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.