Richard spent last night in hospital.  We'd had a neighbour over for dinner, a neighbour who'd suddenly become a widow when her husband died in bed in the wee hours just over a month ago.  She is coping but needs friends and family support hence the invite to come for dinner and an episode of Midsomer Murder.  At 7:25, after dinner had finished, she was heading outside for a smoke while I entered the living room heading for the tv.  As we were both turned away from Richard neither of us saw him fall.  He'd stood up from the kitchen stool to start on the dishes when he felt dizzy and fainted.   Richard's a big man, not fat but tall and solidly built.  When he fell he made a sound like a muted explosion.  The floor shook.

I turned and he was on his back, unconscious, eyes open but unfocussed, lips white and arms faintly twitching by his side.  After the first moment of disbelief, I grabbed the phone, pulling the books and papers from the stand, and rang the ambulance.

Our poor neighbour was in shock.  She'd just been through a similar episode, calling the ambulance while she tried to rouse her unresponsive husband.  Tragically, he never responded.  He had already died from a massive cardiac event.  She stood in shock and had to be asked several times before she went and got a pillow to put under Richard's head.

That's how quickly it can happen.   One minute you're enjoying a glass of wine and dinner, the next you're on the floor unconscious and trembling. 

The ambos came, two capable and confidence inspiring young people.  (One bright spot, the woman, a horse enthusiast was also enthusiastic about my paintings.  It's rare that someone comes into the house and raves about them, she did.  I was quite chuffed).  But they knew their job and their attitude was great; friendly, professional, even humorous.  Because of Richard's age and the fact that he'd fainted he was off to hospital.  I followed, waiting perhaps half an hour before leaving as I'd had 2 glasses of wine and didn't want to be *done* for DWI. 

All the tests were fine.  Normal everything.  Better than normal but they said he had to stay overnight just in case. 

While we are extremely lucky to have a local hospital and good doctors (the doctor on duty looked like a  nerdy high school student complete with thick framed glasses, an untidy mop of brown hair and thin pale arms) spending hours waiting to be admitted and then more hours waiting to be discharged is not fun.  The friendly but overbright demeanour of the nurses, accustomed as they are to talking to the hearing impaired elderly, the ticking and buzzing of machines, the muted slap of shoes up and down the corridor, the look of patients who won't be going home again, all speak the language of illness.   It is a world apart from the bright daylight world of the healthy.  Last night, one curtain over, a young man gasped in pain.  Have no idea what was wrong with him but every few minutes he breathed agony.  He didn't groan or cry or moan, the pain was all in his breath.  He was removed to another hospital.

In Richard's ward were 3 elderly gentleman.  Richard had gone for xrays.  The man in the bed opposite was asleep, one had zither framed himself outside to visit with friends, and the third, an extremely deaf 84 year old with the largest eyes, sat quietly by himself on a chair.  I was doing a crossword to fill the time.  Suddenly the biggest sheet-ripping fart split the silence.  I wanted to shout Well Done! a la Noel Coward but no one there would've heard.

Richard is home now, sleeping.  He had a crap night, as did I.  The consensus is that Richard's episode had to do with his Parkinson's medication.  It can cause a drop in blood pressure when the patient goes from a sitting to standing position (although, despite numerous tests, they couldn't get his blood pressure to deviate from normal).  It can also cause dizziness.  So we'll see.  He goes to see the doc tomorrow. 

Went to Mt. Cootha yesterday, strolled the gardens for hours with friends.  Pocketed many fallen seeds which I'm saving to plant at our new property, as most of them are rainforest type seeds and will fare better in a wetter climate.  It is, again, as usual, very dry and dusty here.  I long long for the day we move to our new home in the Tweed.  I know learning patience is good for me, that it will happen when the time is right, but, that inconvenient but ... why not now?  The house is ready, we are ready. 

Every morning while feeding the birds, sometime around 6:30 a jet flies overhead.  It's fuselage catches the morning sunlight and burns white and gold and I know it glows from the sea sun.  Not our sun which rises over rocky outcrops and burnt grass, but the wet yellow sun rising from a blue green sea.  An absolutely nonsensical way to look at things.  Nevertheless I can feel, almost smell that sea sun reflecting from the Coolangatta bound jet.  And I sigh.  And take a deep breath.  Another lesson in patience.  Not learned.

In the words of Madeleine Albright, 'The world's a mess,' yet just now, walking from one room to another I am overcome with an overwhelming sense of wellbeing.  How can that be so when there is so much trouble, strife, war, cruelty, stupidity and downright ignorance in the world?  I don't know. Because I am alive?  Because in my tiny corner of the world, right now, right this minute, I can still walk, I breathe, I have all my marbles, I am without thirst or hunger, I have enough clothes to warm me, in fact my house is warm while it is cold outside?  I could go on but that is the drift.   Some of us are so intent on what's wrong that we try and kill one another (or the planet) to make it right.

I took the bull by the horns  and have volunteered to tutor immigrants in conversational English.  Normally I would have said no without having to think about it.  I met Regina at the bickies and coffee mini-wake after Roger's funeral.  Regina coordinates the Lockyer Multicultural Centre (I think).  She asked me. 

While I was mulling it over I realized that Life puts things in your way for a reason and maybe saying Yes to Life makes more sense than saying no.  I didn't know I needed to tutor immigrants or it isn't something I would have sought as necessary yet it is, of course, perfect.  I'm insular, like solitude and my own business.  And the older I get the more these tendencies are calcifying into rigidity.  Not good.  So I thought I would say yes.  I can always quit.  It's voluntary.  It's not life or death but it might be good for me as well as helping others.  And, in the end, it's not about me, it's about them.  So I went.

About 22 immigrants turned up; Korean, Japanese, Bangladesh(ians?), Taiwanese, Malaysians, Sudanese and a woman from Oman.  These are the nationalities I managed to catch.  But I didn't listen to the stories of all 22 people so there may have been others.  We separated into groups.  I attached myself to Nola, a primary school teacher (the volunteers were all teachers or university lecturers - so these unselfish people work full time jobs then devote one evening a week to helping others).  We had 8 people, a great mixture of nationalities.  All of them young.  One young man on a bridging visa so he isn't allowed to work or go to school - but he can learn English with us because we cost nothing.  The Asians were backpackers with working visas doing it tough cutting lettuces on farms or packing vegetables in unheated sheds.  But they were educated people; a physics teacher, a biology teacher, a computer programmer among them.  Educated and with a strong desire to improve their English.

So it was good.  I found it hard, not because they were difficult.  They were lovely, laughter came easily to all of them.  And they were shy too and afraid they wouldn't do well.  Remember talking to Ellie and Louann, both Korean.  Conversatonal English is just that so we had a 3 way conversation.  Normally in a social situation like that when I feel a bit overwhelmed I just make some excuse and go away for a breather (why do I find interaction so hard?) but I couldn't because that's what it was all about. 

We're meeting on Tuesday (the tutors) as a curriculum must be created and a plan put into place.  Despite my protestations as to my ignorance (the only thing I've ever taught is beginning Tai Chi and with that I mostly just had to move, not speak), they seem to want me.  But then as there are 40 Bangladeshians due next week along with the originals we'll be seriously short-staffed.  Will just have to take it as it comes and not worry so damn much. 

And I do find their youth and enthusiasm engaging.  And their toughness.  The backpackers are entirely different to the asylum seekers.   The tutors were discussing how they would teach the Moslems.  Because we aren't equipped to separate the men and women, or to string a curtain down the middle of the classroom, they will have to be taught together.  They decided the best way would be to put the women in front and the men behind.  And there I will be; bareheaded, in trousers with my arms and neck showing (and in summer, legs) with these men thinking God knows what horrible things about the shamelessness of Western women.  Should be interesting. 

On a squealy fist pumping note, I won first place with my graphite drawing Birth of a Dryad at the Gatton Show.  Also best exhibit for 2 classes.  Even got a whimsical little trophy and $20.  Really made my day. 

Feel like I've been sitting for a month without moving a muscle as far as writing goes.  Writing has been confined to emails and emails do nothing to stretch the creative muscle.  Alas, the creative muscle has been wrapped  and strapped and immobilized.  I thought it had to do with guilt as I procrastinated about calling the RSPCA about some starving horses up the road in hopes the owner, who's quite a friendly soul, would take the hint and do something.  Unfortunately every nicey nicey hint I dropped his way came to nothing.  And then I didn't see him on the road for weeks.  He'd bought a new rig and was working a different schedule.  The dogs and I were wading through grass to try and get a couple of armfuls for this poor gelding.  But whatever I picked was never going to be enough.  Hence the guilt.  Hence the phone call.  Guilt gone!  Surely I'd get some kernel of an idea for a painting/drawing?  Zip. 

So I rang about one horse.  Yesterday I saw three more.  His property is so large that I don't see the different groups for weeks or months.  The property is large but is also completely overgrown with lantana.  The 'good doers' still look good.  Some are so fat it's as though they have been grain fed.  Others are okay, a tiny bit light but still holding their own.  Then there are the vulnerable ones who need that extra help.  One little pinto mare has already died.  I'm sure of it.  I've not seen her for months.  Then there was another bay.  Haven't seen it either.  Yesterday I saw an appaloosa, a brown and a bay in addition to the one I've been picking grass for.  They are all number two on the Horse Body Condition Score (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henneke_horse_body_condition_scoring_system).  And that's very bad.  (Just let Dakota out to eat.  He's probably a 6 or 7 and as such is shut in the yards 17 hours out of 24).

Spent a long time explaining to the RSPCA operator what the property was like, what to look for, how it would be impossible not to see the horse if he wasn't right next to the road.  (Yesterday he nickered when he saw me, as he does, but I couldn't see him.  He was completely hidden by lantana but was only about 20 feet away).  If the horse are not near the road the RSPCA inspector will have no idea how bad things are.  I fed the gelding yesterday but didn't try and feed the others.  The healthy stronger horses push the weaker ones out of the way.  And I can't pick enough grass anyway.  The rhodes grass is too tough to pick by hand and the green panic, due to my harvesting, is getting scarcer. 

But I have to let it go.  I've done all I can.  If I see the owner on the road I'll ask him when he intends to feed them.  Other than that, unless I start buying round bales, there's little I can do.  He has about 17 horses in that paddock and another 7 or 8 (miniatures along with 2 sheep, 2 cows and a horse) in another.  IF he was destitute I'd offer help but money is not the problem.  Apathy and laziness is. 

Anyway, enough.  There's so much cruelty in the world that it is easy to despair.  And forget all the good, the generosity and the beauty. 

Parkinsons Disease.  That's what R has.  What a relief.  Of course it's not good and it would be better if he didn't  have it but the alternative is dire.  Because naturally, despite best intentions, I sometimes thought the worst; alzheimers, dementia, wheelchairs, aged care, death.  But Parkinsons?  Parkinsons we can live with.  Even R is relieved. 

It was all getting so depressing.  R was aging before my eyes; shuffling along eyes down, stooped, his right hand convulsively opening and closing, his rich deep voice reduced to a whispery old man's voice.  I broke down once in front of him, my fears for the future overwhelming my usual good sense (and I usually do have good sense about things that aren't here yet).  And that breakdown, standing with the dogs in the causeway where R turns for home and I carry on with the dogs for another kilometre or so, was so unfair.  He pretended nothing was happening but he was frightened too.  Who wouldn't be?  We'd done quite well being strong for one another and I let the side down.

But that was then.  This is now.  He's on medication, the weakest dose to start which has made little difference so far - but a difference nevertheless.  On Saturday he gets to double it and that should make a discernible difference.  He's also taking St. John's Wort.  We've read that helps.  So we'll see.  At least the waiting, the ignorance, the fear is over. 

Reading the most incredible book about the most incredible woman, Nancy Wake, the famous White Mouse and thorn in the side of the French Gestapo.  It's a biography by Peter Fitzsimons (and what a delightful writer he is too;  clear, cogent, with a sparkling sense of humour as well as the ability to impart the portentousness and almost tragedy of Hitler's attempt to impose Nazism on the world).  But there is Nancy, armed with her Anne of Green Gables philosophy, Australian disdain for authority, courage, humour and toughness as a light within the war clouds over France.

How quickly we forget how close we were to losing.  How quickly we forget how lucky we are to live in freedom.  How quickly we dismiss the burgeoning threats to our freedom  from fundamentalist Christian to fundamentalist Islamists.    Christian, you say?  Absolutely.  Although they might not be throwing bombs or shooting people their aim is the same:  to make everyone think and behave as they do.  Creationism over science, the nuclear heterosexual family with a man at its head, all that nonsense that should've been done away with years ago.  Thought police under the cover of love of Jesus.  Phooey!

And then there is the far more frightening Sharia Law under which ultraconservative Moslems want the world to live.  That is so much in the daily news I don't have to go into detail about the treatment of women. 

Do we still make people like Nancy Wake.  What would I have done under similar circumstances.  I fear I am a coward and would not have acquitted myself well.  I hope never to find out. 

Haven't finished the book yet.  Was devouring it too quickly so have made myself quit reading and do other things.

Like get another sheet of paper ready for drawing.  Finally finished the naked woman with the bird on her head, framed it and hung it on the wall.  Have no idea what it means but it was an interesting exercise in foreshortening and having the human figure lit from below.  I am not well pleased with it but it's okay.  I can live with it for awhile although as it has a nude I'll probably take it down should we ever get prospective buyers in to look at the house.

On the market a month and not one bite.  Emailed the realtor asking could we have a for sale sign in front.  Took them two weeks to list the property on realestate.com  and no for sale sign after a month.  When the contract finishes in May we will go elsewhere.