Thoughts of a carer

  My mum enjoyed her 90th birthday last December. She’s led what many would consider a good life; worked hard, saved a bit here and there, and brought up me and my sister. A few months ago it became apparent that she couldn’t manage any more in her shared-equity ‘retired person’s’  bungalow, and moved into a care home. My sister and I have Power of Attorney, and we’ve been helping her manage her affairs. The sale of her old bungalow back to the local council went through in February, so we looked around for ideas on what to do with the proceeds - a small six figure sum.  Mum had an ISA at her bank which had built up to a good five figure sum, but otherwise no savings accounts. This included National Savings, which surprised me, for I thought everyone had one or two Premium Bonds, but I didn’t worry: my thoughts were that we should use her ISA allowance every year, and buy her the maximum amount of Premium Bonds (£50K), where her interest, or prizes, would be tax free....

  My local council has a new initiative to get children interested in books. Over the school summer holidays they’re laying on storytime sessions at the local library. Nothing new about that, except that the stories are read by ‘ Drag Queens ’. I’m not the only one to have opinions on this; Ann Farmer has an excellent article in TCW Defending Freedom on how it will leave children confused, and I agree with her wholeheartedly. I have suffered as a result of that sort of confusion for much of my life.  My concern is not actually that there will be a man in a dress reading a story to children; it is actually that a big thing is being made that it will be a man in a dress. Diversity is supposed to be about accepting people who want to do different things, not making a song and dance about it. Society has, in one way or another, been making a song and dance about men ‘dressing as ladies’ for centuries, and it doesn’t do any good. Drag Queens aren’t about accepting an individual’s...

  It’s affecting my mental health! I wrote a few weeks ago about the effects that caring for Viv has had on my mental health. One of the biggest problems is dealing with the huge behemoth that is our National Health Service; people who have few interactions with it may find it easy, but Viv has a medical record file that stands six feet tall or more, and that causes problems. + + +  I had one of my breakdowns this morning. About 8am I ran around the house, screaming; banged my head as hard as I could against the downstairs loo door; ran out into the garden, even though I was only wearing nightclothes at the time, swearing at the top of my voice (and it's a cold, grey December day) December, and then ended up sat on the stairs, weeping.  The cause of this drama? Viv had mentioned that her hearing in her left ear was worsening. She’s totally deaf in her right ear, due to a tumour, and it was loss of hearing that first identified that, back in 2014. The saga we have had sinc...

On 18 April I posted an entry on this blog reporting how I felt that the needs of the elderly, disabled and infirm are not considered properly by government, and, perhaps as a consequence, by society at large. Three more examples have become apparent since I wrote that post. Councils allowing pavement obstructions  The Hertfordshire Mercury has a story  about the problems faced by a blind woman now that councils have allowed cafes and pubs to put customer seating on some of the pavement space in our town centres.  This has the effect of narrowing the available space for passers by, at a time when we are being told by government to keep two metres away from strangers.  The lady concerned has a similar opinion to mine of our PM: “I wish Boris Johnson could meet some visually impaired people so we could explain how difficult it is for us at the moment.  Sadly we seem to be ignored and don’t have a voice loud enough for people to hear our daily struggles." I have co...

The problem of innumeracy today  In some ways I was lucky. I may have had what today's generation might think to be a ghastly childhood, but I did get some opportunities that seem rare today. One is in education: the chance to learn mathematics and science from teachers who actually understood their subjects. The above may sound bitter, it may sound like a swipe at modern schools. Maybe it is, but I have helped two youngsters - one my own son, another the daughter of a friend - with their maths one thing they told me was that their teachers did not seem to know what they were talking about. (In my son's case, it was post-GCSE, at the start of A-level, when he was being taught the basics of calculus - differentiation and integration. He didn't get it. He asked the teacher to explain, who couldn't, at least not so that my son could understand. In fact, the teacher's stock answer to most queries seemed to be 'look it up on the internet'. (Maybe that invention, ...

Much is being said in the media at the moment about vaccine passports. A few months ago the Prime Minister indicated he was against the idea that anyone in Britain should ever have to explain their medical history to go to the shops, or the pub; apparently, that is not the sort of thing 'we' do. I've got news for him. It is the sort of thing some of us have to do already, and it's thanks to the divisive scaremongering for which his government is responsible. + + + Viv has an acoustic neuroma. It's a kind of tumour in her skull base, and it causes her all sorts of problems. I won't list them all, but there are two that are relevant to the current Covid rules for going into public places. The tumour has caused severe damage to her right acoustic nerve. That's the one that connects her ear to her brain. This damage is such that she has no hearing at all in her right ear, and her brain compensates the lack of signal with loud squealing tinnitus, which makes it...

 I've just been writing a six-page summary for a solicitor, and compiling a further twenty-five pages of documentation to assist them. Viv and I are seeking help on an issue with the developers who built our housing estate: while the roads and paths look ok to the mobile, some aspects are a nightmare for those with a mobility issue. The problems are, in fact, obvious: dropped kerbs missing, and uneven or unmade surfaces. The devlopment was built around 2011 - 2013, well after the DDA (and then the Equality Act) became law.  I've emailed and written letters to the developers, and the council; they all seemingly acknowledge the issues but don't seem to have any particular sense of urgency about progressing matters. The council won't accept responsibility for anything until the roads are adopted; the developers say they've delivered what was agreed with the council in the approved plans. It's costing us £750 +VAT to get legal advice to progress our case; that the p...