25th March 2007 - Licked the bowl clean

We went in a little later than usual today - after picking Mark up from school rather than before. It must have been about 3:45 when we got there. The staff were already getting ready for the evening meal. Each resident has to be 'toiletted' prior to their meal, so each person that can't go themselves is taken there, then escorted back to sit at the dinner tables and wait for their meal. Presumably the theory is that if you've used the hoist to get them out of their sitted chair into a wheelchair you might as well leave them in it rather than transfer the person again. So the person will be sat in the wheelchair, tucked into the table, bib on ready for food for anything up to two hours depending when the food comes and when they are removed from the table. Sometimes, though, one of the more mobile residents will either mistake the wheelchair handles for a zimmer, or have a wicked turn and decide to take the poor unfortunate for a hurl. Still it maybe beats staring at the same knfe, fork and spoon for a couple of hours.

Jinny had been persuaded to sit at a table. There were four place settings, set for three courses and with a thick glass tumbler at each one. Starting with her own, she picked up each piece of cutlery and ate an imaginery meal with them, licking them clean and replacing them. She drank imaginery juice from each tumbler and set them back too. She was being watched by my new least favourite staff member. A poisonous wee woman who resembles Roz the sea slug thing from Monsters Inc. She had just finished shouting at Dilys - the youngest resident who is very able bodied and often very lucid - shouting to tell her to sit down in case she fell. Dilys sat "There, I'm sitting doon - are ye happy noo? So huv I jist to sit here until teatime huv I? Oh yer fuckin' jokin' are ye naw? Jist sit here fur hoors? Not bloody likely" and she went to get up. I've never seen Roz move more quickly, darting over to stand over her and force her to sit down again. "I'm only thinking of you Dilys, I don't want you to fall". "I'm no going to fuckin' fall, why should I fall? I'll use one of those daft zimners if you want". "You won't fall because you'll sit there. I'm just thinking of you" and she throws me an expression of careworn resignation, casting her eyes skyward and slightly shaking her slug head. Tweedledum appeared and they both walk away to continue laying the tables. "She's fuckin' stinking of shite by the way" Tweedle tells Roz. "Aye and she can stay that way an aw. I'm off on ma break in a hour and I'm no changing that before I huv ma tea".

Jinny noticed them pass her and stood to be face to face with Roz "Oh oh oh oh oh oh toilet". "Sit yourself down Jinny, yer cod in parsley sauce will be here in a bit" then to Tweedledum "And I'm no getting her piss all over my shoes again either, I'm going to the Weavers straight efter".

16th March 2007 - Kenneth Williams

The entertainments lady - 2nd in command - was around today. She was reading through cards with questions on them "Did you have a favourite teacher at school?", "Was there someone who influenced you in your life?" and the one that caught my notice was "Did you have a favourite singer?". Even while I was noticing that all the questions were in the past tense - like she was asking exit questions from purgatory's waiting room - I heard her turn to Lilly and say "You used to like music. Did you naw like Kenneth Williams? He was a luvly singer in the olden days wis he naw?" There was a Scottish singer - Kenneth McKellar - and I'm assuming she meant him. I can't imagine a "Ooooh matron" to the skirl of the pipes. But she knew she was wrong and corrected herself to Kenneth Branagh, to Andy Williams, to Alexander Brotherson, to Moira Alexanderson, to Magnus MacMagnus but she kept returning to Kenneth Williams. Her little group of entertainees were not saying anything. I understood why. I didn't want to be an arse and shout across the room but I can't tune her out. She moves on to another question "What was your favourite food?". Lily decided enough was enough "What the fuck do you mean 'was'? Wur nae deid yit ya silly bitch and it's Kenneth McKellar ya daft cunt. Can ye no have a word wi yerself and dae a bit of wurk at hame. It's nae fur me - I don't gie a fuck I'm only 23 and I'm leaving soon as Wullie gits here - but these dat auld cunts dinnae huv a clue wit yer own aboot" and she stumbled of towards her zimmer.
I look back to Dad and realise I've been ignoring him and he's asleep. Shame on me. Ignoring my Dad to listen to that. Shame - again.

8th March 2007 - That's one way of keeping the loo clean

Only managed to visit for a short while today. More truthfully could only be arsed staying a short while. I could not think of anything to say. Nothing. Not a single thing. I'd started well with a run through of the previous night's football - Man Utd had won against Lille, and Celtic had lost but I couldn't remember the name of their oponents. I knew it was one of the big teams an AC Milan or Madrid or Bayern Munich or something, and I knew it had gone to extra time and that Celtic were out of the UEFA Cup but couldn't remember the team. That was what Dad latched on to - "It's not much use if you can't remember the team is it?" he cranked. "No I suppose not but I can remember my own name" was my less than charitable mental retort while my mouth said "I'll go and see if I can find a paper and get the results". When I leave the day room I see Mary in quite considerable distress - and a shitty pair of trousers - she's very upset and banging on a door in the corridor. When I got a staff member to help her it turns out she was banging on the toilet door, not because someone was in, but because the door was locked. Saves on the cleaning when they are short staffed. Unfortunately for Mary this particular loo was the one she always went to, the only one she'd use, the only one in her mind.

Twenty minutes afterwards I heard one of the staff berating the one I'd fetched to help Mary. Although she'd helped her change, she'd left her trousers, pants and pad lying in the bathroom and he was brandishing them at her as he shouted in his eastern European accent. Mary watched her soiled trousers and pants being flourished like MacMillan's piece of white paper. Held aloft in accusatory truimph. He'd scored points over the other staff member.

I hadn't managed to find the newspaper so I couldn't confirm the teams playing for Dad, but by the time I'd come back to him after 2 minutes away he said he remembered watching it now and Colin Montgomerie had blown it at the last hole. Well, it might not be accurate but at least it's probable.

6th March 2007 Weighing day

I wanted to thump Tweedledum today. She was making fun of Donald. He was - in truth - being very noisey, very woefully noisy. Moaning loudly and long. She kept shushing him initially and then asking him "wit's wrang ye auld moan? Eh, wit's wrang?". Then she started to imitate him moaning a few inches from his face "There's nufin wrang wi ye, yea just like the attention dint ye?". I wondered why anyone would do anything to get themselves attention from her. Dad eventually managed to get the wrods he was scrabbling for "How can she ask what's wrong. He's in here". I knew what he meant. It's more surprising that there aren't more residents moaning and moaning.

She later noticed I was in visiting and confided that she was having a bad day. "One of them battered my heid against the sink the morn, but wit can ye dae - it's all part and parcel isn't it". While I was still wondering if it was a resident she was talking about or one of her own family she clarified "Wit can ye dae - it's all part and parcel of the job that's what I ayeways say" and just to be sure "Made sure he git his breakfast last right enough though - I'm wicked though eh - ye huv tae though, ye'd go as daft as they are in this place if ye didnae".

Her day worsened when she was told to help Dilys bath and toilet - "We all hate that job. She's stinking though, by the way. Really stinking. I ken it's no her fault or anythin' but I spray her wi the air freshener afore I go anyway near her".

Then Dad surprised me by saying "I was trying to say something 4 years ago, no 4 days ago, no that's not it, that's not it, 4 weeks ago - yes definitely 4 weeks ago. I was telling you something about the exit. I've been trying every day to get the words to talk more". It's 4 weeks ago he talked about suicide. So he did know what he was saying. And he did remember saying it. And he's spent 4 weeks of me visiting trying to get his words in enough order to be able to communicate again. I started to ask him more but the housekeeper switched on the hoover and his eyes flickered with resigned annoyance and then he feel asleep.

2nd March 2007 - Another record low

When we arrived - Ellie and I - Dad wasn't in the day room. Two of the staff were sitting at one of the tables doing paperwork and nodded towards the corridors. At the end of the first corridor I saw Wally, but down the second I saw Dad. Ellie ran towards him and he turned towards us as he heard her, focussing his eyes on the image appearing, then his mind on the relevance to him. As I neared him I focussed too - on the wet patch on his trousers. We were quite close to his room so I said to Ellie that he'd spilled his cup of tea on himself and we needed to go to his room to change them. I directed him there and looked through his wardrobe for a clean pair. I was still hoping that maybe it was tea, or juice, or anything, just not piss. In the toilet he struggled to remove his trousers, so I helped him, and I saw the pad in his pants, but didn't look to see if they were wet, didn't ask if they were wet, didn't clean him up, just helped him into a dry pair of trousers. Ellie kept asking what I was doing and I kept answering that I was helping him get a fresh pair of trousers because he'd spilled tea on the other pair. Every time he'd try to say something I'd bustle him past it.

By the time I'd got him into a fresh pair it was time for afternoon tea so we went to the dayroom. I was hoping the piss on his pants wouldn't soak through to his clean trousers making it impossible for me to ignore. One of the staff brought us tea for him, coffee for me and milk for Ellie. Ellie the granny magnet. He'd brought us three pieces of fruit cake too. But Ellie the granny magnet worked her invisible forces again and brought first two Cecilys, then Mary, then Jinny, then Amy, then Lily to the table. Toilet brush Cecily picked up each piece of cake and licked it before putting it back on the plate. Then she tried to brush Ellie's hair - before I rescued her - and left her ringside stand to another wrinkly oestrogen free female form. All of them talked at once, stroking and pawing, ohohohohing like Beyonce on Xanax, questioning, marvelling and eventually fucking off. They'd been corralled round us for fully five minutes while the two staff members sat and did paperwork. Another tick in the box - two staff members in the day room at all times. Never mind the fact they sit and read the paper, or fill in the day sheets, the residents records, work out the menage or the lottery syndicate - there's two of them there. That's one more than there needs to be by law you know.

His forehead was covered in fine stratches the previous day that I thought were probably caused by a sharp fingernail so I'd bought some clippers and an emery board to manicure his nails. As I was clipping his nails, he was trying to tell me that he needed his knickers changed and I was being deliberately obtuse. No-one listening in would have known that was what he was saying - "The other ones are boiled" doesn't immediately translate but I knew what he was saying. I knew and I ignored and I left him sitting in pishy pants. So I turned back and went upstairs to tell a staff member. Tweedledum as it transpired. "Don't you worry about that hen, I'll git him cleaned up. All part and parcel of the job. Would dae the same for ma mither so it's no different that's what I always say. We're aw Jock Tamson's bairns efter aw. That's wit I eyeways say". I've always hated that expression - we're all Jock Tamson's bairns - it's one I've only heard in Edinburgh and I get the sentiment but it always pisses me off. Particularly when delivered by Tweedledum. She has told me in the past that she'd never let her mother come into one of these places. What does that mean she thinks of the people that do place their loved ones in their tender care - or of what she thinks of the tender care provided? Many of the staff subtly let you know that they think you have failed your family member by putting them in there. It's horrible because you know you have, you don't need reminded of it. Or maybe you do, maybe you should be reminded, and often.

28th February 2007 - My Jeannette

He took my breath away today. I was stunned. He was talking about how he'd felt when he saw me that morning - I'd tapped him on the knee to wake him. He said "I was sleeping and dreaming badly and then I woke up, and saw my Jeannette smiling down at me and everything was alright" and I wanted to weep. I'm not his Jeannette, but it doesn't matter, he needs me, or rather he needs someone and I'm the one that's around to be there. He's sad, he's lonely, he's dying and I'm his Jeannette. Sometimes I'm Viv Lumsden, occasionally Jackie Bird, regularly my Mum, but I'm his Jeannette sometimes. It's awful, it's achingly sad that it's taken him dying for us to get to a point where - sometimes - we love each other.

Today I knew my Dad loved me, and I loved him. Today was a good day.