A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe. Debbie Johnson

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       Chapter 7

      I’m driving around Budbury and its beautiful surroundings in my little white van. It has a sign for the Budbury Pharmacy on the side, and I always feel a bit like Postman Pat when I do my rounds. I even asked Katie if I could borrow her cat Tinkerbell, but she put me off by reminding me that he was ginger, not black and white.

      Despite the lack of a loyal and resourceful feline companion, I always enjoy doing this. It started small, dropping off a few prescriptions, but it’s expanded a lot. I think it was the thing with Edie last year that made me step things up.

      When Edie developed pneumonia, it was only the fact that Katie checked up on her and had an instinct that something was wrong that saved her. We ended up breaking into her house in the village, and managed to get her off to the hospital with a supply of top-class antibiotics in the nick of time. If we hadn’t, it could all have ended very differently.

      Edie’s lucky, in many ways, despite the tragedy that has touched her life. She’s lucky because she is at the heart of a watchful community, and because she has an extended circle of friends and family who love and cherish her beyond measure. We’ve all been keeping an eye on her ever since, through an unofficial Edie Watch rota that we all take part in.

      Other people in our isolated little part of the world, though, aren’t quite so lucky. Sometimes its elderly people, like the man I’ve just visited – Mr Pumpwell. As well as having the most amusing name on the face of the planet, he also has type 2 diabetes, and lives on his own in a tiny freeholding miles away from any other human beings. That doesn’t bother him, as he views most human beings as well below a water vole on the evolutionary scale, and prefers his own company.

      He’s a tough old bird and has lived that life for decades, making the land work for him, largely self-sufficient, never marrying or having kids, and only occasionally venturing into the big bright lights of the village itself. He’s almost eighty now, and still on his own, despite the offer of a place in sheltered accommodation.

      He dismissed it, saying it was ‘for old people’, and stayed where he was. I suspect he’s got a point. He’s active and proud and he’d probably fade and wilt if he was uprooted, like a wildflower that can only exist in certain soil.

      I understand that, and respect his choice, but also worry for him. For him and the surprisingly abundant amount of people in his situation.

      Some rural communities can be like this – the young ones get frustrated at the lack of opportunity, or the hard battle of farming, and move away. The older ones are often left keeping the flame alive. They’re not always old, either – one of my clients is a woman in her fifties, living in a cottage in a vale so green and fertile it looks like something from one of those old Technicolor films from the olden days.She’s a widower, living with her adult son with Down’s Syndrome, who has complex needs and various health problems.

      Then there’s a couple of new mums, out on farms where they don’t have access to baby groups or day centres or places like the Comfort Food Café, struggling with a double dose of motherhood and loneliness. There’s also a man called Charlie, whose seventy-seven-year-old wife has Alzheimer’s, coping alone after the unexpected death of their daughter.

      All of this sounds a bit grim, but it isn’t any different than anywhere. I know from working in London that life in the big city can be just as isolating, just as much of a struggle, especially with the added pressures of urban poverty and air quality that suck the life out of you.

      Here, though, I do at least feel like I can make a difference. It wasn’t entirely intentional – I didn’t sit down and make an action plan – unsurprisingly – it simply happened when I started delivering prescriptions. Katie’s learning to drive now, but until she can get behind a wheel on her own, she keeps the shop open while I do my visits.

      In the early days, I’d stick to filling the prescriptions that the GPs sent over, then either popping them through the letterbox or dropping them off with a quick hello. Bit by bit, though, it changed and grew and became something much more time-consuming but also much more satisfying.

      It started with Mr Pumpwell offering me a cup of tea, and me staying for a chat. Then one of the young mums asking me to take a look at some nappy rash. Then I began talking to Charlie about his wife’s condition, and about Lynnie’s, and suggesting ways he might be able to get more help.

      Over the months, it’s become something of a lifeline – not only for the clients but for me as well. I’ve always struggled with being stuck in one place for too long, and doing this helps me to get out and about, spend time both on my own and with other people, and to feel useful. I’ve only recently started to realise the importance of that – of feeling useful.

      Coming back here - helping look after Lynnie, starting the pharmacy, making friends - has changed the way I view the world. Before, I’d have been horrified at the idea of being trapped here, in this situation, with all these responsibilities. I’d have done anything to escape such a terrible fate.

      But now? Now I see that it took me a long time to grow up. I’m not all the way there yet, but I’m doing my best – and I’m coming to understand that being useful isn’t a death sentence where joy and fun are concerned. It’s something we all need – it’s the reason why Laura freaks out about not being able to work full-time at the café, and Lynnie insists on trying to cook for us, and Zoe’s getting worried about her step-daughter Martha going off to university this year.

      So, yeah, I might have started late, after decades of utter uselessness, but now I’m trying – and these rambling visitations in the depths of Dorset are a big part of it.

      They also mean that I have a chunk of time to let my mind wander. My life is busy, with Lynnie and family and Finn and running a small business. There’s not a lot of unscheduled downtime. I’ve learned over the years that my brain works at its own pace – there’s no use trying to force myself to pay attention, or fix something, or come to a conclusion. It simply doesn’t work.

      But if I give myself a bit of space, and let the thoughts and events percolate through the many layers of illusion and mazes of procrastination, I get there in the end. I see things more clearly and make decisions, or simply amuse myself by planning practical jokes I can play on my siblings. Nothing keeps the spirits up like cling film on the toilet seat, does it?

      Mr Pumpwell is my last visit of the day, and I am driving across an especially lovely stretch of road alongside Eggardon Hill. Eggardon is an old Iron Age fort, strikingly weird and beautiful, with views over all the tumbling fields and out to sea. It’s also one of those places that Lynnie used to treat as some kind of spiritual mecca when we were kids, telling us stories about СКАЧАТЬ