Walking through the Sheffield I pass a man who is often busking in the town centre.
He plays sometimes a guitar, today, I think, some sort of small stringed instrument,
perhaps, or was it a small keyboard. He plays them like I might play them at times,
just making noise using the machine on his lap. He sings over the top of the sound he
makes improvising, or so it seems. A box on the ground to collect money. I gave him a
pound and heard him singing:
Today is a mirror too.
Today is a mirror too.
Today is a mirror too.
Today is a mirror too.
That sums up how I feel today but.
But.
I spoke with a friend, Mark Lallemand, and heard of his weekly visits to care for his
father who has advanced Parkinsons and very painful cancer. His father screams with
pain and was in in working life a well respected oncological surgeon. Depressing I
say but Mark tells me that there is more to it than that – the closeness he gains with
his father, they have never cried together, other noble feelings. We avoid pain in the
society and it is a last taboo. I had asked about how he felt about ending suffering like
that? He believed we needed to accept pain rather than kill it – literally – he was not in
favour of euthanasia fearing it could lead to abuse. However another friend came up
asking if the pain was under control? Clearly it was an issue and not a joy. Ending it
through pain therapy was fine but there was nobility in suffering if there was really
no choice.
This didn’t happen today however. That is not the mirror then.
I sleep each night with the sense that the next day will bring clarity but the morning
brings – not only – haze. That was today.
I spent the day – on and off – exchanging irritations with the one I love – bouncing
around not getting hurt.
I helped complete forms with a Roma family. They talked about food and then one
of the adults, the Grandfather, gave some coins to his daughter who lives with them.
She returned from the corner shop some minutes later with a bag of potatoes and the
Grandmother proceeded to grate them into a bowl in the sitting room while I aksed
about expenditure, outgoings, benefits, income, gas, electricity, food budgeting. They
have been sent a form to help them apply for assistance with an outstanding water bill
– but – this particular branch of the family have no other ‘priority’ debts and they need
two debts to have the chance of success. Hard to explain this is as they thought the
form was from a debt collector. That’s today.
Alot of smoking. Not by me today but the family and thus alot of coughing. I find that
my friend Dz has an appointment with a consultant plastic surgeon. He has two fingers
on his left hand that are dead – the can only bend at the lower knuckle and the rest
are soft with no muscle. Much flesh and tendon was lost in an accident with a window
4 years ago in Slovakia. Can it be fixed he wonders? Could I get disability? Ask the
surgeon I say. That’s today.