An interesting day so far but first we need to catch up on the events of yesterday. In the afternoon, there were meant to be two carers turning up at 3.15 but after a phone call to the agency, they did turn up after a delay of an hour and three quarters. The individual carers are generally helpful and supportive but the information system behind them is practically non existent. They are not allowed to contact their clients directly but are meant to report any delays back to the office who is then meant to inform the clients of any delays. But by common consent, the carers report delays back to the office who seem never to contact the client subsequently but express what I think is a feigned surprise when you report that nobody has turned up. But the doctors at the surgery are evidently a bit worried about Meg because one of them phoned up this afternoon and was appalled that the medication, prescribed a week ago had not been delivered because it was ‘out of stock’ This was not an exotic drug but a a fairly standard penicillin so the young doctor was going to raise ‘issues of concern’ with the pharmacy and was then so concerned himself that he was going to prescribe a much stronger antibiotic than originally planned. He was then going to get it the the pharmacy and pick ip up personally before bringing it around in the late afternoon. The doctor was pretty concerned about some inflammation markers in Meg’s blood analyses which might have indicated an infection and that was several days ago. He was almost inclined to recommend that Meg be admitted to hospital where perhaps some IV antibiotics would get quicker into her system. I must say, I very strongly resisted this suggestion after our recent hospital experiences but he went along with my wishes that the antibiotics he was bringing along this afternoon should be allowed to work. Meg is very sleepy in the mornings and has been for a day or so now but whether this is a result of the disease process or the effects of the inflammation, it is hard to say. The doctor said he was going to bring along their updated DNR form which, as the doctor had made two unscheduled phone calls in two days and then suggested a DNR form, made me wonder if they had secret suspicions to which I was not a party. In a bit of a panic, I emailed an Admiral nurse and got a very calming and soothing Admiral nurse who called me back and gave me some words of reassurance and comfort, of which I was certainly in need.

Now we come to this morning. Meg was her usual sleepy self when the carers called but as we have seen this pattern for the last couple of days, we are leaning to cope with this scenario. The two carers (and myself) helped to get Meg up, washed and dressed but she is so floppy and a dead weight, it actually takes three of us on occasions to do what is required, two of us holding her up and the third washing or what have you. But we did get Meg downstairs and a smidgeon of breakfast inside her. When I last shopping, I bought myself one of those exotic drinks (I think it was guava, pineapple and peach) but I gave this to Meg and I was relieved to see that she was drinking it fairly readily, as I suspected that with the heat and other things, she is quite dehydrated. So Meg having been put into the transit wheelchair, we were just preparing to go down to Waitrose when the parishioner called around from church with a card for me and a box of chocolates. Then we progressed down the hill and although there are one or two uphill sections, it is mainly a downhill run and therefore quite easy. The minute we got inside the store, I got a big hug from one of the Asian partners I have known for years and then we progressed to our usual table. There prepared for us was the chocolate cake that had been put on one side for me yesterday together with four plates and a knife. Whilst I was in the store and thinking about breakfast experiences, I bought Meg some more of the specialised fruit juices and then went to order my coffee and pay for this and the cake. To my considerable surprise, the store insisted that I have the coffee and the huge birthday cake ‘on the house’ and so with two of my friends we tucked in with gusto. Another of one our friends was very disappointed not to be there but she had a very hard day yesterday and may have experienced one or two falls – anyway, she did not feel well enough to come round today but there will be plenty of cake left for nest Tuesday when, no doubt, I shall see her again. Later on this afternoon, my son and daughter-in-law are due to come around so the various cards and prezzies that I have received in the last day or so can wait until we have a more communal opening ceremony this afternoon.

There is a mass of sunspot activity today today and for the next day or so. Apparently the ‘Aurora borealis’ normally seen only in the Arctic regions was seen in many parts of the UK last night. So given that I have never seen this before, I am minded once Meg is fast asleep and to pop out pretty late tonight, probably after the Eurovision Song contest is completed, to see if I manage to see anything at all from our back garden. Politics is intruding massively into the Eurovision contest this year with many protests against the Israelis from being part of the competition and this is not really a surprise. This afternoon my son and daughter-in-law called around so I had a very happy afternoon opening my cards, presents and boxes of chocolates. In the late afternoon I received a FaceTime called from my sister and niece so this helped to round off a really pleasant and memorable day.

At last, we are getting a taste of summer as the temperature gauge rises and I look forward to a day without visitors as such but nonetheless one of which I hope we can make the best. This morning as we were waiting for the carers, Meg seemed particularly sleepy as she was yesterday but whether this is transient or a sign of a deeper malaise I cannot say. We had two of our usual carers this morning who are always cheerful and pleasant to be with and they jollied Meg along and got her ready to face the day. I had the carers place Meg into the wheelchair we have been holding in reserve (although we did lend it out for a while) and I was happy that we would push Meg down to Waitrose in it, the mainly downhill journey being generally quite easy. Within Waitrose, we did not see any of our usual quite close friends but have a chat with a friend of a friend, as it were. There is also a very friendly young assistant (partner in the Waitrose terminology) who knows us well so between us we surveyed the range of cakes that they had in stock. Tomorrow is the store’s seventh birthday as well as being my own. I would like to claim that I am the store’s oldest customer but have to admit am only the second oldest customer as, on the opening day seven years ago, I got edged into second place by a rather pushy young woman. One of our acquaintances in the store today was also present on the opening day and she told us an amusing story. She had received particularly good service with her drinks and comestibles served to her by a very pleasant and obliging young man. She took him on one side and asked him if she could be introduced to the young man’s manager so that she commend his courteous attention throughout the morning. But she got a response that she was not expecting as the ‘young’ man informed her that he actually was the manager. A bunch of really lovely roses was pushed (gratis) into our hands by one of the long serving staff and then we made a few purchases before eventually starting the journey back home. On the way back, we espied one of our friends who we have not seen for a week or so busy in her garden and commiserated with her over the loss of a string of mature conifers that had been planted around the boundary. It transpired that the roots of these trees might have extended so far they threatened some subsidence in the house itself, so they had to go. I imagined that she would be heartbroken but she told me that she had never really like them from the day they moved into the property and was actually glad to see them go. Her husband was heartbroken, however, which I could well understand being a ‘tree’ man myself. Several minutes into our conversation we were joined by another neighbour who we both know well. This gentleman limped into our presence with a happy support above and below the knee on one leg and he really explained that his gammy knee needed immediate replacement but there was no way it was going to get done with the NHS in its present plight. So he had provided with some heavy strapping and, in effect, learn to live with it or undergo an operation privately where I think the figure of £15,000 might have been mentioned. We were also told another appalling story by the same gentleman who had experienced pains in his chest on night. He was taken to one of the local hospitals who then sent him on to another who then sent him onto a third. Eventually, though, the bed was needed by somebody else so a taxi was summoned to take him at 3.00am in the morning. All of these horror stories just add to the feeling that the whole of our social fabric is crumbling around us. To make matters worse, our two friends mentioned ‘the boat people’ and were quick to make a connection (encouraged by some politicians) between the arrival of economic migrants and/or asylum seekers and the hollowed out state of our public services. We made our excuses and started back up the hill not wanting to get involved in political arguments with friends.

We had only been home for about two minutes when one of the carers that we had in the morning came round for her scheduled, late morning visit. There should have been two carers but the agency had asked me if I could lend a hand as they having staffing/scheduling difficulties. As always I was happy to oblige but Sod’s law took over in that right on the middle of a manoeuvre getting Meg onto the Sara Stedy contraption, one of the doctors from the local practice phoned up (something tells me that something is being flagged up as requiring attention) Like the doctor yesterday, he was appalled that the prescribed antibiotic were ‘out of stock’ because it is quite possible that a slight infection of a few days ago might now be raging for absence of medication. So he was going to prescribe some much stronger antibiotics (about which I am privately a bit worried about the sequelae) and he was going to try to get them into the surgery and to bring them along himself later in the afternoon or early evening. He also started to review some of Meg’s blood results that are just getting onto the system and was evidently worried that some of the inflammation markers were high and was opining that Meg might need a hospital visit for some more detailed blood analysis and perhaps drip-feed antibiotics. I strongly resisted this suggestion that Meg visit hospital after our last visit when Meg was declared medically fit within the day and then it took eight days to get her out of the system ago. The doctor started to mention ‘Advance Directives’ and ‘DNR’ forms which has made me wonder whether the doctors in the practice have a lot of worries about Meg about which they are not being completely frank. At the moment, Meg is in a fairly deep post-prandial sleep which may, or may not, be a good thing and in a few minutes time we are expecting another of the scheduled visits that Meg is now receiving in the middle of the afternoon and a ‘double carer’ call at that as the physio had recommended that Meg’s body strength was such that it might take two carers to get her using the Sara Stedy rather than just one. I must admit I am trying to stay positive at the moment but some waves of pessimism are starting to sweep over me, I must be frank.

What a very strange day it has turned out to be today and several more hours to go as well. The carers were detailed to show up at 8.00am but by 9.00am nobody had turned up, so an urgent call was made to the care agency to ascertain what might have happened. The care team when they arrived had experienced an emergency in their previous call when they discovered the old lady for whom they were caring on the floor. An ambulance was called for but it took an hour to arrive and hence the massive delay in getting to us. In theory, the care workers should inform their management about delays who should then inform the clients down the line of any delays but the care workers tell us that this communication process never occurs. One would have thought that this was totally unproductive time waiting for the carers but we made the best of a bad job. Meg was pretty sleepy this morning and so slept on quite soundly until the carers themselves actually did arrive. For my part, I busied myself with a much needed cleaning job. We have a fan controlled ventilator in our en-suite bathroom and although my domestic help and I give it a good vacuuming every so often, it appears that spiders like to live in the grooves and eventually self-immolate leaving little black blobs on our en-suite bathroom carpet. So whilst I was waiting, I attacked these with some wet wipes with some hand gel inexplicably providing a good little bit of detergent and with an old toothbrush at hand, ready to be utilised if necessary. I then turned my attention to my (two sets of) black leather slippers I gave a good clean up followed by one of those polishes where you use it with its own built applicator to dispense a thin layer of liquid wax. By the times the carers did arrive, though, I had something to show for my wait, frustrating though it was in other ways. As soon as the carers were arriving, I got a phone call from one of the doctors at the surgery. I think that with the plethora of reports arriving from OTs and physios, the practice might be waking up to the fact that they really did need to be a bit more proactive in looking after Meg. They really needed the results of the blood tests from the samples that Meg gave yesterday. The doctor was somewhat appalled that the antibiotics that had been prescribed were ‘out of stock’ and were going to do some investigating and chasing to see what happened to our drugs. I mentioned this to the carers who knew of several instances of other conditions where much needed drugs seemed to be in very short supply. I suspect that the main culprit here is Brexit because supply chains have been so badly affected. But there seems to be a conspiracy of silence about all of this. But a quick search of the web confirmed my fears. I discovered that drug shortages are a ‘new normal’ in the UK and are being exacerbated by Brexit, a report by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank has warned. A dramatic recent spike in the number of drugs that are unavailable has created serious problems for doctors, pharmacists, the NHS and patients, it found. Mark Dayan, the report’s lead author and the Nuffield Trust’s Brexit programme lead, said: ‘The rise in shortages of vital medicines from rare to commonplace has been a shocking development that few would have expected a decade ago.’The UK has been struggling since last year with major shortages of drugs to treat ADHD, type 2 diabetes and epilepsy. Three ADHD drugs that were in short supply were meant to be back in normal circulation by the end of 2023 but remain hard to obtain. So the doctor concluded his call to me, fuming that Meg had been left without antibiotics for a week (where any condition could have dramatically worsened) and I shall just have to sit tight and see what happens.

We had only just about had our breakfast when he Eucharistic minister called around from our local church. Today was the day when, in theory, we should have been going off to the funeral of Meg’s cousin in Derby. We had already come to the view that our attendance at the funeral would have been impossible but if, by any chance, we would have wanted to attend the funeral this would not now have been possible owing to the delays of the morning. But the Eucharistic minister arrived at just the same time as the funeral service was due to commence in Derby so we managed to incorporate a few elements and reminiscencies of Meg’s cousin in our little service and so that we felt, in our own way, we had done our little bit to give Meg’s cousin some of the send off which she deserved. We had a busy morning because the minister had not long departed before a couple of physios turned up from the community branch. I had previously sent an email asking them to delay their visit to me because i thought they might collide with the other set of physios from the NHS ReAblement team and I did not want to be in a situation where one set of professionals thought they were being short circuited by the other set. But it was not too long before one pair of physios had departed and the second pair arrived to give us some instruction and advice on the Sara Stedy which was delivered yesterday. I must say that this new model looks bulkier but probably better built than the models of which we had experience in the local hospitals and the physios thought so as well. Instruction in the use of the Sara Stedy proved illuminating. The lead physio thought that it would take two care assistants to help Meg use the equipment (wanting to preserve my health but not aways be called upon to help) It took Meg a bit of a struggle the first time but on the second occasion Meg used it, it seemed a tad easier. When the care assistant arrived in the mid afternoon, we managed to use the technology to even better effect so I think we are in a situation where Meg’s brain, muscles and coordination are entering a learning process and she will get better and better at using the equipment as the days go by. I was relieved that Meg had a good sleep this afternoon whilst I managed to get the back lawn cut in a day of beautiful sunshine.

Today has turned out to be an interesting day. This is the day when our domestic help calls around and she can always be relied upon to lift our spirits and to lend a helping hand, when asked. I had resolved that after we had breakfasted this morning, we would repeat the pattern of the last couple of days and venture forth in our external transit wheelchair, brought inside the house for the purpose. Meg had had a bit of a disturbed night last night but I managed to make her comfortable after which she seemed to sleep more soundly but still seemed quite sleepy this morning. The doctor after he had called had prescribed some antibiotics but the pharmacy are having problems in supplying these – which may or not be a Brexit related problem. Pushing Meg in her conveyance down the hill is not really problematic apart from the odd one or two steeper uphill sections but I timed myself today and found that it only took me 21 minutes from leaving the house to arriving in Waitrose. We did not expect to see any of our friends today but nonetheless we had a pleasant coffee and apple pie between us before it was time for a quick purchase and then the journey back home again. One would have thought that the journey home, largely uphill, would have been a lot more difficult and would take considerably longer. But for reasons I cannot fully explain, the journey back does not seem particularly arduous and it only took me a minute longer to get back than it took to get me down in the first place. Whilst I was in Waitrose, I got a call on my mobile from the extremely helpful physio who knows Meg well and who said that she was going to call around tomorrow in the late morning. But as Meg’s condition seems to have deteriorated so some extra solutions seem to have been forthcoming to cope with attendant problems.Once we got home, we turned on ‘Questions to the Prime Minister’ which is a regular commitment on Wednesdays. The Labour party pulled off a bit of a parliamentary trick because there had been another defection of a Tory MP to the Labour ranks, this time the MP for Dover. But the announcement was timed for about one minute before the PM was due to answer questions and so when Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, announced that there had been two defections within two weeks the rest of the Tory benches were left scanning their own benches and the Labour benches to see who the defector happened to be. There has been a variety of reaction to Natalie Elphicke’s defection to the Labour Party on both sides of the political spectrum as she is on the extreme right of the Conservative party. Normally, the MPs who defect are at least ‘centrists’ but to have a confirmed right-winger join the Labour Party is causing eyebrows to be raised in both the Labour as well as the Tory party. After the normal knock-about stuff of PMQ’s with planted questions, prepared responses and the like, we pressed on with getting some lunch prepared. But just before lunch, we had a late morning visit from one of Meg’s carers who she knows quite well, a lady from Peru. We worked out that the physiotherapist who had called yesterday had recommended to social services that the number of visits a day be increased from three to four ((getting up, going to bed, and toilet assistance at the end of the morning and in the mid-afternoon) and this new arrangement had been put into effect immediately which was very good news for us. After we had had our lunch, I got Meg to doze for about half an hour and then a nurse called around who had been detailed to take some blood samples from Meg. The doctor had evidently ordered a full array of tests because I think that eventually up to eight samples were taken although the nurse had some difficulty taking the samples. Just before she left, the ‘afternoon’ carer showed up and this likeable lad was skilled in the use of the Sara Stedy, We had three attempts to get Meg to stand upright but she does not now possess the body strength to stand up so that the technology can be used as intended. This does not mean that all is lost, though, as I have a grab belt (which I could not immediately locate) and I think that putting this on Meg and exerting some upward pressure by one carer whilst the other carer folds the leaves of the Sara Stedy into place might just do the trick. The young male carer and I put Meg to sleep on the settee in our normal lounge and she seems to have fallen into a sleep again which must be to the good. Perhaps the exertions of trying to use the Stedy had all proved a little too much for her.Tonight, the extremely experienced carer who helps to put Meg to bed in the evening said we would devote a little time to seeing how we could use the Sara Stedy this evening and then, of course, I should have the help and assistance of the physiotherapist who is due to call around tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the day of the funeral of Meg’s cousin who died recently at the age of 88. As of two weeks ago, we fully intended to make ever effort to attend her funeral but the way that things have developed in the last few days, this is now almost completely out of the question. If Meg cannot stand even holding onto an open car door, then there is no way I am going to manage to get into a crematorium and thence to the reception afterwards, not to mention the strain of the journey. So this will, regretfully, have to be given a miss. In a similar vein, I had booked a couple of tickets for a concert late on Saturday afternoon but this, too, is now out of the question so I will just have to find some other entertainments for my birthday on Saturday.

So another day dawns and one wonders what today is going to bring. Tuesday mornings are generally devoted to a visit to our Waitrose friends followed by a visit to my Pilates class, but today I felt that the pattern needed to change. After the carers had seen to Meg and she was downstairs and breakfasted, I brought our wheelchair in from the car and we located Meg into it. Then it was just a case of getting some outdoor clothes on Meg and wheeling her down the hill. Today was a beautiful day and it was a fairly easy task to wheel Meg down the hill. Although there are a variety of ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ the journey is generally downhill so the wheelchair rather takes care of itself on the journey down. On the other hand, one has to have a careful watch for dropped kerbs and so navigation has to be done with a certain amount of care. But we were delighted to get to the store just after 10.30 and were delighted to meet up with our three friends as is normal. I felt somewhat tired after the journey down and wondered what the journey up the hill afterwards was going to be like. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our coffee and cake and I reminded some of the long serving staff that Saturday was going to be the seventh anniversary of the opening of the store. Mid way through our coffee, our Irish friend from down the Kidderminster Road called by with a birthday card which was very sweet of her to remember just before she shot off to Ireland with her husband. Now that we came to the journey home but, paradoxically, and perhaps fortified with some good coffee and cake, the journey back was fairly straightforward even though much of it was uphill. I was helped in this because the immediate start of the journey was quite steep (when I was refreshed) followed by a longish gently sloping downhill section towards the park at which point the journey was approximately one third over and the remainder easier to contemplate. Whilst we were having a coffee, I received a phone call from one the ReAblement team physiotherapist who said she was going to call around in the afternoon which was like music to my ears. The care arrangements for today included a young carer who we know well getting to the house so that, in theory, I could go off to my Pilates session. But I had already decided not to go which was just as well so that I could be at home when the physiotherapist called around. So the carer, Meg and I watched a little bit of a concert before I cooked our fishcakes and microwaved vegetables meal. When this over, the carer and I got Meg onto our settee (something I could not have done on my own) and then we encouraged Meg to have her after dinner nap. After about half an hour or so, the physio turned up and she seemed very good at appraising the situation quickly and accurately. When she saw Meg and I getting Meg onto her feet and attempting to load her into the transit chair, she had seen enough to make an assessment and immediately came to the view that a piece of equipment called a Sara Stedy was called for. Both Meg and I are familiar with this piece of kit because it was used extensively in the hospital during Meg’s recent stay and I suspected that something like this might be called for. So the physio made an instant request to the departmental store and I received a telephone call within the hour which indicated that a Sara Stedy would be delivered tomorrow afternoon. It may well that both Meg and myself as well as any carers need some training in the use of this equipment but I am pretty sure this will follow. She was also going to make a recommendation to Social Services that the number of visits per day should be increased form three to four and, under the circumstances, I really feel that we are now at that stage. So to summarise the situation, Meg’s strength has declined by a fair amount in the last week or so but we are getting some extra care and support, including physical equipment, to help us cope with the situation. After our carer had left, we ensured that Meg was comfortable before we left and we then entertained ourselves with three programmes. One of these was a dip into the Post Office Enquiry where a senior executive when presented with evidence of a possible cover up suddenly had a bout of selective amnesia. Whenever the lawyer posts up an incriminating email and asks evidence concerning it, the (vague) response was nearly always along the lies of ‘I cannot remember .. I did not appreciate at the time.. It was someone else’s responsibility ..’ or other irrelevancies meant to disguise the fact that they wished to avoid all responsibilities.

And now for something completely different. In the middle of the night a couple of nights ago, I idly followed a link from a ‘Twitter’ feed which led to a fascinating audio clip from a programme made by the renowned mathematician, Hannah Fry. This documented the attempts by a couple of econometric students to study and is possible amplify a very important paper which argued that once debt rose above 90% of GDP, then any attempts to reflate the economy were doomed to failure and the only available option was to follow a policy of austerity to reduce the amount of government debt. This paper was enormously influential in the management of debt in the advanced industrial economists. But the econometric researchers failed to replicate the result of the paper and requested from the author(s) the spreadsheet upon which the argument was constructed. In this spreadsheet, they discovered that there was a fundamental error in the spreadsheet and the data from several important economies was inexplicably excluded and the data from new Zealand which contained a year of really ‘rogue’ data was included. In short, the whole model was fundamentally flawed so the austerity regime to which we were subject and which affected the lives of millions of people was probably unnecessary and was the result of a spreadsheet error which had hitherto had been unexamined and unchecked. Whether this was the whole or only part of the explanation for the austerity regime to which we were subject is probably unknown and unknowable.

Today is the Spring Bank Holiday but not exactly May 1st which is celebrated across many European states as MayDay. I must admit I do not look forward to Bank Holidays these days as normal social life seems to be disrupted so much. Nonetheless, the sun was shining so we decided on a slightly different pattern of activities for the day. Last night, I had taken our transit wheelchair from the back of the car and cleaned up the wheels so that they would not dirty our carpet. Then this morning, I got the carers to put Meg in this transit chair instead of more normal armchair so that we were prepared for later in the morning. As soon as it was well past 9.00am I took the opportunity to phone the manager of the care agency as his sister (who also works in the business) had told me that the day before her that brother and his two children had been involved in a car smash and although a little battered and bruised were basically OK but their car was a write-off. Apart from my best wishes and concern for his health, the care agency manager was going to give me access to their own ‘app’ which should enable me to look ahead to the exact timing of the next care worker in the schedule.

After breakfast, we had the choice to push Meg down the hill and go for a spin in the park or just go that little bit further to Waitrose. In practice, we did neither because half way down the hill we were really pleased when we were pleasantly surprised by our (male) Irish friend who had been out for a ride on his bike. He invited us ‘in’ for coffee and we arrived within about 5 minutes. My friend and I tried to lift Meg over the two door thresholds but a combination of Meg’s dead weight and the height of the thresholds defied our efforts. Eventually, it was decided that we should take our elevenses outside which made for an absence of trouble all round. A little outside table was quickly produced and then we sat down to a delicious jam sponge and a pot of tea. This meeting was absolutely fortuitous as we neither had any plans to meet the other but it was great to seize the opportunity. This couple are due to go to Ireland tomorrow for a Spring Break so the meeting today could scarcely be better timed. They were expecting their grandchildren around in a few minutes time and we remarked at how fast the children seemed to grow up these days. After we had our repast, it was time to strike for home but our friend very kindly volunteered to help me push Meg up the steepest part of the hill, which offer I was glad to accept as I knew it would quite a hard push home. Once we got home getting Meg plus wheelchair in through the front door was easy but getting Meg out of the transit chair and into her regular armchair was going to prove quite a challenge, the leg supports from the transit chair getting in the way. I made two attempts without success and was reconciled to having to wait for the carer to arrive mid afternoon but then I thought of something that might help. At a visit in the past, one of the physiotherapist had brought along what is termed a grab belt which is our around the waist of the patient and which then has a series of handles upon which one can exert some upward pressure. This seemed to do the trick and I got Meg into her favourite armchair and then proceeded to cook a chicken lunch. Again, we are having to adopt a slightly different regime here so i dished up the two sets of dinners but had my lunch alone in the kitchen. Then I cut Meg’s lunch up into bite-size portions and fed her with it ‘in situ’ and in this way managed to get more food inside Meg than is she had been feeding herself. Afterwards, I was relieved that she had a good sleep of over an hour which is always to the good.

We try not to let our lives be dominated by the TV schedules but tonight there is going to be a little treat in store for us. There is to be repeat of the animated cartoon ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse‘ which we saw the Christmas before last and which was repeated last Christmas.This a delightful little animation with some stunningly well drawn illustrations and a series of little philosophical homilies. Our friend from the local parish church brought along a hardback copy of it as a Christmas present for Meg – I think it is true to say that it has hardly left her side and she reads (and re-reads) the book constantly. So this little gem is something to which we look forward for half an hour in the early part of the evening. There are two events later on the week to which we are sort of committed but it seems problematic whether can attend either of both of these. The most important one is the funeral of Meg’s cousin with whom we have spent a great deal of time in the past. As of about a week ago, I thought that attending the funeral in Derby was just about feasible but after the pattern of falling, inability to stand and extreme weakness, I am just not sure if this is feasible or even too foolhardy to even contemplate. The other event is on Saturday which happens to be my birthday and where, about two days ago, I purchased a couple of tickets for a local concert because I thought it might have been a nice birthday excursion but I think this is eluding us as well. So the patten of our lives seems to be changing almost day by day and I constantly having to take decisions about what is feasible and what is not.

When the House of Commons resumes after the break, Rishi Sunak will find his MPs in a sullen and jittery mood if not outright rebellion as even some of the extreme right wingers are admitting that changing Prime Ministers at thus stage is not just feasible. Some MPs are clinging vainly to the hope that there there may be a hung Parliament after a general election after a rather dubious projection has raised this as a possibility by projecting forward from the local to the national election results. This has given some Tories hope but most of them must know that they are heading a for a massive defeat and the present troubles of the SNP in Scotland are going to aid the Labour Party.

Whilst Meg was laying on the floor yesterday afternoon, the knife-edge result of the contest for the West Midlands mayor was coming to its conclusion. But the announcement of a result that was originally scheduled for 3.0pm in the afternoon eventually came closer to 9.00pm with the real drama unfolding once Meg was asleep in bed (after quite a traumatic day for her) The opinion polls have generally shown the popular Tory Andy Street to be 1-2 percentage points ahead of his rival, Richard Harper, but the entire political commentariat knew that the result was going to be very tight indeed. The very first indication that all might not be going the Conservative’s way was a ‘bundle recount’ for the result from Coventry which was the second last result to be declared. Normally, the side that believes it is behind calls for the recount but once all of this had been resolved, we had to settle back and wait for the very last reporting area which was Sandwell. By this stage, though, Andy Street was leading his rival by some 11,500 votes so we had to wait what seemed an indeterminable time for the Sandwell vote to materialise. Then some Labour supporters started to flood into the hall which is normally what the ‘winning’ side do to celebrate the result. When Sky News got an intimation of the result (reporting that the Labour party had won by 1,000 votes) we suspected that a stunning victory was about to happen. The vote from Sandwell gave Richard Harper an excess of some nearly 13,000 votes meaning that the margin of victory was 1,508 votes which was estimated to be about 0.2% of the total vote. Andy Street gave a short but appropriate speech in defeat and afterwards allowed himself to be interviewed by Sophie Ridge. I think she gave a very sympathetic and well judged interview and Andy Street himself accepted entire responsibility for the defeat, refusing to cast any blame upon Rishi Sunak. But we know that the mayor and the PM had their difficulties in the past, not least when Rishi Sunak was Chancellor and refused to entertain any requests for extra resources and, of course, the cancellation of HS2 was a major cause of contention between them. Although the margin of victory/defeat was incredibly small, the political ramifications are enormous. The mass of Tory MP’s are not in a mood to change their leader at this stage. But there are several sobering statistics that can be gleaned from this contest for the mayors. The swing against the successful mayor for the Tees valley is still enough to wipe out most of not all of the gains that were made in the North East by the Johnson era. Needless, the amount of analysis given to the West Midlands result is enormous, not least because Keir Starmer is demonstrating a momentum and the ability to steal ‘the jewel in the crown’ whilst the Tories are having to contemplate their worst defeat in 40 years, losing half of the seats that they were contesting (nearly 500). There is a certain amount of misplaced excitement as an analysis has been done of what would happen if these were a general election rather a local election results. But this analysis is fundamentally flawed if only people the electorate is prepared to vote in one way in local elections and another way at a general election. Also local elections stimulate a lot of ‘Independents’ which the general election does not. Also, of course, we have to factor in the result of the traumas that the SNP is experiencing in Scotland which could well give the Labour party some additional seats.

This morning, knowing that it is so difficult to get Meg into a standing position so that she can transfer from her armchair to her transit (wheel) chair, I tried a more imaginative solution. I knew that somewhere I had a triangular foam wedge which I located and then chopped down to a size which would fit snugly into Meg’s armchair. I reasoned that if Meg were to be seated on this wedge, it would ‘de facto’ raise the height of the seat and then we might be able to slide her onto the transit chair. So after the care workers had seen to Meg and then brought her downstairs, we tried a little experiment to see if my solution would work – if there was any danger of Meg hitting the floor again, then I thought the two carers and myself could catch Meg before she did so. But my solution was evidently not going to work so had to be abandoned. Just after breakfast, our University of Birmingham phoned and I decided to have coffee here rather than go out anywhere. Our friend and I between us managed to get Meg into her transit chair in which I kept her whilst I prepared the lunch. Then after lunch, I transported her into our main lounge where the settee is lower than the transit chair by several inches. So in a case like this, although Meg cannot stand, she can be got up and then half ‘fall’ onto the settee where she could doze and spend the rest of the afternoon. The early afternoon was a blaze of sunshine so whilst Meg was on the settee and prevented from rolling off by a suitably located and braked transit chair, I seized the opportunity to get the front lawns cut. This I did in three tranches rather than the more usual four so this is a good job done. Meg seemed quite sleepy this afternoon so perhaps the 2 x 1.5 hours that she had spent on the floor yesterday after her falls had taken their toll on her. Half way through the afternoon, one of the young carers called around and between us, although it was a considerable struggle, we managed to just about get Meg changed and comfortable because there was no way we could get her to stand which was our original plan.

Today has been a day of mixed fortunes, as we shall see. After our carers had turned up this morning and we had got Meg up, washed, dressed and safely downstairs but it was evident that Meg was exceptionally wobbly this morning and certainly could not stand unaided. It was quite a nice, bright day today and I contemplated whether it would be possible to get down to Waitrose to meet up with our friends, as we typically do on Saturday mornings. I had decided on a ‘Plan A’ to see if it was at all possible to get Meg into the car unaided but if proved not to be possible, I also thought of a ‘Plan B’ which was to forget about the car altogether and just walk Meg down the hill (and evidently back again) in her normal transit wheelchair that we keep permanently in the boot of the car. But I just about managed to get Meg into the car this morning, half an hour earlier than would have been normal to give me time to walk Meg down the hill if necessary. When I last went shopping, I had called in at one of our local supermarkets to access their ATMs and discovered, to my disappointment, that both of the ATMs were empty of cash. I suspect that the imminence of the Bank Holiday next Monday meant that must have been a sudden surge of people accessing the ATMs to get cash out before the holiday weekend and hence there being empty. So this morning, I called in on the Asda carpark in sight of their ATM and hoped that they still had some cash left which it had and so I was relieved to get out my weekly cash. I then called in at a nearby garage to make sure that I was well and truly topped up, also picking up a copy of ‘The Times‘ and so I progressed onto Waitrose where my efforts to get Meg out of the car were only partially successful. My attempt to get Meg out of the car resulted in Meg slithering down so that she was half seated upon the sill of the car. In some desperation, I called for the help of passing strangers and a very obliging young (and strong) young man came to my assistance and helped me to get Meg onto her chair. When we got into the cafeteria, the place was absolutely teeming but I managed to secure the one remaining table. By the time I had purchased our coffees, the space had cleared somewhat and so I pushed two tables together (as is my wont) and then there was space not only for Meg and myself but our three friends who had just shown up. One of them had observed my efforts to get into her wheelchair so to some extent was informed about how things were but, as is usual on a Saturday, we enjoyed each other’s company for at least three quarters of an hour. Now it was time for us to leave and I had to contemplate the journey back home. When I got to the vicinity of the car, it was pretty evident to me that Meg could not stand unaided so I just stood and waited until a relatively fit middle aged couple were passing by and I called upon them for assistance. So between us we got Meg into the car and now all I had to do was to get Meg home. I called in to see if our friends down the road happened to be in but they were not so I progressed home wondering how I was going to cope at the other end. I called on our next door neighbour who happened to be in and, between us, we got Meg into her transit chair and thence inside the house and so into her usual armchair. Reflecting upon these experiences (i.e.only one of the four transfers had been possible without any assistance either from complete strangers or from neighbour) I have to come to the view that I cannot repeat the experiences of this morning. So I either resort to my ‘Plan B’ which is to push Meg all the way in her without using the car (which I might do tomorrow if the weather continues to be fine) or to only use the car if I can be assured that I have assistance at each end of the journey.

When I got home, I started to think about lunch for today and I had previously got some mackerel fillets ready to be prepared into a salad. This I did and shortly after 1.00pm, it was ready for lunch and I tried to transfer Meg from her armchair to her transit chair. But despite three attempts, Meg could not straighten her legs or stand up even with more assistance and so my attempts to get onto a chair failed and she finished up slithering to the floor. I had to call the ‘Falls Response’ team but they were already out on another job. So I suspected that meg would have a wait of over an hour on the floor and it turned out to be a wait of an hour and a half. At the scheduled term, a care worker turned up only to find Meg on the floor but fortunately the Falls Response turned up shortly afterwards. They used their technology (an inflatable device) to get Meg upright and then left, leaving Meg and I to the care worker. We made Meg comfortable and then the carer left, leaving me to console Meg with some tea and chocolate biscuits. Later on in the day Meg spent another hour and a half on the floor but after the Falls Response team had left, the carer and myself got Meg straight to bed.

Whilst all of this has been going on, we have the results of the mayoral elections trickling through. The London boroughs were being announced section by section and although the London electorate has been described as a doughnut (whiter, more affluent and Tory voting suburbs but ethnic minority,Labour supporting areas in the inner city) But as the afternoon progresses it transpired that there was a fairly consistent swing of over 3% from Conservative to Labour and therefore it was quite evident that Sadiq Kahn was going to win a third term as London Mayor by a fair but not overwhelming margin. The really critical result is going to be Andy Street and the West Midlands result which is about as knife edge as it is possible to be. Most of the opinion polls have given Andy Street a lead of about 1% but the result may be so tight that we might be getting into recount territory.

This has been an interesting day but we are still in ‘recovery’ mode a little after last night’s little episode. Our carer was designated to call at 7.00 so I got Meg into her chair and ready to utilise the stairlift. We waited for half an hour and then I resolved to try to get Meg to bed on my own. But as soon as we got as far as the airlift, it became evident that it might have been slightly difficult for me to get Meg onto the chairlift unaided. So we decided to wait for what turned out to a wait of an hour and a half altogether and it was fair to say that Meg was becoming somewhat uncomfortable and a bit agitated after a wait of this length. A call to the office indicated that their timings had indicated that the call should be made at 8.15, not the 7.00pm on my spreadsheet. So what is happening is that the schedules change daily, not to say hourly, and the only fairly secure way to know what time the next visit is scheduled is to ask the carer on the previous visit because their app always points to the next visit ahead. So, to make sure that tonight we have an easier time and not a repeat of yesterday’s wait, the carer and I exchanged telephone numbers as she is on duty again tonight and it means that this way we can be in contact with each other and thus we can get the time of the next visit aligned with each other.

Yesterday was election day and I could not resist staying up a little to see how the results were likely to pan out. Once I had made myself some tea and toast, I fell asleep in the comfortable armchair in our Music Lounge and woke up at about 3.00 in the morning. but not before the Blackpool result had been announced in which the seat fell, as expected to Labour. But what was extraordinary about this result was that the ‘Reform’ party aka known as the Brexit party came to within 160 votes of the Tory party and very nearly made it into second place. This morning as I awoke, there were many more interesting results to digested which one of the most significant was the result in our neighbouring town of Redditch. Bromsgrove and Redditch are separated by a fast dual carriageway and the two towns provide a lot of services in common – for example our local hospital is actually in Redditch and not in Bromsgrove. The Labour party had taken 21 of the 27 seats on the Redditch council and was a sweeping Labour gain. This has all kinds of implications for the forthcoming General Election in Bromsgrove because a Labour victory in Bromsgrove at the forthcoming General Election may now be considered a possibility. We are losing our sitting MP Sajiv Javid so it this adds to the possibility that Bromsgrove may actually go Labour which it has been at some time in the dim and distant past. The other election result in which I have a personal interest is one of the Winchester seats in which one of my ex University of Winchester colleagues is a Liberal candidate. I can tell from the BBC website that the Liberals have retained Winchester and have actually increased their representation by three extra seats but whether my colleague is one of the extra three I will have to wait until tomorrow (or even later) when I get the full results. One little election story which I found quite amusing was that Boris Johnson turned up to vote but was initially denied the opportunity because he did not have with him the necessary Voter ID (a policy which the Johnson regime had initiated as a form of minimising the anti-Conservative vote).

Today our domestic help called around and we always take the opportunity for a aught and a joke, as well as a bit of story telling. I recounted to bet how this time last week we had been in Alcester and had been delayed by a police car blocking our exit – and it transpired that in the hotel next door there was a dead body on the floor, three ambulances and two police cars. I told our help that in my day when I worked at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, we occasionally had to cope with the occasional death of a guest (about one a year when the hotel was about 375 bedrooms and full most of the time) To avoid bad publicity that attended a death, we resorted to the expedient of wrapping the body inside a roll of carpet and then bringing it downstairs on a service left until we could whisk it round to the back and off to the undertaker. I also repeated to our domestic help the comment made to me yesterday by the Admiral Nurse after I made the remark that I helped to deliver my own son as the maternity hospital was a little short staffed that night. The Admiral Nurse turned to me, having seen me caring for Meg over the months and remarked to me ‘Why am I not surprised by your story?’

Today, we received a telephone call from one of our local doctors who did say that he would call round and give Meg an overall checkup. He did discern a very slight crackling in her chest that might indicate a small chest infection so was going to order us some antibiotics to get it cleared up. This afternoon, we had a young male carer call around and after Meg had had a good sleep after lunch, his visit was timely and we got Meg cared for between the two of us. For lunch, neither Meg nor I felt particularly hungry so I fell back upon the expedient of making ourselves a Spanish omelette. I fried off some onions, sweet peppers, mushroom and petit pois and then transferred this mixture into what was became one enormous omelette. I must say that Meg and I found this to be a very tasty alternative to our normal fish dinner on a Friday and as it was so tasty, we may well repeat this type of a meal on a future occasion.

These days I am never quite sure how the day is going to unfold. In particular, I had received a message fairly late on yesterday from the manager of the care agency to say he had been in contact with Social Services and to cut along story short, he had been informed that we now had no allocated social worker and it was incumbent upon me to phone up the duty office to indicate our needs. The carers who came this morning were allocated rather a late time and as this coincided with the Bromsgrove rush hours, they were both twenty minutes late whilst Meg, sat uncomplainingly, waiting for them. So breakfast was a little delayed and immediately this over I phoned up the Social Services office. At first the receptionist could not find Meg on the system but eventually by going through postcode rather than date of birth, Meg’s records were located. It turned out that we had in practice been allocated social worker No. 3 and almost unbelievably, she happened to be in her office and could receive my phone call. The news that emerged, however, was good. We have got funding approved for the next two weeks subject to review and, moreover, the social worker made an appointment to come out and see us in a couple of week’s time which was, again, excellent news. So I suspect that we may have a call this afternoon but, as I write, nobody has turned up. This morning, though, was devoted to a call from a couple of Admiral nurses, one of whom is our regular contact and the other a colleague who had come along in support. There was a third attendee as well, who was a student observer whom I had met once before when I attended a carer’s session in the local community hospital but whose role was confined to an observer only. But the two Admiral nurses were a fund of useful advice and support. They were as dismayed as I was that the local GP practice thought they could offer a service to a person who is in as frail a state as is Meg these days by only offering a telephone consultation service. I suspect that since COVID, GP practices all over the country have latched onto the idea of a telephone consultation as their very first option without applying any degree of discretion to the cases in front of them. But the lead Admiral nurse intended to fire off an email in the direction of the doctor, another one towards the newly allocated social worker and perhaps a third in the direction of the OT service. In short, I feel as though I have some kind of advocate acting on my behalf which is surely welcome. The hour that they had allocated to us very quickly shot by but I always feel that the fact that they can make approximately monthly visits and are always available at the end of a phone is a source of some reassurance to me.

We had our thrown together pasta type lunch and then I got Meg settled down for a doze which was only light to put it mildly. We were half expecting a visit this afternoon from another care worker but perhaps the system will kick in from tomorrow. Last night, though, when Meg was in bed and I had done some routine tasks such as processing the contents of the washing machine, I started to watch a Channel 5 program in the series of Great British Sex Scandals. Last night’s edition focussed on the issue of Cecil Parkinson, the Conservative party chairman who helped to organise Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1983. I remember all of the major elements of this scandal but what I failed to appreciate was the ramifications of this affair which went on for years, or more accurately decades afterwards. I knew that Parkinson had been forced eventually to resign (by a well placed contribution from Sara Keays, the made pregnant secretary) who gave her side of the story to ‘The Times’ who made it their headline and, after which, Parkinson had no alternative but to resign. But what I did not appreciate was that Parkinson’s liaison with his secretary was well known to other Tory MPs and the rest of Fleet Street at the time but the ‘old boy’s club’ which operated at the time meant that Parkinson got away with everything. In fact Andrew Neil, the editor of the Sunday Times even produced a headline saying ‘The case for Parkinson’ and all of this I must admit was news to me. What was even more jaw dropping was the injunction that Parkinson served upon Sarah Keays and her disabled child which meant that they were effectively muzzled for the best part of 18 years. Anybody who gave air Io any of their concerns about the case (such as one brave questioner upon the BBC ‘Question Time‘ was liable to immediate imprisonment) and thus the ultimate victim in the case was the wronged Sarah Keays whilst Parkinson got away with all of his transgressions and after being brought back into government was eventually given a seat in the Lords.

We have a modern day scandal in the making as I write. According to the Institute for Government then the ‘purdah’ rules state that ‘During general or local election campaign there are restrictions in place on what the government can do – both in initiating policy and in using official resources. This is to avoid inappropriate use of official resources and to ensure the impartiality of the civil service, so that public money is not used to support the campaign of the ruling party’ But this principle has just been roundly violated by the present government. Yesterday, the day before the voting day in local elections, the Home Office saw fit to release a video (with a musical soundtrack to boot) indicating how asylum seekers were being chased across the country and then locked up, prior to their deportation. This was clearly designed to appeal to those who are supporters of present government policy towards asylum seekers and is as flagrant a violation of the rules concerning civil service impartiality as it is possible to find.

Tonight, some results from the day’s local elections may start to trickle through and, as an election junkie, this gives me a certain dilemma. I think I will stay up until midnight to see the lie of the land and possibly some exit polls and then head for my bed unless anything really exciting starts to ensue.