Typing is proving a very successful exercise in thawing out my fingers after a particularly chilly swim. The lido is ( in theory) warming up, but today although the sun is out, the wind was really cold and it was challenging to walk across the bleak and unforgiving concrete to get in. However, once in you just get on with it and it’s always worth the effort in the end

One of the things I have been doing in the last couple of months is attending a Death Cafe. I have always wondered about them and had never really known what they were, but then I saw an advert and discovered that there is one that takes place in a local community centre on the first and second Monday of the month, so I went along. I wasn’t at all sure what to expect. The first session was quite small, there were six of us, two of whom were the facilitators. The others were from about my age up to about eighty and all continue to come regularly ( apart from one silent and rather startled looking man who had travelled down from Hampstead for it but left hurriedly at then end declining to leave his details) Perhaps he had somehow mis read the advert.

Each session lasts two hours and everyone brings biscuits and cakes to share. One of our group ( a retired actor) is as fond of biscuits as he is of his own voice, and once wolfed down an ENTIRE packet of Jaffa cakes while regaling us with tales of Shakespearean death rituals but all in all its a very interesting way to spend a couple of hours on a Monday

Basically it’s a chatty and informal morning where people talk about death and everything around it in an attempt to make it less of a taboo. As we all know, death is the sort of topic that makes people squirm and start to talk about the weather, which is stupid really because after all it is the only one definite thing that we human beings have in common. And as you know, I’m very interested in the subject.

The first two sessions continued in much the same vein as we covered all sorts of things from how unusual it is to die at home these days, the cost of a funerals, to who is a funeral actually for? The departed or the bereaved? We recounted our own experiences of death and how we think about our own when the time comes. It probably sounds rather ghoulish but it really isn’t.

And then a new person turned up and really set the cat among the pigeons. A perfectly ordinary looking woman arrived , carrying the obligatory packet of biscuits. As usual we went around the group and introduced ourselves. She then announced that her name was B and that she was a medium. Personally I nearly fell off my chair in excitement, not so a couple of the others, who were also falling off their chairs but for very different reasons. Basically her very presence caused a real stir and made some people feel very uncomfortable. As for me, I can’t imagine anyone more suited to a death cafe than someone who actually proclaims to be able to see the dead, but anyway.

The main facilitator of the group is a retired GP and though very friendly and interesting, can be rather opinionated on certain matters. She viewed B’s arrival as if the devil herself had hopped off the number 36 bus and arrived on our doorstep. When B started saying that the spirits of the dead were at that very moment standing around us, she couldn’t contain herself and stood up and shouted ” Mumbo Jumbo” at the top of her voice. I personally rather liked the idea of our loved ones hanging around as we nibbled on our biscuits, but her presence really caused a bit of a divide in the group. Retired GP and one other thought she should leave ( and later sent round a WhatsApp message to say so) but the rest of us thought she should be invited stay. and participate. And to give her credit, she still comes. I haven’t yet got around to going and seeing her in action at the rather glamorously named Croydon spiritualist church but it’s on my bucket list.

And while we are on this subject, a very strange thing happened the other day. It was the anniversary of Tim’s death and I had gone our for a drink with his brother Jon. Just to be clear, it was an early and very grown up drinking session which ended well before closing time and I was home at a very sensible hour. When I went up to the bathroom there was a folded up tablecloth lying on the floor by the end of the bath. I had to walk over it to get to the loo. It was definitely not there before I went out, nor does Elvis the cat (who was the only other living being in the house at that time ) know how to fold up table cloths. It wasn’t even a tablecloth that was relevant to Tim, it was just very very odd. It couldn’t have fallen off the towel rail as it was already so neatly folded and it doesn’t even live in the big bathroom as its place is on the shelf in the other room.

Perhaps I should ask B next time I see her.

Happy Wednesday everyone

It has been a glorious summer for swimming all round, and even now as I sit looking at the drizzle outside my kitchen window, the weather isn’t exactly wintery, though this morning when I took my clothes off at the lido for my daily swim it felt a little like being slapped around the legs with nettles when I first got in. The fact that there were only about five other people in the pool is a sign that temperatures are dropping like a stone ( they don’t allow under 16’s to swim once it goes it below 15 degrees, which seems a little strange, I would have though us over 60’s are much more at risk of heart attacks, but perhaps my blubber is a safety net). But then, as always, after huffing and puffing like a walrus and thinking ” I only need to stay in for a minute’ I look at the big sky stretching out above me, do another length, and then another, and another and suddenly my head clears and everything is right with the world. It’s the time when I make lists , think about what I need to do, who I need to see, wonder whether to have toast or scrambled eggs for breakfast, or just let my mind wander. I suppose it’s a sort of meditation ( though some might argue its more of an endurance test) but I certainly feel great afterwards.

We had some wonderful sea swimming too this year, in North Devon in August , where for the first time ever the idea of Greek villa holiday option wasn’t discussed once because frankly the weather was as hot if not hotter than Greece. Raincoats and wellies remained unpacked throughout and we wafted around the campsite in hats and a state of sunburnt disbelief. Down at the quay, the water was cool and the colour of jade, the water flat like a mill pond so you could swim right out and round the rocks, something you normally only do at certain times because the tides are too wild and the sea too rough. The evenings were comfortingly cool with shocking scarlet sunsets as we poured gin and tonics and lay on the grass looking for shooting stars. We lit a fire each night but more because it’s what we always do, not because we needed to for warmth. Camp life was easy because you weren’t constantly having to tighten tent poles, battle against the wind, dry out wet muddy washing, find a dry lighter so you could light the stove, or get in and out of damp waterproofs the entire time. Weirdly, even though it was completely lovely not to have to think about any of the usual weather related things, I sort of missed it (and the complaining about it).

Portugal in September was wonderful. It’s a different heat, the sort of dry heat infused with the smell of scorched earth, ripe figs and hot air, that reminds me of my Tokyo childhood without the cicadas and the hiss of water sprinklers. In the early mornings as I padded across the cool kitchen tiles in my bare feet, the sky was already brilliantly bright blue against the whitewashed house with a splash of impossibly pink bougainvillea against the wall. The sort of weather to get down to the seafront early, past the storks nesting on top of the church, for coffee and custard tarts and then to the market looking for sweet fleshed yellow melons that taste of summer and huge bulbous tomatoes the size of a babies head. A dash of olive oil, fresh basil leaves, a twist of black pepper,a sprinkle of salt and there you have it.

We caught the ferry over to the island and walked, sun umbrellas, books and bottles of water in our bags, across the dunes past shacks, olive trees and cafes. The sand was white and the sea was turquoise, buoyant and fresh. We collected striped shells and had lunch overlooking the bay our cheeks sun blasted and sandy. Another day we went by boat to an island called Deserta. It was beautiful but not in any way deserted, as the beach was busy with day trippers, boats and loudmouthed fisherman. with berry brown pot bellies and cans of Estrella. The water was clear and cool, and as we swam fish jumped right in front of us, flashing like strips of silver foil as they splashed and spun in the sunshine.

And now I’m back in Camberwell, the Virginia creeper is turning red and there are apples on the tree in the allotment. I started this yesterday and it is now morning. Once again I am bracing myself for a morning swim even though the trees at the end of the garden are dancing in the wind and wind is not my friend as I shiver my way across the concrete to the pool. Then again, I only need to stay in for a minute.

Astonishing as it seems, I am now a grandmother ( or ‘Oma’ as they say in Germany). A little Berlin baby boy born on Halloween, thus ensuring years of brilliant spooky birthday parties and pumpkin shaped cakes. It’s hard to describe how much I already love him, this squidgy wriggly munchkin whose arrival has made everything seem alright with the world. But more of that another time.

As I write this, I am listening to a piece on Radio 4 about stepmothers ( or ‘blended families’ as they keep calling them, a phrase that I find deeply annoying and irrelevant to my own particular experience). Indeed, if you had attempted to blend me, my brother, our stepmother and father in the Nutribullet (not that we had them in 1976) it would have splintered and broken, a little like the time I tried to trim Lucas’s sheep like hair and the whole pair of clippers fell to bits and got stuck in his tight curls

I guess in my case, step parent hood was never going be easy as it didn’t get off to a great start.

My stepmother H was the spinster in the Embassy who got invited to ours for Christmas because as my mum said ” she is on her own and people should never be on their own at Christmas”. Two years later my mother left twenty years of Foreign office life and came home to live in Wiltshire, armed with letters for my brother and me from our father announcing that our parents were divorcing. We didn’t see our father for a year after that as we continued our boarding school lives of exams, Snoopy and teenage crushes. For some strange reason I was convinced that I was somehow responsible for their divorce. I do wish that somebody could have assured me it wasn’t , as I carried this as a tiny seed well into adulthood. Stupid isn’t it?

And then my father came back to visit. My mum ( we found out many years later) moved out to a hotel so that he could stay at her cottage. I can’t remember much about that excruciatingly awkward week, apart from that I threw a mug of hot chocolate over him, and that the whole experience should have featured in a ” How to deal with your children when you are getting divorced in the worst possible way” article. After a few days we moved up to his club in London, a large ornate building off Berkeley Square with copies of ‘Horse and Hound’ and newspapers laid out on the tables with military precision, a place where ties were compulsory at dinner and where Colonels and Lords lounged on the squishy sofas with glasses of sherry or tea served in impossibly thin bone china cups with silver strainers and tiny bite sized sandwiches. The best bit about the club was the swimming pool in the basement, with the poolside cafe where you could order club sandwiches and stick thin chips ( with a bottle of Canada dry ginger ale, a fact I thought was absolutely the height of 70’s cool). It was at the club that my brother overheard my father talking on the phone and realised that he was getting married again ( a fact that he had neglected to mention to us) and not only that, he was getting married to H, someone we already knew. The next bit is a bit blurred. I think we must have confronted him about it but I can’t really remember. I do know that he left for Japan fairly soon after that and that they got married in the garden at the British Embassy there ( not again because we were told this but because years later we found the wedding album).

This is probably coming across as a whinge, well I suppose it is really. It’s just astonishing how badly my father dealt with all of this, though as time passed and the dust settled, my mother happily re married, we grew up, had our own families and we all sort of got on with it. Inheriting two angry teenage stepchildren who were fiercely loyal to their mother cannot have been easy for H and looking back I think she did her best with very little support, so we muddled along through the years. To be honest my relationship with her was in some ways more straightforward at times than with my father.

Visits to their house in Wiltshire were nail bitingly tense as she welcomed a car load of fighting grubby grandchildren into the immaculately white sitting room with a large plate of home made chocolate cake but at least she always made an effort in a rather formal don’t touch anything kind of way.

They are all dead now, my mother 30 years ago, my father two years ago and H more recently. My father did not take to old age ( to put it mildly) and as H valiantly attended the coffee mornings and film clubs that were laid on in the sheltered accommodation they had moved to, he shut himself away in his study and sulked.

While my father died of old age ( and bad temper) and lived to the ripe old age of 93, poor H was not so fortunate. She became increasingly confused, her behaviour erratic and out of control. Some mornings she would put her clothes on back to front or empty packets of rice into each of the kitchen drawers. Once she called me to ask why I had been in during the night and stolen all the carpets. It was apparent that something was very wrong, though in the next breath she would pull back and ask about the children, or point out how lovey the roses were looking and you could guarantee that if anyone from the hospital or GP surgery turned up she would turn into the most perfect hostess, so that people would think it was us losing the plot and that we were making the whole thing up. This went on for some time until she was finally diagnosed with vascular Dementia and Alzheimers. Her last two years were desperate as she raged and fought, battling with me, my father and the carers, throwing things, hitting and shouting. An attempt at a nursing home ended in disaster so we brought her home with 24 hour care and a hospital bed in the sitting room. After my father had died ( in the next room) I tried to explain to her that he was no longer here. ” Don’t be ridiculous” she said, “I’m getting married to Fabrice this afternoon” and threw her cup of tea against the wall. I have no idea who Fabrice was but I hope she enjoyed the thought of him.

Six months later she also died, calmly and peacefully in her sleep. We found out afterwards that she had been working as a spy. But that is another story.

So here I am back in the field, almost a year older but sadly not any wiser, and certainly less fit. Arthritis that has grumbled away in the back ground for the past few years now shouts and jabs into my hips making walking painful and hopscotch impossible. And then in order to perpetuate my reign as Mrs Clumsy, a month or so ago I managed to trip down two very small steps in a large and impossibly ramshackle farmhouse that I was meant to be house sitting. An hour into the stay I opened the kitchen door leading into the dark hallway and neglected to notice there was a step, so down I went. A visit to Whitstable A and E for an x ray revealed a hairline fracture in my metatarsal, and I left with this months must have accessory, a delightfully ill fitting surgical shoe. Not only was it too big, it also had a weird heel which meant that my left leg was 5 inches higher than my right one so after a week my hips were really protesting. Luckily my Ray Mears survival saw came to the rescue and I removed it. Anyway enough of this moaning on, it sounds like a Saga magazine article.

Because it’s August and because we are creatures of habit we are back in North Devon in our corner with my old van, and the Poppits, the old battered Army dining shelters that have saved us from many a weather upset over the years, crates of food, tables, gas burners, Dutch ovens and large cooking pots, bell tents, small tents, vans, braziers, Cobb ovens, you name it, somebody has got it. Because I am under orders ( trying very hard to obey) not to scamper about too much I am actually writing this from bed with the Archers omnibus and a cup of tea as I watch my fellow campers busying themselves like worker ants as they set up camp, getting out all the old familiar mugs and plates, emptying the spiders and dust out of the van, filling up the water, connecting the gas cookers, getting things in the right order, just how we like it, just as we have done it for years and years. The spade is here for cutting the turf for the fire and C will be bringing the tipi poles up on his trailer later. In a nutshell, camp life is shaping up nicely, the wind has died down and it isn’t even raining ( yet).

The joy of coming to the same place every year is that people come and go over the years, a bit like the tide. Small children who once complained and whined about being dragged every year to this windy wet part of the world where it was muddy and wet and there was no telly, when all their friends were on villa holidays in Greece, still come in their own cars with their partners and friends, old faces turn up, people return after long gaps, we gather, we feast, look for shooting stars, batten down the hatches, battle with storms and guy ropes, laugh and argue, shout at the camp dogs, talk about the weather, play games, deal with broken tents and bent poles, convince ourselves it will brighten up ( it barely does), manage to rustle up delicious suppers even the time when during a massive storm the cooker blew over, spilling the lovingly simmered onion gravy into the grass. Undeterred we scooped it up and served it anyway. One lucky diner even got a complimentary slug with his portion.

On Friday night, our first night, we went down to the quay for a pint. It was dark but we could see the white of the churning waves and hear the whooshing and frothing water as it was sucked out around Life Rock. There was a group of people on the headland who were letting off fireworks in memory of a family member. It reminded me of when we fired Tims ashes from the standing stone at the top of this field that bitterly cold day fifteen years ago. Nice to think that others love this place too.

 

Magazines and newspapers

neatly piled in date order

envelopes sliced open

with a knife from

Spain.

Sharpened pencils

at the ready

in regimented lines

like the toy soldiers

you played with as a boy.

A little lacquer bowl

with shells and buttons

and a stone from the garden

not this garden, the old one

the one with the lawn that was yours to mow.

Where you raked leaves

in your old trilby hat and Burberry coat

Came in as it was getting dark

smelling of woodsmoke

and damp leaves

Your red notebook is here

spidery sums dancing across the pages

I see you last paid the milk bill

on the 15^th February

the week before you died.

 

Today I chose your coffin

in a stuffy room

with beige curtains

and walls

the colour of peach sorbet

a bunch of paper flowers

on the polished table

and a box of tissues

already open

to avoid awkward fumbling

As he went through the options

I thought of your body

lying somewhere out back

by the car park

in a freezer

and worried you might be cold

then I remembered

the night you died

we dressed you

in your cashmere cardigan

and the socks I bought you

from Scotland

so that made me feel better

on the day

I chose your coffin

 

 

 

 

 

My puberty has plopped

Slipped and fall down carefully

Grilled sexual harassment

Please wait to be entered

Happy pork!

No killer littering

My fanny toilet roll

The tray I have finished is to a trash can

No climbing and no scribbling

Wet dream!

For restroom go back towards your backside

Dining room closed. Sorry for incontinence

Please piss beautifully

Do not smoke we want fragrance of coffee and bread

Danger in outside of fence

Poo Hotel

Cool cowboy flicks his butt into street

Happies made to keep arseholes off caramel club boys

Unreasonable chickens

It’s good swimming fish

I am not good at vegetables

 

 

 

After six weeks of H being in the care home with  S staying on his own in their flat, we admitted defeat and took her back home. The final straw was when a fellow dementia patient wandered into her bedroom in the nursing home and hit her, causing her to fall over and cut her leg. The first I knew about this was  a call from the Wiltshire adult safeguarding team, which persuaded me that she needed to be somewhere else. While I have no beef with the nursing team at the home, who were kind and friendly, there simply weren’t enough of them to go round, to administer enough one to one care that she needed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that if you are Mrs sweet mild old demented lady who will happily sit in the common room smiling, you will naturally get more attention than Mrs Spitting and Shouting who swears and shrieks every time you go near her. That’s just how it is and as a result she spent most of the time sitting in her room on her own which was just plain miserable ( not that she really noticed, but we did). It has been  impossible to know what to do these  past couple of months for the best and it feels as if we are constantly veering from one crisis to another, but we move on mostly because we have no choice. None of this is easy and I know S absolutely hates all this fuss and interfering and  certainly makes sure we know how much he hates it at every possible opportunity.

Despite being very clear that he wanted H to come home more than anything , he made everything as difficult as possible to make it happen , as we attempted to move furniture and shift things around so that there was room for a full time carer. and for H’s bed. Unfortunately at ninety three years old this is all beyond him, though we have tried our best to make it as painless as possible.  His default position has always been, and continues to be  (magnified) , to shout if he doesn’t get his own way, which doesn’t help with first impressions, particularly if you are a brand new carer who has just arrived from the station and must hope you have mistakenly come to the wrong flat. His absolute refusal to hand over the key to the garage enabling us to store stuff in it is also   challenging. In the end I resorted to sneaking  in and borrowing  it from his desk drawer when he is in the loo. We have now had a copy cut  that we keep by the front door.

We ordered  a comfortable single bed in order that he could move into his study, leaving the carer to have the double bedroom. This bed was duly delivered by Mr Sands , a sweet local man with a family firm in Gillingham. Poor Mr Sands had no idea what he was getting into when he turned up at the front door to find S shouting at him to “bugger off” while waving his zimmer frame at him in a rage. His grand daughter who had come along for the ride retreated to the van in horror. Eventually the bed was put back in the van and Mr Sands departed. When I asked S what he intended to sleep on he said he would sleep in a chair. In the end I managed to find a smaller fold up bed which he accepted on the basis that it was a camp bed(?) even though I explained it wouldn’t be as comfortable and he might fall out of it. “Shut up” he yelled.

The next hurdle was the table in the sitting room, a  heavy walnut circular table that needed to be moved in order to fit H’s bed and equipment at one end of the room. This table serves no purpose other than to be the place S places his newspapers on with military precision each morning ( think hotel). He insisted that rather being put in the garage it should be re positioned  in front of the fireplace, obscuring the telly  and meaning that you had to climb over it to get to the armchair or to open a window. This arrangement will suit perfectly he said and stomped off to his study, squeezing round the corner of the table to get out of the room. In the end we took  it to bits ( helped by a large bit of it falling off) and carried it through to their garage ( with the stolen key) while he watched the news, oblivious to us lugging it past his door. And when he finally shuffled  back into the sitting room he didn’t even notice it had gone, or mention the newspapers that  had now been  carefully placed on a long foot stool in front of the sofa

So H came home from the nursing home and carer number one took up residence. The fact that we are now on carer five in a month, gives an indication of how well it hasn’t gone, though there is no doubt in my mind that overall this situation is much better for both of them.  S has people around to help when he falls out of his camp bed and to make sure he has food on the table and its reassuring to known that he is not alone. Sometimes they sit together and H smiles at him, but he is increasingly frail and bewildered and his memory is going at an alarming rate and he mostly retreats to  the peace and quiet of his study . H’s dementia continues to be up and down, every now and then she is calm and sweet, mostly not, agitation and paranoia usually overtakes her by lunchtime and the afternoons are fraught. She is convinced that she lives somewhere else and that I have hidden 59 people in the flat. We have a wonderful team of support carers who come and help, patient and calming and we get extra help in overnight when needed as sometimes she wakes up 9 or 10 times in the night . If nothing else, she is in her own flat  and can look out at the blue tits hopping about on the bird table and see the wind in the trees.

As of next week we are going into a new system and are getting rid of the live in carers. It is too disruptive as they never stay long enough to settle and makes it very hard for everyone. So we are introducing a system of shifts so that there is still full time care but nobody actually lives in. This way S will get his bedroom back with his double bed and more space. Though of course when I told him that he said ” I’m not moving”.

Watch this space.

 

 

 

 

They were there. Thick pungent dreads wrapped around their heads, stuffed into huge crocheted hats like hermit crabs, soft whispered rhythmic voices muffled against the steamy windows on the number 12 bus when it’s raining, and water gathers in tiny sparkling droplets on the glass. Did I recognise that hotel with the ice sculpture and the people next door who wore matching shirts and danced the conga into the dining room? Except it wasn’t in the hotel it was the dining room   we used to sit in at school. And then the horses came, jingling and jangling at their bits, the last one, the most beautiful and the hardest to control threw his head up and down as if he was on a carousel, a gaudy painted fairground ride and the crowds shouted and cheered. We went to the sea because the postman said we should, that it was the day when the tide would be very high and that the waves might crash right over the quay into the car park and wouldn’t that be a sight to see. But we never got to see it because we found ourselves in Sainsburys looking for ham, the right sort of ham, smoked and cut into thin slices and an avocado. And I thought I saw him standing by the crisps but then he turned around and it wasn’t him at all, even though he said he knew me and said “Hello”. But I had to rush as I needed to get the washing   in before the weather changed. And Gollum the cat stuck his paw under the gap at the bottom of the front door as I put my key in the lock but that couldn’t have happened because he has been dead for 3 months already. Someone was having a party in the street and Antonio from number 14 taught everyone how to make Caipirinhas in plastic cups and when he took his shirt off, we realised he was covered in tattoos. I must ask him to take it off again when I next bump into him in the corner shop, but I must be careful as he might think I am mad. Because Snowy the parrot seemed to be sitting on his shoulder. It’s always fun to get to the boat, to unload the bags and light the stove, shaking out the bedding, turning the fridge on, the engine roaring into life, belching out diesel fumes into the frosty morning as we put the bacon on and got the coffee going. And apparently my mum is on her way which is strange because I haven’t seen her for thirty years and I’m not sure I can even remember what her voice sounds like. Someone has made spiral patterns out of little white stones all around our patio and sprinkled pink sand in between so it looks like one of those mandalas. It must have taken ages and will be spoilt because it’s bound to rain. And when I asked Michael to pass the tea towel he handed me the dog instead and I was too polite to say anything

 

 

Hazel

Flabbergasted

80 something.

Am I?

The police took my pillows

I don’t know

We  sleep in the carpark every night, over there by the supermarket

Those aren’t mine

You are a buggery

buggery bastard

Shut up

She smells

You are very pleased with yourself aren’t you

Sheila is here

You are a bloody liar

It’s the Moroccans

You are a bloody liar

Apple pie

Sydney useless weak

That one is a mean bitch.

She pretends to be nice, but she isn’t,

You have hidden my things

I have no money

Don’t make me laugh

Very scheming and clever

but I see through you

Ann says she is sorting things

Last week we got the train to Waterloo

Pointless

They promised we could go to the party

Where is the British consulate?

I gave it away because I didn’t like it

I said I didn’t like it

This is all your fault get me out of here

Get Patrick

to give me a pill

Thankyou my darling

Sheila has made a picnic

I don’t know

I hate tea and I hate you

They threw the food

You are a bloody liar

He hid the cat under the bed

I know they have sold my coats to make room for Sheila

she lives in that cupboard

How should I know?

Nobody

I don’t care

The pudding was nice

With cream in a blue jug

How dare you

I’m sorry you have to do all this

My name is Hazel

Thank you for looking after dad

She is the nice one

If you like, I don’t care

I have two sisters

You are not one of us

Fuck off

He is useless and does nothing

That’s not mine

I don’t know them

Go now

I love you

Sheila and Harry are helping me look for the papers

I don’t know where my home is

why are you trying to trick me?

So, you can go there and steal from me?

You are a bloody liar

In the British Embassy

Get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here

Have you paid the milk bill?

I don’t have the time to talk to you

Useless, useless, weak and pathetic

Where is Amanda?

Take it away

Because I like pressing it

Just go now

That bloody doctor

Why have you left me here?

Hazel

Oh God

I hate you

I don’t want to watch it

I broke it

because I wanted to

Thank you for looking after dad

Did you do the Ocado order

Completely weak and useless

I need safety pins

Harry died penniless,

he killed himself

She’s very stuck up

Shut up shut up

Put the bed up, up I said

Can’t you do anything

They do very good poached eggs

You are a bloody liar

Do you think I’m stupid?

Call the police

Just fuck off

 

My 89 year old stepmother Hazel is in a secure dementia unit in Wiltshire. I visit her regularly and have written down her responses to the various questions we ask when we sit with her. She is convinced her sister Sheila lives in the cupboard (Shelia died years ago). We have no idea who Harry is. She is particularly horrible to my dad who sits at her bedside holding her hand as she hurls abuse at him