Big Day

Small Day

Today is very big day. And a very small, normal day. Because that is how it is with big events, they sit in the day to day like everything else. There are huge, dramatic events going in the world alongside tiny lived experiences that don’t make a dent in the grand scheme of things.

I get up abut 7.45 (6.15 today actually), drink coffee, think about doing yoga then don’t do it. Russ gets up at 6am (5 today actually) and leaves the house at 6.30 to drive fifty miles to Aberystwyth. The milkman, who delivers next door arrives, leaves his truck chugging out diesel fumes while he ambles over to leave the bottles on the doorstep. The sun comes out, goes in, there’s a downpour of biblical proportions.

Somewhere between the huge events of the world, like the wars that scar the population and planet so deeply, and the insignificant events that disappear without a trace like a sneeze or finding another pee puddle left by the cat, lies this day.

My husband of fourteen years, he who is known as Russell Walker, is working his last day of twenty nine years as an NHS worker. He is a speech and language therapist, senior, it says on his lanyard badge. Alongside the training and work he did in the USA he has been in this business for over thirty years. While many of you may think, as I did before being re-educated, of speech and language therapy as correcting stammers or helping children sound out words, it is, as it turns out, much more than that. The bits in your throat and mouth that create sounds and words also help you swallow. Think about the process of swallowing, what is your tongue doing? That biscuit you just crunched and moved about your mouth, how does it end up in your stomach and not your lungs? This is his area of speciality

No, me neither.

I now know more about the act of swallowing than any civilian wants to (pass over the crude jokes please), and possibly more than some of the doctors that Russ has worked with over the years. Russell knows more than most of his colleagues put together, which is not an insult to them as most of them are half his age.

When we moved to Wales we did so on a wing and prayer that he would get work out here. I am less reliable as an earner so it really was down to him. And it worked. Three months before he left Southmead Hospital in 2021 he was offered a job here, on his birthday, to set up a video fluoroscopy clinic in Carmarthen hospital. You can look it up if you’re interested but essentially it uses moving X-Rays to diagnose what is going on when a person swallows. Or can’t swallow, more to the point. This he has done here in Wales, alongside general clinical work on the wards of three hospitals, for the last nearly five years.

He carries a wealth of knowledge that has helped people in real physical distress. His patients have mostly be the very elderly and frail. He comes home with stories about fascinating characters with horrendous problems, and with details no one really wants to know about the interiors of people’s mouths.

Because of this huge knowledge he may carry on with running a few more clinic sessions, helping train up newbies, passing on of the wisdom and the Walker eye roll when faced with yet more bureaucracy and NHS blinkeredness. But basically this is it.

My pride in this man is huge. Our sunlit horizons are now focused on setting up our book shop, and for Russ a lot of guitar noodling time, podcast listening, substack writing, walks with his brother-in-law, band practice, some light travelling, sleep and well deserved lie-ins.

Stay tuned for further news.

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Apologies for not adding a recipe to this post.