Welcome to my perfumed garden

I get up as early as I can bear (being in a constant state of knackerment) and spend the early morning working on book and fics... (To those of you following it, there should be more Academy fic up tomorrow, I hope).

9.00 ish; Dad gets up, wanders about looking confused and complaining of dizziness. I make him a pot of tea and toast and he retreats back to bed to watch Philip and Fern. I go back to my writing.

Middayish: Dad gets up and starts asking the same questions over and over, losing stuff, finding it, losing it again, asking where it is, finding it, losing it again… I remain patient whilst quietly wanting to scream like a banshee.

1pm, more or less: I finally get Dad into the bathroom for his bath (though he may re-emerge several times looking for ‘something’ or go back into the kitchen to make tea). Assuming I’ve heard him actually get in the bath, I alert my sister to keep an ear out t make sure he's OK and go for a work –out, then a run.

2.30: I arrive home sweaty and in need of a shower to find Dad is still in the bathroom. He usually emerges, in a cloud of perfumed steam sometime between 2.45 and 3.00, when I get a quick shower. Dad then hovers between the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, checking, re-checking and re-re-checking stuff and asking the same questions over and over until around 3.30 – 3.45 and asking repeatedly when visiting time begins (3.30)

Sometime after 4: we arrive at the hospital. Mum decides she needs the bathroom and I spend most of visiting time waiting outside to bring her back to her room (what she does in there is anyone’s business, but it always takes an age).

4.30ish: I head home, leaving Dad behind. He’ll stay with Mum till visiting is over at 5, then eat in the hospital restaurant. I go home and, with Mark, race like a maniac to walk the dog, clean the house, wash dishes, cook our dinner and eat. At 6.15 we return to the hospital. As soon as I arrive, Mum decides she needs a shower. I spend most of visiting hours holding the door shut while she showers – she can’t lock it in case she falls or collapses.

This is actually one of the most amusing times for me, nurses and patients providing a constant floor show – nurses in particular tend to have very loud voices and appear prone to discuss the most vivid details of their sex life at full volume. Today I learned that Maureen, my mum’s clinical nurse, has a new boyfriend, a Greek boy with ‘the biggest todger, and the hugest, most low-slung and hairiest balls’ she's ever seen – and I get the impression she's seen a few; I have no doubt at all that this woman’s experience is vast and wide-ranging. It would appear that’s some serious tackle young Stavros is packing.

Then there’s Eileen. Eileen is actually in for complications from diabetes but is also ‘not all there’ (as my Mum would say). She wanders, grinning, from room to room, waving at the bemused patients and their visitors, sitting on beds, frightening old ladies, laughing oddly for No Apparent Reason and stealing Kendal Mint Cake. On Sunday night, she plucked a carnation from mum’s bouquet and danced with it between her teeth, flamenco style, wearing a pink, candlewick dressing gown and no nightie or knickers. This I know, because she flashed us all on numerous occasions as she flipped her dressing gown in the heat of The Dance. American-Shirley from Charleston’s Husband moaned (in a thick Barnsley accent) ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve gone blind. Or is it just wishful thinking.’

‘Come on Eileen’ is the clarion call of Eileen’s harassed nurses as they herd her back to her own room. Sadly, they don’t sing it in a Kevin Rowland voice.

Then there’s the gay couple in the room next to the shower – I say this so my earwigging appears less gratuitous and more; ‘I’m right there, I can’t help but overhear, as I wait by the door, honestly’. Obviously, there’s not a gay couple in the room, one half is, the other half visits. They both have Tom Selleck moustaches and bicker good-naturedly in camp, northern voices;

Patient-Gay Guy can’t get his telly working (I sympathise; the bloody things are utter bastards of inefficiency. I had to re-boot Mum’s five times tonight just to get it to tune to ITV; though perchance the device had obtained prior knowledge that ‘Rosemary and Thyme’ was on and was simply downing tools in a statement of good taste).

Patient-Gay Guy: Look (pron. luke) at it… Taps screen repeatedly. T’thing doesn’t bloody work, what a waste o’ three quid.

Visitor-Gay-Partner: You’re not doin’ it right…

PGG: I am, look; taps more and harder.

VGG: Oh what are you like? Gi’ it ‘ere.

PGG: Oh go on then, I’ll never hear t’ end on it till you’ve had a try.

VGG: patiently re-boots and starts again; shows working screen with an air of restrained patience.

PGG: Ooh, you’ve got a magic touch.

VGG: (predictably) That’s what they all say.

 This is far and away the most entertaining part of my day, which says a great deal, I fear.

Anyway, by the time Mum’s out of the shower (usually having soaked her slippers in the process despite increasingly desperate reminders), visiting time is effectively over. I then have to race down to the next floor to charge up her TV card in the machine so she can watch bloody Rosemary and Thyme (or Heartbeat or Midsommer Murders or something equally grotesque). Dad and I are usually thrown out, long after visiting time is officially over, by the Nurse who Bears the Horlicks.

I'm in and out of that ward so often, I swear I'm getting addicted to the alcohol hand-rub.

Home by 8.30ish: (heaves sigh of relief), I make a pot of tea for Dad and poor Mark (who does all the driving), butter scones for dad and leave him bemusedly watching Big Brother with my sister, asking LOTS of questions (they're both rooting for Brian).

 That’s when I get to sit down with fruit, olives, cheese and wine and write this. Best part of the day. (o: