Red Nose: Filial Demand

RND 05, or Red Nose Day to the uninitiated, is just a fortnight or so away. However, as has become the custom, Comic Relief use every opportunity ahead of the big guffawfest to publicise their cause and their raison d'etre. They are aided and abetted in this by an extra-ordinarily co-operative BBC, together with a sometimes unlikely combination of retailers and commercial supporters. The American clothes discounter TK Maxx is, I see, the latest to jump on the bandwagon to show themselves as having a Comic Corporate Conscience.

Tonight on BBC ONE also brought an excellent all-star tragi-comic drama, from Lucy Gannon, she of Soldier, Soldier and Peak Practice fame, among many others. One star of the original series of the latter medical romp over the rocks, the Derbyshire Peak District, was Kevin Whateley and he played the part of a loving son driven to desperation by the sudden incapacity of his post-80 father and his mother afflicted by the insult to personality which is Alzheimer's.

I didn't get to watch too much of the programme "live", because I was too busy attending to the new needs of my own mother, who returned home from hospital today. Or rather, attending to the needs of those ladies caring for her personal hygiene needs and transferring her from armchair to the loaned electric bed which now occupies a couple of metres of floorspace where that favourite chair once sat.

The theme that Comic Relief are aiming to alert people to is the little-publicised issue of "Elder Abuse". This refers to the bruising of physical assault of elderly, vulnerable citizens, often by those closest to them. Whately played the son who eventually hits his father in a mad mood of utter desperation at the circumstances imposed upon him and his father's uncharacteristic behaviour.

Please God that I never become like this, but today's events have certainly proved it is not going to be easy adjusting to caring for our newly-housebound Mum. The lounge was just not designed to accomodate such things as an electric hoist- for carers rather than caree-, commodes and sundry other accessories deemed to be necessary for the proper care of a disabled person in these circumstances. It's also only at times like this that you realise quite how much clutter you accumulate in a home over more than forty years.


I'm trying to keep life as normal and family oriented as possible, but am up against "the system", Mum's care plan, and as it often does, that makes me feel slightly angry. The plan at present means that Mum will have TWO female carers come in up to four times a day to attend to her needs- all of which of course takes up space and bites into the privacy and personal space of domestic routine. Not that this has really been my domestic routine for many years, but my filial devotion along with Matthew has made it something that just has to be done.

Please God that we can cope and do this, lovingly and without complaint, for as long as circumstances and your will deem it necessary to do so, Lord. Tonight I got a text from Dave, Chris and Alan, presumably down the pub for their usual Thursday night curry bargain with Wetherspoon. Would that I were able to join them, but not tonight, J D. What this sudden, awful intrusion into the "normality" of my life has shown is how you can be plunged from being a man wandering along life's highway to an emergency service bringing relief and care to the ones who put you there in the first place. I'm certainly learning the hard truths of commitment and love at the moment, as I have to make some surrenders that I don't like at all, of course- though it has to be said that my Mum probably doesn't feel any easier about it than I do, probably much less so actually.

Nevertheless, life must go on and we must do our best and try to make this work. At least the cat seems to approve of the new arrangements, as she has made herself company on Mum's bed- with Mum asleep in it too!- but I'm rather unimpressed that one of the regular carers is not a cat person. You would have thought they could have taken this into account: one of the reasons I wanted Mum to be able to come home was so that she could see and fuss the cat again.

Will I be able to sleep easier tonight? Who knows. Theoretically, my tendency to keep fearing that early morning call from the hospital has now gone, but I find myself now feeling just as worried now that Mum doesn't have the watchful eye of nursing staff over her through the night. You can't win, as a parent or a child, can you.

POPE THE QUESTION
Vatican Radio ought to be the station of choice tonight, to keep an eye on events in the Holy See as the Pope has undergone an emergency tracheotomy. It seems it can only be a matter of time before the Catholic hierarchy once again loses a beloved Holy Father and the Holy Smoke quite literally has to be seen again for the appointment of a successor.

SNOW BUSINESS LIKE SNOW BUSINESS
It would be a rare month in Britain where the weather did not hit the headlines and this week has been the first real taste this winter of disruptive snowfall for many. We've even had a fresh sprinkling in Feltham tonight, though I wonder whether it will still be there when I look out of my window in the morning. Oh how I yearn for the enjoyable stress and action of the Radio Sussex Snowdesk again, my moments of broadcasting "glory" in 1991 when I did my bit to keep the local listeners of South East England informed on the various effects of the white stuff, from buses stuck on hills to schools closed with burst pipes.
Those were the days, and how I long for them again right now. Life seemed so much simpler then, even if I was poor through only being a humble Employment Trainee. Even more would I love to be transported back to the Winter of 63 when we built our first snowman here in a winter garden in Feltham.