29th April 2007 - Are your shoes working hen?

"Are your shoes working hen?" Lily asked me as I came in. I replied that they were and she looked with bemusement at her slippers. The tongue was flapping out of the left one but she'd zimmered away before I had a chance to tell her.

Dad and I sat at a table and Margot brought us tea and coffee. Which was very kind as the trolley had been round already. Dad didn't acknowledge her bringing them over but I thanked her and she knew I appreciated her kindness. Her face is very easy to read, she is a person that can not hide how she is feeling. If she is in a thunderous mood, her brows collect above her eyes and you can almost see her own personal 'little black rain cloud' just hovering above her head. When she's in a bad mood, you know. And it's always the same cause. The management of the home. Not the residents, not even the equally demanding relatives, but the management. She can handle batting away "The dodds of shite that they fling at me, it's the keich fae above that gets ma goat". Sod cloning sheep, they should clone her. Clone her over and over again and sack the Tweedles.

Anyway, Dad was a million miles from planet earth. "Away ta-ta" as my mother would have said. Every foray into conversation I tried went nowhere and was confusing him and - latterly - just irritating him. So I stopped talking, read him a few bits from the paper and sat back for a while. I sat without much interaction for 5 minutes - I could see the huge wall clock from my post - and in that time the wanderers circuited the place. The residents that walk round and round and round. At differing paces , some with zimmers or sticks, some unaided, but all to no place, to no end, to no purpose persevable to the undemented eye. Amy went round most. In five minutes she came and went 14 times. Came in, sat, got restless, rose and walked off with a "I've lost me handbag" or a "Jist wait 'til my husband comes in" or a warning "Look out fur that yin love, she'll have yer purse quick as look at you".
Only to come back seconds later, apparently oblivious to the previous encounter.

Lily had sat at the table next to us. She was staring at her slippers, the tongue of which was still flapping around. She was bent over trying to fix it, then took it off, turning it over and over trying to make sense of it. One of the staff was watching her do it, and watching me watch too, he was smiling at me in a "Aren't they funny sometimes" kind of way as she'd swear at her "Fucking bastard shoe, will ye no go oan and stay on!". After a bit I kneel down in front of her and fix her slipper for her. "That's awfy kind of ye hen! Are you a doctor or tha? Ye must be awfy clever to fix tha jist like tha!"

When I had got back up to our table Dad asked "Is it usual for a woman to propose these days then?" and I realised he mistook my dropping to my knees infront of Lily the wrong way. "I was fixing her slipper Dad, not asking to marry her". "Ah, that makes it better then, I would think you'd be better to marry a man". Lily screams from the other table "It's no a man I'm looking fur it's the buckin' lavvy. Aw, hen, Doctor, will you no tell me where the lavvy is?". On my way out I showed her where the lavvy was, while the staff member read the Daily Record and waved me a cheery goodbye.