afternoon play

I caught the last fifteen minutes of the Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4.

The Scattering, by Christopher Reid. He lost his wife to cancer. It is a series of poems.

Too close for comfort, yet comfortingly close. Even to the point that he was also a second partner after a divorce... I know I'm not the only one going through this and everyone is different and reacts differently.

It is bewildering and enervating. Everyone wants to help, but you don't know how to ask, or even what to ask for. It feels an age, but no time atall, as if you are in a time concertina.

You hang onto doing normal things, and even seem very busy. I wake too early, but getting going is slow. Things take longer than they should, and starting each job takes an age.

Then you look at everything that is half done or not even started...you try and haul together paperwork to fill in yet another official form.....every one complete with dire threats if you get it wrong.

All three of us are sad in our own way, yet it is infuriating when they don't just get on with sorting obvious problems....they probably are thinking the same!