HOLIDAY POSTCARDS

You might have noticed from the strange smorgasbord of eclectic postings last week, scraped from the very barrel of unpublished nonsenses, that I'm just back from a short holiday, a much needed break from which, incidentally, I entirely failed to send any postcards to anyone.

So, if you were hoping to get one - a most unlikely state of mind to expect anyone to get into, I'll grant you - then I'm very sorry to tell you that you won't be. Don't stay indoors waiting for the postie to deliver one to you, because it isn't going to happen, no matter how much you may linger hopefully and pine for such a delightful outcome.

Writing postcards seems to have become yet another of those things which I fail to do and them allow myself to get beaten about the head with a metaphorical stick about.

What I did do, however, is take far, far too many photographs. Far more than any normal week in Wales ought to require. Well, I say photographs, but what I really mean is snapshots taken to try and remind me of my week of freedom as and when the vice-like grip of life starts to crush me all over again.

Most of my snapshots - like this one - are very, very dull indeed, but there's a lot of inspiration amongst the snappery which will probably be enough to keep these pages ticking over for quite a few postings yet. However, if they get us through to Christmas, there's a fair old chance that I'll have been overdoing it and you, my loyal reader, will be heartily sick of hearing about one short week at the height of summer when that summer is far behind us all and we're shivering in the darkness once again.

Still, in the meantime, perhaps these postings will help to fill in the gaps and sort of act as substitute postcards to all of you who I have so recklessly abandoned in the pursuit of peace and quiet and a week of escaping from the maddening crowd...

N.T. LIVE - MACBETH

This write-up is, of course, happening well after the fact because I didn't have time to do anything about it at the time seeing as I was off and about doing "holiday things" and far, far away from dreary things like keyboards and so forth, and if you think that I'm going to try writing such things on the keys of a tiny portable telephone, then you know little of my ham-fisted technophobia...

Anyway...

We were hugely excited to discover that Sir Kenneth Branagh was going to return to the Shakespearean stage for the first time in over a decade in order to play "Macbeth" at the Manchester International Festival and, whilst it transpired that tickets were like gold dust and almost impossible to get hold of, having sold out in an incredible nine minutes way back in February, we were excited all over again to find out that it was going to be given the rare honour of being broadcast live to cinemas as part of the "N.T. Live" project which I may have mentioned a couple of times already in these pages.

Then, of course, we found out that there was a clash of dates, and the scheduled live broadcast would be happening on the very first evening of our planned holiday in Anglesey, and suddenly it looked as if we might have to miss out on this rare treat, which remains, for various reasons far too complicated to go into here, one of my favourite plays.

Still, with a little bit of research, we found out that it would be playing at a venue that we'd not previously heard of, the Ucheldre Arts Centre in Holyhead, and we were able to book tickets over the phone a few weeks in advance, and our evening of Shakespeare was saved, with the slightly unusual development that we were travelling 120 miles or more to watch a play being beamed out from the general vicinity of where we'd set off from that very morning.

Such is the value of location, location, location.

Nevertheless, we turned up at the appointed hour and found ourselves at what appears to be a quite brilliant project, in that the Ucheldre Centre is an old convent which is in the process of being converted into an arts centre and seems to be making a rather wonderful job of itself. It's a long time since I've found myself feeling quite so enthusiastic about, well, pretty much anything really, and if I lived in the area, you could almost bet your last penny that I'd be throwing myself into the venture with as much gusto as I could muster (never much these days, sadly...), at least until something happened to disappoint me anyway...

I was already in a good mood. After all, following the endurance test of the last half year, I was finally on holiday, and I'd just eaten at the "Oyster Catcher", a local restaurant which is, incidentally, another quite brilliant local project about which I might enthuse to you another day.

Happily, of course, and despite my misgivings and worries about my capabilities when it comes to things like advanced bookings, the tickets were actually there just as they were supposed to be. Of course, being me, we actually turned quite considerably before the appointed hour, which was just as well, because it meant that the staff were willing to reserve us our seats and, given our usual request for "middle, middle" we were given some of the very best seats in the place, right amongst all those members who had reserved their seats too, and, given that the original was being performed in a church in central Manchester, seeing it in a converted convent somehow seemed highly appropriate.

The (deconsecrated) church in question was St Peter's and it worked astonishingly well as a performance space with the audience on two sides of a central aisle ankle deep in sodden mud (made more so by the downpour under which the opening - almost cinematic - battle was staged) in which much of the action occurred. The exceptions to this were the altar area, beautifully lit (for the most part) with a sea of candles, and the balcony area at the rear of the church, the area beneath which had been covered with rough woodwork concealing doors which would cause mysterious appearances and disappearances as the plot required them.

Whilst all that mud may have disconcerted some and no doubt caused horrific daily problems for the wardrobe staff, having it here for the actors to slog through and battle upon seemed somehow very appropriate and probably helped considerably with getting into the mood of the piece, although I suspect it must have been exhausting, given the sweat that was pouring from the players (and the audience) on that stiflingly hot July evening.

Some key moments which have stuck fact in my memory were the peerless acting of Sir Kenneth Branagh (His "Tale told by an idiot" was astounding) and the playful raunchiness of both him and Alex Kingston until the inevitable fall. Of course, "Out, damn spot" is the key scene of Lady Macbeth which everyone in the audience is waiting for, and this performance did not disappoint, despite being a very fresh and modern take upon the madness that wickedness brings along with it.

So, whilst the heart of this production were those two astonishing performances from Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth and Alex Kingston as his Lady, I should also mention from amongst the impeccable supporting players, an outstanding portrayal of Macduff by Ray Fearon whose achingly painful enactment of the heartbreak and grief at the loss of his family was an absolute show-stopping moment towards the end of the performance.

I must also mention the artful staging of the "Is this a dagger I see before me?" scene which used a beam of light shining through the shape of a cross to devastating effect, and the use of the branch "shields" to represent Birnam Wood was a master-stroke, given that it would pass in front of the faces of the audience as they sat there, giving the sense that the trees were indeed passing in front of them on their way to Dunsinane.

Did I have any complaints?

Given that I thought that it was a theatrical triumph and something approaching a masterpiece, then not really, although there were obviously a few quibbles, possibly caused by altering the staging for the cameras that night.

For example, the sound quality for the Wyrd Sisters was a little bit suspect at first, in that I worried that if the show was all going to be that echoey, then I might not be able to make out a word. The play itself was, for obvious reasons, played through with no interval which did have the advantage of keeping the audience "inside" the play, but did lead to one or two of the audience in our cinema rather noticeably drifting off to the loo, distracting us from some of the key moments.

It also came as quite a surprise, given how familiar the text seems, at how long the main characters disappear off stage for once the evil deeds are done and they have ascended to the throne, but to criticise that would be to criticise Shakespeare himself, and I'm really not going to do that, although I suspect that losing that interval did rather make it all the more noticeable.

Finally, and this is a very minor quibble indeed, but that "closing shot" with swords raised directly at the "spider camera" way up in the rafters, did seem to be done especially "for the cameras" which was, of course, a very nice touch for those of us watching remotely, but might have looked rather strange to those actually in the venue itself.

Still, once again the "N.T. Live" experience did not disappoint, and I'm already counting the days until the next one...

TWISTED SIREN

I was trying to explain my recollections of this rather large and impressive sculpture to someone the other day who'd never actually seen or heard of it.

It is, of course, one of Marc Quinn's mildly erotic and perhaps also, given that reaction, only mildly famous series of sculpts of the "supermodel" Kate Moss in one of her yoga poses, the more tiny gold version of which sold for pots of cash a few years ago, despite (I'm unreliably informed) costing £1.5 Million to actually make...

Anyway, my own personal existence was in collision with this particular piece a few years ago when it was one of the many sculptures on display in the grounds of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, where it was positioned for the duration of that particular exhibition of sculptures, at the opposite end of the long water from the house itself.

As you walked along the sides of the lake you became increasingly aware of a rather bizarre abstract shape lurking in the distance and which gradually resolved itself into this unusual repositioning of the various parts of the human form as you got closer and closer to it.

It is a staggeringly beautiful and unusual piece, and you cannot help but be impressed by the physical dexterity of the girl, whilst simultaneously being rather relieved that she kept her pants on so that we all became far more intimately knowledgeable of her than we might really want or need to...

We wouldn't, after all, want to frighten the horses now, would we...?*

(*That's an oblique Mrs Patrick Campbell reference, by the way, in case you were wondering...)

STRIKING TIMES (MINER, 49ER)

It was quite interesting to watch a recent programme about the 1970s and to be re-exposed to the strange world of the miner’s strike of 1972 and the fact that, because of the power that the miner’s held over the, er, power of the nation, that the government totally folded under the pressure and gave in, giving the strikers everything they wanted and more. That this victory was able to address the grinding poverty of the mining areas (for a time at least) was, after all, no bad thing, but you can tell that it felt a bitter thought or two in the subconscious of the nation for many years afterwards, not least because of the threat of further strikes and other industrial action basically humiliated and destroyed the Heath government two years later.

Strange too to see all those long flowing locks and moustaches on display from amongst the rank and file of the young miners back in that post-1960s era, when the expertise in male grooming wasn’t quite what it became. I well remember an episode of “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads” from about that era when “modern-man” Bob went to his hairdressing salon, much to the distain of his crew-cutted friend, Terry. However, long hair was the fashion then, even though a lot of working young men didn’t really know what to do with it once they’d grown it and so ended up with it looking rather lank and greasy and, to our modern eyes looking back, rather ridiculous, especially amongst the men working in what was considered to be a very masculine profession, although I did not really need to find out from that documentary that they often worked naked whilst deep underground because of the unbearable heat.

They rarely showed that sort of thing in the “How and Why Wonder Books” I can assure you.

The programme also showed how they were being persuaded to wear hairnets in what might very well have been the very first wave of what the Daily Fail would now probably call “Health-and-safety-gone-mad!!!”

I’m very sure that, if what that documentary was saying was true, those little nets might have been swiftly transferred to holding in place other, more intimate, areas once the  “Health and Safety Police” had returned to the sanctity and safety of their clean, whitewashed office block.

Fascinating also to see a young Arthur Scargill in his pre-combover days, speaking very eloquently about his members wanting to join in with the aspirational society at a time when everyone on TV seemed to sound what can only be described as a bit “posh” to our ears nowadays. They showed an old “Top Gear” clip on a new “Top Gear” recently and the familiar bombastic voice of Jeremy Clarkson was pitched both infinitely higher and infinitely “posher” than it is these days, and it seemed most odd.

I wonder when that changed…? I suppose that it was a gradual progression, but the sudden juxtaposition of those two distinct points in his broadcasting career seemed very jarring even though, in reality, it probably all happened rather gradually. Like when they show those “compare and contrast” clip montages of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s, it’s the differences that you notice most. (Mind you, just hearing her voice, even now, still sends a tingle of terror up and down where my spine would be if I had one…).

I suppose it’s a bit like when someone you know gets a very dramatic haircut. Immediately they look very different, and then you get used to it and, after a short while, it seems perfectly normal. Then you see photographs taken of them with the old hairstyle, perhaps maybe taken only a few days earlier, and that look seems strange to you.

Mention of Margaret Thatcher of course brings us to the tricky matter of the long-delayed sequel to the miner’s strike “Miner’s Strike 2: Unforgiven” that caused so much angst in the 1980s.

You can tell that the humiliation of that previous Conservative administration still burned deep in the heart of darkness of their memories, and probably explains a lot about what happened during that second, longer and far more bitter period of industrial strife and unrest. This time, from day one you knew they were not going allow themselves to be humiliated again and the battle lines were drawn and, well, we all know what happened.

I spent a lot of my time during those angry couple of years studying in South Wales, which was, back then, one of the heartlands of that oh-so-brutal mining industry, so it was very difficult not to get drawn into the argument and the bitter struggle, even if it was only by contributing to the buckets that were regularly placed under your nose in the pubs and the canteens, requesting you to help with the strike fund, and joining in on the odd march, as the S.U. was prone to do.

This, of course, all comes flooding back to me when there’s all this talk of the tanker and other lorry drivers being able to bring the country to a halt, which of course, in terms of the fuel supply, they essentially are. Nowadays, in the ever-continuing power struggle between the interests of business and the interests of their employees, it’s very difficult to see where the real power lies, but, if you have control over something that is a vital resource, they you are definitely holding a very strong hand indeed.

“Bitter politics there, yes indeedy!”

CARE HOME (5)

Thursday, 18th July, 2013

My sister drives up on the Thurday and we have a "council of war" (which amounts to little more than we whingeing about my recent lot in life) over an evening meal at a local cafe, although I appear to have arranged for us to meet up at an eatery that has closed (or at least changed hands) since we last met up there, but the one we meet up in is pleasant enough, if a little hot. The main purpose of the exercise, other than the social one of course, is the more practical matter of handing over the keys to mum's flat and her purse, and the vital cash card codes.

This accomplished and the "baton" that is mother passed over into other hands for a while, I then stay up late enough to be able to ring my sister for a "post-visit" update via the telephone and find out that the visit went fine, with the positive signs of mum being up and about and dressed being a good sign, although my sister did have to have one of those dreaded "confrontational" conversations with the staff about mum's dietary requirements, and, of course, was finally able to get the mysteries of the mobile phone properly understood, and is left to make more calls, although the device will have to be taken away for recharging fairly soon, triggering an extra visit.

Meanwhile, some points arose during our little late night chat:

1. Mum is essentially "very lazy" in the sense that she sometimes "can't be bothered" and, with things like the mobile phone, would just prefer it is "someone else" does it for her, which does rather go against the principles of "Intermediate Care..."
2. Mum is now "quite keen" to go home, possibly because my sister is actually there. She pointed out to mum that in that case she needs to put in the effort to get herself stronger because, now that the "infection risk" restrictions have been lifted, there's no reason for her to not move about the place a little more. But, well... See (1) above.
3. Mum is still on a "toast" diet, despite the fact that the doctor said that she could return to a normal diet. Interestingly my sister was told that the doctor might have approved that, but the Care home Manager had not, which is kind of interesting. This might be because the after effects are easier to deal with or it could be more about being ignorant about mum's underlying health issues which are not infection based.

My sister's return to mum's flat afterwards is more of a worry and speaks volumes about my neglect of the place because I haven't spent any real time going there for months. The plumbing needs some attention because there's been a leak under the bathroom sink which is causing problems, all of which I was blissfully unaware of and now feel rather bad about.

It has, however, been a tough few months and I am utterly exhausted and so, whilst we can't officially call that chapter "closed" as such, there is an opportunity for me to present something of an interlude.

Friday, 19th July, 2013

Stuff to do... Things need finishing off at work before my week off, and then there's all of the packing to think about. With another person to do the running around, this is far, far easier for me to deal with, he said selfishly.

However, I do have to field a couple of calls with regards to my sister staying in mum's flat, mostly about forgotten passwords and TV settings due to long-ignored retuning issues...

Saturday, 20th - Sunday, 28th July, 2013

I am officially "on holiday" and therefore officially "care free" for a week whilst lurking in the top left-hand corner of Wales, spending an extended week in "Joanna" (which I'll explain later... probably). For one week I don't have to think about illness, or hospital visits, or Care Homes, or other people's bowel movements, and can just relax and enjoy myself whilst keeping my Ostrich-y head firmly in the sand and going "La-la-la-lah!!!" a lot if ever thoughts of home attempt to come to mind...

PARKING FEES

Rather unusually, I had a little bit of a clearout of the car the other day, and this tiny pile of dashboard tickets represents some (but by no means all) of the cost of having to park at the hospital for the majority of the first six months of this year.

Visiting hours were between 2.00 and 4.00PM during the afternoons, and between 7.00PM and 8.00PM during the evenings (and NEVER during meal times!!!), although, during the couple of weeks that mum was in "the other place", visiting was between 6.00PM and 8.00PM, which actually worked better for us because it was twice as far from home as the usual venue. Also, when the patient is in a more critical condition, like mum was for a while, visiting hours are classed as "open" (depending upon which staff member greeted you) so that you could go any time and think whatever bleak thoughts were required of you.

Generally, at two quid a time for the minimum period of up to two hours, this represents a considerable investment of the many pound coins that you constantly find yourself scrabbling around to acquire and ensure that you have about your person, especially when occasionally a machine would take your money, refuse to give you a ticket, and refuse to respond to the coin return button either.

Sometimes, for those longer, trickier visits, it would be £5.00 for "all day"parking, assuming, of course, that you'd managed to find any parking at all at the time you arrived at the place, but at least it would never be a higher amount than that, not unless you had one of those unfortunate visits to make which passed the witching hour of midnight, and would see people, otherwise known as "the children of the night" sneaking outside at a crucial moment to feed the machine all over again as the rest of the country slipped into another day.

Occasionally I did use the supermarket across the road to park up outside of, so that, whilst one of us was shopping, the other would hop and skip their weary way the quarter mile or so over the road and into the hospital for an hour or so...

This was the kind of "money saving exercise" that I'm sure the supermarket tends to frown upon, but, given that it tended to cost us at least thirty quid in shopping, I think they kind of got their own back. And it's not as if we were just using them as a convenient nearby free parking lot... We were actually playing the part of paying customers for the duration, but we also happened to have other business in the area.

TWITNEWS

Just the teeniest, tiniest of rants of the day, today...

Whenever there's a news story nowadays, the "online" version (and sometimes even the main bulletin) always seems to be full of celebrity Twitter quotes about what the "great" and the "good" "reckon" about whatever the situation is, the finding of which seems to be what passes for journalism in the modern era.

Nowadays it seems as if the "profession" of Journalism involves spending your day on the various social networking sites looking for the various impressive tid-bits that other people have written. I've lost track of the number of times I've read a few interesting comments in TwitWorld only to find that some hack has bundled them together into some kind of "non-story" on tomorrow's news feeds.

Perhaps this is the price we pay for having this almost voracious need for "24 Hour Rolling News"...? After all, with so much time and space to fill, the exceedingly trivial, and things that are 'trending" become ever more desperate reasons to seek out anything that resembles a "story" no matter how banal and pointless, or how much of a press release for a new, miraculous "Wonder Product" (usually Snake Oil) that it might actually be...

And in a society (I nearly said "culture" there but had to stop myself) where what everyone "reckons" about pretty much is now deemed to be so very important, this means that translating the banal and pointless into "News" has become something of an art form...

If you consider copying and pacing a few random comments to be "art" of course...

Also, so-called "Journalists" always seem to be trawling for their "non-stories" on fan sites and concocting fake scandals speaking about "outrage" about some trivial matter or other (usually involving football, celebrities or telly programes or, on occasions, the special madness reserved for the users of "Mum's net") when in reality there's just one lonely voice who's feeling "outraged" about some trifling issue and who's got into a trolling slanging match with another poor wretch, or, more alarmingly, found another similar spirit who agrees with them and has decided to assist them in their plans to reshape the world in their image.

But it's the celebrity quotes that seem worst. Especially when another celebrity has passed over into that exclusive VIP Lounge in the sky. The once noble art of the obituary writer has now been transformed into a ghastly "cut and paste" parade of what a list of celebrities posted on Twitter as they sat watching the news that morning...

"So sad to hear about..." etc.

Someone needs reminding that a whole list of other people's "OMGs" does not add up to an actual story, a reasoned debate, or a proper "tribute" to anyone, and the truly great and memorable pieces of journalism that have been written over the years have been down to sheer hard graft and knowledge of the craft that the profession, I'll grudgingly admit, once used to have...

BROLLY

One of the best things I ever bought was the sun brolly I picked up for a tenner more than half a dozen years ago in a supermarket near to where I used to work...

Naturally, the next day, I did have to go back to that same supermarket and buy a base for it, once I found out that it didn't have a spike on the end, but, even so, for a total of twenty quid combined, it still turned out to be a bit of a bargain.

Okay it could be better than it is...

It might, for example, be a lot more useful if I could tilt it instead of having to keep moving it so that I can follow the shade around, and the screw thread that separates the two pieces of the pole has started to become difficult to get working. So much so, in fact, that the wood has now separated from the metal and its all a little bit more fragile and prone towards blowing away in the wind than it once was, although, if the breeze gets too vigorous, I've always tended to take it back indoors anyway... along with myself.

My "outdoors-y-ness" does rather depend upon an ideal set of circumstances being in place after all... The correct amount of warmth; The right level of sunshine; A very precise level of noise; A limited number of people being around and about; A good book; A decent game on the radio; And the breeze being "just so..."

Granted, because of such rigid criteria, my brolly hasn't exactly been over-used during the intervening years, but when the weather's good enough to drag it outside, and being very careful not to swing it about too much and knock anything and everything inside the house off its perch, it's an absolute godsend.

On a sunny day, when the sun's beating down, it just provides a little piece of sanctuary from its blinding glare, and I can find myself a tiny spot of civilisation in which to read my book in the great outdoors...

I have never been brave enough to leave it outside, assuming that such an obviously useful object would be too much of a temptation for any passing tea leaf. Instead, I pack it away and lug all of its constituent parts back inside and find myself hoping for the next time when the correct confluence of circumstances will drag me outside into the shade again.

CARE HOME (4)

Wednesday, July 17th, 2013

In the morning, I get up and find no further messages from my mother or my sister or mum's carers, although I still suspect that things are far from being well.

There is, however, a message from mum's former colleague, saying that she plans to visit her in hospital today, so that's another call that I need to try and remember to make from work this morning, although that turns into one of the nicer conversations of a grim old day. My sister had been unavailable yesterday evening because of a family crisis at her end of the country, so now I feel even more wicked for asking her to do point duty in talking to the Care Home itself...

Four days... Four whole days she managed to be out of hospital before going into crisis mode and laying another massive guilt trip at my door, however, my sister's morning call to the Home itself does a lot to reassure us, and we are told that a doctor has been and seen mum and that she seems "back to normal" this morning and is a "lovely lady..."

[INTERLUDE: Some good advice I was given: It is unwise to just assume that the doctors and nurses in the hospital and the carers in the Intermediate Care system actually have my mother's best interests at heart. Most of the time they're just fire-fighting, trying to solve the problems that are happening now, and not looking at the "bigger picture" - hoping instead to make such things "somebody else's problem" so I need to push harder to make them aware of what needs to be done, even if I'm not a person who enjoys confrontation in any form.]

Interestingly enough, it seems that, when patients are released into Community Care, one thing that the Care Environment is not given is a list of whatever complaints and conditions the patient might have, which kind of seems a little odd...

Meanwhile, I still dread the evening visit that I had planned, because I know that I'm not going to be a particularly popular bunny...

So, on the hottest day of the year so far I arrive to find that mum's in the middle of being cleaned up after an incident, with huge "infection control" notices stuck to her door, and am given a lecture about whether I understand what this means by a passing staff member who also adds that mum is on a "toast only" diet until it gets sorted out. I am expected to wear an apron, and when I ask where they are I'm told "They should be in the room" but, of course, it turns out that they're not, so I spend my visit standing by the window as far from mum as possible and avoiding too much contact.

Mum is not happy, and "hates it in here" because "nobody care" to which I retort angrily. She's also very unhappy with the mobile phone because "nobody told her" how to work it. I get a long list of complaints about the staff saying "rude things" about "This one won't get up" and being stuck on the commode for three-quarters of an hour, and the fact that they won't feed her any proper food or even a cup of tea. The fact that she has a cup of tea in front of her does not escape me and, when the staff member comes to clear away the plates, she is told that she can drink it, and does so, gratefully, whilst telling me that she hates the orange juice she also has to drink.

Things calm down a little after this and she tells me about the "lovely"doctors and the "lovely" night staff, and I remind her that my sister is due to arrive tomorrow and that she will no doubt have more time (and patience) to talk her through the phone calls and order things she needs from the internet whilst she stays at mum's flat next week. I try to explain how difficult the job is for the staff, and how understaffed and under-budgeted they are and, whilst I accept that the situation is very frustrating and unpleasant for her, we simply have to try and make the best of it and see it as a stepping stone to going home.

To mum, however, the idea of "going home" is still an alien concept, and her thoughts upon this have now shifted from "I don't think I'm ever getting out of here" (meaning the hospital) to "I don't think I'm ever getting out of here" (meaning the Care Home...)

A church friend of hers then pops her head around the "Infection Zone" door to say "hello" and, of course, mum is as nice as pie to her...

I'm also asked if mum's upset the beloved who she hasn't seen in a while (because the new job is keeping her very busy) and we are, at least, wished a happy holiday (although I still might pop in with my sister tomorrow) and told "not to worry" about mum. When I remind her that we're bound to worry, that is taken as a criticism of her, too, but then it's that kind of a day it seems.

GLORIOUS!

I'm not going to make any great claims about my abilities as a gardener because I know that they leave lots to be desired, but, as I sat there last Sunday, listening to my radio and drinking my coffee on a blisteringly bright summer's afternoon, I looked up and along the row of other people's gardens in front of me and was just struck dumb by how astonishingly green and utterly beautiful it all was.

And then I was reminded of one of the criteria that I set for myself way back in the late 1990s when I was looking for a tiny piece of England to call home. I wanted a patch of grass where I could sit outside with a good book on a summer's day and listen to the Test Match on my radio, and I realised that, despite everything else and all of the many, many failures in my life, I had actually managed to achieve that one small goal.

There's nothing else that I want to add to that thought, really, other than to say that, on a day like that one was, and looking out over a sea of green, there's really nowhere else in the world that I'd rather be.

Glorious!

CARE HOME (3)

Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

Every so often I like to at least try and put the needs of the beloved first. God knows, she's had to play second fiddle to my mum's priorities for six months of this year already, so, when Graduation Day (which is a big deal in her job) came around, I decided that it would be rather nice to go out for the evening and have a nice meal and generally try to make a little bit of a fuss of her for once. I think that she deserves that, at the very least.

I think that she deserves to be made a priority.

I think that I deserve the right to make myself "unavailable" every once in a while.

After all, I reasoned, with mum now well on the road to recovery and safely settled in to life in the Intermediate Care Home, it might just be nice to plan an evening out for once, because I ought to be allowed to have just one sodding night out every once in a while, oughtn't I...?

I mention this only because I need to justify my response to what happened over the course of the evening. I arrived home and got myself ready before dashing out to meet the train and, after picking up the beloved, already dressed in all of her finery from the day's events, we popped home to drop off a few bits and pieces before heading out to the restaurant for which we already had reservations.

Just as I was leaving I thought that I'd better check the phone for messages and, unfortunately, there were two.

It's mum claiming that she's had "a really awful couple of days" (although I saw her only yesterday and she'd seemed fine...) with her "stomach problems" and that the Care Home (I emphasise the word) had been really horrible about it and refused to clean her up saying that it's not their problem" and that she "shouldn't have been let out of hospital" in her condition.

Interestingly, I'd like to know what her condition actually is, because, after three months on a Gastric Ward, you'd think someone might have diagnosed an actual condition if it existed... Strangely enough and coincidentally, today it was announced that 11 hospital were being put into "Special Measures" and having teams sent in, and I was rather surprised to find that the one my mother had been in wasn't one of them.

The second call is to tell me that she can't get the hang of "this stupid phone" and that it was telling her she had "no credit" left but that "You or your sister will have to ring them and find out what's going on..." because they are "refusing to give her any Diarrhoea tablets..."

She sounded really miserable and yet, there I was, literally on the last minute and on my way out of the door, and that is when I did the wickedest thing, the thing for which I will no doubt be damned forever; I rang my sister's house and left her a message, and then I rang my sister's mobile and left her another message, and then we went out for the evening.

Granted, the evening was already ruined, with my mind being both distracted and worried (but not worried enough to actually do anything about it...), and simultaneously furious with the system for letting us down, my mother for just being so old, ill and feeble, and, perhaps, myself for not being stronger, and yet, somehow we managed to have something approaching a reasonable time.

When I did eventually get home there had been no further messages from my mother, from my sister and, perhaps most significantly, from the Care Home demanding my responses as the "Next Of Kin" which I never wanted to be.

And so, being an utterly wicked person, and assuming that all had been dealt with satisfactorily, I went to bed to sleep the sleep of the damned, and it was only much later on, when I woke up in the wee small hours, that I realised that my sister might have been out for the evening, too...

CARE HOME (2)

Monday, July 15th, 2013

I did, at least, get a Sunday to myself, although I did very little with it apart from listen fretfully to the anxiety-inducing end to the cricket match whilst sitting in the garden.

There is always a price to be paid for such self-indulgence, of course, and that was the many hours spent awake during the stifling Sunday night when all the things that I ought to have attended to, like checking through mum's mail, suddenly loomed large in my mind and kept me awake.

Oh, how did I become so lazy...?

So, Monday dawns and we have a plan in place. I am going to swing by and see mum after work, delivering the cordial I bought her in the supermarket on Sunday (You see, I did manage to do something...) and explain the wonders of the new mobile phone I bought her, before heading home later and picking up the beloved on the way.

After a long, hot day in the office, which includes more bill paying for her by telephone, and for purely geographical reasons, I head straight to the Care Home from work and, after negotiating the "Wet Paint" signs and finding that the entry bell has been fixed, I find it far easier to get inside than it was at the weekend.

I bound upstairs to mum's room (thirty five), and find that she's not here, but that she's written up a lot of little notes which I expect are jobs for me to do. Assuming that she's in the loo, I unpack the cordial and scribble a few instructions about how the phone works, before inspiration strikes and I head off towards the dining room and find her anticipating her tea with mum having taken to eating in the public areas for the first time today, which is, of course, progress.

To be honest, after all this time, it's great to see her dressed and out and about again, and already she's looking much better than she did in the hospital only last week, and a heck of a lot more healthy than many of her fellow inmates, so it comes as no surprise that the "Lovely Doctor" see saw this morning doesn't think that she'll ned to be there all that long.

Meanwhile, her list of stuff to do includes an urgent trip to her flat to pick up supplies of sanitary wear because such things are not provided in the home itself which she thinks is "Disgusting..." although I mutter something about budgets. Still, I think it's best to leave them to their meals and head off to battle my way to and from the flat during the rush hour.

Half an hour later, I'm back, "products" in hand, and they're still waiting for dessert because all the staff are trying to deal with a bad fall which has happened somewhere. This means that we are able to have a nice little chat over a dinner table and I make the first demonstration of how the phone works before slipping away to ring my sister's message service with it so that she, at least, has the number. Mum seems less than impressed with the Care Home in general because one of her neighbours "Buzzed for an hour..." to get any attention earlier and she herself was "Stuck on a commode" for ages.

Given mum's unusual understanding of time these days, I remain slightly sceptical, but you never know.

After the jelly trifle and the evening pills, we head back to the room ("You're supposed to walk with me in case I fall!") and, amongst other bits of chat, I try to explain at great length how a mobile telephone works with no obvious success, but I do stress the importance of switching it off at the end of a call so as not to use up all the credit, and mum seems happy enough as I head off into the evening with the happy prospect of arriving home and knowing that I don't have to go out visiting again.

I ring my sister for a natter and council of war, and find out from her that telephone communications have been successfully achieved. After half an hour of that, I put down the phone and it rings to tell me there's been a message. Mum has left one, telling me that "a nurse" showed her how to use the phone and that she'd briefly rung her friend Doris, and also my sister, but now she thinks her credit's run out...

Twenty quid... Pfttt!

Just another thing, like Tic-Tacs and biscuits, to splurge upon I suppose...

HARVEST

I think that I may have mentioned before about my lack of skill or desire for committed gardening. In fact, for various reasons, despite being a tiny smudge of nothingness in the great scheme of things in which you could barely swing the proverbial cat (although I've never tried, sometimes it is rather tempting...) our garden has been rather neglected over the past few summers after having put in some considerable efforts for a couple of long forgotten seasons.

I could blame it on the fact that, for the past three years, whenever I've planned to spend a weekend in the garden, it's absolutely hammered it down with rain.

Perhaps I could blame the seasonal workloads which come with our jobs which have meant that sowing time has already long gone before we get ourselves organised enough to plant anything.

This year I could blame the endless trips to the hospital eating up the more glorious evenings and weekends, or the minor ailments we seem to have accumulated between us, which have prevented much in the way of manual activity for more months than I care to remember...

But, I suspect that we've just got a little lazy.

It was heartening, therefore, to find, when I sat outside the other morning with a cup of coffee in my hand and the test match on my steam-powered analogue radio, that a long-forgotten blackcurrant bush, sitting alone and neglected in an overgrown corner of the garden, had borne an almost astonishing quantity of fruit after having had no input in terms of tending to it from me whatsoever.

Very quickly, this spurred me into action, or whatever passes for it nowadays, and I dashed indoors to get a colander and swiftly began to harvest the berries before the birds and the slugs had a chance to grab the lot, and now they lurk , deep frozen in our freezer, and I'm anticipating a rather fine blackcurrant pie at some point in my very near future.

Huzzah for easy gardening and something for (very nearly) nothing...!

HOLES IN THE SKY

There have been some rather beautiful skies this year, especially during those rain-soaked days which immediately preceded the recent hot, dry spell, and I suppose that I've been far more aware of them this year than in previous years simply because I've been out and about a lot more than I usually would because of my seemingly endless hospital visiting.

A couple of weeks ago, as I headed out of the hills, I spotted a hole in an otherwise slate grey sky over the town in which I grew up, which was producing one of those "Spotlight of God" moments,  where visible beams of light beam down from a tiny gap when the sun bursts through.

It was the sort of thing that was, as the saying goes, "heavenly" and you can imagine that it would be just the sort of thing that might have convinced earlier, more primitive and unenlightened minds to believe in some kind of greater power living above the skies.

Of course, nowadays we know better, but, in the learning of it, perhaps we've lost a lot of our capacity for awe and wonder, too.

Certainly, as I pulled into the less than awesome surroundings of a hospital car park a few minutes later, some of my thoughts were far less wonderful than they had been, but I was able to pull my telephone from out of my pocket and get a quick snap of what was still a fairly impressive sky, and, although its magnificence was already waning, and the technology at my disposal was less than wonderful, I think you still get a slight impression of a fairly dramatic moment.

CARE HOME (1)

Friday, July 12th, 2013

Mother was transported to her latest place in the world by ambulance, and delivered there alongside another patient at some point in the early evening.

After various attempts, I manage to get through and the telephone handset carrying the call from me finally gets handed to mum at about 8.30pm, and I get to find out what a "Nice room it is", and so forth.

The staff member leaves mum alone with the handset and one of the things that emerges from the conversation is that mum has not been "assessed" yet, and so doesn't even have a walking frame, after which she then heads off outside into the corridor to shout "Hello? Hello!" to return the handset to the staff member on duty.

I'm on the other end of the line saying "Don't try finding them... you haven't got a walking frame..." but she tells me that there are handrails everywhere (although there aren't, I find out later) and, as I get a few details about visiting times and so on from the carer, this doesn't make for the most auspicious start.

Saturday, July 13th, 2013

One of the things mum mentioned is that I would "have to" get her  a mobile phone because there are no patient telephones available. So, as I head over to make a first visit on Saturday afternoon, i pop into Tesco to get as basic a one as I can find.

Typically, all of the really cheap ones are "out of stock" and so, with the addition of twenty quid's worth of credit, I walk out of there fifty quid down and not in the best of moods on a hot afternoon. despite the young salesperson's "uplifting" tales of his own experiences with his family and intermediate care.

I arrive at the prison Care Home at about one o'clock after finding the only parking spot right next to a bus stop. An elderly lady is sitting on a bench outside and tells me to ring a bell that doesn't, it transpires, actually work. Happily, I am eventually noticed by a passing member of staff and let in, although when I mention parking, I am advised that this is "at my own risk" and decide to move it.

Then I have to wait for another member of staff to key in a code to let me out again and, sure as eggs is eggs, have to start the whole "getting in" process all over again five minutes later, after having left the car at the tender mercies of the local housing estate.

I do finally get pointed in the right direction for mum's room and have to endure the bawdy banter which accompanies the sharing of an elevator with one of the nurses, but, eventually, I tap upon a particular door and an greeted by a jolly "hello" by my mother and a far more scary "who's there" coming from another doorway not so far away.

Almost immediately I get "the list" of stuff that mum has thought of for me to do, most of which involves taking some of her clothing home and bringing others back, so, after a brief conversation about the mobile phone which goes along the lines of "Do you want me to charge it and set it up and bring it back another day?" "Yes, do that..." I head off with bags of clothes ("You don't have to put them in bags!" "Well, I've got to carry them out to the car, so... yes, I do...!") I try and make my second escape from Stalag Luft Pflegeheim, whilst muttering about where the tunnel is to the exasperated nurse...

To mum's flat where I try and make sense of the list of clothing she's requested, leave a message on the church answering service explaining where she's been moved to, and grab mum's walking trolley, walking with which is always an uplifting feeling for a bloke just on the right side of fifty.

And so I return once again to the Care Home, and this time I find a slightly more convenient spot to park, and head back inside with bags of clothing ("Oh, can you fill out the list of her stuff as you unpack it...?" says a passing staff member "we started to fill one out, but..." - Gee, thanks!) and a walking trolley. I have another desperate attempt to get spotted so that I can be let in, another ride up in a lift with another nurse ("You get used to it" she says wearily when I wondered which floor to press for, found out that there was only one and had to sheepishly explain that I'm new here...)

Anyway, my clothing choices prove to be at least adequate, and mum seems very happy in her new environment, although it turns out that there are no power points in the room itself so that charging this wretched phone is going to become a bit of a chore.

There's fifty of my quids well spent, eh, boys and girls?

Still, we manage to have a little chat and mum seems happy enough, even though she claims not to have slept well because the hospital didn't add the sleeping pills she says she has to her prescription, and there was a strange reference to a "dreadful smell" in the room that someone on the staff had mentioned before vanishing.

Mostly mum seemed most impressed with the amount of storage space that there is in the room and, after a bit more chat, and with a promise to try and remember to bring a bottle of cordial next time I visit (possibly on Monday after work because it's far more convenient to get to from the office than from my home), I head off back to my home.

PROCRASTINATION

So, as  another weekend drifts into history, and the stifling heat of an unexpected warm spell in an otherwise damp year makes everyone except the sun worshippers tetchier and tetchier, I can reflect upon a weekend that was suppose to be busy but, in the end, one that turned out to be one of those where I got precious little actually done.

And, unfortunately, there really is so much that ought to have been done, but somehow I've just put it all off and wasted two days lying around feeling exhausted whilst listening to the cricket commentary for most of the day before sitting myself down and watching the highlights of the very same game that I'd been listening to all day for a fairly hefty chunk of the evening.

Still, at least they don't tend to bring any unexpected surprises along with them.

Gad... It was hot... One thing you can say about last weekend was that it was hot.

Hot and exhausting.

Two things!

Two things you can say about last weekend was that it was hot and exhausting and just the kind of weather where you really struggle to bring yourself to be bothered.

Three things... Oh, you get the idea...

But there's mountains of paperwork that I ought to be attending to, some of it not even my own, and the "Stuff To Do" list seems to be growing ever longer whilst the "Stuff Done" list doesn't even get a piece of paper with "Stuff Done" written at the top of it. Come to think of it, even the "Stuff To Do" list hasn't actually been written down yet, with me preferring instead to let the endless list orbit my brain in that continually worrying way that keeps me even more awake throughout the hot, sticky nights, and eventually drags me out of bed in the wee small hours to procrastinate even more at a keyboard complaining about the stuff I'm not doing instead of actually doing it.

How did I become one of those people who ignores their paperwork? Is it just the fatigue born out of endless months of hospital visits, or is it perhaps something far more fundamental? Have I begun not to care, or do things worry me so much that I've become dysfunctional simply because of the panic that it all induces in my soul...?

If I had managed to drag myself out of the gutter of life and become a "someone" of course, I might just be able to afford to employ another someone to do my stuff for me, but then, of course, I'd only worry that they either weren't doing it properly, or that they weren't getting their own stuff done because of doing all mine, and that the total list of the entire world's "Stuff To Do" lists was building into an epic mountain of stuff that could not possibly be completed in all of our collective lifetimes.

When did life start to get so very complicated for everyone?

Wasn't the coming of the so-called Digital Age supposed to make all of our lives a little easier?

So how come everyone now ends up with so much to do?

It seems that everything we do nowadays has so many terms and conditions, and passwords, and regulations, and paperwork that comes along with it all, and insurance, and security, and changes to terms and conditions, and updates to software that means that the software you bought no longer is allowed to work in quite the same way and so on and so on ad nauseum, that sometimes it just seems far easier to just chuck the envelopes into a handy carrier bag and decide to worry about it later...

Or is that just me...?

BINDWEED

The thing that seems to grow with the most success in my little garden is a thing that we like to call Bindweed.

It is not, emphatically NOT, Japanese Knotweed, which is another horticultural horror entirely and with which we have, as far as we can ascertain, not yet been plagued with, although it would be rather difficult to be absolutely sure without hacking back at all of the overgrowth.

Meanwhile, I am getting rather fond of the old Bindweed, despite the fact that I'm constantly being told not to touch it with my bare hands.

Perhaps it's just because I like the sound of the word...?

"Bindweed"

It really does sound like a word out of Dickens.

A clerk working in a particularly unseemly solicitor's office, or a debt collector, or some kind of pawnbroker...?

The most fascinating thing about it, of course, is how quickly it seems to shoot up. No sooner have you uncoiled a length of it from around pretty much anything and everything you've left outside, than another tendril seems to have replaced it before you've even had time to blink or boil a kettle for that alfresco cup of coffee you've decided to treat yourself to.

I do get the impression that, if you watched it, you might actually be able to see it grow, which might seem fanciful, but is probably what inspired all those old TV shows in which the plants went wild and started throttling the humans (in much the same way as the Bindweed seems to enjoy throttling all of our other plants), sometimes even without the benefit of any help from a Diabolical Master Mind...

Anyway, I'm trying to learn to love the stuff, as it really seems to be the only plant that does seem to thrive thanks to the intervention of my turquoise thumbs. One of the lessons I'm beginning to learn about our garden is that things seem to grow far better by being neglected by me than they ever manage if I actually try and put the effort in.

What does bewilder me, though, is why, when they'll happily chew anything we buy from the Garden Centre right down to the soil, sometimes before we've even got around to taking it out of the pot and putting it into the ground, those blessed slugs and snails won't munch upon the Bindweed, seeing as it is by far the most profligate food source in the entire area of our own little postage stamp of green.

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 070713 (PART TWO)

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

A phone call about 11.45 (just about the time the first wicket fell, apparently) is from my mother telling me that she will be going to Marbury House on Friday. She didn't want to go to Marbury House, she says, but if she wanted to go anywhere else "You'd have to pay..." Meanwhile, she's "left a message" for my sister which basically means that she's out.

"So" I say "You've not actually spoken to her, then...?" I ask.

"No, but you could ring her..."

If only I had the time, mother. If only I had the time...

Thursday, July 11th, 2013

Well, here we are.

Exactly six months in.

I don't look forward at all to tonight's visit but it does, at least, have the possibility about it of being the last time.

For a little while, at least.

My sister rings for an update, but there's little I can say other than to complain about how ghastly I imagine things are likely to get. Still, she's due to arrive for a visit next Thursday, so we'll have to see if that can take the edge off. Given how much I complained about the entire hospital experience with the beloved's parents over dinner yesterday evening, I'm beginning to think that it might take a while for those memories to fade...

After another blisteringly hot and (professionally) exasperating day, I wend my weary way through the traffic to that most familiar of car parks, feed another £2.00 coin into the meter, and head onto the ward once more. "As far as I know" says my mother ("Because they never tell me anything", "You should ask them", "If only people took a bit of an interest", etc.) we are still "on target" for her to be moved on come Friday, but nobody seems to be holding their breath or betting the house on it.

Controversy of the day has been mum's reaisation that all of the nightwear she has with her is "Winter nightwear" to which I plead ignorance, telling her I just grabbed a load out of the drawer.

Her pithy "You would!" is immediately followed by her departure for the lavatory leavig me alone to listen to the other activities on the ward ("Urgh!") as ward life goes on ("Urghh!!") around me both in front of and behind closed curtains.

Mother returns and asks me if I have scissors on me to cut her nails, and then, because of this massive failure on my part, manages to borrow a pair so that I can cut them for her, although her complaints that I can't hell flesh from nail might mean that she doesn't ask me again any time soon. This is all done to the soundtrack of the most piercing and endless whistles as a machine somewhere sounds its alarm and is ignored by everyone for five minutes until a nurse turns up and switches it off. She leaves and the thing goes off again and sounds for another five minutes until it is, thankfully, finally silenced again.

Mother's conversation after this is mostly to do with "suddenly" feeling "old and useless" and pondering cheerily on whether "It would have been better if I had died..." but at least this prompts the nearest thing I can manage to a pep talk and we discuss (in that one-sided way we have) the benefits of her going into intermediate care, even though I insist that it doesn't matter where it is.

After all, once I know where they're sending her to, I'll be able to find it.

When prompted, I find out that the church Minister did visit on Wednesday (not that she recognised him again), but her tales of his visit to Amsterdam are interrupted by a nurse making a cannula check who promises to "find out" about mum's imminent release but who then fails to reappear.

Instead, as I pack up for the evening, I reluctantly approach the desk and am pointed in the direction of the one nurse I had a bit of an issue with, all those Thursdays ago. Ah well, she seems to have forgotten me as we discuss the fact that mum leaving the ward is "Still the plan, but..." as they'll be waiting for a prompt from social services before they order up an ambulance, but she won't be needing me to bring any clothes or anything like that, but they will "keep me informed" as to what's happening.

I return to the bedside and bid my farewells to both mum and the patient in the next bed and her father, both of whom have been very kind, and head away, perhaps for the last time, at least for a while, and then I spend a hot half an hour waiting in a car park for the beloved to meet up with me, such is the excitement of my life beyond those hated doors.

Friday, July 12th, 2013

I'm so very exhausted now that I struggle to find the energy to actually get up at all. Even writing up these notes has become too much of an effort, but there you have it.

Meanwhile, Friday itself turns into a bit of a waiting game. I spend the day constantly on edge and wondering quite when the telephone will ring, and, by the end of the working day, when it quite blatantly hasn't, I'm rather at a loss as to quite what to do.

Typically, I arrive home to two messages from mum from around about lunchtime and directed at precisely where I am not. The first states that her drugs have arrived so that she can be packed off but "no doubt" the hospital will be letting me know where she is. The second that she's (helpfully) terminating her hospital telephone account and I should let my sister know this.

Also very typical is that I have heard nothing else whatsoever on any of my three phones, but I doubt that my mother will believe any of that. When I finally do manage to get through to the ward, they tell me that they've been "trying to contact me" but I refuse to believe much of what they are telling me any more.

So mother is now in the mysterious hands of "intermediate care" and, also typically, I can't get anyone to answer the phone there, either... at least not for a while. When I do manage to get a reply, the person answering the phone promises to take the phone up to mum in "about half an hour" but then doesn't and, after another hour of no replies, I do get someone to do precisely that and we finally have a conversation and I am able to find out whether there are any restrictions upon visiting.

There are none, so a hefty chunk of Saturday looks as if it might be spent running around in a brand new (but also somehow slightly familiar from our lives many years ago) part of the world, and, it seems that I might have to buy mum a mobile phone because otherwise that's going to become a brand-new bone of contention...

Let this new phase of joyfulness begin...

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 070713 (PART ONE)

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

Well, here we find ourselves at the start of the week in which this entire saga will slip past the six month mark, from the very darkest depths of winter to the heights of summer, and still, it seems, there's no end to it in sight, unless you count the bleakest one which could, of course, still happen.

And so we get a bright, sunshiny day and our plans change and the cinema doesn't get our money because we don't want to sit inside a dark auditorium on such a fine day but, perversely, spend the day indoors watching old documentaries instead because it's simply far, far too hot for outdoors.

In the midst of all this debilitating heat and stickiness, I drag myself out to the hospital via the supermarket and find mum spark out fast asleep. My arrival wakes her but she fails to really come round for the entire duration of my visit, failing to even summon any enthusiasm for the tennis which is going on somewhere even as we speak, although the fresh cut rose from her neighbour's garden does spark some interest. Other than that, however, she remains "dozy" instead, and the depression of thinking that "she might never get home" is returning, so that when she does (briefly) turn on me again, it is with the familiar notion that I "never ask" about what they're planning to do with her, because the proposed endoscopy still hasn't happened, and this time around, they "never talk" about sending her home again. I remain convinced that asking, of course, wouldn't make the slightest difference, because they do what they do despite me, but I may be wrong about that.

I tell mum that I've noticed a "party" going on outside the next ward along, in the sense that they've got the emergency exit open and a number of people are chatting outside. Mum says that they had their fire door open all night, too,  just to help keep the place a little cooler. This is, apparently the "coolest spot in the whole hospital" but I doubt it, and mum constantly exposing her underwear from under her blanket would tend to imply that she's still far too hot. My sister has (apparently) suggested that I ought to get a wheelchair and take her outside, but this is, of course, far more easily said than done and so I decline the offer.

The nurse comes to take her blood pressure and is concerned that it is a little low, perhaps because mum  hasn't been drinking enough in the stifling heat. One of those yoghurty supplement drinks miraculously appears which seems to improve mum's spirits, especially as she'd mentioned that she'd not had any today, although she did have two bowls of porridge for breakfast.

She feels as if she's "not with it", "living in a maze" and "everything's blurry" that she "can't see straight" or "hear properly" but none of these things are new or sudden developments and come mostly from feeling tired and, understandably,  more than a little sorry for herself. Her legs feel very wobbly and it annoys her that she still has to ask for help to walk anywhere, but her legs are likely to be weak as she hasn't really used them all that much for nearly six months now.

Mum is very sleepy and, whilst I am concerned by a sense that her health's deteriorating again, I decide that it's best to let her doze off and I bid my farewells and drift off home again, feeling in need of a bit of a doze myself.

Monday, July 8th, 2013

Whilst I'm not planning on any dealing with the hospital on this hot, sticky Monday, I wake up feeling very gloomy as if I can sense we're approaching, for good or ill, some kind of an "end game". I don't know, perhaps seeing mum looking so frail and ill yesterday has troubled me, even though I know that it was mostly due to fatigue, heat and possible dehydration, and I start to believe once again that we are on a slippery slope towards darker times.

A phone call at just before ten. It's mum saying that the Doctor has just been. She asked him about the biopsy results and was told that the haematologist would discuss the results with her... Mum wonders whether they would ring me if it was anything bad, points out that it's not my day for visiting, and makes some small talk about it being a nice day. I say that I don't really get to see it and have to confess to not really having lunch breaks to speak of, that my sister has disappeared (presumed to be at the beach) so she's left a message, but that's as far as our conversation goes.

Tuesday, July 9th, 2013

A bad night's sleep, lying awake thinking that, one way or another, I really need for this to be over. I had, rather jokingly, said a few weeks ago that if mum was still in hospital by the end of July, I'd most probably have gone mad and yet, here we are, already well into the month and with no signs of her leaving that wretched ward any time soon, and, if you'd told me in January that this would still be going on in July, I really don't think that I would have believed you.

Still, the 2.40PM phone call from mum is encouraging, or at least as encouraging as "I think I'm on my way out" can be. She does, of course, mean that the hospital are now actively seeking out a place for her in intermediate care and not any other meaning that it might have, and no, they haven't rung me...

Meanwhile, the haematologist has said that the biopsy showed no sign of that "cancer thing" returning, although they'll be keeping an eye upon that as an out-patient.

So... Could it be...? Could it really be possible...? Is this endless round of tales from the hospital finally approaching its end...? As a hot, sticky day draws to a tetchy conclusion, and I make a few tactical errors in professional terms because of some late-in-the-day confusion over messages, and with the beloved's mocking imitations of what my evening might have in store (a la "Boycott Bingo" but I really can't bear having to put up with the same criticisms twice in the same evening), I head, once again, hospitalwards, wondering quite how many more times I'm, going to have to...

I wearily arrive as beds are being rearranged to be faced with the question as to whether I've listened to my messages, which is "confused-speak" for the conversation we had this afternoon, because there aren't any. But, in a quantum environment where she both has and has not spoken to my sister, anything is possible.

This leads to the "It would be nice if people (i.e me) showed an interest" conversation which is coupled with the "There was a time when your sister rang every day" aside which all grows out of the fact that the hospital are preparing to discharge her, but there's the tiny matter of our disagreement about how best to handle it. I maintain that they will let me know when they need me to know things whereas mum thinks that I should constantly pester them for more information.

I would say that we agreed to disagree over this, but there was precious little agreement involved in it to be perfectly honest with you.

Still, the breeze coming through the window is pleasant enough, as are the other patients and such visitors as there are. The doctors think that her health is generally okay enough for her to go into intermediate care, even if she herself believes that she is neither better nor ready to go anywhere. Everything, from getting out of bed to eating is "an effort" and her legs are wobbly, but all of these are things that will be helped by intermediate care if she'll only put the effort in.

Meanwhile the doctors were apparently unsympathetic about the fact that mum might need new spectacles despite having pain "over £300" for a pair recently, and they didn't think much of her complaints about feeling "light-headed" either (but then it is damned hot at the moment, so we probably all are...)

Other topics include what day it is, my work problems (not really interested), my friends who are abandoning the country (not interested - except to tell me of her own history with her friends in Canada), and the fact that she did actually read the Stockport Express I bought her before giving it away, but there wasn't much in it. The fact that a nurse is off to Egypt tomorrow is far more interesting, although my tales of the current troubles over there, and more tales of catastrophe and woe from around the big wide world don't seem to be of much interest either.

So much for having things to talk about when I go, eh...?

Anyway, on that jolly note, I make my excuses and drift off into the ether, bidding my farewells to whichever staff want to say "good evening" to me... and head homewards to eat and sleep and sweat, get miserable all over again about "wanting my life back" and fret about what the next chapter in this jolly little saga is going to bring along with it.

THE GAP BETWEEN PLANS AND REALITY

Okay...

 So...

Yes there was a gap in the mighty unfolding saga that make up our little tales of life in Lesser Blogfordshire yesterday, but...

Well... to be perfectly honest with you, I'm rather surprised that anyone actually noticed, (although it's a bit of an assumption that you did), but there you go.

There were various reasons of course, not least that there was a bit of a crisis of confidence going on right next to me in my home which needed talking through during a very, very early part of the day, a time at which I might normally be concocting one or other of these pieces of nonsense.

The fact that I hadn't actually planned to be writing that day is kind of irrelevant, but I had got it into my head that I might have a try at having one of my rare attempts of sleeping in a little which only goes to show that the best laid plans of rodents and rat-faced individuals have a habit of not quite working out as you might hope or expect.

But then, well it's been an odd few days from the point of view of planning, so the fact that my planned break from doing this writing lark seems to be not quite working out as planned either should probably come as no real surprise to me.

Work's been very complicated and frustrating in a way that I'm not going to dwell upon here, not least because it would be most unprofessional of me to do so. Let's just say that we've had an odd couple of days where our plans to work on certain things have not worked out quite as expected due to various distractions and problems which have required rather more of our attention than we would have preferred.

There's been a gap between our goals and our achievements...

Then there's also been the start of the Ashes series which, I think I'd be right in accepting, hasn't really gone as anyone planned over the course of the first three days anyway. My own plans to while away as many hours as possible tuning in to it haven't quite worked out as I'd hoped either, but I have at least managed to keep half an ear upon proceedings in amongst the chaos in my life, which was almost as chaotic as England's plans for getting out 19-year-old debutant Ashton Agar when Australia were 117-9.

He, of course, had other plans...

Also, after settling into a routine of hospital visiting over the past... oh... forever, that routine has now been shaken up by the fact that (Ta-dah!!) as of this very afternoon, my mother is no longer on a hospital ward but is now living within the mysterious confines of "intermediate care..." about which, I will no doubt be describing more to you over the coming days, if everything goes to plan.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The last two installments of Hospital Updates have yet to be released upon an eager and expectant world so, as you can see, even that little plan has come to naught...

I'm sorry... This has turned into a bit of a nothing of a piece, when I didn't really plan upon it being. Still, very few people ever read my "evening" posts, so I think that it's safe enough not to ruin whatever reputation I don't have. After all, great things are afoot, and icons like Alan Whicker and Anna Wing (not a good week for the AWs...) have shuffled off this mortal coil, and presumably they didn't plan upon doing that, either.

More soon... (I expect...?)