HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 260513 (PART ONE)

Sunday, May 26th, 2013

A day "off" from hospital visiting was spent in the garden and, for a few short hours, I was actually able to almost forget about this entire ongoing saga and just relax a little in the sunshine, read a couple of books, and listen to the test match on the radio.

Monday, May 27th, 2013 (Bank Holiday)

After two whole days of not thinking about the place, it really was a wrench to drag myself out into the rain and take myself back to the hospital once more on that Monday evening, and I misjudged the timing dreadfully, forgetting completely that the Bank Holiday traffic which snarled me up last time would be much dissipated by the rain. Instead, after popping into the supermarket to get some perishables for my lunches during the working part of the week, I sat in the car park as the end of the day's play fizzled out due to bad light and then listened to Aggers and Geoffrey Boycott review the day's play before grabbing mum's washed nightclothes out of the car, paying the parking fees and trudging once more unto the breach, so to speak.

Of course it didn't help that the lady opposite had at least half a dozen visitors surrounding her. You could almost smell the seething resentment that was emanating from the other "less popular" patients. Still, I arrived at my mother's bedside once again and she seemed cheery enough, although obviously disappointed that I wasn't being her Milky Bar supplier today, once she'd told me how much she'd enjoyed such a forbidden fruit.

Meanwhile I talked about my weekend activities, or lack thereof, and then did it all over again when, then minutes later, she asked me whether we'd we'd been anywhere this weekend. Because of her back, mum has a great deal of trouble getting comfortable, so we jiggled pillows and manoeuvered the  bed for a while whilst we discussed her lack of interest and ability to concentrate upon anything.

Other than that, the talk was mostly about her stomach being "off" again and the lack of doctors seen during the three-day Bank Holiday weekend (although "Jonathan" from OT is "lovely", apparently), which didn't quite make sense when she started telling me about the "infected lumps" in her stomach and the "things they want to remove from her groin" so I kind of, as the saying goes, let that pass...

I also found out that she has to share a walking frame with the lady in the next bed, because there's only one available between the two of them but luckily their bathroom trips have, so far, not coincided.

Mum was obviously flagging, energy-wise, so I drifted off back to the car park, with the knot which seems to form in my own stomach whenever I go to that place returning after its two day break. Still, there was an excellent Blues track playing on Radio 2 as I headed home, and mum's former work colleague had apparently telephoned in my absence and offered to do the Tuesday visit to give me a night off...

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

Back to work after the Bank Holiday and I have the kind of day that leaves me feeling so stressed, exhausted and anxious that it was just as well that i didn't have to think about the hospital, or about visiting it for a while...

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

Mum rings me at about 10.00am to tell me that they're going to do "this biopsy thing" which is apparently what the "groin" thing was that she was referring to the other day. This had, apparently, been rescheduled from yesterday afternoon when mum woke up and "forgot" she was supposed to be "nil by mouth" and ate a biscuit...

I'll bet she was popular, then... as, no doubt, was the fiendish biscuit supplier...

Anyway, the upshot of all that is that she might be spark out when I get there for evening visiting, so she thinks that I ought to ring first, not realising that, to be honest, it's far easier to just show up than to try and get some kind of sense from the system...

And so, when the evening rolled around, despite being far too exhausted, I dragged myself back to that dreadful place and, because I was early, stopped in the shop for another Milky Bar because it's just so much easier if I avoid the sulks I would have got if I hadn't.

I don't know whether its fatigue or that vague sense of light at the end of the tunnel, but the place seemed very odd to me that evening - I kept getting flashbacks to "Carry On" films combined with a sense of institutionalisation, as I watched porters in uniforms running through routines that were so familiar to them that you could almost touch the over-familiarity and inevitability as they almost reluctantly carried a piece of equipment to wherever it was needed.

It's hard to describe what I mean by that, but the feeling was very vivid at the time...

At the bedside, mum was in her chair, having survived the afternoon's procedure. She'd only had a local anaesthetic and had been allowed to eat, despite the "nil by mouth" sign which was still in evidence and meant that she'd not been given any water, a fact which I soon remedied. I then took down and returned the "nil by mouth" sign on the obvious assumption that if it was left in place, mum might not get any breakfast, which I didn't want to become my fault. "That couldn't happen" I was told, (although recent events have convinced me otherwise), but I was told that mum would have been very "vocal" about it if it had, which was an interesting way of putting it.

Perhaps they are ready to see the back of her, too.

Actually, mum's main preoccupation tonight was the fact that Social Services have decided that she's better off going home after being discharged, rather than into a care home, which is an interesting decision which was, I'm sure, in no way financial... (Ahem!). Well, it's their call, but with the boomerang effect of the last few times she's gone home, I fully expect that they'll find her back again fairly soon if they try that one... She'll need extra help, they admit, and a handle to help her to get in and out of bed, but it does seem that they are preparing her for release fairly soon.

The rest of the visit was a whirlwind of talk about biscuits, me being mistaken for a farmer (a visitor on that woman's previous ward had been one), tales of a visit by "Pauline's daughter" (a neighbour's child who mum hadn't met before), mum putting more money on the telephone account herself, waiting whilst she made another long visit to the loo, and the inevitable decision to get back into bed on her return.

Still, at least everyone has their own walking frame again, and, despite claiming not to be interested in anything, mum's observations of life in the ward, a kind of "all human life is here" moment, would seem to suggest otherwise, and I headed back to my car convinced that we are about to enter a new, post hospital era (however briefly) any day now...

SMALL DILEMMAS

Modern life does tend to give us one or two small dilemmas which can confuse and befuddle the unwary. Like whether you really need to constantly thank people for retweets and just add to the pointless blather flying around in cyberspace; or whether free one month trials will inevitably lead to contracts you don’t want; or how to politely put an end to a cold call; or whether you’ve filled in your online car tax application correctly; or why money spent on downloads doesn’t feel as “real” in quite the same way as cold hard cash does.

Another tricky little problem unfolded for me when I got a little disorientated a few weeks ago, when I was heading over to Warrington for a regular appointment. I’ve got the route pretty much sorted now after the five or six months that I’ve been driving over there, but that’s only if I’m setting off from the point that I usually am. This time I was had Salford as my start point and I wasn’t quite sure how Salford arranged itself into the great jigsaw within the Manchester ring road, and so I got out my old A-Z and had a quick look.

All well and good, although I’m sure that the more hi-tech gizmo oriented of you are already whispering “sat-nav” under your collective breaths and wondering how on earth I survive this life with such an old-fashioned, lo-tech default position.

Well, the point is that, despite being published in an era when MediaCity was still a pipe dream, the planet hasn’t shifted around all that much in the intervening decade and I was quite able to work out how everything joined up by using the information inside it.

But, thanks for your concern.

Anyway, all of that’s not very relevant to our little dilemma.

The point is that the A-Z in question had been hanging around in the glove compartments and door storage bins of various vehicles I’ve had during all of those years and hadn’t really had that much attention, if I’m being honest with you, because I don’t get out much.

When I idly flipped through it, I found an old “Post-It” note affixed to the corner of one of the pages bearing an address and telephone number but no name, which, presumably, had once been a rather vital element of a journey I once made. Now, when I checked later, I didn’t seem to have those details in my address book and I don’t have much of a clue as to quite whose details they might be, or if they even refer to a person, a business or just an appointment for a job interview or something that I once may have had.

So the question is… Given that at least a decade has gone by and other people’s lives, at least, do tend to move on, are these details likely to be current…? And, furthermore, assuming that the number belongs to an actual person, are these the long-lost details of someone I regret losing touch with, or are they a way of renewing contact with someone who’d rather forget that I even walk upon the same planet as them…?

In the end the dilemma is…

Do I dial those eleven digits and risk opening up a whole can of worms…?

Or do I leave well alone, close the book and forget all about it again…?

A DAY IN THE GARDEN

So finally, the weather turned, and, after Friday, the first day of the second test at Headingley had been completely washed out, the three day Bank holiday weekend following it turned out against all the odds (and historical precedent) to be a rather sunny one.

Mind you, with that all said, I recall that the equivalent weekend last year was equally spectacular, but the holiday had been shifted away from it so that we could all get rained upon for the Jubilee instead, and I only mention that to remind us all that we really need to grab the nice weather when we can because it might all be gone by the next time a weekend rolls around.

Nevertheless, sunshine is what we got, and nearly three full days of it too, and it was even enough to drag this old troglodyte out blinking into the sunlight and soak up a few of its life-giving vitamins, something I have been sadly lacking as I work daily in the gloomy bowels of the grey cube when the sun is never allowed to penetrate and seldom venture out into the daylight unless the window cleaners want me to move my car.

So, on the Sunday of the Bank Holiday weekend I had a day that lacked all responsibilities and, after getting up and failing to write anything, I had my breakfast, plonked my Mendocino cap (circa 1996)  on top of my head, and headed outside to put up the sun umbrella, sit on the new bench (which – I noted - already has a hint of rust around the screw heads), and read the remains of the latest Mark Billingham paperback, whilst waiting for the cricket to start.

Granted, I did miss “Soul Limbo” because I was pfaffing about indoors brewing up some coffee and grabbing a few garden tools, and I could hear other people chatting somewhere beyond the bushes, but other than that, it was all kind of perfect.

At lunchtime I went indoors and made up some spectacular Pastrami sandwiches to have with our tea and a bowl of Doritos, and I returned to the John Lanchester novel that I’d picked up and then put down a few weeks ago, and read a huge chunk of that whilst New Zealand wickets tumbled all afternoon.

However, it still didn’t grip me – it could be that the “range anxiety” of the batteries was distracting me too much – and I went inside and picked up the book of theatrical reviews that Diana Rigg once compiled (“No Turn Unstoned”) which I had picked up in a charity bookshop a few weeks ago and placed by the bedside, and read some of that instead.

In the late afternoon we were joined by a neighbour’s cat although, despite the fact that it lay there quite contentedly under the shade of the umbrella, I knew it was only really hanging about because it had seen a couple of tiny voles moving around which had grabbed its attention and it was simply biding its time and waiting to strike.

Meanwhile I treated myself to a beer, which had been lurking in the fridge since the dawn of time. It had a bit of sediment, but it was only after I’d drunk 90% of it that I noticed and read the label which stated “Best Before August 2010…”

So, only just under three years out of date then…

In and around this, we managed some very minor-league gardening, pulling up some weeds and so forth, but it was all rather blissful and, for the first time in ages I felt that I had been able to unwind and forget about things for a few hours, and that my Sunday actually had felt like it hadn’t just vanished in the blink of an eye like it usually does.

‘BROADSWORD’ CALLING ‘DANNY BOY’

You know, I started writing this piece, oh, it must be a couple of years ago now, and never got around to finishing it off… Until now, that is, and what could be more appropriate for a Bank Holiday weekend than burbling on about some old war movie that we’ve all had the opportunity to see a dozen times or more, even if some of you will no doubt never have taken the broadcasters up on the opportunity…

There are some films that you know that you really shouldn’t like but you find that, despite yourself, you find that  you do anyway and you really can’t help it. For me, one of those films is “Where Eagles Dare”, the 1968 action movie based upon the Alistair MacLean book, starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in which a captured “American General” and, with him, all of the allied plans for the invasion of Europe, is taken to the Schloss Adler, the most impregnable prison in the Third Reich, a prison considered so impregnable that only eagles would dare to try to reach it. When this happens, a fiendish plot is hatched in London to get the General back, although quite how fiendish the plot is going to get is, at least at first, not really apparent.

Whenever this film happens to appear on television, I’m always drawn in by it because, despite all of the “Boy’s Own Adventure” trappings, there’s a really clever storyline at the heart of it, one which, in a manner completely unlike Clint Eastwood and all of those nasty Nazis he mows down during the film, blew me away the first time I sat down and watched it all the way through, and still amazes me on further viewing…

On paper I shouldn’t like a film like this at all, especially with my record as an artsy-fartsy wet liberal who usually sees the appearance of a helicopter in any movie as a sign that the entire industry has gone to hell in a handcart… After all, there is a quite nasty ruthless streak running through the film which ought to find me sucking at my teeth and crying “shame” and much of it is infected with the kind of nonsense and poppycock that would usually find me reaching for the “off” switch, but it is a quite compelling film, despite the fact that it does even have a helicopter in it…

It shouldn’t have, of course, but that’s probably a point to be addressed at another time…

Because, at it’s heart, however, “Where Eagles Dare” is a caper movie and has a plot that is at the same time so preposterous and yet absolutely watertight and strange incidents in the first half hour of the movie pay off in the final fifteen minutes. Even the fact that they go into a shed and start a bus, and that this bus has a snowplough on the front all becomes vital to the characters as they try to make their escape later, despite being barely remarked upon. It’s a classic example of informing the viewer without drawing attention to it…

As I mentioned earlier, Schloss Adler is a German high security facility that is so remote that “only eagles would dare” to attempt to enter it. A high-ranking American General has been captured and taken there for interrogation and, because he has all the plans for the allied invasion of Europe in his head it is vital that he be got out.

It doesn’t really matter of course… He’s just the “MacGuffin” upon which to hang the complexities of the daredevilry. It doesn’t even matter really, what those plans are or even whether he’s actually a real General. He could just be some lowly G.I. Joe with access to a particular secret, all that matters is that he needs to be got out, and Major Smith and his plucky band of commandos are just the chaps to do it.

It’s really hard to describe what it is that I so enjoy about “Where Eagles Dare” without telling you the whole plot, so instead I’ll just describe a few of the special moments that I remember…

There’s that stunning call-sign catchphrase, of course: “Broadsword calling Danny Boy” which will always draw out another “fan” if you happen to mutter it within their earshot. I think, in all honesty, the movie would find a special place in my heart if it was only because of that, but there’s so much more to enjoy, too.

Quite early on in the film, our heroes Mr Burton and Mr Eastwood have stripped off their winter whites to reveal Nazi uniforms underneath and go for a stroll through the main gate to the army base that services Schloss Adler whilst explaining to each other what’s going on. They barely break step as they greet the officer on guard at the gate and you suddenly realise that you’re supposed to realise that they’ve been talking in fluent German all along.

Derren Nesbitt’s sinister SS officer is a masterclass in building tension as you never know when and if he’s going to burst into a room and allow the entire enterprise to unravel, especially as he seems to be just the sort of suspicious wild card character who might just cause that to happen…

There’s an astonishing exposition sequence slap bang in the middle of the film where many of the plotting and counter-plotting is unravelled like the layers of a particularly complex onion buried inside an orange, all of which exists in a quantum state of probability, and it’s riveting stuff, I can tell you, that has to be seen to be believed…

In some circles, the movie was known as “Where Doubles Dare” but the breathtaking stunt sequences performed on and around the cable cars are still pretty impressive all these years later and you also get to see some of the leading character actors of their day going through their paces and showing you quite why the actors of that generation are still held in such high regard to this day.

Michael Hordern, Peter Barkworth, Donald Houston, Patrick Wymark, William Squire, Robert Beatty, Anton Diffring, and Neil McCarthy, all stalwarts of the kind of telly and film series that I still enjoy so much, all make appearances, as do Ingrid Pitt and Mary Ure, just in case you think that there are no women playing any significant parts in this movie

I will admit that there are moments I don’t like.

The German radio operator who’s just trying to listen to some classical music suffers an unduly nasty and distasteful fate, and do I find and the relentless mowing down of the German troops by Clint and his trusty machine guns does seem rather excessive at times. I mean I know that they’re supposed to be the bad guys, but, much like in the “Indiana Jones” films later, there’s little room for them to be anything other than ciphers, and, as I’ve got older, I have started to wonder more and more about their fictional families waiting for them back home…

Of course in many ways “Where Eagles Dare” is a load of old codswallop filled with historical inaccuracies (that helicopter particularly is very out of place historically speaking…), a ridiculous overblown plot, and cardboard characters straight out of the pages of a cheap thriller, but the plot is so taut that , if you stick with it and pay close attention, everything comes together and makes sense at the end and I just bloody love it.

“Broadsword calling Danny Boy, are you receiving me…? Over.”

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 190513 (PART TWO)

Wednesday, 22nd May, 2013

Yes, almost incredibly, this story, which began its latest phase five weeks ago, but which also started way back on the 11th of January, is still pootling along and sucking everything else in our lives into its benign whirlpool of influence...

Wednesday was one of those "flying" visits that I sometimes make in order to keep my sanity and some kind of control over the other things I need to do in my admittedly uneventful little life. Whilst one of us  skittered around Sainsbury's, stocking up on the "perishables", the other (i.e. me...) headed off up the road and back to the hospital to metaphorically pop my head around the door and say "hi..."

This meant that the visit was short, but by no means sweet, although its main purpose - restocking the days on the telephone bundle so it would work again (those screens are fiendishly complicated for even a supposed technology aware person like myself...) - was achieved, and it was nice to have a little chat, especially as, despite what I had been led to believe, there had been no other visitors that day. It was also a good idea anyway, not least because she is my mother, but because the "procedure" was still scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday) and nobody likes to think that everyone's forgotten about the fact that they're going to be going through something of a personal ordeal...

Anyway, after a jolly fifteen minutes or so, I scarpered my way back to my car park rendezvous, and we headed home listening to a CD of 1920s dance music "inspired by" the release of the movie "The Great Gatsby" which had somehow made it into our shopping basket...

Thursday, 23rd May, 2013

Mum's morning telephone call to me at the office seems to imply that the left hand really doesn't have a clue what the right hand is doing and, in fact, might not be even all that sure whether there is a right hand at all. After asking if it was all right to have breakfast (because of the "nil by mouth" approach to gastroscopy) she was told that she "wasn't on the list" for any procedures today, and seemed not to know anything about it, despite the nurse on Tuesday assuring me that the ward would need to ring the department on Thursday morning to see if there was a slot available...

Hmmm...

Meanwhile, mum seemed quite cheery at the prospect of not seeing me on Thursday evening, even though I was planning on going, having just "popped in" on Wednesday because I was "passing by" anyway...

Perhaps not going would have been wiser, because Thursdays adventures in hospital-land left me feeling so frustrated and angry that I ended up ringing my sister from the car park for a bit of a ranty vent before I felt calm enough to drive home.

Let's start with the positives, shall we...? Mum watched a bit of "Bargain Hunt" and read her book for a while today. Both great leaps forward in the great scheme of things, but hardly award-winning achievements.

On the downside, she had a "bad accident" in her bed and got "shouted at" by a nurse for not making it to the toilet in time, even though, as mum explained to me later, she had actually been asleep when it happened.

Not that she told the nurse that of course... Anyway, because of this, she hadn't been allowed back in bed but had been made to sit in her chair all day, which isn't all that great for someone with her back problems, and consequently, she hadn't slept and was feeling "very tired..."

She had been for a scan, in "one of those tunnel things" but the planned and much talked about gastroscopy hadn't happened, although she had apparently been discussing "intermediate care" again with the Occupational Therapist, or the "Eye man" as she seems to think of him as.

I decided to have a little chat with a nurse, which is where, I'm sorry to say, my anger started. I might have been terse, perhaps even a little bit rude, but I'm fully aware of the "zero tolerance" policy and did my best to keep a lid on my exasperations during our "intense discussions" because, given the inconsistencies between what I'm told on various days,  I was genuinely left with the distinct impression that nobody on that ward has the slightest clue about my mother's condition, and, to be honest, I'd never really felt any dissatisfaction with that ward before that night.

You know... "Aren't our nurses wonderful?" "They do an awful job under very difficult conditions..." etc., etc., etc.

And of course, most of them are, but occasionally one comes along and... Well, anyway...

First off, my mother has been signed off as "medically fit to be discharged..."

In what freakin' universe...???

Not only that, because she can walk with a frame eight feet to the toilet she is "capable of looking after herself" and doesn't need to go into any kind of community care, but can have a "home care package" set up for her.

The gastroscopy she had apparently been given, although the report was dated April 19th and therefore predated the stroke/seizures which, it seemed, nobody had any recollection of her ever having. Another one was deemed unnecessary, and the ulcer we were told we had was only a stomach inflamation (so the special diet was unnecessary for those three weeks then...?) and I was probably imagining that she might need to be put back on Warfarin because "sometimes they decide not to reintroduce it..."

What...? After a stroke...?

In fact, apparently, "in some circumstances Aspirin and Warfarin are prescribed together" I was told when I reminded the nurse the reason that mum had been admitted by an emergency ambulance in the first place five weeks ago.

Still, as I pointed out, she'd been pronounced "medically fit" and sent home several times over the past four and a half months, three and a half of which she had spent in hospital because she plainly wasn't, and I did wonder whether it was more the impending Bank Holiday weekend that had them so eager to have a clearout, especially of the patients with the unsavoury or unpleasant conditions which might have to be dealt with, and I had several other issues which, I think, come under the heading of "etc., etc." (although my sister did apparently take copious notes during my ranting...)

To me, it seems that nobody is addressing any of the fundamental issues of her actual condition, but seem quite happy to just pack her off home to become somebody else's problem, but when I mentioned that, the first part anyway, I was told that I really ought to speak to a doctor and they're only in between nine and five, strangely when the rest of us who have jobs might also have to be doing them, and the lady crying in the car park who I spotted as I left did rather help to retrieve my sense of proportion...

A bit...

I took a number, and am going to set my wolf pack (a.k.a. "Angry Sister") on them.

That'll teach 'em...

Friday, 24th May, 2013

The anger and frustration continues...

My sister rings me at work having just spoken to the same nurse as I did and been left with the same levels of anger and frustration that I was left with last night so at least it's not just me then...

"Interestingly" (and when I say "interestingly" I tend to mean that it interests me at least...), I get another telephone call from my sister later on, after she's had a chance to have a conversation with the consultant in charge of my mum's case. It is interesting, however, because he tells my sister almost the exact opposite of what the nurse on the war had been telling both of us. Mum is not "ready for discharge" and did, in fact, have a stomach ulcer, which is why they haven't yet been able to restart the blood thinning medication that she obviously needs.

The worrying thing about all this, of course, is quite how the hell the people who are dealing with my mother on a day-to-day basis could get it quite so wrong, and if they can get it quite that wrong, what the hell else are they getting wrong as well...?

After all, it is they that are continuing to treat her and, given that this whole cycle began because of an error in mum's prescribed medication, it does tend to leave you with little confidence in the entire system, which, coming from someone who has always been a staunch defender of the NHS and all that it does, is something of a worrying trend...

Incidentally, when I got home, there was a message from mum on my answerphone telling me that both  one of the chaplains and her own church minister had been to see her today - the chaplain had even given her "communion" - and that there was no need for me to visit tonight which, given that I hadn't been planning on going anyway, was a bit of a bonus for the end of the working week...

Saturday, 25th May, 2013

After all those dramas, Saturday afternoon's visit is all rather low key, especially as I sneaked in late after a misunderstanding at home and the traditional Saturday traffic jams found us running rather behind schedule. To be quite honest with you, I wasn't all that eager to catch the eye of certain members of staff, either, so I grabbed my chair and squeaked my way along the corridor (because that surface does seem to bring out the worst in my shoes) and parked myself next to mum, who appeared to be fast asleep.

She wasn't, though, but she was very tired and "didn't really need any visitors" today, so my efforts felt much appreciated. The tiredness was apparently due to her being woken "at 3.00 am" to have a cannula fitted, so they could set up more magnesium drips, and it taking them "until 7.00..." to manage it... and then "made" mum sit in the chair all morning again...

Well, sometimes I have to take what mum says with a certain amount of salt, but you never know...

In other news, the consultant who had seen her yesterday had made it quite clear that she was not yet "medically fit for discharge" and the packet of Rich Tea biscuits I'd left with her had come in quite useful when the box of "official" biscuits got dropped at teatime the day before...

Nevertheless, mum remained very tired, and when I asked whether she'd been drinking enough, she requested some cordial so, before I made my excuses and left, (as should be written in an old song somewhere) "off I popped to the hospital shop" and bought some for her, whilst also capitulating on the "bit of white chocolate" that she had requested, but that I told her probably wasn't a good idea before getting it anyway...

So, the Milky Bar is on me...

WEEDKILLER

A rare sunny Bank Holiday Monday recently found me drawn outside into the sunshine to take advantage of the opportunity to at least make the slightest of starts upon tidying the tiny jungle that seems to have erupted where our tiny garden used to be, after two long and soggy years of neglect.

So there I was, having strimmed back a portion of the long grass which sometimes passes as our postage stamp sized lawn, and weeded a flower bed and a pot plant or three, busily extracting the weeds from between the cracks in the front paving, when an incredibly tall woman who I’d never met before walked up to me and plonked a bottle of weedkiller down in front of me and said “Here you are!” before sauntering away back to her own house.

Well, that’s how I remember it now, anyway, although there was a bit more chat than that and, despite being utterly befuddled by this, I did manage to mutter a brief “Thank you” before returning to my weeding.

I believe that the chat mostly came from her and seemed to involve the fact that they had “loads of the stuff” that they’d “brought from their old house” and that they’d “considered spraying it anyway but decided not to” with regards to the weeds that I was currently tackling which, if it had happened, might have been mightily neighbourly, but also just a tad presumptive, given that we had never even been introduced...

It transpired, you see, that she is, after all, one of the “new” occupants who’ve recently moved into number whatever it is further down the row.

Now, I’m never all that good at dealing with “new” people and situations at the best of times, but crawling around on my knees battling with some stubborn dandelions whilst feeling utterly knackered and having what we laughingly refer to as my “muscles” shaking from all the effort put into the strimming ordeal could never really be described as the “best” of anything, especially me, so I remained as nonplussed at the arrival of this strange bottle of chemicals as by the courier who took it upon herself to deliver it, and couldn’t really decide what to do with it.

So I hid it behind a plant pot to keep it out of direct sunlight, and returned to my more physical approach to weeding, before sweatily drifting inside a few minutes later and plonking the bottle on the dish drainer as I grabbed a swift glass of lemonade and attempted to explain this strange development to the beloved.

The thing is, we don’t like using chemicals on the garden, and never really have, and, whilst they might make life a heck of a lot easier for me in garden maintenance terms, especially with me being so very neglectful and all, we’re really rather reluctant to change our principles on this small matter, especially when it comes to adding toxins to the water table and upsetting the delicate balance of nature and so forth...

Plus, we rather like the bumblebees, and we wouldn’t want any harm to come to any of them, even if the labels do claim that they are perfectly harmless...

But then...

Well, it does perhaps seem rather rude, especially upon first meeting  new neighbour, to reject outright such a kind offer, especially one that came along unprompted or provoked by anything other than seeing me struggling along on my hands and knees. Plus, of course, everyone knows how much first impressions count in all manner of things, and I really didn’t want to come across as pompous or superior in any way by snubbing her kind offer in my usual haughty and stand-offish manner...

“Oh, we don’t use those...”

So, as you can imagine, I was pretty confused by the entire situation and went inside to explain my dilemma to the ever-practical beloved, who, shortly afterwards, strolled back along the row of houses, weedkiller in hand, and returned the bottle from whence it came, introducing herself pleasantly in the process and having a nice little chat - presumably about what an idiot I am - before returning sans weedkiller.

Why am I so bloody awful at such things...?

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 190513 (PART ONE)

Sunday, 19th May, 2013

In the end, I did actually get my perhaps rather selfish Saturday "off" from hospital visiting, even though it turned into one of those summer Saturdays when I didn't achieve very much apart from listening to the test match and battling with the growing mountains of washing up. In the evening, I was so determined not to have my "fun" disturbed that I even felt confident enough to unplug the phone so that nobody who knew me, most especially my mother, could possibly telephone me during the "Doctor Who" finale, or our annual tapping of the pencils on the teeth as we scored the singing sections of this year's Eurovision Song Contest...

Cheese and wine and cheesy music... Excellent stuff, to be endured enjoyed without a care or a worry intruding into it...

So, after our Sunday drive-around, somehow managing to miss all of the more crucial parts of the final day's play in the first test against New Zealand whilst mooching around in department stores, supermarkets, garden centres and cafes, we eventually pulled up once again in the car park adjacent to the ward in which my mother seems to be almost permanently housed.

She was, of course, completely asleep when we got there, and so I had to gently wake her up for the dubious pleasure of our company. This might not have been as cruel as it seems as she was going to be woken up anyway a couple of minutes later as it was time for her go at the latest round of blood pressure and temperature taking anyway.

And so, after we'd given mum a few moments to come around (her first words: "There's some washing for you to take with you...") a brief(ish) visit followed in which she complained about another broken night so loudly that the poor unfortunate who had broken it felt the need to apologise, in the middle of a chaotic visit of her own, and the same old tales about wanting to sleep came around again.

Yesterday had not been in any way eventful, it seems, although mum is now at least attempting to read and make telephone calls, although the phone credit had run out mid call, and we did have to take out another £15 bundle in order for the "free calls" to actually start working again which seemed a tad suspicious to me in terms of trades descriptions, if nothing else...

I also got a couple of signatures so that I could attempt some official paperwork, and made a call to a friend of mum's in order to get a telephone number for another friend of mums... which sounds weirder than it actually is, but sometimes she works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, our chatting lasted just under an hour and I was able to suggest that I might start to cut back on the daily visiting for a while, and we headed back towards the car park with the bags of washing, just in time to have missed the final few overs of the game...

Monday, 20th May, 2013

A day off, at least from visiting. Instead, I trotted off to bed at a time which would have frustrated a toddler and as a consequence had the best night's sleep I can remember having in a long time...

Tuesday, 21st May, 2013

A telephone call at work about 9.00am from my mother indicates that things are starting to return to normal. She tells me that she had a couple of visitors on Monday anyway, an old work colleague and the chaplain who is also an old family friend, so my absence was not a problem, although I detect a little of her old criticisms in the casual question "Will I see you today?" that "she hasn't seen me for a couple of days..."

Returning to the hospital visiting treadmill after a 48 hour gap, I find that I am no less inspired in terms of what to talk about, but at least I got to return the washing. Mum had had another visitor from amongst her church friends anyway during the afternoon, so my miserable face was rapidly becoming redundant.

Still, we had a pleasant enough chat about this and that, and I was able to find out that the "physiotherapist/optician" who appears to have been looking at mum's eyes (which looked "brighter" to me today) has been discussing her "post-hospital" respite care with her again, that they are talking about looking at her liver and that they are still pushing magnesium into her at every available opportunity.

Mum is also reading "but not really" and still has little interest in the world beyond the confines of her own head, which probably isn't all that good her her, really, especially as she's not even bothering to watch TV, either. As my sister put it later, it really is a case of "use it or lose it" but... ah, what can you do...?

I had a long chat with a tiny nurse with bright red hair (once she got a moment), because I'd not had an "official" conversation with anyone for quite a few days and, whilst they remain "pleased" with mum's progress, there's a lot of stuff planned for Thursday (if possible - they have to ring and see if there's a slot available apparently) which she reeled off lots of technical terms for but which is most probably a procedure involving a gastroscope and a possible insertion of a "stent", whatever that is... We also finally began talking about plans for what happens after mum is released, but these were slightly different to what mum had been telling me, so I suspect that little is actually set in stone as yet, because it's still quite some way off.

In the car park as I left, a gentleman tapped on my window and waved a fiver at me, asking if I had any change. I did, but not for a fiver (pound coins having become quite precious in this car park heavy life I'm living), but I was able to give him my ticket which still had forty minutes or so left on it, so he went any happy enough and not completely convinced of my selfishness.

I headed home but, despite the exhaustion, ended up ringing my sister and nattering for an hour or more. One of the things that emerged was that a friend of mum's has offered to visit on the days that I don't which will, at least, lift some of that commitment from my shoulders for a few days...

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

This is a bit overdue, but... better late than never, eh...?

I was away on the day Neil Armstrong died... which always feels a little bit weird when a big news story breaks, or at least one that strikes a chord with me, and I want to know more about it without having to spend large chunks of my supposed break sitting in front of a TV set or screen trying to find out more about what has happened.

I was also otherwise distracted on the day he was laid to rest, perhaps rather fittingly on a day ending in the appearance of those proverbially rare events, a “Blue Moon” which a happens, of course, er, once in a...

Anyway, having found out the news by happening to notice a headline on an active computer which I just happened to glance across the room at over breakfast, I managed to “borrow” a TV set and catch up on the story via the still rather wonderful means of “Teletext” which still staggers along as an information source, albeit in its new and slightly less fun new digital format, despite all of the other, newer and far more exciting methods now available.

Anyway, later on that Sunday, because it was one of those exceedingly rare sunshiny days of last summer, we all went for a bit of a stroll, followed, rather naturally (and, because it was such a nice day), by a trip to the pub (which was a rather pleasant something, incidentally, I felt as if I hadn’t done in years…). As we walked into the pub, there was a pile of Sunday Newspapers spread out for the use of customers and I noticed a distinct lack of emphasis on the story of our lost man on the moon which was of course in direct contrast to the massive headlines which accompanied that historic landing 43 years earlier.

Still, because of my interest in all things moon-landing related, I was “allowed” to read the two-page article inside the dreaded “Mail on Sunday” just so long as I promised that I wouldn’t make a habit of it or, indeed, read any more of it. After all, I am getting to an age where exposure to such extreme and right-leaning ideas might just begin to rub off on me if I’m not too careful.

So I found myself thinking about humanity’s trips to the moon, and found myself feeling all rather melancholy, and not simply because of the loss of one of those great pioneers, but also a little because of what we’ve collectively lost in terms of our ambitions to explore and look beyond this little blue world we live upon, and the limitations we set ourselves as we stare at our little screens instead of embracing the big wide universe beyond our tiny little obsessions of telly and footy and celebrity and wealth and war...

How far we went, I began to think, and how narrowly we venture now…

ELECTRIC PALACE

A few months ago - although it might be over a year ago by now - I happened to spot that a crumbling old picture house near to where my mother lives had inadvertently told a story in the way the staff had worded the signage at the front of the building. As far as it went as a bit of my writing, it was a bit of a nonsense piece which filled a morning for us and, at best was fairly forgettable, although one or two people remarked upon what an impressive building it was, which was terribly sweet of them.

Anyway, I’ve always been quite fond of the older buildings that surround us, and the old picture palaces can be favourites as they always seem to have something rich exciting about their design which was supposed to convince the potential punter to pass through their portals and explore the mysteries to be found inside in the darkness.

Amidst the general air of artifice and glitz that always seems to accompany the world of entertainment, somehow both cinema and theatre designers and architects seemed to create something rather wonderful, usually a fanciful reworking of the embellishment and detailing of Georgian or Jacobean architecture with a hint of the exotic, or the Mediterranean which, of course, also had its roots in the ancient worlds of classical Greek and Roman architecture, which is also, of course, where much of modern theatre and storytelling also has its roots.

Hand in hand through history, the arts and the architecture of a bygone age adding just a hint of respectability to a profession so very steeped in being outside the mainstream and just a little bit dangerous...

Isn’t this fabulous…? Not the picture, of course, that’s fairly ordinary, but the building itself. A beautifully preserved relic from a bygone age still hanging on in there at the edge of a country that seems hell-bent on redeveloping all of the heart and soul out of itself.

It’s the “Electric Palace” cinema in Harwich, and I love it, with the “one shilling ticket” doors to the left (for the gentry) and the “sixpenny” ones to the right (for the hoi polloi). ’Twas ever thus; the “thems” and the “us” brought together to enjoy the entertainments provided by the outsiders and the mavericks. I can just picture it now, all of them sitting (almost) together in the dark and waiting for the magic to unfold.

HOLE IN THE GROUND

Absolutely everywhere

It’s that time of year when the sun comes out, the excavating machines are taken out of mothballs, the contractors dust off their hard hats, slip on their fluorescent tops, work boots and gravitationally over-active jeans and set out to dig holes in the roads.

Suddenly, on any journey I have to take anywhere, there are roadworks, roadworks everywhere, where recently there were none, and I’m beginning to think that it can’t be a coincidence.

It’s as if, during the rainy and icy months, there’s nothing at all wrong with the pothole-marked crusts we move around upon, and the road workers all hibernate in the little stripy tents that they construct for themselves, drinking tea, playing cards and comparing tattoos, and then, there’s a glint of sunlight in the air and the cones are out, the temporary traffic lights are tested to make sure they are all set to “red” and, like those tiny little workers in the “Snow White” story, “hi-hoh, hi-hoh”, it’s off to work they go.

Well, off to somewhere, anyway…

The cones are there, the machinery is there, the lights are on red and there’s nobody home, except for some road users trying to work out whether the contra-flow is clear enough to risk a head on collision with the traffic coming from the other direction and which will be wondering thinking exactly the same thing.

And so, you carefully manoeuvre your way around one hole in the ground, relax and tootle along on a bright sunny morning, only to find there’s another one half a mile up the road and another, and another, and each time you go through the same routines, relieved in a way that it’s early enough that there’s not yet much traffic about and also thinking, with increasing dread, about the journey home.

You might be heading different direction, but it’s the same set of holes and, even if you manage to avoid the tail end of the “school run” you’ll have slipped into the “rush hour” instead and you begin to wonder whether you’ll ever see that warm bed you so recently vacated ever again as you continually hold the car on the clutch, no doubt chipping even more of the notches off the cogs in your overworked gearbox.

They seem to pop up at random, too, almost as if they’ve slipped through from some alternate  “roadworks fixated” universe, designed to snarl up the free-flow of movement in our world and so not have to face the ignominy of winning the “Most Tetchy Version of Reality” award for the umpteenth year in succession.

Not only that, but these holes in the ground, or – possibly - routes to adventure (which might explain where the contractors actually are…), always seem to appear at the most inconvenient spot - the three-way junction, the blind corner or the only route to town - and never where that huge pothole causes you to swerve out of the way and into the path of the traffic coming the other way on the one morning in three that you remember in advance that it’s actually there before you feel that familiar clunk as you hit it full tilt.

I know, like my journeys, they are a “strictly necessary” evil, as things do, unfortunately, still fall apart in our own “entropic” universe. Perhaps we need to work out a way of sending our entropy over to “roadworks world” as a kind of big “thank you” for all the joy they’ve given to us over the years…?

Sometimes a hole in the ground becomes necessary because the water pipe they dug up the road to mend last month has leaked and damaged the nearby electricity feed, or corroded the gas pipe, or interfered with the optical cabling, and you can feel pretty sure that once one part of your journey has been has been dug up, the same spot will be getting dug up fairly regularly for the next few years, and, even when the autumn clouds have started to gather and the roadworks have all gone back to sleep for another winter, you know that, even as you sail across that new laid tarmac that somehow never manages to quite match the road surface around it, one day you’ll be greeting it again like an old friend.

The kind of old friend that you really wish wouldn’t keep coming around and stealing all of the beer from out of your fridge.

WINDOW DRESSING

I don’t know all that much about “window dressing” but this really struck me as a place that wasn’t really making enough effort…

Still, whilst we are trawling through the back catalogue of thoughts and pictures that never quite made it out there, here’s another one for you...

Look... I know that it really is a lousy picture what with the cars breaking into the frame and so on, but sometimes you really need to just capture the moment, or the thought, and that sad little red dress just spoke volumes to me about the current state of our high streets, just as I hope that it is speaking to you now...

I came here to mock, but then left thoroughly depressed by the empathetic sense of sheer desperation that it triggered in me...

“Window Dressing, Harwich, August 2012”

HOT DOG STAND

“You used to be a woman with a hot dog stand…”

I have (for various reasons) been struggling more and more in recent days to come up with anything new and exciting to rattle on about in BlogWorld, and so I’ve started trawling back through one or two of those half-hearted, half-started pieces which I never got around to publishing at the back end of last year as events started to overtake me and I deferred them again and again for “another day…” and then “yet another day…” that just kept on failing to show up.

Anyway, this is a picture of a refreshment stand that I rather took a liking too back on the twelfth of never, or, at least, somewhere on the sea front in Harwich during the August Bank Holiday weekend of 2012...

God only knows why it was that I thought it worthy of “sharing” or why I thought it would be of particular interest to anybody at all. There was quite obviously some kind of exciting thought that was buzzing around inside my head back then, but I really can’t imagine what it was...

Still...

“Refreshment Stand, Harwich, August 2012”

Enjoy...

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 120513 (PART TWO)

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

I had to call in at mum's flat on the way to Wednesday's visit to grab the mail and sort out a few extra bits and bobs like dressing gowns and alternative night dresses for mum to wear. Walking around the place after it has been empty for so many weeks now was a pretty sobering experience, and I found that I had to get out of there before the melancholy overwhelmed me as I wondered whether things would ever return to normal ever again.

Before I switched into "Hospital Delivery Boy" mode, I did, however, finally remember to switch off the water heater as per a suggestion made by my sister a while ago, but, because I'd not been back there since, it hadn't managed to have been got around to. However, now that it's snowing again (at least in Devon), I did ponder later upon the wisdom of this.

Still, I arrived at the hospital on foot, having left the car in Sainsbury's car park whilst the Beloved did the midweek shop and saved me a couple of quid by spending thirty. After revealing to the other impatient visitors watching the clock tick past the appointed hour the "secret" entry code, I delivered the extra night clothes and went through the most official looking of the mountain of mail, and also gave mum a couple of the free local papers that had been also delivered. Whilst local newspapers are usually full of nonsense, those kinds of "local interest" stories do seem to interest mum far more than the gloomy and grave "national" stuff that seems to exercise everyone else so much.

As it was their mealtimes, there was only one nurse at the desk to answer what questions she could, and so I dutifully joined the short queue (translated as "I regretted letting the other bloke speak to her first...") to be told that there were still no results from the Ultrasound scan done a couple of days earlier and that there was a scheduled CT scan due to be done tomorrow to look at how mum's brain has progressed since the incident three weeks ago. Mum had already mentioned to me that she was getting another scan; "One of those where you go in the tube..."

Due to some mix up over telephone messages that I probably just never got around to listening to, two of mum's friends turned up and, because they were very swiftly having a whale of a time yattering away to each other, and I usually struggle to come up with anything new to say about anything, I decided to leave them to it and bid a swift farewell or three before slinking away back to the car (where the key breaks in the ignition, but luckily still works) to finally arrive home at the comparatively early hour of ten past eight in the evening

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

After work today, I have to make my semi-regular jaunt to the vicinity of Risley Remand Centre to deliver the Beloved to her Osteopathy appointment, and then we battled back through the frustrations of the Manchester Outer Ring Road system to drop in for a swift hospital visit before finally heading homewards to deal with the combined pain of the after-effects of that and the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

And so, for the first time in quite a while, my visit is something of a "flying" one, as I dash over from the Sainsbury's car park again before immediately tracking down a nurse to see if she is able to tell me the results of any of the scans mum has been having this week.

The notes reveal little - the "full report" will come later I'm told - but there was "no evidence" of any "significant" tumours, which is good, but the Magnesium was down again and another bag of that had to be pushed into her intravenously today. There was still no talk of resuming the Warfarin, but, all-in-all they remain "very happy" with mum's progress and, as an aside, the nurse thinks that she's looking "a lot better" than the last time she'd seen her a few days ago.

My visit to the bedside is brief. Mum has slept well today and asks me how many weeks she's been in hospital this time (over four...) and, after a brief chat I am able to dial the telephone for her to make a swift call to the church office to request a "thank you" message be added to their announcements this coming Sunday, and I leave after having dialled my sister's number for mum so that they could have a little chat...

Friday, May 17th, 2013

The morning involved paying another of mum's bills as I pondered upon the small matter of how, with almost mind-boggling swiftness, another weekend has come around, although this week, I've decided that I really need at least one day off, and have decided that Saturday will become that particular prize, if only I can persuade my mother that it will be okay...

In the meanwhile, and despite the fact that I was running terribly late for various reasons, Friday's visit was pleasant enough, if uneventful. We chatted for a while, mostly about "not worrying" about what happens when she is released from hospital, and I asked whether mum felt capable enough yet to sign her signature in order that we could start to consider getting one or two of the forms we've accumulated recently actually signed during a later visit, and we dug out her notebook so that mum might be able to use the bedside phone and make a call or twelve to some of her friends.

The hospital staff told me that there was nothing new to tell me, but mum mentioned that the "eye doctor" had been to see her again and had once again mentioned interim care, and mum also said that she had been for a "long walk" to the entrance of the ward today, but generally, day by day, she is returning back to something approaching "normal" again which can only be a good thing...

I departed after dialing my sister's home telephone number for her and headed home, planning to spend Saturday doing as little as possible and hoping to recharge my batteries a tad...

THE TANGLED RAILINGS

Photographs of accidents not seen #1 - The tangled railings.

I really don't know what happened here, but on one recent morning, during the regular commute, as I approached the usually all-too familiar corner of one industrial estate to make the turn onto the road which leads to another, I was greeted by this unexpected sight which did, at least, have the one slight advantage of adding a smidgen of variety into my otherwise tediously similar daily photocopies of yesterday's journey.

Okay, as silver linings go, it's not much... especially for anyone who might have happened to have been involved in the incident as it occurred, but it's something...

Later on, however, I did find myself wondering quite what had happened, though, to leave such a sculptural mangled tangle of metal sitting there at the junction 

Was it a lorry perhaps...?

Misjudging the turn...?

Certainly the lack of floral tributes which didn't appear at the site over the next few morning thankfully implies that it was nothing more tragic for which we should be grateful, but I did find myself thinking more and more about this evidence of an accident unseen and wondered time and again about whether you can ever fully reconstruct an event just by looking at the outcome and not seeing the initial incident without running off into the realms of sheer fantasy.

"The aftermath of accidents unseen..."

Of course. for me at least, the worst thing about this whole scene was my attempts to try and avoid having another accident at the very same spot whilst pulling up and trying to take a picture of the one I hadn't seen whilst puttering along through my own commute, because, whilst I seem to be oblivious to most things, I'm not immune to irony...

(One of those blog postings that - hopefully - does exactly what it says on the tin...)

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 120513 (PART ONE)

Sunday, May 12th, 2013

As I wearily dragged myself through the rain to make yet another of my daily hospital visits on Sunday evening, it was with the resigned and fatigued air of someone who really didn't want to go, but, surprisingly, Sunday evening was to prove to be something of a "turning point" in so far as great changes were afoot and positive thoughts were about to be had.

The most obvious immediate difference was that mum had been moved off the side ward and back amongst the general population and, whilst this had been the cause of much trepidation recently, she seemed to be thriving upon it. As I rejigged the TV to reflect that it was now actually her in that particular bed, she tried to persuade me that there was money left on the phone by the previous occupant - there wasn't - but I used the "free calls" option and called my sister for her (mum had no problems remembering that number, I noticed...), and was able to sit back whilst they had their first direct conversation in a couple of weeks.

Mum's mid-visit "toilet break" was different, too. As I was scooted away expecting the curtains to be drawn, I noticed mum being walked to an actual cubicle which was the first time I'd actually seen her on her feet again since the seizures that so nearly killed her occurred nearly three weeks ago, so that was a definite sign of improvement.

There was even time for a little bit of banter with the staff as they indulged in a bit of good-natured argument over who was working the Christmas shifts this year. The middle of May and they're already planning for Christmas. This not only reminded me how much of this year has already been chewed up and swallowed by my endless visits to the hospital, but also made me realise that if mum is still here at Christmas time, I will have had a complete nervous collapse myself by then.

However, amidst all the banter, I also overheard some comments being given to another family who were strolling to and from the waiting room in an all-too familiar manner and with those familiar grim expressions that my sister and myself had so recently been wearing. I got the distinct impression that here was another family going through their own "longest day" much as we had so recently done ourselves, and it's still too heartbreaking to see.

I wanted to tell them not to worry, that it was all going to turn out to be okay, but, of course, I couldn't really tell them that, could I...?

Monday, May 13th, 2013

Another working week, and another evening visit. Same old, same old.

The day was significant because of a telephone conversation with my sister in which I was able to be fairly optimistic in only that basically pessimistic way that I seem to manage so effortlessly. That said, when I ventured out on my regular evening visit, I was so worn out that I hadn't got the first notion of what I was going to find to talk about for an hour.

Upon arrival, mum was reluctantly sitting in her chair and looking pretty exhausted, and the skin of her feet wasn't looking too good, I thought, and an improvement to her circulation is possibly why she was sitting there, even though the staff will insist that "seeing her out of bed" is something that will give me some sort of great joy and is therefore for my benefit (or is my fault, depending upon your point of view).

To be honest, Monday was not a high point in staff/me relations. Once mum had informed me that she'd been on a long journey to the "psychiatric department" for an x-ray upon her stomach, I went off to try and discover the results only to lurk by the desk long enough for someone to emerge from the staff room, spot me there and refuse to even tell me which staff had been treating my mother that day.

"She's in this room, but she's having her tea..."

I wasn't even allowed to ask who I might need to ask for later, and I seethed my way back to mum's bedside having also had my request for a jug of water for her pretty much ignored. Mum had been "nil by mouth" for a while before the x-ray (or, perhaps, scan... it remains unclear) and they'd forgotten to give her any water since which might have explained the vagueness she was feeling.

The ward was also suffering from having a patient on it who appeared to be suffering from "wandering nutter" syndrome which might sound callous, but when someone is walking around asking everyone they can see for "a light" for their cigarette, and had been doing it non-stop for most of the day and even during the previous night, I do start wondering whether a "sin bin" or some kind of restraints might be necessary, even though I'm sure that it's not NHS policy.

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

On the way to Tuesday's visit, we actually managed to organise ourselves enough that we were able to find the time to sit down in a "proper" restaurant and actually have a meal. Granted, it was a "diner" and we had burgers, but it was a far better meal than anything we'd managed to arrange for ourselves in what seems like weeks of weeknights, although my telephone buzzing with work-related stuff which had come up after I'd left, and the hideous ordeal of trying to park in that part of town didn't make it the most relaxing hour and a half of my life.

However, we arrived a smidgeon early for the visiting hour and lurked in the corridor even though I knew the entry code, and then admitted ourselves bang on time - I'm still a stickler for punctuality - and made a scrambling dash for the few available chairs as the room they are generally stored in seemed to be occupied. Later on, as we were shooed away for one of the two "toilet breaks" mum required this visit (that unfortunate aspect of her illness having flared up again), someone made a grab for them and I had to dissuade him from walking off with them, being as they are like gold dust in such circumstances.

Other than that and the visitor in full highland dress, it was an uneventful evening. Mother made vague reference to her liver now being a cause for concern, but none of the staff mentioned anything about it, and that they the physiotherapist is continually checking mum's eyes, which seems unlikely, but you have to believe what you're told. Yesterday's scan results are still not available I am told, and mother did attempt to read her book for a while today, even though she was firmly tucked up in bed when we arrived and wasn't interested in the newspapers we'd been bringing along with us.

We did, however, manage to work it so that mum was able to telephone my sister again which seems to please her, and we were sent on our way with another bundle of soiled washing and a requirement to pop into mum's flat to pick up some alternative night clothes, a visit which will have to be crammed into tomorrow's schedule somehow...

NEW BENCH

Over the Bank Holiday weekend, at last we finally managed to find a couple of hours of sunshine and were able to put together the flat-pack garden seating that was delivered sometime way back in March, just before it began snowing again.

You could argue, of course, in the spirit of the great coincidental legends that clutter all our lives, that there was a direct correlation of cause and effect from me taking delivery of the hope brought along with new garden seating and the ensuing despair-inducing weather that followed, so that it might be believed that the recent cold snap was all my fault…

If you believe in such nonsense of course, like a cricket team always playing better when I’m not listening, but it must be said that, since I put the new bench together on a Monday afternoon so blisteringly hot that the nuts and bolts started to melt their way out of their plastic wrapping, it has started raining again…

Just saying…

So, if it turns out that it actually is my fault that our brief summer is well and truly over and that we are now looking at the prospect of six months of non-stop rain, then I can only apologise.

Meanwhile, I have to ask… Is it excessive, or perhaps a sign of my mistrust of my neighbours, for me to decide to chain up my new bench…?

Or is it just symptomatic of my wider mistrust of society as a whole…?

I mean, in the topsy-turvy, back-to-front world that is our tiny house and garden, the thing is relatively exposed by being outside and on full public view, and whilst there have been few incidents of the kind of opportunistic theft that this might bring along with it, there have been some (as well as the odd jolly prank…), and we are living in austere times when petty thievery and the notion that if you’re idiotic enough to leave stuff outside it’s your own fault if it goes walkabout seems to be increasing again.

After a couple of worrisome days of expecting the thing to vanish, I went and bought a padlock and chain from a DIY store, after having spectacularly failed to find an aesthetically pleasing bicycle lock that seemed fit for purpose.

I know, of course, that this will not deter the more determined thief, but might just be awkward enough to discourage the opportunist, at least until I think that the new bench has been out there long enough to feel as if its always been there.

It’s a strange kind of double standard that I have with such neuroses. I mean, if I left a few twenty pound notes outside my house, I would be kind of surprised to find them to be still there in the morning, but my car cost me thousands and I leave it outside every night, so why would the possible disappearance of a bench that is worth far less than that worry me so much more..?

I think it comes down to the amount of sheer bloody effort the thing took to put together and the thought of having to go through all of the rigmarole required to replace it and rebuild it all over again that makes me so jittery.

Anyway, despite all of the anxiety it caused me, for a few short hours, we were able to sit outside and enjoy the brief snatch of summer sunshine, and look forward to being able to do so again at some far distant point in the future whenever the sun chooses to come out again...