I now have four days left to work before I stop practising. I have been trying to stop practising for about two years now and have been putting off the fateful day for one reason or another. Now that the end is in sight I feel a bit sad. However, there is, now, no going back as I have taken myself off the register from 31 December. In any case I need to be realistic, standing up for eight hours a day is a young person's game. When I was younger I used to stand up all day at work then stand up all night in the pub. Nowadays I rarely get to the pub, even when I am not working. I shall miss the staff that I have worked with but I will not miss the patients. I can live without the hysterics, tantrums and theatricals that relatives and patients sometimes subject us to. Life will be quieter and a little less colourful, but that is how I prefer it. Professional ethics prevent me from going into more detail here.
Whether or not I am working it seems that my presence is going to be felt. Last week one of the assistants claimed to see me upstairs in the stockroom when I was actually downstairs in the dispensary. Even if work does not haunt me, I am going to be haunting work!
I am not quite sure what I am going to do with myself when January comes around, but one thing that is certain is that it will be different to what I have been used to. Before I get myself involved in anything whether paid or voluntary I intend to work my way through the list of jobs in the cottage that have been ignored or left undone over the last 18 months.
If you are wondering what I have been up to since I last posted, I always struggle to find the time for my blog when I am working and husband is at home, which he is at the moment. Recently most of my spare time has been spent in the garden - weather and light permitting. Autumn is the best time to move plants, in the garden, while the soil is relatively warm after the Summer. Over the last few years we have missed this opportunity which has left us with a lot to do this year.
The other big job that we have also done was to take down a dead tree and prune a rather out of hand hawthorn hedge. This left us with a massive pile of prunings (right) to cut up and dispose of. What could not be cut up into logs or kindling for our open fires, was loaded into our garden waste bin and that of our neighbours for several collections.