Mrs Birks Blogs

Dear Jon, Last night when I couldn't sleep I started thinking about writing to you.  Tomorrow will be your 50th birthday and of all the 'anniversaries' since your death, this one seems particularly hard.  You were always better at writing the soppy stuff than me.  Even though your handwriting and spelling was terrible, you always used to write the loveliest messages to me in birthday and anniversary cards.  I write the occasional blog, but you were always so much better at expressing your love for me and the children in writing.   I wish I had trusted that love more. When I read those cards back now, I can see that your love was constant and uncomplicated.  You were proud to be my husband and proud to be a father.   I wish I had seen that and just enjoyed it.  I was wrapped up in the everyday and I was insecure.  I questioned our relationship.  I didn't need to.   You loved me the way that I am, you chose me, you liked me knowing that I could be a prick sometimes.

I didn't really want to write this post and have been putting it off for ages but I feel I must finish our cancer story which ends pretty much in the way you'd expect.  Mr Birks has gone.  'Gone' is a pretty rubbish way to put it considering my last post which mentioned the language of cancer but there's no easy way to say that someone has died.  6 months after diagnosis and 6 weeks after writing my previous blog post, Jonathan Birks, the funniest man in the world, died in the Tapping House Hospice, Norfolk. We never did get our pain free time in the end.  Although Jon always claimed it was more discomfort than pain, he wasn't able to sit properly or sleep or eat, it completely restricted his life and took the joy out of everything.  He went from being relatively mobile to unable to get out of bed by himself very quickly and his final deterioration was shockingly quick.  If you've never seen death close up, like I hadn't, every little change comes as a

I haven't posted on my blog for quite some time and it's not just because of my usual tardiness.  I usually post about nice things on here, things I enjoy, things that make me happy but since my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer it has been hard to find anything that brings me joy. When my husband told me that he had found a lump, my first reaction was 'I hope it's not cancer'.  His Mum and Dad both died of cancer a few years previously and within one year of each other, so in our family cancer means death.  No survivors, no fighters who have won, just beautiful people that have left us too early.  When he went for his second biopsy, I knew it was cancer.  By this time, my optimism that it could be something else had disappeared and I was beginning to think through practicalities - How would he cope with treatment?  How would he eat?  How would he talk?  Even with our experiences of cancer, I still hadn't faced the idea that he might die.  He's 48

Looking back over this blog, I find it VERY difficult to believe that I have never written about Harry Potter before.  In fact, I did start writing a post last year but looking back it only contained one sentence, so no wonder I didn't post it! Anyway, the daughter and I are HUGE fans of Harry Potter.  I couldn't wait until she was old enough to 'get into' Potter and now she is like a walking encyclopedia.  We have loads of the books - original, illustrated and Kindle in Motion version, plus house colours (Ravenclaw) and an American Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I have a Hogwarts and Slytherin 'goblet' from the original WB store and we were given the original Lego Hogwarts and Hagrid's Hut.  As I write this, I'm in my Hogwarts hoodie and I'm being to see how obsessed we seem... But before this turns into a list of stuff, this post is all about indulging in your Potter addiction by visiting some of the best Potter attractions.  Now h

Everyone knows that I do like a bit of upcycling.  In fact recently, we upcycled our very old and very grotty Ikea table.  I mention that it's an Ikea one so that you all know that I didn't destroy a fantastic, retro piece of furniture with glue and paint.  It was already a grotty looking thing that had started yellowing pretty badly, so we had nothing to lose by upcycling in a slightly experimental way. When we cleared out my in-laws house we kept some of their old maps - I had a vague notion of doing something crafty with them.  What we hadn't noticed when Barbara and Nick were alive was that everytime we had moved house (and we have moved house a lot) they had bought an Ordnance Survey map of that area.  The husband and I were both really touched by this, so the maps felt even more special and we thought we might want some of them 'out' to look at.  Queue perfect marriage of table that needs a tidy up and maps of special places we have been. I painted th

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is a fab day out for families and it's free!  With two lovely children's galleries and an interactive map that kids can navigate using an iPad, there's plenty to see and do before heading off to the cafe for tea and cake or better still, down the road for some pie and mash at Goddards. But it's not all about the kids.  This week I enjoyed a photography exhibition called 'The Great British Seaside:  Photography from the 1960s to the Present.  The exhibition featured images from Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurd, Martin Parr and Simon Roberts. I have loved Martin Parr's work since teaching a little bit of A Level Photography a few years ago and there is something about street/beach photography that I find completely engaging.  I didn't know much about the other photographers but I think I was most taken with the work of Tony Ray-Jones.  In his short career, he travelled to beaches around the UK to capture 'the sa