21-12-08 - Wednesday I - Dementia Diaries VIII - Grivvy

Today's Word of the Day (WotD) is "grivvy". I've got no idea either. We were out for a walk for the first time in Mum's post-op shoes, walking quite slowly, and she said "this is grivvy". We didn't walk very far, but I don't think it had negative connotations. It was nice to get out in the fresh air.

TTFN.

21-11-25 - Thursday I - Dementia Diaries VII - Repetitive Treasure Hunts

It's getting to the point now where Mum keeps forgetting where she has put stuff. I think she used to do this, but now she is doing it more regularly. Yesterday she realised that she had mislaid her wallet, so we turned the house upside down trying to find it. We looked in all the usual places with no luck, and I started again. When looking in one particular spot which I had already visited once, I noticed that there was what looked like a pad of tissues. When I looked more closely, it turned out that it was her wallet, but wrapped up in tissue paper. So I gave it to her, and she was very grateful.

Then, less than an hour later, she again claimed that she had mislaid her wallet again. Having briefly looked around me, I headed back to where I found it the first time and guess what? There it was, in precisely the same spot as when I'd found it fifty minutes earlier. 

I know that it is the dementia, but it is becoming harder and harder to continue to be patient and I should accelerate our search for a long-term solution...

TTFN. 

21-10-19 - Tuesday I - Dementia Diaries VI - Capabillity

When I first went to stay with Mum there were a few things that she couldn't do, like use the key in the front door, and put up the washing line in the garden. I did assume that she had lost the ability to do those things, but it seems that she has regained the ability to do those things.

Someone did suggest that maybe what with Dad being ill in hospital she was anxious and that was affecting her ability to perform what seemed to me to be straightforward, repeatable and well-known, almost daily tasks. I was profoundly surprised then, when she seemed to regain the ability to perform some of those tasks. I had assumed that Mum's deterioration would be linear and one-way, but it seems that that is not the case. 

I do think that her reasoning and speech has deteriorated since I've started looking after her. I don't think that I am the cause of that deterioriation, though! She has started calling me "Jim", which was my Dad's name, and she always asks when I'm coming back if I head off somewhere while someone else is is with her. So I think I am her safe space. Any way, when I first started looking after her I was trying to arrange a live-in carer for her and I told someone that she had dementia. Later, she said "what was that word you used?", and she said that she wasn't happy with me using that word. I'm not sure she could have that conversation now, even only two or three months later.

Luckily, though, I am quite "laissez-faire" (some might say "lazy") by nature, so I don't think I'm taking away responsibility from Mum. I will normally only intervene if she's getting confused with whatever she's doing. Maybe I could step in earlier, but I think if it's something that she could normally do, I should leave it to her for as long as possible. And there are times when she can do things, and there are times when she can't. So it's worth letting her get on with things so that she doesn't feel infantilised. At least, that's what I tell myself... 

TTFN. 

21-10-13 - Wednesday II - Dementia Diaries VI - Sign Your Name

Last Friday I took Mum to a local private hospital for an assessment of her foot. She has a hammer toe, which is one of the few things she is concerned about these days. I don't think the toe in itself causes her any pain, but because it is raised up she has a callous on her toe knuckle which does rub and cause her pain when she walks - and she is still very active. 

Anyway, at the hospital there were a number of forms she needed to complete, which I helped her with. She did need to sign her name though. I had noticed that her handwriting has changed over the last few months and is certainly a lot less cursive than it used to be. In fact, writing and words have taken on an almost mystical meaning; she reads aloud virtually every sign she sees, as if to prove that she can read, or in an attempt to extract the essential meaning of the words? 

Well, it seems that Mum has forgotten how to spell her name, which is a sad development. I had to spell out her surname letter by letter, so that she could write it on the forms which she needed to complete. It's another stage in the development of her disease, I suppose, which has become evident / is unavoidable. She didn't seem to be worried or embarrassed by this event though; I don't know how aware she is, if at all, 

21-10-13 - Wednesday I - Dementia Diaries V - baking saffron bread

So, Mum used to like cooking and baking. And fortunately it's one of the things she still likes to do. She has decided that knitting and playing bridge are things that she "used to do", she doesn't do them any more. That's a bit of a shame, because they would be a good use of time.

Anyway, baking is still one thing that Mum likes to do. Unfortunately, when we do cook together we normally come very close to arguing because Mum gets bored following the instructions, and if anything I am a stickler for the instructions - I rely on them, because I've never felt comfortable "freewheeling" in a kitchen. 

Last Monday she decided that she wanted to make saffron bread, following a Paul Hollywood recipe. The trouble became evident when she decided not to let the dough rise (that's when you leave it for two hours so that it rises as the yeast gets to work), nor did she want to let it prove, which was another two hours.

So basically she made a dough mixture and put it in the oven. I had no idea how long it should take to cook, nor do I know how to identify when it's cooked; all the instructions I read advised to let the dough rise.  

I did explain that she should follow the instructions and if she chose not to follow the instructions that might not be the best option, but her attention span just isn't there. She has no patience or understanding of time. I've probably mentioned before, but if it isn't happening "now", in front of her eyes, it's not important (the one exception, I think, was that my uncle seemed to be terminally ill in Ireland, and she was aware of that).

I wasn't looking forward to sampling this unleavened saffron cake, and my suspicions were confirmed. It was cooked on the outside but still raw dough on the inside, and it weighed a ton. She did suggest giving it to one of our neighbours, but I told her she couldn't do that as it wasn't cooked. Eventually she threw it in the bin. 

Lesson learned, I suppose; stick to simple recipes like hummimgbird cake and victoria sponges; recipes / cakes where you can throw everything in the bowl and marvel at how it all comes together in the oven. Certainly don't entertain any recipes where any degree of patience is required. 

TTFN.

21-09-28 Tuesday I - Dementia Diaries IV

 So, last week we had fun. Mum was very concerned about some theatre tickets which were for a date in 2020, which had obviously passed. The date had been rearranged for 2021, but that date had also passed as well. She kept bringing up these tickets, and so eventually I phoned the box office and clarified that the event had been postponed *again* until July 2022. I did hope that would be the end of it, but no...

Later, she advised that she didn't actually want to go, which was actually a sensible decision in light of Dad's passing, and so I rang for a refund. Absolutely no problem, the nice lady at the box office said, I can refund the purchase to the card you used to pay. This was the Monday, I think. So I told Mum, there was no need for concern, the refund had been made, and it would be on the card. I did think that would be the end of it, but no...

Mum brought up the issue of the tickets again a couple of times, and it took me a while to figure out that as far as she was concerned, the matter wasn't closed because she didn't have the cash in her hand. I explained that the refund had been made to the card, and that she basically had free money on the credit card, in the expectation that the explanation would be sufficient. Unfortunately, it wasn't. 

To cut an even longer story slightly shorter, I ended up, on Tuesday afternoon, walking up to the shops to take £71.50 out of the cash machine so that I could give Mum the hard cash she was expecting. 

The irony was that she hadn't paid for the tickets in the first place; she may have used the credit card to buy them, but Dad had then paid the monthly bill, and so she had never been out of pocket. But she was dreadfully concerned about the refunded cash, and I've not heard it mentioned again at all in the week since I gave her the £71.50. So it seems that was an end to it. Mum doesn't use cards now, she only deals in cash, so if I had thought about it for even a fraction of a second I would have seen that giving her the cash was the best and only solution. Every day is a school day, isn't that what they say? And next time I'll know what the answer is before I'm harrassed about it ten times a day and nearly driven to a breakdown...

TTFN.

21-09-20 - Monday I - Dementia Diaries III

Well, that was an interesting day. I think Mum went on strike, although I'm not quite certain. She was mithering about who was going to wash the sheets, so I took them down and put them in the washing machine, and when the cycle finished I was on the phone. She was bustling about, huffing about gettting the sheets hung out to dry. Well, I wasn't going to hang up on a fairly important call to hang sheets out, but once I had finished I went out to the garden. Mum was then nowhere to be seen...? 

I don't begrudge hanging the washing out; I find it weird though that she would think that takes priority over an ongoing phonecall but she's not prepared to actually hang out the sheets herself. The intricacies of the mind are a wonderful thing, but Mum was hardly predictable before her dementia diagnosis... And then she paid for tea and cake out later this afternoon, so I thought that I was back in her good books. As I say, an interesting day...

TTFN. 

21-09-17 - Friday I - Dementia Diaries II

Wednesday was a good day. We went to Arundel in the afternoon and had a walk around the town. It's more of a village, but with a castle attached, so you can't really call it a village...

Some days Mum can't walk far because she has some toe issues, so Arundel is just about the right size. We walked up to where Sparks Yard used to be, and looked around Nineveh House. Mum is so odd; despite the fact that she could almost buy anything she wanted, she is still a spendthrift. It is just bred in to her, it's part of her inner core. The day Mum starts splurging money on even good quality tat will be the day I know that she's truly not there any more. So of course, she turned her nose up at everything, but there isn't really anything she needs... except fudge.

We wandered down to Roly's Fudge Pantry and bought three packets for £10. My choice was the salted fudge, which was delicious. Mum seemed to want to eat it all before dinner, but I saved most of my pieces for pudding. 

We also stopped and had a cup of tea in Lulamae's cafe, which Mum seemed to enjoy. Going back to her spendthrift ways, she would never normally enjoy a cup of tea out when she can make a perfectly good cup at home... But it was a nice sunny afternoon and spending time wandering around Arundel seemed an appropriate thing to do. All told, I was happy with Wednesday. 

Yesterday (Thursday) was a different story; it was a tiring day. I was trying to understand from Mum what she wanted from Dad's funeral, which was a complicated conversation to have, involving choice. And there was a point where she was trying to tell me that I should somehow change my attitude, but I couldn't quite get what she was driving at. So the levels of concentration were high, and I am not sure that all our interactions were successful. But: when I said I was going to go out for a walk to get some fresh air, late in the afternoon, she offered to come with me, so I knew I hadn't pissed her off. To be honest, I was really looking forward to 40 minutes or so by myself, but I didn't manage to achieve that yesterday. 

TTFN. 

21-09-15 - Wednesday I - Dementia Diaries I

I shouted at Mum yesterday.

I'm not proud of the fact. I'm actually really upset that I did it. But I'd just spoken to the Funeral Director about Dad's funeral, and I was looking for a document to show Dad's last job title before he retired. And Mum started banging on about some Nashville tickets, while I was feeling under pressure to find that letter. 

I know that time is collapsing for Mum, so if something needs doing, it needs doing *now*. So it is the dementia, not Mum, which is causing all of this. And I shouted at her, telling her that finding Dad's letter was the more important issue. I didn't swear, but I was conscious that I was shouting. And I knew at the time that it really wouldn't help anything, but I was feeling really pressured. 

Yesterday was tough; I had to discuss the plans for Dad's funeral with the Funeral Director as well as register his death. And watching Mum slowly disappear isn't particularly easy either...

Watching Mum "forget" how to make a cup of tea, and "forget" people's names, and "forget" events is sad & painful. She is essentially still there, but she can't express herself properly, and she can't follow an argument. She needed help with paying a cheque into the bank on Monday. That would be something she could do without thinking about it even as recently as last year. 

But it's not as though she has forgotten and can be reminded; it's like that piece of info has been permanently destroyed. An example is that she has forgotten the name of the woman who lives over the road, and as often as I tell her the lady's name is "Helen", she can't take that in. Even if she refers to Helen two minutes later, she won't be able to use Helen's name - because that info isn't in her head. Reminding her of the name doesn't help Mum, but it does help me keep a track of what Mum is thinking about and referring to. 

Anyway, I raise my voice very rarely, and the fact that I did so yesterday, to my dementia-ridden Mum, was a bit of a wake-up call. I need to remember to take a breath next time, wait a beat, and then respond. That Calm subscription might come in handy after all... 

TTFN.

21-08-14 - Saturday I - Lemons and Lemonade

Life has been pretty easy for me so far. I'm nearly fifty, and I've not experience the loss of a close loved one, nor have I had to care for anyone who's been seriously ill, even for a short time. TW has had bouts of high fever and delirium due to tonsilitis, but that's been about it, until now. 

Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few months ago, and Dad has been her primary carer. She has on occasion rocked up at our house needing to "have a conversation", she said. Dad has recently been diagnosed with macular degeneration, as well as cataracts, and I think being forced into looking after Mum as well hasn't been good for his mental health - in fact, he did make an appointment to see the doctor about being diagnosed with depression. 

But events conspired against him and on the morning of 24th July, Dad was taken into hospital. Mum raised the alarm with the neighbours and they called an ambulance. Dad was taken to A&E and then admitted as an in-patient, where he has been for the last three weeks. Today is the three-week anniversary, which is probably worth marking but not celebrating - I'm not some sort of weirdo.

The doctors have known what the next steps are for over a week now, but treatment is being help up by the lack of a bed (and possibly appropriate levels of staff/care) in Haywards Heath hospital. Currently it is just a case of checking daily that he is still in Worthing hospital, and then booking to see him.

My sister and I have kept Mum company since Dad went into hospital. I don't think I've ever spent so much time with her, at least, not that I can remember. She's okay physically, but mentally she's losing words, so it is difficult for her to form a full sentence. She needs a lot of prompting and suggestion for those missing words. Also, if people are not in front of her, she begins to forget them, so for instance today she bumped into one of her neighbours who asked how Dad was, and she suggested to him that he come and talk to me to get an update. But when she told me someone was coming, she couldn't say that he was a neighbour, he was "a man", and as she had just come back from church, I thought it was someone from church. 

So the upshot of that is that Mum probably needs live-in care. She has trouble using the door keys, and she is beginning to get muddled when she makes tea, and she has never (as far as I am aware) used the oven - that was new, a few months ago, more or less at the same time that she was diagnosed with dementia. 

She doesn't want care, but she doesn't want to be on her own in the house either, so I think that might help persuade her that actually it is for her own good. 

It does seem to me sometimes that Mum and Dad were just marking time, and there are times when I have talked to them both over the last three weeks and they are shadows of their former selves. And it does get me down. But then we have a lovely sunny warm day like today and actually things don't look too bad. And I am encouraged to make the most of what I've got, and to enjoy life as long as I can. I must remember that I don't always need to say "no" to things, and maybe sometimes the best option is not to sit on my behind reading opinion pieces on social media. Sometimes it might be nice to look back and be able to say "I'm glad I did that". 

21-07-03 Saturday I - Writing

I was on a training call this week when the presenter recounted a story. It was probably one she's told a thousand times before, but it really stayed with me. It went something like this... 

I went to visit an old lady in a home and asked her carers about her, hoping that they would give me something I could use as small talk, an ice-breaker. "Well", they said, "although she's 92 she goes swimming  every day". That was a great bit of info, I thought, and I decided to use it when I met her. 

"So, I hear you go swimming every day", I said, "I hope I go swimming every day when I'm your age". 

She looked at me sternly and asked "do you go swimming every day now?" 

I was slightly taken aback, and said "no". 

"What makes you think you'll go swimming every day when you're 92 then?" she asked. 

The rest of the presentation was okay, I suppose; it was a bit corporate-y, but that scene-setting encounter stuck with me. 

I do want to keep my blog up to date with thoughts on current events and family happenings, and the tale above jolted me somewhat: how am I going to do it in future if I don't start doing it now? And I know that yes, I often write at the start of the year or at various points that I am going to update this blog more often but I think this is a real "paradigm shift" to borrow a phrase. How long it lasts is anyone's guess; this will probably be my last blogpost until September :D. 

But this might be the start of an outpouring of daily gibberish, so I'd watch out if I were you...

TTFN.

21-06-20 Sunday - Chesham and Amersham By-Election

I thought it was probably worth noting that in the by-election this week in Chesham and Amersham (that is one combined constituency), the Lib Dems won unexpectedly. Or, they won *massively*, unexpectedly. The Lib Dems took over 50% of the turnout, which admittedly was low, I think it was 52%, but that is standard for a by-election.

A couple of things: 

1. I won £20 off of Paddy Power by backing the Lib Dems at 8/1. I only bet £2.50, I'm a bit disappointed I didn't put more on now. But I could afford to lose £2.50. I only put that bet on on Tuesday, it seems even the bookies weren't expecting the Lib Dems to do so well. 

2. This is only one data point, but it is interesting. There is another by-election in Batley and Spen in a couple of weeks, and the Conservatives are expected to win there as well; it'll be interesting to see if they can accomplish that. It will be interesting to see whether the Chesham and Amersham result has any impact on the Batley vote. 

3. The acceptance tweet by the Conservative candidate was particularly ungracious: he tweeted that he was "disappointed" that the voters didn't vote for him, and he also remarked that the election had been held under "extraordinary circumstances". This links to something else I want to cover, but I'll mention that later. If the Conservatives want to dismiss this as a one-off that won't be repeated, without any reflection or analysis, they may be doomed to suffer similar results?

4. Part of the Hartlepool result was explained by commentators as voters thinking that by voting Conservative they may get the ear of the government. I think the vote in Chesham disproves that theory. It's been said that a lot of Labour voters voted for the Lib Dem candidate, and I guess the Conservative voters must've largely stayed at home. But by showing that other parties can win, it gives hope, I think, to other campaigners in other constituencies. Will this, for example, encourage Labour to redouble their efforts in Batley and Spen?

5. Please no more political "jokes" like Ed Davey knocking down an actual blue wall with an orange hammer. That is cringeworthy and on a par with the "Ed Stone" and Johnson knocking through a wall on a JCB. 

Overall it's nice to see that the Conservative vice-like grip on the UK electorate doesn't seem as vice-like as maybe it did at first glance. Hopefully this is the first of several progressive successful results. 

The other thing I wanted to mention, which goes back to point 3, is the defection of John Bercow to Labour. If the Conservative party were truly an inclusive "one nation" party, that wouldn't have been necessary. But I fear that the Conservative party and government are becoming increasingly one-eyed and narrow in outlook. The reaction to Bercow's defection from an official party spokesperson was that Labour were "welcome to him".

If you don't want to engage with others who have different viewpoints, even if those viewpoints are close to yours, I don't see how you can expect to persuade people around to your point of view. And that feeds into a wider point, I think, which is that Johnson and his government are not subtle. They currently rely on overwhelming other perspectives, or ignoring them altogether. Since Bercow hasn't signed up to "the project" (I'm not quite sure what "the project" is at this stage), his support isn't required. He was a Conservative MP for a number of years, he had been out there beating the drum for the Conservatives, and yet all that hard work is dismissed in one phrase; Labour are "welcome to him". 

I don't think that kind of reaction is going to garner loyalty to the party. But we'll see. And maybe the Batley and Spen by-election will provide some more information about what is going on in the country. Let's see. 

TTFN. 

21-05-31 Monday I - Married in Secret?

It came as a surprise to me, if to no-one else that Johnson got married in secret. There was talk, I think, that he was intending to get married later this year, and I suppose that since Carrie Symonds did bear his child and has had to put up with him throwing wine over her sofa, it's the least he could do. 

I guess we're not yet progressive enough as a society to tolerate someone with an "alternative lifestyle" (i.e., not married) as our Prime Minister. Let's not even mention the LGBTQIA+ community! Baby steps and all that...

Still, it is a bit of a shame that the Prime Minister of the UK had to get married in secret. If there was ever an excuse for a party, I would think getting married would be it. I mean, I'm not a great one for a party, but even I enjoyed our wedding and being surrounded with friends and family, all wishing us well for the future. As the most powerful person in the country, he could have had the "knees up to end all knees(s) up", even with social distancing. Maybe there were one or two individuals he didn't want to invite? I guess we'll never know...

It may be due to the fact that this is his third attempt at marriage. Maybe he'll get it right this time. He obviously succeeded at the wedding bit on the last two goes around; perhaps he just thought that he needed to get that bit out of the way, then he could concentrate on the "being a husband and father" bit, since that is the part at which he failed last time(s).

Either way, and whatever the rationale for the secrecy surrounding the wedding, I almost feel sorry for the man not being able to celebrate this life milestone in the usual way. But then he's in the position he is because of the decisions he has made over time. And at that point, empathy fades. 

TTFN. 

21-05-18 Tuesday I - All Jabbed Up

I'm dropping the Covid day count from my posts, for several reasons. Covid isn't over by any stretch of the imagination; ask the Indian population. But we are relaxing lockdown rules here, pubs and restaurants are now open so that people can eat and drink inside, and with the elderly and vulnerable population in the UK vaccinated, I don't think we'll see another lockdown. Maybe famous last words...?

I received my second jab the other day, on Saturday. This time around there were no side effects which was a bit disappointing tbh. I'd been looking forward to a day of feeling a bit fluey, sitting on the sofa and being brought treats. Instead I ferried TE to and fro from rugby and baby sitting as per usual.

From my perspective this is just something that we're going to have to live with from now on. We'll all get annual Covid jabs alongside our flu jabs, and we'll carry on our lives as normal. Come June when we give up social distancing and stop wearing masks, it'll seem, in the UK at least, like some weird dream. People will reminisce about the year we spent locked in our homes, away from friends and loved ones. Those memories will fuel chats in sunny pub gardens on summer afternoons as people start to get back to normal. But you might find people walking their hands slightly more often, or sitting further back from their friends (just slightly) than they would have done two summers ago...

TTFN.

21-04-02 Friday Covid-19 Day 384 I - Projection

Gosh, it's been a while. A lot has happened, but then not a lot has happened. Touch typing is not going as well as I'd hoped, although we're getting there slowly. 

I wanted to note that in the culture wars there is a lot of projection going on. Others have noted the same, that sometimes people do things specifically "to own the libs". For example, I was surprised last year (but on the other hand I wasn't surprised) to read that Priti Patel was boasting about how the "left were going to have a meltdown" over proposed changes to asylum legislation. This kind of attitude leads to divisive politics, at a time when the need for unity and coming together is stronger than ever. We need an inclusive approach to the way forward. The Conservatives have been in power for over ten years now, and before that Labour implemented policies which the Conservatives agreed with.

(By the way, an ironic note: having binned off Sure Start when they came to power, the Conservatives are now proposing to reintroduce it, although in a much less helpful way) 

Much more common are the tweets and references which demonstrate that the "left" are living rent-free in the heads of those on the right, tweets like this: 

I suppose those on the left do this as well, but I don't see it to the same extent. Maybe I am a victim of unconscious bias, I don't know, but the right are in positions of power. They run the government, they run the newspapers, and they tend to dismiss concerns, when they are raised, which don't fit their narrative. So why these people are even bothered about what their political opponents think or feel is beyond me. And I think they think people are more "wound up" about things than they actually are. 

I'm getting a little tired of the culture wars, tbh. And I think that the longer they go on, those making such a fuss about these things can only lose. 

TTFN. 

21-02-20 Saturday Covid-19 Day 343 I - Touch Typing

This week I have mostly been re-learning how to touch type. It is a chore, but the first time around, for some reason I learned the layout of the keyboard with my index fingers resting on G and H rather than on F and J. All I can think is that I am some kind of doughnut.

It has taken some time, and I am still typing very slowly, but I am beginning to make fewer mistakes and type more fluently. It means my fingers are less cramped on the keyboard, which is a good thing, but it is weird having to retrain my hands to reach for different keys.

Sometimes I do have to give up and go back to a “hunt and peck” approach, especially if I am on IM with a colleague, but a slower pace is good sometimes as it gives me time to think through and review what I am writing.

I am hoping that time taken now will lead to fluid writing at some point but we’re not there yet... Hopefully only another week or so might be needed before I’m back to feeling useful. There are a number of letters which I am getting used to, so hopefully that level of comfort will spread across the keyboard as the days pass.

It is quite amazing once a level of touch typing is achieved, as you can see words and thoughts appear almost without effort on the screen, once the hands and fingers have built up the muscle memory to find keys without effort. I have to remember that now, while I’m typing in a halting, staccato fashion, that some day this will all be worth it.

TTFN. 

21-01-25 Monday Covid-19 Day 317 I - New Chromebook

So, I bought myself a new chromebook this morning. I'd been agonising over it for days, wondering whether it was necessary, or whether I should be spending that much on a new pc (in the broadest sense of the term) when my existing chromebook was absolutely fine. 

I had decided that an Asus C434 was a suitable replacement for my perfectly serviceable Asus C302. The C434 is about the same size as the C302, but has a bigger display, due to smaller bezels. And it seems to be better-regarded than the newer C436 as well, which was a surprise. I did notice that one particular configuration had an eighth generation M3 chip where the C302 has a sixth generation version, but the C434 has 8gb of RAM. For a chromebook, that is pretty much future-proof, I reckon. 

I was looking at a couple of deals on eBay, and I was considering spending just over £500 on the model I wanted, but I was finding it hard to justify the expense. I do like my C302, and I've had it for over two years. I did see one deal listed at £525 or best offer, and I was considering putting in an offer below £500, i.e., £499. "Don't be silly", said TW, "buy it new and then you'll have a guarantee and a warranty and all that palaver".

Then I woke up this morning and the seller was offering £50 off, i.e., I could get it for £475. That was a fair saving over the £537 which was the nearest offer I was interested in, and it brought it under the £500 mark, which made me more relaxed. But it added another consideration to the decision whether to buy it or not, because I had to consider how I would feel if I missed out on this deal. Like, if I continued to want this particular model, would I be kicking myself in three or four months' time, thinking back to that time I could have got a new chromebook with those specs for under £500? 

And so, I bought it. It's coming on Wednesday. Looking at new laptops and weighing up the pros and cons of buying them, and deciding which one to buy, is almost more fun than actually making the purchase. Paying that much gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach, even though I'm expecting this new device to last at least three years and I reckon if I break that down into a monthly cost, it'd be easily justifiable. Now I just need to make sure that I get as much use out of it as I can, so that I can rest easy over this purchase. Maybe I'll provide an update in a week or two as to whether it was worth it. 

TTFN.

21-01-23 Saturday Covid-19 Day 315 I - "Paradigm Shift"

Well, that resolution (to blog more frequently) didn't even last a week. Maybe I should hang my head in shame. Maybe anyone who reads this is breathing a sigh of relief. Who knows? 

I thought it might be worth commemorating the fact that we have a new president in the U.S. Now we can refer to "President Biden" rather than "President-Elect Biden". I listened to a bit of his inauguration speech on the day; it sounded pretty good. The sort of stuff you would expect a normal, standard politician to say. I think he's got a pretty big job on his hands (hurr hurr, not *that* kind of job) to reunite the U.S., considering that over 70 million people voted for Trump. He is going to have to show that he is listening to their concerns as well, and working for the benefit of the U.S. as a whole. 

There were two interesting things coming out of the transfer of power in the U.S., or at least they are interesting to me. One is the QAnon conspiracy cult; apparently they mostly believed that the Biden inauguration would be the trigger for a mass national rebellion. According to message boards and other sources people were stockpiling water, ensuring their generators were in working order, etc., because they thought this was going to be "the big one". It seems that a lot of people are now disappointed, and I would hope disillusioned as well. Maybe "disillusioned" is the wrong word; maybe I mean disabused of their fantasies. Hopefully the country can come together on a common set of facts which they agree on, and go forward from there. There will always be disagreement about the best way to progress, but if you can at least agree *where you are*, that is a start for dialogue. And maybe we can get to the same situation here in the UK regarding Brexit, at some stage in the future. 

The other interesting thing is the Winston Churchill bust rebuttal video. A number of right wing commentators in the UK have been up in arms about the fact that Biden has moved the bust of Churchill out of the Oval Office and replaced it with a bust of Cesar Chavez. So the White House admin have released a video stating that it is "just a bust" and it doesn't affect the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the UK. This is quite a good move, I think. Firstly, it is an acknowledgement that some people have concerns (whether those are legitimate or not). Secondly, it addresses those concerns in a lighthearted (I think) way. Thirdly, it shows that they are listening. Fourthly, it cuts off thoses who are agitating against the new administration. Maybe "agitating" is the wrong word, again. But clearly there are some people who preferred Trump in charge, and they are focusing on this change of bust as a signifier of the regime change. If Biden can move this bust out of the Oval Office, and disrespect the UK like this, what else is he going to change? This video minimises the bust issue. It focuses instead on the past relationships between the leaders of the U.S. and the UK, as well as the security and economic interests shared by the two countries. The bust? It's just a bust. 

I think a lot of people are hoping for four years of boring, pragmatic politics coming out of the U.S. If they can include a video like this every once in a while, so much the better. 

TTFN.

21-01-03 Sunday Covid-19 Day 295 I - A Dry 2020

Looking back at 2020, maybe it wasn't the best year to not drink any alcohol. There were certainly some days when I could have done with sinking four beers or a bottle of wine, or relaxing into a nice whisky, and forgetting what was going out in the real world.

But on the whole I managed to abstain. I certainly drank enough Heineken Zero and other non-alcoholic beers to sink a battleship or two, and I found one or two I actually liked. Moretti non-alcoholic lager, for one, and Brooklyn "Special Effects" for another. I would add Leffe as a new one, but I'm still undecided on it. And one I'm looking forward to trying is the non-alcoholic Guinness.

I did have an alcoholic drink on three occasions in the year. Once was in March, in Amsterdam - I had a "radler", which I later realised was a shandy. It was a can or bottle, 330ml, the same quantity as you'd get in a can of coke, and it was about 2.5% alcohol by volume. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I did try some non-alcoholic beers I've not seen in the UK and a few of them were quite tasty.

Then in August, on a Sunday, I had two glasses of prosecco. I did enjoy them. We had visitors, and they brought some bottles, and it was nice weather, etc. The surprising thing was that I didn't have a drink the preceding day, when we had walked ten miles from Littlehampton into Worthing, and then sat in a few pubs in Worthing for the rest of the day. To be honest, I was thinking about having a beer for most of that walk, but then once I smelt the lagers which my walking companions had ordered, I wasn't that keen. Up until that day I had kind of dismissed Nanny State by Brewdog as too stouty / malty, but on that Saturday I really enjoyed it. I did have to leave and get home when everyone else got more drunk than was comfortable, but come the Sunday I was happy with that decision. The last time I had an alcoholic drink, it was a glass of prosecco to celebrate a friend qualifying as an electrician. I would have liked a second, but TW got there first and there wasn't any left for me. No biggie though.

We did discuss me having a drink on New Year's Eve, but we didn't stay up until midnight and by the time we did go to bed, the prosecco had all gone anyway, so there wasn't the opportunity.

I have found it difficult from time to time to stay sober; it's quite an enticing idea, to sink a couple and let go. It's something that comes in waves; I can be quite fine for weeks on end, but then I have a few days where I really fancy a pint. But that feeling normally fades away, and then things are fine again. My trouble is that I enjoy it too much for it to be "a pint" or "just a couple of drinks", and I end up out of control and then massively hungover the next day. Towards the end, in the summer of 2019, being drunk wasn't as much fun as it used to be.

That's the bit I miss though; the chance to let go and be "off duty". If I can find a way to replicate that without getting drunk, I'll have properly nailed it I reckon. Then I won't even want a unit or two of alcohol every hundred days or so. It might be worth looking into that more deeply in 2021. Currently I'm on a 59 day dry streak on the Try Dry app, and I'm looking forward to getting that up to 90 by early Feb. 

TTFN.

21-01-01 Friday Covid-19 Day 293 I - Happy New Year

Happy New Year all. That was a year, wasn't it? I did want to title this entry "Happy New Year Motherfunsters", but I held back. By letting you know, I kind of did it anyway. That is the definition of having your cake and eating it. 

New Year's Eve was a calm affair at Thorley Towers. We had party food for dinner; little mouthfuls of shop-bought breaded chicken and halloumi. We baked a camembert and dipped bread in it. Then I ate mini Stollen bites for dessert, while we played Risk. This was all at the kids' request, BTW.

Then once the game had ended we watched The Last Leg and when that finished at 11pm, we went to bed. TW fell asleep in front of the TV so I had to wake her up, and as we headed upstairs she got a call from a friend, seeing what we were up to and wishing us Happy New Year. TW felt we should stay up with the children to see in the new year, now that she was awake, but I declined, since I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. 

I heard a few unimpressive fireworks being let off at 11 o'clock, probably by Worthing's Brexit contingent. When I looked out to see what was going on, it was quiet and misty and there was nothing to see. I'm sure there is some metaphor or simile there, but I can't be bothered to make it. 

TW told me that there were much more impressive and loud fireworks at midnight, but I was asleep by then and didn't hear them. 

The new year always brings resolutions, and so I have three, I think. The first, as always, is to update this blog more often. This resolution tends to fall by the wayside early, so if I were in your shoes I'd tend not to worry about this one. 

The second is to run more often; it'd be good if I could get out three times a week. So I'll probably go for a little trundle later this morning - I'll have to start as I mean to go on. 

The third is to read more. I've got a load of comics (a whole bookcase full, to be honest) that I haven't read. I've also got Private Eye delivered every fortnight, and the Byline Times every month. More reading material is coming in than is going out, so it is time to do something about that. During lockdown we spent most evenings watching Netflix or Disney+, so in order to make time for reading, I think that TV watching on the scale we were doing it is going to have to go - at least for me. 

I think my ability to concentrate for long periods of time is slowly fading, and I'd like to build that back up. I've got a few books I'm intending to read as well, so I need to focus on those. 2021 might be "The Year of Study". 

We'll have to see how it goes. 

That's it for now, I think. I hope 2021 is good for all of us, but I have a creeping concern that it won't be. 

TTFN. 

#nowreading: Why We Get The Wrong Politicians, by Isabel Hardman