The sand tickles my toes

I feel the sea

lets think about the simple things in life we can enjoy

listen to the birds sing in the morning and the dusk lovely time when they go to bed

making a cup of tea for someone

doing something unexpected for someone, without being asked

spending time with someone who is lonely, without thinking i really must get home i am such a busy person and this is taking up too much of my time, put your feet in their shoes

try and be selfless think of others

take joy in cooking, cakes bread

read a book, all day

smell the coffee, smell the freshly cut grass

what else can you think….

…is the longest pleasure pier in the World dating back fromVictorian times, i dont know all the history of it but will have to research sometime.

For myself from a child i visited it often with my parents.  Southend sea front was a great place, with arcades, icecream, candy floss, the beach, sunhats, flipflops, fish and chips, donuts and lots of trinkets to be had in the seaside shops.  Peter Pans Playground was a great place for kids with all the rides, the crooked house, big wheel and various other rides suitable for all ages.  I would walk down the pier with my mum and dad and brother and we would get a very delicious Rossi’s icecream, you would see people fishing along the pier and there were places where you could hid out of the wind if you wanted to.  Sometimes the tide was in and what fun to walk over the vast expanse of water!  Other times the tide was out and you could not see the sea for miles and miles.

When i was a child there was lots at the end of the peir, for starters amusement arcade with penny slot machines, my dad always gave me a good handful and sometimes i would win.  Then there was the Lifeboat to look at which was a wooden boat, not like the dingies they have nowadays.  There was a bar, cafe, theatre, aquarium, boats and yachts going by, so it was great to go and see.  Also a bowlin g galley.  Over the years lots has been burnt down sadly and nowadays there is only a cafe and an area where they have exhibitions and bands play sometimes.  Bit different to say the least.   But over the years i have loved walking down the pier, as a child, with my children and later in life, most recently with the Street Life Social group on a Saturday morning with my Guide Dog Polly.

The seafront is a great place with the Sea Life Centre and seaside shops and cafes and all the arcades, a few fountains pop up now which the children love to walk in during the hot summer days.  Swimming? well my dad always inticed me into the water even when it was cold, saying how lovely it was! it was always, always cold!

I am living in Shrewsbury now near to my daughter and i miss the sea and the pier and all to do with my life before, though it is tinged with sadness, as got divorced and also both my parents passed away in recent years.  I feel quite lonely to say the least as i sit in this bungalow alone, divorced and my sons in London, my daughter and husband only round the corner, we are in a pandemic, carvo virus-19 which is awful and have to stay in now, my glaucoma has got a lot lot worse since it began, which is so difficult to explain to anyone, a mist of sepia and closed in it is horrible, i just forced myself to go for a walk with Polly my Guide Dog down the road but i felt very nervous.  i am feeling overwhelmed and the thought of walking down the pier on a lovely summers day with no cares in the World is wonderful.  i truly feel dreadful at the moment, mainly due to the glaucoma…

i dont think anyone can have the idea of how it feels…to lose your sight unless it happens to you, it is scarey to wake up in the morning and wonder what you will see today… sometimes i dont want to go to sleep in this fear and lay awake and doze and wake for hours on end.

The sound of the sea can be very relaxing especially at these time of stress.

I pray that the cona virus will go away and also the glaucoma i have inmy eyes will stop progressing and give me a break, how can we stop it?

so moving to Shrewsbury has been a big move for me probably more than i realised it would be, it is a lovely quiet place and feels safe and very different from Southend on Sea. My bungalow is ten minutes walk from my daughter and husbands house. I have coped very well with the amount of vision i had sustained though registered severely sight impaired but since the pandemic it gone down i would say another 50% which has been very scarey. Is the stress of it or the dark shadow that lurks over this World with the virus with negitivity. Moving is one of the most stressful thing we can do and i have done this with advanced glaucoma! which in hindsight was probably a bit crazy to do! I just walked down the road with Polly on my own which have not done for a long while, i felt very nervous doing this… i just want to have a normal life and go and watch Bake Off with my daughter and do some shopping for clothes and just simple things in life… can i do this…PLEASE…letme get on with life as normal…

when i was a little girl it was a quiet life, i would get up at the weekend, not even stop for breakfast and rush out on my roller skates.  My mum would shout, arent you having any breakfast! I never felt hungry and was generally as skinny as a rake and just couldnt wait to get out and play in the garden on my swing, or my bike ormy skates.  Sometimes i would grab a jam jar and punch holes in the lid and collect ladybirds, loads i would have in this jar, they were my little pets as it were! Some would die and would let them go at the end of the day

n the summer would have a paddling pool which was not big enough to swim in and was more than often used by my mum and her visiting sisiters and my cousins to sit round and dip their feet in!  Then the dog would come and sit in the middle to cool down!  Sometimes at the end of the day i would get in and betend to swim round and round in it.

My dad had made a mini golf course in the garden with bean cans and we had a little set that would have a put round the garden in the evening. The dog would often just walk over the golf ball as it was going to go in the hole!

we would play cricket my brother in the wicket, ialways remember him hitting me with the cricket bat by mistake

well the world is very different now and its all tech stuff fast food, being fat! and being on diets oh well….

i preferred the good old days…

people say to me i should write a journal every day, i have several times tried to do this but it always sounds a bit boring, i have tended to write a poem to express my feelings.

In last few weeks there have been major changes, there is a pandemic all over the World and lots of people are dying, it is awful, coronavirus-19 and the World is on lock down and not allowed out the house, how long this will go on for we dont know it has affected everything, economy, socialisation, families, work everything, a tiny virus !

i was doing quite well since i moved to Shrewsbury, Shropshire to be near my daughter, when i first got here my glaucoma pressures were ok and i was coping very well with the vision i had.  I joined a choir, a local church, have a regular friend Jeanette who i go out for lunch with once a week and now an art class. Just started a yoga class and made a few friends.  Write some poetry.  Katy cat loves the garden as does Polly Guide Dog.  My daughter and her husband who live round the corner are very busy with their lives and i suppose i wish i could see them more.  I thuoght during the lock down i would stay with them but i do not which seems a bit sad to me.  I feel extremely isolated and my glaucoma has taken a big turn for the worse, really since the pandemic started, it is scarey stuff like something out of a movie!. i keep having regrets of the past, i have done so much been so many places and really have made some big mistakes in decisions i have made and where i have lived over the years. i realise i have tried to do too much over the years and really i need some peae and quiet and stability and really wish i had a nice man in my life to share with.  I feel the glaucoma in my eyes and making me vision impaired will not appeal to men!  i feel very overwhelmed with the sight loss . Still dont know where to live and often wish i was back by the seaside as miss the sound of the sea. I have lived in Essex all my life and to move to Shrewsbury, apart from having the sight loss is a very big upheaval and change.

I pray my family keep safe from this virus it is awful and wish to be in safe haven away from it all and pray i can keep what little vision i have left, and not bore people any more with it.  It seems such a shame that i have taken a retirement to be here nearmy daughter and could have pleasant life and then my sight is taken from me! how unfair and awful is this!