Thoughts of a carer

‘ You must stay at home’ - Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 23 March 2020. To paraphrase his hero, never in the field of human endeavour has a Prime Minister spoken five so poorly considered words that would impact so many. It's not as if likely problems with this approach were unknown: in January 2017, Dr. Amit Arora wrote a blog note on the topic of ‘Deconditioning Awareness’ for the NHS England website, of which the ‘experts’ advising the PM must surely have been aware: ‘Time to move: Get up, get dressed, keep moving’; it explains, in layman’s terms, why restricting the mobility of the elderly is a bad idea.   *** The NHS is at breaking point: that we know. The reasons given are many and varied, but the underlying cause is that old chestnut, bed-blocking. Patients, many elderly and vulnerable, cannot be discharged home without full engagement of necessary social care support. This takes time; during that time said patient takes up a hospital bed....

We have more space on our drive than most. We have a small courtyard garden in front of our garage (which is used for storage and as a workshop). I don't mean that we have done what some of our neighbours have - turned the drive into a garden, and are using the street or pavement as storage for our car. No.  Eighteen months ago we got rid of the car. And we don't miss it one bit.  When Viv was ill, the car was useful. Indeed, we couldn't have done what we did - go on holidays, go out to shops and hospital appointments - with her in a wheelchair without the car.  But even before that - back in 2016 - we were questioning whether we really needed one. For a whole year - March 2016 to March 2017 - I kept a record of every expense we incurred relating to the car - insurance, tax, maintenance, fuel, cleaning and washing - everything. I also kept scrupulous records of our mileage and purpose of journeys. Financial costs of car usage At the end of that time I was able to look at...