hand in it and wiped the water on my face which I thought would have to do.

Strangely after dipping her hand in the water, it started smelling of strawberries. Wendy is not as convinced an atheist as me but is close to it but nether-the-less she wandered around being spiritual for a while, challenging the sceptical children to explain the magical strawberry smell which could only be smelt where she had touched the water.

We are having a rest day today but shortly we will take the dogs out for a walk. As usual the children will refuse to come with us but despite that I love our walks along the lanes and in the nature reserve. Something peaceful about the dogs sniffing as we wander along; though they usually seem to be sniffing for poo which they have a strange liking for! We wander, we talk, we look at the lambs, we look at the clouds and the flowers and the strain of work and the last few months feels like it washes away that little more with each step and each brief distancing from emails and meetings and orders.

In the evening we went to the Fox Inn which is in Ysciefiog, about a quarter of an hours walk away. That was a blissful couple of hours. It is a tiny pub with a small bar and fire and two very small rooms for eating in. Initially we were a bit worried about Louie as she appeared to have had a migraine earlier but the walk, the air and the food seemed to do her good. I cannot remember what it was that Wendy and the children were saying but sometimes they are so funny it is impossible to stop laughing. It was one of those evenings and I loved every moment. James and I had fish and chips, Wendy and Louie Scampie and the children pudding while Wendy and I shared one between us. It is probably somehow or other exploitative but it was wonderful to hear people at neighbouring tables talking in Welsh. By the time we were due to walk back it was dark, so Louie and James used their torches to see the road. I think I would have preferred to walk in the dark as there was almost enough light to see where we were going and that can be very special but the giggles from the children about being snatched in the dark by murderers or monsters kept the torches firmly on.

In the house we are now in a routine where when we finish tea James is banned from the gaming for a while, while we watch the new series of Black Mirror. What a stunningly thoughtful and shocking series of programs these are. After that Louie and I go to bed while Wendy rests in James bedroom so he can come up and game a bit longer before he goes to bed and she takes her place on the sofa.

We seem to have done so much in this short time. Chester was wonderful. I worried a lot as usual, this time because when I went to pay in the car park I didn’t see the notice saying pay on your return and instead inserted my ticket and got told I had paid for one minute. This meant I assumed that when we got back it wouldn’t accept the ticket again and we would be locked into the car park for hours. Many people think I am calm and pretty stable but actually on top of the schizophrenia I worry about everything, always sure something will go wrong, which it almost never does.

Chester is an ancient city and used to be an important place for the Roman empire. We had decided to walk round the old town walls and hastily told the children it would take hardly any time but as it was a two mile circuit we were lying. However, as they had taken to extreme grumbling when we first got on the walls maybe our lies were needed. They cheered up when we found a café on the walls and bought them cakes and drinks and cheered up a bit more when we wandered off from the walls along the city streets and even more, or Louie did, when we found a charity shop where she bought a ring for one pound. They weren’t impressed by the racecourse, nor by the castle, nor by anything much and at one point when we rested in a watch tower Louie claimed she was too ill and exhausted to go any further. However a couple with a dog popped in and that changed her mind. More protests at the end when Wendy went unsuccessfully in search of lemon meringue pie which apparently originated but and these too died down when we found a charity shop selling vinyl records. However, Louie’s fascination with this is diminishing as she hasn’t a clue about any of the music produced in that period. The car park ticket machine did work after all so, as usual, I got teased again!

On the Friday I learnt yet again how unsuited sat navs are too Wales.. Wendy had set her heart on a trip to Prestatyn but there are many routes to get to this seaside town and the sat nav doesn’t know how to distinguish between narrow lanes where if you meet another car you are likely to be stuck for ages and dual carriageways where the miles fly by. Though I must admit I encountered very few dual carriageways.. this meant that I navigated by a cross between guesswork, Satnav and arguments with the satnav.

The seaside town reminded me of a town I grew up in in England, much smaller but the grey cold wintry air and the smirr of rain and the sheer desolation brought back many memories; some of them pretty good ones. It is strange sharing the past with my family now, as when I mention some schools they ask if that was the paedo school or the one where you got beaten or the one with the cold baths or the one with the baths after football that the entire school bathed in until the water was thick brown. Some of my memories I am sure are accurate and those expeiriences maybe made me think and act the way I do today but just now I don’t think it was as bad as all that.

Anyway; grey Prestatyn. We found many, many, charity shops which meant Louie and Wendy were in heaven and then a treasure trove of an antique shop odds and ends and everything shop. That was truly wonderful, farthings for a pound each, statues of Egyptian gods, old cigarette stamps, letters from the thirties, glasses and antlers on boards. Such an amazing array of stuff. Louie bought some earings for four pounds. And James tried to avoid the life sized Elvis as he has a horror of such things and all in all was remarkably patient.

We found a smelly posh shop where Wendy got a fit of the giggles when James whispered in her ear that it smelt just like the donkey stall did earlier in the week. Finally the grey sea with its offshore windfarms and its amusement arcade where no one won anything and it was far too noisy for me but the children loved it.

Our last trip of the holiday was to Port Meirion. The sire of the series The Prisoner, which is now a cult classic. It is a village built between 1925 and 1975 in an Italian style and is very eccentric indeed. The sat nav misbehaved even more this time and Wendy’s heterophoria sparked off as we entered Snowdonia and seemed to be on top of the world. Louie countered Wendy’s floatiness by putting her hands over her mum’s eyes at any particularly bad bit and was congratulated as a life saver.

When we arrived and the children found out how much we had to pay to visit they were incredulous and scathing and got busy deciding what they could have got if we had given the money to them. I loved our time there and also loved that I tricked the sat nav so she could take us back on a different, less perilous route. That bought back memories too as we passed old slate mines. I remembered hours trudging through the tunnel of one when I was about ten and looking at a picture of Tryfan earlier also remembered climbing a four hundred foot cliff face there at the same age and startling other climbers who came across us. I was proud of that time once but now that I remember that all those years of climbing were also filled with abject terror wonder at it all.

And now we are home and tomorrow work starts again. During our journey home we passed the crash site of where a fourteen year old had died just hours before, earlier we had been being very silly at the long delays but now it is sobering thinking that in an instant a child the same age as Louie and James died, probably while on holiday too, even more so to think of all the fourteen year olds sheltering from gunfire and bombs in Gaza and Ukraine. It is not good to come back to the news and how the world is now - but weeks like this? We are lucky indeed. Thank you Wendy, you make life glow!!

Thanks for reading this, I love writing about justice and mental health/mental illness but like writing about family and the things we get up to even more- that is the reason for all this. My wish that other people with my diagnosis have lives that in one way or another are as wonderful as this despite what the ‘illness’ does to us. If you want to read more do try out START or Blackbird Singing, best to go via Amazon for that though you can get discounted copies direct from me. By the way i ran out of room for my photo’s i will add a last few when this is published, in the comments section.