Well, it really feels as though the weather is on the change today. Yesterday afternoon, the sun was shining fairly brightly and Meg was dozing so I took the opportunity to dash out and cut the front lawns in a series of tranches as I normally do so that Meg is not left too long unattended. But I could feel the weather changing even as I was mowing and therefore I was heartily glad to get this weekly job done before a deluge started. But the threatened downpour did not arrive and we had a slight shower of rain whilst today is cloudy – and threatening. Two things have happened recently which require more attention. The first of these is that one of the wheels on the transit chair that we use to transport Meg from stairlift to bedside upstairs has somehow got irreversibly jammed and a few hefty blows with a hammer did not resolve the issue. So I needed to phone the OT service to report the issue and indeed, later in the day, I did get a message from them that they would try and deliver another chair tomorrow, if possible. The second issue was a medical one in that the carer and myself notices that Meg’s left ankle was quite puffy with evident fluid retention so I needed to get this reported to the doctor. This necessitated filling in an online form to request some doctor’s advice from the surgery and I received a text back saying that i would receive a phone call from a doctor some time before 6.30 this afternoon. In the event, one doctor did phone at about 3.00pm and evidently I had to go all through Meg’s history with someone who only had Meg’s notes in front of her. She did request that I bring Meg down to the surgery where I had to suppress an evident snort of indignation indicating that as it took the combined strength of two carers into a more or less standing position to get onto the Sara Stedy, coming down to the surgery was hardly a viable option. So, rather reluctantly (I sensed) the doctor indicated that they would try to put in a house call in the late afternoon or early evening but I am relieved that these symptoms are receiving some attention.

This morning, Meg having been loaded into her ‘going out’ wheelchair we went down the hill to Waitrose where I intended to buy some ice cream and some smoothies to help to get some fluid into Meg. I was dismayed, though, once we got inside the store to find all of the ice cream section completely empty which seemed to be Sod’s Law in operation as that was one of the purposes of going down the hill this morning. So I had a word with one of the staff I know well and they told me that their ice cream freezer had packed up (on the hottest day of the year so far) but they had some ice cream in their storeroom bridges upstairs. So I was delighted to get some ice cream which Meg enjoys a lot, together with two bottles of exotic sounding smoothies. So then we made for the park and sat on one of the lower benches overlooking the lake before we started off up the hill striking out for home. Half way home, we bumped into our Italian friend briefly and then got home in plenty of time for the late morning call of the carers. After this was completed, I started to think about lunch which I do in a slightly different way these days. I tend to cook slightly more than enough for one person and then I load up my plate and eat my dinner on my own but only consuming about one half of it. I then heat up the remainder in the microwave and feed it to Meg in fairly small fork fulls which is all she seems able to manage these days. Later on this afternoon, it is possible that I will get a call from an Admiral nurse (specialist in Meg’s condition), a call from the doctor and a late afternoon call from the carers. In the meantime, I have to concentrate upon getting some more fluid into Meg as the doctor is again threatening a hospital stay which I am anxious to avoid.

The Donald Trump road show carries on today. According to the few snatched accounts that I have come across today, it looks as though Trump has been sounding off today with his usual vituperative rhetoric and later today, Michael Cohen who was Mr. Trump’s lawyer who helped to organise the payment of hush money to the porn star, Story Daniels, is due to take the stand later on today. Michael Cohen is the prosecutions star witness and his evidence will be crucial – and damming. On the other hand, he comes with considerable baggage and Donald Trump’s lawyers will argue that as a proven liar, Cohen was sentenced to prison in December 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes. In all, he spent about 13 1/2 months behind prison walls and a year and a half in home confinement. His time was further reduced through good behaviour. So the Trump defence will certainly be that as a witness Michael Cohen is so unreliable that every bit of testimony he gives needs to be disregarded. So the important question at this point is how Cohen responds to cross examination and the impact this has on his testimony, and his responses under cross examination, hold sway with the jury. No doubt, some of the juicier bits will be reported on Sky News later on today.

Some interesting domestic political news is emerging this afternoon. It seems that the law allowing asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda has been disapplied by court in Northern Ireland. The reasoning of the court that this legislation breaks some of the fundamental principles which underlie the Good Friday agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland. The government is going to appeal this ruling but already there is an indication that there are legal rocks ahead for the Government’s Rwanda legislation. Tomorrow morning, I am also going to see if there any are more interesting developments in the Post Office enquiry, which is proceeding apace. It is not often that you see people actually held to account in the way that the Court of Enquiry does but at times it can make for absolutely fascinating TV when one wonders what prevarication, absence of memory or denial is going to emerge next from the lips of the witnesses.

Today has been a really messed up day, what with one thing or another. Why I bothered to watch the Eurovision song contest last night, I do not know but with an entry like the UK’s (a weedy voice accompanied by semi clad males doing indescribable things apparently upside down using a backdrop that looked like an uncleaned men’s toilet) is it any wonder that the ‘professional’ jury gave it ‘nul points’ The winning entry from Switzerland was somewhat better but not really memorable – all best quickly forgotten about. Meg had a rather disturbed night which did not help and then the carers arrived at 7.00am instead of the usual 8.30am so we did not have time to properly wake up. Although we are given a schedule a week in advance, the actual schedule of visits changes on a daily and sometimes even an hourly basis so the only way of knowing what the next visit is going to be is for the carers to consult their own app which does detail both the carers and the time of arrival. I was a bit dismayed that this was going to be at 11.05 this morning which rather messed up what I intended to do. We watched one half of the Politics programmes on a Sunday morning and I then pushed Meg down the hill, stopping for a brief chat with our Italian friend down the road who was desperately trying to get some potting plants in before the threatened rains started. Then we collected our Sunday newspaper from Waitrose and then made our way to the park where we sat overlooking the lake in a haunt that had been a favourite one of ours in the early days of COVID. Meg had a drink of a smoothie juice I had taken with us and I had also bought along some crunchie oatmeal type bars and this provided us with a bit of sustenance before we started on the journey back. We got delayed a little because a friend I had phoned the other day down the road was phoning to enquire after Meg and I was able to tell her that now she had some more powerful antibiotics inside her. Then we bumped into some of the relatives of Clive, the octogenarian trumpeter who attended our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations but who died at the start of the COVID pandemic four years ago now practically to the day. As we suspected, Clive was an early by-casualty of COVID because the chemotherapy he was receiving to keep his leukaemia at bay ceased and hence he succumbed as soon as this medication was withdrawn. So we got home five minutes before the allotted time to find both the carer and Miggles, our adopted cat, waiting patiently for us. The carers had hardly anything to do for Meg just ensuring she was comfortable and then transferring her via the Sara Stedy from the wheelchair to her own leather armchair. But then we were dismayed again as the 3.00pm afternoon call had now been rescheduled to 1.20 This has really messed up our arrangements and mealtimes as, in an ideal world, Meg and I would have watched a bit of TV, Meg would have had lunch followed by a nap and then the carers would make their afternoon call. As it stands, Meg is fast asleep at the moment and I am loathe to wake her. I may just cook the dinner at the ‘normal’ time, wait until Meg wakes up and the carers have made their afternoon call an hour and 40 minutes early and then ‘play it by ear’ I like to be fairly organised and to have, if not a regimented routine at least a predictable one but when the carers schedules are all over the place like this not fitting in with biological activities like eating and sleeping, then I finding this somewhat difficult to cope with.

Today, we come to the time when we have a beef joint. Meg and I have cut down on our consumption of red meat these days but we do tend to have a beef joint about once a month. I cook it in the slow cooker for about 4 hours and then once cooked, the already small joint is divided into half and the one half gets frozen. I then add slices of the meat to a rich onion gravy, made a little bit thicker with some powdered potato and made to look a deeper colour by the addition of a few drops from my bottle of (gravy) browning. Today, the meal times are so messed up that I am cooking the meal according to a normal timetable and then I will plate it up and be ready to heat it up in the microwave when the time is more propitious.

I have just read the weather forecast and learned that a number of storms are about to sweep across much of the UK this afternoon. This has all come as a bit of a shock because earlier on today, we were getting the news that today might be warmer than yesterday and we hod expect some rain to follow in the next few days. But thunderstorms of this intensity in mid May are not unexpected. I vividly remember one which I can actually date i.e. 11th May, 1968. I can be precise about the date because it was my birthday, a date which I shared with a flatmate who came from Sri Lanka (then, of course, Ceylon) I can remember myself and my flatmate standing in front of our living room window which fronted onto the Wilmslow Road in Manchester. The rain was of such a ferocity that absolutely all of the traffic was forced to a halt and my flatmate and I watched as the rain hit the ground so hard that it bounced some 12″-15″ above the surface of the road. Of course, it could not rain at this intensity for very long but, nonetheless, it was a very vivid scene that is etched in my memory. Some people feel absolutely wonderful in a thunderstorm and there is some scientific evidence that the negative ionisation creates a euphoric mood in many people (whilst the counterpart is the positive ionisation you get in very hot and sultry weather than can make one feel out of sorts) So we will have to wait and see what we get this afternoon – I wish, though, that it would arrive a day later so that I could get the lawns mowed before the rain strikes.

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.