Thursday 30th April – Wrinkly Scrotums

A quick post.

I cannot believe how tired I am. I feel like a limp noodle, but not quite so attractive.  Which is nice.

I have spots on my spots. I look like a teenage glue sniffer, which added to the grey skin, the dark rings under my eyes and the yawning is making me think I should probably hibernate for at least a week.

Jason is on his way back to Norfolk from Cornwall.  They managed to get MP into a home today. It is not ideal but it is the start, hopefully, of his journey to something better.  It was at the moment that all the paperwork was approved and the room was ready that MP decided that he didn’t want to stay there at all, and that he much preferred one they had seen the day before.

Unfortunately it cannot be undone.  Apart from anything else, the home he wants to stay in have been difficult in the extreme, to the extent of insisting that he come to see them in person, knowing that he was coming and then not having anyone available to assess him when he got there.  On top of that they have one room available and four other people waiting for it, all of whom are Cornish residents and one of whom is even more in need than MP.  It just wasn’t going to happen.

MP is a lovely guy, but he is a people pleaser extraordinaire.  He is the sort of person who if you said: ‘Now MP, in order to make my life easier I am just going to saw your legs off with a rusty teaspoon. I’m afraid we don’t have any anaesthetic, so just bite down on this twig,’ he would let you do it and smile.

In some circumstances this is good.  Jason’s mother was a very ‘in charge’ type of person who brooked no arguments. I can see why they managed to live together for as long as they did.  In other circumstances, i.e. when you are trying to help someone whose life has fallen apart and you really need them to be quite positive about what they want, and make decisions in a very short space of time, it is disastrous. 

I do think though, that whatever place he had gone to MP would have changed his mind.  He just doesn’t want to go into an old people’s home and live with women twenty years older than him who smell of wee, share one set of dentures between five of them, and watch Eastenders at volume 11, 20 hours a day.  I don’t know anyone who does.  Unfortunately that is the best we can do for him given the circumstances.

So. Jason is travelling about once more.  The van has to go back to its home tomorrow morning and hopefully he will be home some time tomorrow afternoon.  I cannot wait.

I had hoped for a reasonably peaceful day, but my list of things to do and get to grips with went nuclear overnight and left me with a never ending scroll of tasks.  I went into town and thought: ‘When I’ve done these jobs I will have tea and lovely cakes before I go to nursery to pick up Oscar.’  I rotated round like a crazed dervish, never sat down and got home with ten minutes to spare.  I wolfed down a sandwich and then ran down to pick up the boy.

It is Rainbows in less than an hour. I still haven’t cooked tea.  After Rainbows a friend is coming round.  He is stuck with his essay and needs help.  The deadline is tomorrow.  It is about economic growth in Asia. He seems to think I can help.  I said yes. I must need certifying.

On the positive side, Oscar and I spent a very satisfying hour playing with Mr. Men Fuzzy Felts this afternoon. I had forgotten how tranquil Fuzzy Felts make me feel. I am taking a box with me when I go into a home.

And Oscar did not disappoint.  I was changing his nappy and he reached down to his scrotum and said: ”What’s this mama?” to which I duly replied using the correct anatomical name.  He chanted it thoughtfully for a while and then said: ‘Oh no! It’s broken!’  Which I vehemently denied.  He was not to be pacified.  I asked him why it was broken to which he said: ‘It’s all wrinkly.  Fix it for me.’  I solemnly explained that brilliantly gifted though I was, I was totally unable to help out with the problem of wrinkly scrotums and he would just have to live with it like that.  He was singularly unimpressed.  I don’t blame him.

Wednesday 29th April – I Am Home

It’s ten thirty at night and I have been on the phone  for hours, catching up with all my lovely, concerned friends. My throat hurts, my ear hurts and I am frankly sick of talking about death and all its utterly horrible accompaniments.

My brilliant father came to Norfolk yesterday to pick me up and help me out with a few last jobs that needed doing, and then drove me all the way home.  I spent last night at my mum and dad’s getting reacquainted with my gorgeous son who alternated between being pouty that I had gone away and being delirious that I had come home. 

Today I came home properly and went to pick my lovely girls up from school like a normal person.  It was very, very weird.  I feel like I have been away for about a thousand years, and it is really hard to comprehend that everyone else in the world has carried on their lives as normal and that things like school and homework and squabbling children are still going on.

I have spent the rest of the afternoon and evening attempting to pick up the pieces of my life from where I abandoned them nearly a fortnight ago.  There are things like Brownies and birthday parties and Rainbows and dinner money to think about now.  I can’t quite get my head around them.  I have spent the last  fortnight thinking about wills and funerals and solicitors and care homes and it just doesn’t stack up.

I feel like I’ve got the world’s most monumental case of jet lag.  It’s that feeling of still travelling emotionally and mentally even though my body has landed.

And I am tired. I am so utterly, totally tired.

Things are still not resolved.  The funeral went as well as can be expected given the ramifications of difficult family members and the fact that it was in Norfolk.  That has been the high point of the week, which will give you an indication of what is happening with everything else.  Nobody wants to clear the house, which means we will probably end up doing it ourselves, and despite me cleaning and clearing and tipping like a loon it is still dirty and full of furniture and crumbling round our ears.  There are still holiday makers we haven’t managed to contact who are randomly getting in touch in dribs and drabs.  Jason is no further forward in his decisions over what the best thing to do with the house is.  All I know is that at the moment there is nothing else I can do that is important enough to keep me away from my children.

As for Jason’s mum’s partner who I am now going to call MP, because I can’t keep on typing that anymore, things are about as bleak as they can be.

By Friday evening we had drawn a blank with Cornwall and its supply of care homes.  Because he is no longer a Cornish resident, even though he was born there and lived there for fifty years, they don’t really want him back.  So they are making it as difficult as they possibly can.  By they, I mean social services and local government.  He is not eligible for help unless he is a resident.  He cannot be a resident unless he has lived there for 26 weeks.  Unless he can get into a home he cannot reside there.  Some homes won’t have him unless he is a resident because they need a guarantee of funding which non residents cannot always give.  The amount Norfolk will contribute is not enough for even the scummiest home in Cornwall.  Someone has to make up the shortfall if he is to be considered.  Even if they consider him nobody will take him untill they have seen him. 

On Friday we called the social worker in despair.  In Norfolk she can get him an emergency place in 48 hours. We asked her to go ahead, just in case we needed it.  On Monday after the funeral she called to say there was a place. Just one, in all of Norfolk.  We took him to see it.  It was adequate. Adequate but horrible, and in the middle of nowhere.  If he was there he would have nothing to do and no visitors. 

We had a crisis meeting with the social worker.  She said our best bet was to get him down to Cornwall and hope we didn’t have to turn round and drive him back to Norfolk at the end of the week.  Even she admitted the outlook was grim.  She has, it has to be said, been utterly brilliant.  I never thought I would say those words in connection with a social worker, but she has been kind, thoughtful, totally respectful of MP and his position and has worked like a dog to help us in every way she possibly can.  She has moved heaven and earth and I wish I could put her in my pocket and use her in other emergency type situations.  She has been the nicest person I have dealt with in the entire two weeks of shit that has been storming around us.  Her and the funeral director were the two ports in our storm.  Thank God.

We hired a van and spent Monday night packing it with MP’s stuff.  He wanted to take everything in case he gets a flat.  This is almost impossible if he stays in Cornwall, but he got so distressed on Sunday that we couldn’t think of a way to break it to him and decided the kindest thing would be to pack everything he wanted and just pray that something miraculous eventually happens.

 We got up at six on Tuesday morning and finished packing.  Jason drove the van, his sister drove MP in the car.  They set off at 7.45 a.m.  They got to Cornwall at 5.30 p.m.  The b&b was expensive because it had to be disabled friendly.  Jason says it is the best disabled friendly hotel he has ever seen and that the owner is amazingly understanding and good.  Despite that, the grab rails on the toilet are still not in the right position which means that MP can’t use it without help, which is sad. 

By 6.30 p.m. last night,  Jason had already visited two homes, both of which were suicidally dismal.  He then drove to MP’s relatives where he unpacked the entire furniture van and then had a crisis meeting with them.

He has spent all day today crossing Cornwall looking at homes and arguing about funding with Norfolk and Cornwall social services.  By six this evening when he finally rang me it seems they may have found somewhere that will just about do, but they have to agree funding.  Even so it is merely acceptable.  It seems there is nothing else to be done but get him in there and wait 26 weeks and see if the amount of help and advice available improves.  Things were so bad earlier that one sympathetic care assistant recommended that they take MP to the local hospital and leave him there because that way the social services would be under obligation to find him somewhere better suited to his needs.  As it turns out, this is not true.  If they do this, social services will simply send him back to the emergency home in Norfolk and refuse to let him come back to Cornwall unless he pays privately for everything.

Jason has until tomorrow lunch time to find somewhere or he will either have to abandon MP or bring him back to Norfolk.  Bringing him back is the worse of the two options because nothing can be resolved in Cornwall unless MP is physically there.

It sucks. It sucks so much that I have been actually praying for a miracle.

I am also cross.  I am cross that MP’s relatives, who are really close relatives, about as close as a person can get, are not and have not done enough to help.  If MP was my relative I would be mortally ashamed of having basically made a show of doing something for an entire fortnight without actually having either a) come to see him, b) come to get him or c) having actually done very much of anything at all.  I would also be ashamed that someone who is in no way related to MP has done what I should have done and had to force me to take responsiblity.  Merely saying the words; ‘I’ll have him,’ is not enough.  Not only has nothing practical been done for his benefit, help or care, but no financial assistance has been offered at all.  Not one single, solitary penny.

I am sure there are wonderful reasons for all this, and I am probably being over judgemental and harsh, but hey, it’s my blog.  And I’ve done my share of the grunt work over the last fortnight and I’ve only met the bloke half a dozen times in my life.

I am cross because Jason could have been home on Monday afternoon with us if all this hadn’t needed to be done.  He could have been in work by Tuesday, earning money and attempting to secure his career on a more safe footing, but no, because some people were only paying lip service to the idea of looking after family members, he has had to put his life on hold again.

Still, in fairness serious talks were had today and those some people have finally had to face up to their responsibilities in a more realistic way and actually get off the fence and start doing things.  MP has not had a good few days health wise and they were able to see just what is needed in terms of care, which although a shock, was also needed.  As of tomorrow they are actually going to have to take over completely, as Jason and his sister have to come back to Norfolk no matter what.

So here I am, at home but not really at home, unsettled, slightly crazed and missing my husband like crazy.  I’m worrying myself sick about him.  He has had no time to grieve at all, he’s full of anger and frustration and stressed beyond belief.  He is driving about the country for hours and hours, existing on rage and adrenalin and without me there to nag at him I know for a fact he is not eating properly because I’ve practically had to sit on his chest several times this week regarding nutrition being his friend.

Even when he gets home there are still a hundred, small and horrible jobs left to do and it’s all pants.  And it seems increasingly likely that we will still have to drive to bloody Norfolk on several occasions hereafter and now probably down to Cornwall on a fairly regular basis as well.  Cornwall is more beautiful than Norfolk but we’re talking a good six or seven hour drive instead of a four hour drive. Arseholes.

I would like to write some cheerful blog entries.  I miss being cheerful.  Don’t get me wrong.  Some things have happened that have really made me laugh over the last fortnight. I’ve not changed that much. Trouble is, I can’t tell you about any of them, just like I can’t tell you about any of the really horrible things.  The things I would tell you if it was just me.  Not that you’d want to read them.  It would help to write them though.  I might write them and then delete them, although that’s not really the same. Not for me.

Tomorrow I’m sure there will be more misery to share.  On the other hand, with the children around there may well be some light spots in an otherwise evil time.  I am hoping that there will be cheerfulness to share.  It would be good.

Saturday April 25th – I’m Back, But Not For Long

Thank you so much to everyone who sent their love and support in the comments to my last post. You are all so kind and thoughtful and coming home to such lovely words has been a high point in quite one of the worst weeks of my life so far.  I am very blessed in my friends both on the internets and in real life.  I usually respond to every comment, but please accept this general thanks to each and every one of you.  You are truly wonderful.

 

I did have a brief opportunity to use the internet while I was away, but I knew that if I read all the things you had written and sat down to articulate what has been going on I would fall to pieces.  It wasn’t a helpful thing to do at the time, so I have waited until I am home where I can fall to pieces in relative privacy.

 

My lovely dad drove me to the hospital in Norwich on Friday afternoon, which was above and beyond the call of duty.  He was a superstar.  My mum took over the children completely and has done a stellar job of caring for them all week long.  Even UE rallied round the flag.  I am so grateful that I could just leave everything behind safe in the knowledge that everyone was being cared for, and were as happy as they could be under the circumstances.  I have been inundated with text messages and offers of help and support.  It has made me feel very cherished in what have been some really dark times.

 

I got to the hospital at three o’clock on Friday afternoon.  Jason had been on duty since the early hours of the morning and needed to go home for some sleep.  We spent about five minutes in each other’s company before he headed off for the hour long drive to his mum’s house.  I stayed behind with his sister and his mum’s partner.

 

It was really tough.  Earlier in the day the doctors had decided that as she wasn’t responding to the antibiotics that they could administer morphine to help Jason’s mum with her delirium and panic.  Unfortunately the amounts were really small and by five o’clock she was terrified every time she heard a noise or saw a movement she couldn’t identify. It was a hard job to soothe her.

 

We spoke to the doctor and he said that as he had decided that she was actually now responding to the antibiotics after all he wasn’t prepared to give her any more pain relief.  We were not impressed.  We got a second opinion from a senior consultant.

 

The news was bad. The basic upshot was that even if they cured her of the pneumonia, if they couldn’t give palliative care for the cancer it was going to kill her in weeks anyway. If they could administer palliative care, the best we could hope for was 8 months.  Because of this we were able to argue for a compromise care plan of continuing to give the antibiotics, but also continuing to administer morphine every two hours if necessary, with a review in the morning or later at night if we decided it was necessary.

 

Jason came back on shift at midnight and his sister and his mum’s partner went home for some rest.  I stayed with Jason and we sat with her through the night.  Her state had worsened in the early evening and she had become completely unresponsive.  As the night wore on we knew the end was coming.  We sat and talked with her and held her hand and comforted her.  Jason was astonishing. He was so tender and caring and thought of every tiny thing he could do to help her.  He never cracked once.  I was so utterly proud of him.

 

She died at half past nine in the morning.  Jason had just come back from a discussion with the consultant, who had confirmed our belief that this was it, and who had finally agreed to stop interfering.  The nurses asked us to step out while they washed her face and brushed her hair. A minute after we shut the door to give them some privacy, she died.  I am convinced she did it on purpose.  She wanted her last moments to be private from her family, and who can blame her?

 

By the time we had said our goodbyes and his sister and partner had arrived and said theirs, it was lunch time.  We were all totally battered and just drove home in a kind of trance.

 

The rest of the week has been just as hard in a thousand tiny, crappy little ways.  There were holiday makers in the cottage all week, and although they have been very understanding and sympathetic, we could have done without them.  Jason has had to ring everyone else who has booked holidays and talk with them and sort out all the ramifications, which added to the list of friends and family who needed informing meant that he was on the phone at all hours going over the details again and again.

 

The house, cottage and barn are enormous and were stuffed to the rafters with ‘things’.  Nothing was in any logical order, which meant that we had to start clearing out as soon as possible in order to find things like wills and other important documents.  This has mostly been my job and I have spent days sorting things out and cleaning and cooking and tidying.  I don’t think I will ever get clean again.

 

The biggest issue has been trying to find somewhere for her partner to live.  I mentioned that he has MS and is in a chair.  On Saturday night he had a bad attack brought on by stress and grief and after an evening of relatively minor accidents he ended up falling out of bed at two o’clock in the morning and cracking his head against the bedside cabinet.  It took three of us an hour to get him back to bed.  Until then we had thought maybe he might be able to manage in the house if we could find him suitable carers to visit, but that just confirmed that it wouldn’t work.  Then it turns out that Norfolk Social Services don’t have that kind of care available even if we did want it.

 

He wants to move back down to Cornwall to be near his family.  This has caused untold difficulties.  Care there is even less well organised than it is in Norfolk.  His family want to help but have no experience of this kind of thing at all and there is no time for a gentle learning curve, so the time Jason hasn’t spent on the phone to funeral homes, solicitors and the like, he has spent liaising between Norfolk and Cornwall.

 

It is not going well.  We have not managed to find anywhere suitable in Cornwall yet.  We are arranging interim care in Norfolk for next week, but because it is emergency care this means it will not be good, or even necessarily suitable.  We cannot leave him there for long.  Waiting lists for any good places are long, and costs are exorbitant.  It is a pretty desperate situation and we have become increasingly despondent as the days have gone by.

 

We had problems with the hospital releasing the death certificate.  We had problems with finding a crematorium.  Apparently it’s a busy time for dying in Norfolk at the moment.  We have moved heaven and earth and raced around the county chasing people and shouting at people and generally making ourselves totally unpopular.  There have been problems with the funeral, due to family differences about what should happen when.  It has made me think that I am going to live in a minimalist house when I am old, and that I will leave specific written instructions which cannot possibly be left open to interpretation by others.  Life and indeed death, will be so much easier that way.

 

Then we had the issue of the dog.  She has not been well for a few weeks, and took a turn for the worse in the week.  Jason and his sister had to take her to be put down on Wednesday.  This was probably the nadir of the whole week.

 

So. Here we are.  Things are still in limbo.  Jason has managed to negotiate another week off of work.  They are very understanding, but because he has an important job, things are now beginning to pile up and cannot move forward without him.  He is on contract, so not only is he losing significant amounts of money with every day that he is away, he is also nervous that this two and a half week hiatus, plus the holiday in a fortnight will make them think he is unreliable and he will be out of a job come June when it is time for his contract to be renewed.  It seems very mundane in the face of all the sadness and grief, but it is a real worry in this climate and he is terrified that he will not be able to provide for us.

 

The funeral is on Monday morning.  The rest of the week will be spent trying to find suitable care for his mum’s partner and potentially travelling backwards and forwards to Cornwall, which is an eight and a half hour drive away.  The house still needs clearing, which may mean that I have to stay behind in the house for a couple of days after Monday, we are not sure yet.  We are still waiting for people to get back to us.  It seems that the more in a hurry we are, the slower everyone else moves.  It is very, very frustrating.

 

We decided that we desperately needed a break and have left Jason’s sister behind to hold the fort while we popped home to see the children and make sure that my parents weren’t buckling under the pressure.  We couldn’t leave until after his mum’s partner was in bed, just in case he fell, getting from bed to chair, so we spent the whole day working, the whole evening working and then left Norfolk at 11.30 last night.  We got home at half past two in the morning.  We are zombies.

 

Having said that, it is wonderful to be in our own home with our lovely children and our very, very comfortable own beds.  The house is clean and tidy and smells of home.  I cried when I came through the door.  It will be very, very hard to go back.

Friday 17th April – I am going travelling

I am heading off to Norfolk today.

Mixed reviews from the night.  The doctors have moved her to a ward rather than an emergency unit.  She now has her own room.  They have said that she is responding to the medication and that there is a better chance she will pull through the pneumonia. I am honestly not sure if this is a good thing.

Something is making her hallucinate floridly and she is distressed for a lot of the time.  She is only on antibiotics so it is not the drugs.  Who knows?  It is upsetting for her and upsetting for everyone who loves her.  She is afraid to be left alone and they are with her round the clock.  Poor things.

Sorry for the incoherence of the post.  I had decided that they would not need me for days and so had been counselling myself on being good and patient.  Now I have to swing into action and I am all at sixes and sevens! Typical.

Trains to Norfolk are few and far between with plenty of changes. Just how I like them!  It will take me most of my day to get there, which is a shame, because now he has decided he needs me, he would really like a magic wand job.  A friend has offered to drive me, bless her, but it takes about the same amount of time to drive as to go by train, so I shall train it and read my book and chew my finger nails.

I don’t know how long I will be there or whether I will be able to check in on you all while I am away.

I shall miss you.  Please behave yourselves while I am gone.

• sit up straight
• Eat your greens
• Wear a clean vest in case you get run over,

and most importantly of all:

• Never boil eggs in your kettle.

xxxx

Thursday 16th April – More Updates, Bad News

Bad news I am afraid.

Jason saw the doctors today.  They have given his mother an 80% chance of dying of pneumonia within the next forty eight hours.  This is terrible.

Even more terrible is the fact that because she was already so weak, frail and ill when she came in that they cannot give her proper pain relief because it will kill her.  Nor can they perform any surgical procedures as they would with other more healthy patients, because that too will kill her.

The worse news is that if she pulls through the pneumonia, even though they are not sure what sort of cancer it is that she has, they know she has it and that it is too advanced for them to do anything about.  This means that if the pneumonia doesn’t get her, the cancer surely will, and soon.

As for the cancer, if she is not well enough to be treated now, she will be in no position for the harsh regimen they put them through for cancer then, so she will suffer.

So, the best possible outcome really is for her to die soon, and hopefully in her sleep, because that will mean less pain and suffering all round.

It’s pretty devastating.

I am at home, waiting, waiting, waiting.  I am becoming increasingly frustrated and driving myself round the bend.  I was going to take the kids to the park so we could run off some excess energy and it would get us out for a bit.  The park is only down the road so I am near enough to home to be of use, if and when they need me.  As it is the weather is totally vile, foggy, wet and rainy with side winds.  Even the girls, who are up for the park in most weathers, have not been eager to venture outside.

We have been reading books, curled up on the sofa.  The girls have played makeovers and I have been chief hair straightener.  Oscar keeps wanting daddy, which is not helping.  I have been able to pacify him by finding his scroop driver and drill.  He has been using them to perform his own, more industrial strength makeovers.

In between I am writing about King Lear.  It is keeping my mind busy and focussed on other things than the misery my loved ones are going through and about which I can do nothing.  My version however, is turning into an epic.  If this continues it may well turn out to be longer than the play itself.

Update and More Cheer

It’s half one in the morning.  I’m going to bed in a minute to drink Rescue Remedy and read Molesworth and The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx.  An interesting combination but it just might work.  I have to do something else because even I, with my prodigious appetite can no longer delve into the sweetie jar without chundering mightily, and I have given myself a nasty jaw ache from all that chewing.

Luckily I got a good night’s sleep last night and Oscar is in nursery in the morning, so I have more reserves of energy AND the chance to slob out a bit tomorrow morning.  The girls are fairly zombified in the mornings so they will stare at television and books while I hunker down over the coffee pot, mumbling and telling my beads.

The news from Norfolk is good in parts.  Apparently she looks and sounds terrible, and there was worry that she wasn’t responding properly to the oxygen they were giving her, until they worked out that as a life long, full time smoker, her body reacts differently to oxygen.  They tinkered around with all the levels of stuff and thingness and are now happy that she is getting more of the good stuff and less of the bad.  This is good.  It took them till midnight to figure it out, but hey, at least they got there, right?

She seems to be responding to the meds and they have now decided that they will monitor her every two hours instead of every hour.  This too is progress of a sort.

The general consensus seems to be that they are treating the pneumonia as a priority.  If she pulls through that, they will worry about the cancer side of things then.  Even I, who is the most terrible cynic when it comes to health care, think that this is actually quite a sound plan.

An interesting issue is that they have told Jason and his sister about the possibility of cancer, but not his mother or her partner.  Jason didn’t realise this and had a hideous conversation with her partner who wanted to know why everyone was rushing to see her with such urgency and why there was such a fuss.  Jason had to tell him in the end.  Nobody has told her, and I don’t blame them.  She’s terrified enough as it is.  It would serve no earthly purpose. 

It worries me slightly that the hospital are being incredibly laissez faire about visiting hours.  They didn’t arrive to visit until late.  Nobody stopped them seeing her and Jason’s sister is staying with her overnight as she wants someone with her all the time.  This is not normal hospital procedure, at least not in this county.  Maybe things are different in Norfolk.  In this county relatives are only allowed to stay like this when the outlook is bleak, or when the patient is a child.  I am not mentioning this bit to anyone, just worrying it around my head and the internet, which of course is my own private playground with my hand picked readers who are sworn to secrecy.  Ahem.

We won’t know anything else until the doctor does his rounds tomorrow.  Jason is safe at his mum’s and so at least I don’t have to worry about that now.

I thought I’d try and focus on some nice, positive, hello birds moments before bed.  It’s a list because I’m tired:

Oscar worked out that if he takes his tricycle into the kitchen and stands on the seat he can steal sweets from the sweetie jar AND make a getaway on his vehicle in one easy manoeuvre.  He is a child genius.  A child genius who has turned to crime, but a child genius nevertheless.  I shall change his name to Prodigy and hot house him for entry to Cambridge immediately.

Tallulah was helping me clean the bathroom this afternoon and doing a remarkably good job.  She was chatting to me about cleaning in general and said: ‘Mama.  We have to clean because we like visitors to think we are clean people.’  I said: ‘Yes, and because we like to be hygienic Tallulah.’  She thought about this and said: ‘Yes. Because we have to scrub all these things because germs are really very small.  They are too small for us to see, so we smoosh them all up like this in a cloth.  It would be easier if they were bigger and we could just pick them up and throw them outside the front door.’  Very true.

Tilly bribed her father to let her stay up late last night by saying: ‘Will you let me stay up ten minutes later if I do a monkey dance?’ To which the only sensible answer was of course, ‘Yes’  Whereupon she did her monkey dance and won the right to an extra ten minutes television time.  She didn’t try that on me this evening.  Either she is weary of the world of simian jigging or she knows that it will cut no ice with tired mamas.

Oscar has started to use the potty more frequently.  We are bribing him with Haribo Star Mix.  He didn’t want to eat his tea this evening.  The rule in our house is that if you don’t eat tea, you don’t get pudding.  He was determined not to eat his tea AND to have pudding.  He stuck his lip out and stamped about demanding ‘sweeties’.  We ignored him.  He put his cunning, criminal brain to the test.  He went away, came back with the potty, sat down, did a pee and then stood up and said: ‘Now give me sweeties.’ Damn his eyes.  I was very, very impressed. He still didn’t get any sweeties.  I will not be held to ransom by a lime green potty full of urine, particularly not when I am trying to eat tagliatelle.  Gordon Ramsay doesn’t have to put up with this nonsense.

I am currently addicted to eating passion fruit.  They are very expensive.  Four from Ocado are £1.50.  I have discovered that they are 8 for £1 on Leicester market.  This news has made my week.  I am a simple soul.

Wednesday April 15th – I Vent A Little

King Lear will have to wait.

 

I am somewhat stressed.

 

Jason’s mother was taken into hospital this afternoon with pneumonia and suspected lung cancer. It is pretty serious.  She was not in the best of health before this and was only just getting over a nasty bout of this stomach flu that has been going around.  Things do not look good.

 

She is a tiny, bird of a woman who does not eat and survives on grapefruit, coffee, fags and rage.  She has extreme osteoperosis already which has been causing her spine to crumble and her to be in agony for months.  This is still not enough to make her eat anything, so she has absolutely no reserves of energy to help her through this latest health crisis.

 

It is my pessimistic opinion that we are looking at big, fuck off miracles needed here.  I hope I am wrong.

 

Jason has rushed off to Norfolk.  I am here with the children feeling bloody useless.  He may need me to help, he may not. Until they have a clearer diagnosis there is no knowing.  We agreed that there is not much point in me charging up there with him and calling in all the favours I will need for childcare at this stage.

 

My only consolation is that I have packed him a bag of provisions, which made me feel slightly more in control of the uncontrollable. He has only been gone for an hour and I am pacing about stuffing bits of Easter egg into my mouth and allowing the children carte blanche with the television.  They are currently watching Kung Fu Panda and counting their blessings.

 

Jason’s sister is on her way from Cardiff, so he will not be totally alone. This is good.  He turns into the strong silent type at times like these.  She does not.  She will help to balance him and give him focus.  I hate that he turns into the strong, silent type.  He likes to have time to sort his head out and meditate his way through things.  He turns his phone off at times like this.  It is not wrong, it is just his way of coping.

 

I, on the other hand, ring everyone I have ever known, make nine hundred battle plans in fourteen different colour ways, eat a lot and ‘do’ things.  It is at times of crisis that we are at our most incompatible.  It is probably a good thing that he has gone without me. I don’t think I would be helping him much.  I think I would be aggravating him like salt in an open wound.

 

This is shit.

 

The situation is further complicated by other events.  Jason’s mother’s partner has MS and is wheelchair bound.  He does brilliantly. It is the type of MS that is slowly degenerative rather than the type with the dramatically horrible ups and downs.  He cooks and dresses himself and gets around, but with difficulty.  Without Jason’s mother he will barely cope.  We have no idea how long she will be in hospital or indeed, and it pains me to say this, whether she will come out, so we have the worry of what is to be done with him in the foreseeable future.  Apparently Social Services will help, but not until they know what is happening. I have no idea how long it takes them to get their shit together.

 

They also run a holiday home, specialising in holidays for people with dogs.  There are people with dogs there now.  There will be people with new dogs there on Saturday.  The house will need cleaning and sorting and de-dogging and the new guests will need to be greeted, or they have to be cancelled. And all this has to be done on top of everything else.

 

As previously blogged, they live in the middle of Butt Fuck Nowhere.  Norfolk itself is a county that prides itself on being Butt Fuck Nowhere.  Half of it is falling into the sea.  The other half is waiting its turn whilst people push from the Suffolk border.  It is wet.  It is flat.  It is uninspiring and it is miles from anywhere of any use whatsoever.  They live in a particularly nowhereish bit, right near a bit that is falling into the sea.  It is four miles to the nearest paper shop for God’s sake.  You have to lay gold dubloons on the roads to get people like cleaners or gardeners or Tesco delivery men to venture that far into the arse end of nowhere. The local pharmacy does not even offer a drop off and pick up service for prescriptions.  Glenfield isn’t exactly the throbbing metropolis, but even our chemist offers that.

 

The hospital is half an hour’s drive away.  As Jason’s mother’s partner doesn’t drive, due to being in a wheelchair, he is going to be stuck for visiting without a lot of help.  There isn’t a lot of help about.

 

It is all very hard.  It is sad and horrible and difficult.  My heart bleeds for my poor husband and what he is going through. His relationship with his mother is thorny and difficult and fraught, but she is still his mother and he loves her.  And he is my best beloved and I love him, and I hate to see him suffer.  It tears little bits out of my heart when he is so far away in every respect.

 

Normally I do not blog about his family or their situation.  He is quite a private man, which is hard when he is married to a big blabbermouth like me and I post pictures of him dressed as a girl on the internet and tell everyone about his poker playing ways.  There are some areas of his life where I do try to respect his privacy a little. This is usually one of them.

 

On the other hand, I do need to get all this off my chest, and he doesn’t need this from me at the moment.  He needs me to give him his space, to do whatever practical things need to be done, and to keep my head when all about are losing theirs.  I can only do that if I can vent a little.  And that’s where you come in dear internets.  Thank you.

Tuesday April 14th – Too Tired to think of a title day

I have promised more Shakespeare this week.  We will be doing extensive work on the topic of King Lear eventually, if I ever get my shit together.  Unfortunately it will not be today.  Today the shit was all over the place, on the ceiling, in the light fittings, hiding under the rug pretending to be fluff.  And as much as I tried to get it together I just couldn’t.  Thankfully it was only metaphorical shit, although in this house one can never be too sure and it’s always best to wash your hands, but you get the jist.

Partly it was to do with me being up until three this morning.  I think it was Jaywalker’s disturbing pictures of dolls heads mainly.  I haven’t had such a bad night for a few weeks now and it has left me rather zombified.  Partly it was to do with it now being the second week of the holidays, and as such my will to live is slowly being sucked out of me by small, menacing individuals who know my name and how to break into the bathroom in under ten seconds. I find it best in these circumstances to be on autopilot for as much time as possible.  This means that the horrendous things they are doing kind of pass you by as you use all your brain functionality to do things like inhale and remember to blink.  You enter a state of valium-like calm in the early stages of such tiredness, which is very useful.  It is only when you start weeping and screaming and having eyes like cartoon dogs being hit by spades which go round and round that things get bad and you have to actually really have sleep.

Partly it was the weather. It has been one of those hideous days which is muggy, clammy and yet cold all at the same time. It is too cold to venture forth without protective layers, yet the minute you exert yourself you seem to be covered in sweat.  You step into a shop, start to perspire freely and have to rip all your clothing off and somehow balance it about your person.  You step out of the shop, the sweat freezes on your brow, promising pneumonia like treats to come and you throw all items of clothing onto your trembling torso once more, and so it goes on.

We went into town with granny today.  Bits of it were nice.  We went to the John Lewis cafe and I ate a piece of coffee and walnut cake the size of my head, which was immensely cheering.  Oscar failed to do a pooh in the hallowed portals of TK Maxx for what is the first and will probably be the last time in his life.  Naturally this meant that Tallulah had to use the toilet, so it was no less fraught with peril.  We went to a bookshop.  That was rather nice.

But we had the sweating/freezing thing going on.  Granny’s hips are bad where she has spent all weekend hefting antiques in and out of vans, and Oscar is coming to terms with his inner lip sticker outer, and seeing just how fast he can run in crowded shopping centres.  This was not so nice.  Granny is not so good at sprinting.  I was wearing heels and very tight trousers (cream. Big mistake as are now covered in mysterious soot like substance), and had to use the stentorian power of my rhino like lungs to stop him from disappearing completely.

We had many plans.  We did about a third of them and then gave up and came home.  A third is not bad.  I’d have liked to have gone for a higher success rate but I was knackered and the sugar rush was wearing off.  As such we came home with a lovely new story book and granny bought a jumper but we have no tea.  Jason has gone to the chip shop.  The girls are out, so we do not feel too guilty.  Oscar is young enough that we don’t have to worry too much about his arteries taking a pounding just yet.

Normal service may be resumed tomorrow. In the meantime I shall be dribbling all over King Lear this evening in preparation.  I bet Germaine Greer doesn’t have to laminate her play texts.

Monday April 13th – Doctor Who? With No Spoilers…

I am exhausted by the effort of eating an Easter cupcake with yellow, glittery butter icing, and have already started this blog entry three times, made a phone call, had a cup of tea and then had a little lie down.  It does not bode well for literary prowess, but I vow to persevere this time until the damn thing is written and I can go downstairs and veg out with a clear conscience.

Doctor Who was a raging success in our house, you may be pleased to know. Never fear, there will be no spoilers here because Sharon is hoping it will be shown on Australian t.v. soon and doesn’t want any giveaways.  I’m down with that.  I know Bronxbee was a little disappointed with the story.  I was not.  It was very, very light hearted for a Who story written by the great Russell T. Blessed Be. Davies.  I was prepared for this though, having read an interview in the Times a few days previously where Russell and DT confessed that they basically fancied a bit of a lark before the terrible, heart wrenching darkness of the three episodes that will follow. Gulp.

I will say, that like Jo commented yesterday, I was somewhat nervous of the Michelle Ryan phenomena.  In this story she plays the Doctor’s temporary side kick.  She used to be in Eastenders and I am not a huge fan, either of Eastenders or Michelle Ryan.  I was a bit toys out the pram about it all in the first instant in case she breezed onto the screen shouting: ‘Cor blimey Doctor. Gizza ride in yer Tardis then innit?’ and I had to write a strong letter of complaint to the controller of the BBC.  Luckily it turns out that she has clearly spent the time since leaving Eastenders learning to do real acting and shaking off all vestiges of her Pearly Queenship.  Thank the Face of Bo for that.

I confess to not having been a massive fan of her gingerness, Catherine Tate either.  I think my least favourite episode of the new batch of Who’s is The Runaway Bride, the Christmas special in which we are first introduced to Donna.  It was an hour of white lace and stentorian screeching abetted by killer spiders.  I wept when they announced that she would be the new companion and seriously considered not paying my licence fee in protest.  Then it turned out that she was actually rather good and once they had sorted out her volume control I was willing to forgive and forget and let spiders be bygones.

Yesterday’s episode was a bit unbalanced in my humble opinion.  I felt that it was a little rushed at the end and could actually have benefitted from being a two parter.  That way the tension and individual story arcs could have been built up in a more satisfactory manner.  Nevertheless it was fun, it made me laugh (particularly the bits with Lee Evans in, and I don’t like Lee Evans at all. It must be something about Doctor Who that brings out the best in people), and it had lots of gratuitious shots of DT looking sleepy and rumpled and like you could just pop him in your trouser turn up and feed him bits of biscuit for all eternity.  So, all in all, a thumbs up.

The kids enjoyed it immensely and although we had to have a very complex discussion with Tallulah about the difference between men dressed up as aliens and effects created by CGI when she wondered how a man in a suit could ‘do that’, and I had visions of her trying to contort herself into death defying positions wearing the contents of the baking cupboard and snapping her vertebrae, all went well.

The girls trundled off to their dad’s this morning.  He has returned from globe trotting for a nano second and has swept them up and will continue to do so on and off for the next couple of days.  He arrived promising Easter egg hunts, which went down well.  Then he asked me just as they were leaving if I would mind if he took them to see 17 Again starring Zac Efron at the cinema.  This also went down well. I know I am an old fart, but I really fail to see what girls find so swoonsome about Zac Efron.  He looks like a shop window dummy and I bet twenty quid he has a mono brow and has to have it waxed at least once a week.  He is just unnatural and terrifying and not to be borne.

We took Oscar to tropical bird land to make up for the fact that he was missing Zac Efron.  Not that he really cared.  Zac has no ‘oculars’ and cannot tell one end of a ‘scroop’ driver from another.  He is a wet and a wede and an utter girl. Fie and chiz.

Tropical bird land is very strange.  It is about eight miles away in a sleepy little village with absolutely no other claim to fame at all.  It is tucked down a back lane and looks like it has been built by enthusiastic amateurs using Oscar’s tool kit.  It has been there for years.  Every year they do ‘work’ on it, which makes you think it will somehow be better.  It never is.  It just becomes increasingly bizarre and ramshackle.  Nevertheless, for a boy interested in the avian world it is a very good thing.

The owners of Tropical Bird Land like as many of their birds as possible to be able to fly around freely.  The bushes and trees are absolutely festooned with parrots and love birds and cockatoos.  You can buy bags of fruit and nuts and feed them as you go round.  If you sit still long enough the birds will perch on you and nibble your ear.  I have photos of my mother looking very perturbed with a Love bird on her head to prove it.  If I can find them I may even publish them one day.  She will be so pleased.

I think it’s wonderful that the birds are allowed some freedom, and the whole place is set in a small wood with lots of cool twisting trees and streams and interesting foliage for them to muck around in, so that when there are no people there to entertain them, they don’t get bored.  The place also acts as a bit of a rescue centre, and they take in unwanted birds and care for them and have a nursery unit and first aid bit and it’s all very charitable and wonderful.

The thing I don’t really like about it is the fact that the place stinks.  If you go when it’s warm it smells entirely of bird shit, millett and rotting fruit, which is not ideal.  Not a place to go with a hangover or if you’re suffering from morning sickness.  Jason is very sensitive to smells and even today, on a cold, miserable afternoon he was still looking pained.  Oscar liked it though, even though he forgot to bring his ‘oculars’.  Luckily the whole place was seething with bird life and he could see them perfectly well without ‘ocular’ assistance.

He has gone to bed to dream of giant parrots and time travel, which probably means I will be up ninety times in the night pacifying him and explaining the finer points of men dressed in latex suits and the fact that they no longer use ketchup as blood.  Apparently they now use golden syrup and red food colouring.  Maybe we’ll make some tomorrow.  That will cheer him up.

Sunday April 12th – Eastertastic

Happy Easter chicks and chicklets.

I found all the eggs and gifts and stuff and things.  I am a good mummy.  Not only did I find them but I also remembered to put them out, which is extra points on the parenting scale.

There was much rejoicing this morning.  We don’t usually buy eggs for the kids because everyone else does and it just gets ridiculous.  We buy them a non food related gift instead.

 This year I excelled in my Easter present buying choices and there was much preening from me.  Tilly got a gorgeous book by Phaidon of vintage photographs of dogs and their mad owners.  She is desperate to have a dog.  We have said she might be trusted with a stuffed axolotl if she can prove that she is capable of looking after herself without filling her sleeves with ketchup, falling asleep into her soup and losing socks she put on only three seconds previously.  She needs to do this for a sustained period of time.  She has consistently failed to do this for even a single day.  It looks like one of the reasons she may be leaving home as soon as she hits sixteen is in order to purchase livestock. 

The book was the closest she will come to owning a hound under my roof unless her eyes drop out and we have to invest in a guide dog.  I am particularly anti Tilly type dogs because she wants a dog that looks like this:

Now, as regular readers will know, I am not keen on dogs of any description, not because I am phobic, but because they smell of dog. I dislike the smell of damp dog intensely.  I can just about live with other people’s damp dogs, but not my own.  If we ever did have to acquire a dog I would however prefer one which looks like this:

This is a Lurcher. It is a stretched out weepette with more hair.  They are shambolic and amusing and my buying one would only comfirm the firm belief of most people that dogs look like their owners.  Imagine a Lurcher wearing Alexander McQueen dress trousers and you will see.

Ideally what I would really like is this:

The upkeep is minimal and they only smell of damp polyester when you get them wet.  Perfect.

Anyway, the constant moaning for livestock has been somewhat abated, although I have had to spend all morning oohing and aahing at pictures of Victorians shoving their Schnausers into boots and Pomeranians into hat stands.  See Exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

Lovely.

Tallulah is going through a Wizard of Oz phase.  I hate the Wizard of Oz since Vicky Finn was the only person in our village to have a video recorder and she would only let us go round to watch the Wizard of Oz even though she had Jaws and Grease, both of which films were way cooler.  I have seen the Wizard of Oz nine hundred billion times, because even though I hated it, it was better than staying at home and watching that lameass girl with the clown and the chalkboard;

 or even worse, forty five episodes of Silas dubbed from Lithuanian and repeated for the hundredth time.

So, after encouraging Matilda in her pursual of all things canine, against my better judgement I bought the most amazing pop up book of the Wizard of Oz for Tallulah, also against my better judgement.  Even I have to admit the pop ups are spectacular and beautiful. The detail is so fine.  Here is a picture of the Emerald City. I don’t know if you can make it out, but there are real emerald glasses that you can put on, which come in a little cardboard glasses  case:

I have spent what time this morning I have not been staring at sepia dachsunds, staring at glowing, green cities and marvelling over the doings of Dorothy, the squeaky voiced loon.

Oscar got a bird spotting kit.  He is still convinced that he can speak bird and has a back up career plan of being a cross between Doctor Doolittle and Bill ‘Birdspotting’ Oddie should all not work out in the demolition business.  He was very excited because the kit comes with binoculars which he insists on calling ‘oculars’.  He has spent large chunks of the day wandering around with his ‘oculars’ glued to his face, spotting things.  He does not take them outside.  That would be foolish. No. He spots very rare, indoor birds. Ones which are invisible to the naked eye, which is why he has to wear ‘oculars’. 

The kit also comes with a spotters book and chart, which are wet and weedy and not worth the paper they’re written on, according to ‘ocular’ boy.  The next best bit is the CD of bird calls, which is shrill, insistent, slightly menacing and very, very long.  This is perfect for small boys.  He makes us put the CD on before he hunts the birds.  This makes them more ‘visible’ to him.  He has had a most excellent time.  I approve of all of it except the bird noises.  It’s rather like having Roger Whittaker perched on the sideboard, and not something I am learning to live with, despite being subjected to it for several hours.

We had a slight crisis when he was so intent on his invisible birds that he ran into the French windows with his ‘oculars’ still glued to his face, but prompt action and some arnica seem to have allayed the chances of double black eyes and the promise of chocolate stopped the wailing pretty sharpish.

They were so thrilled with their gifts that we had no trouble persuading them to eat real breakfast before they embarked upon egg decimation, which was wonderful.  When it did come to the time for choosing which egg would be the first one for the chop there was some contention because Oscar has got two more this year.  He got an egg from nursery and he won a chocolate chicken from Carluccio’s when he entered their Easter drawing competition a few weeks ago.  I think he won because his entry was mostly decorated with chocolatey finger prints and Jason had written ‘I love your cakes!’ on the bottom in red crayon pencil.  Anyway, it worked and Oscar was very impressed with his prize.  We all were.

The girls were a little jealous until we pointed out that they have had several years head start on the Easter eggs that Oscar will never catch up with, whereupon they sat back smugly and watched him smash his chicken to flinders, safe in the knowledge that they are still egg supremacists.

This afternoon we took them to the cinema to see Monsters Versus Aliens.  It was Oscar’s first time at the cinema and it went remarkably well.  He didn’t scream. He didn’t cry and he only got fidgety in the last thirty minutes of the film, and even then it wasn’t very full, so he just bobbed up and down our row and didn’t pester anyone else.  I think it helped that the film was loud and violent with all the things a small boy requires including laser guns, mass destruction and carnage.  I was impressed because it was actually rather good for a small person’s film and I didn’t spend the majority of it trying to tunnel out with a teaspoon. 

All this however, pales into insignificance compared to the highlight of the day, which is yet to happen.  It was the Doctor Who Easter special last night.  We have yet to see it, because Jason went out and we recorded it.  We have been merely twiddling our fingers all day in anticipation of the magical hour after tea when the whole household will unite in peace and harmony to revel in our shared obsession with The Doctor.  There will be no arguing. There will be no fidgeting.  There will be no discussions. It will merely be the sound of five pairs of eyeballs blinking in communion as we watch.  There are not many things that bring a family of such disparate natures together except war and cake, but this is one of them.

Happy Easter.