Its kind of odd to think that I wont ever be doing that stuff again, especially as the boot of my car is still full of manuals and promotional stuff and general Training Detritus. Ive trained about 170 people since I started last July and I�d kind of like to hope that at least some of them are now having slightly nicer lives � asking for (and getting!) the services they need and recognising that they are doing fabulous jobs that NO ONE else could do, for their loved ones and friends.
If you can bear to, or if you think it might be interesting, you could do worse than to have a look at this. It still makes me cry a little bit in places � not because I know these people (it was filmed in Manchester, I think) but because I know about 170 people just like the ones you can see here, and their stories are just the same.
In the last couple of months alone, I have met a lady whose husband is double incontinent and barely knows where he is but is still lucid enough to beg her to not put him into residential care, a retired Lt Col (aged 83) whose wife is now bedridden and, after 53 years of marriage, he says �well, she�s looked after me all this time so I suppose its my turn. Wish I�d paid more attention when she was cooking, tho.� He has arthritis and walks very slowly, with two sticks.
Oh, and yesterday, a lady (86) looking after her husband (87) with advanced dementia. He�d wandered out of the house the night before and had managed to get a mile or so from home (in the dark, along country lanes) before he was found. She didn�t want to mention it at the group session because she didn�t want anyone at the session who lives in the same village to think badly of her husband �because he�s no trouble, really�. ***TRIED TO EMBED A VIDEO HERE BUT IT WOULDNT WORK - YOU'LL NEED TO CLICK ON THE LINK INSTEAD. SORRY!*** An introduction to Caring with Confidence
BTW, the facilitators you see taking the sessions in the film are NOTHING like how I take my sessions. Theirs were wishy-washy and bland � mine aren�t.
Oh, and lest you should think Im being disrespectful, I call �em Crazy Old Ladies even though most of �em aren�t crazy, some of �em aren�t old and a few of �em aren�t even ladies. I had to call �em something, m�kay, and they have provided me with many and several comedy moments over the last year:
Two ladies discussing the problems of insufficient �me time�:
�How can I get some time to myself once this course is finished?�
�He�s got Alzheimers, hasn�t he? Tell the silly old bugger you�re still coming here � he wont remember how long the course was supposed to be � That�s got you three hours a week for a start!�
Gentleman (early 80s), when asked how he alleviates feelings of �low mood� in his spouse who is disabled and has complex needs:
�I just kisses her til she cheers up a bit. That�s always done the trick!�
Lady explaining that her husband wont have a nurse in to help bathe him
�He says he doesn�t want strange women seeing him naked in case he gets sexually aroused. I said �Bill, you�re nearly 80 and you�ve had two strokes. Its not very bloody likely, is it?��
Anyways, enough cheeriness � lets move on to something a bit more sensible. There�s just one week left of the summer holidays so we�re all scrambling about at the Palace of Many Sins, getting ourselves ready for the new term. For L, this seems to manifest itself in �putting some petrol in the car� as he does some of the school runs with Treacle. Us girls have been getting new stuff. Jooj is working the �Manga Schoolgirl� look this term, which has meant buying the most enormous school sweater that the uniform shop stocked, and pairing it with a teeny pleated skirt and black knee socks. I predict daily battles along the lines of �No fucking WAY! You look like a paedo�s wet dream!�. Treacle is being more sensible although I know it can only be a matter of time. She doesn�t share her sister�s love of all things gothic/punk/etc but the presence of a pair of gold Ugg boots in her wardrobe and her predilection for the music of N-Dubz tells me bad times are ahead.
We�ve also been fighting a losing battle with nits AND verrucas. As the girls aren�t at school at the moment, we can pin at least one of these infestations on ONE visiting child (a friend of Treacle�s). As I don�t like this child anyway (and Treacle even seems to be fairly ambivalent towards her and was only playing with her because nobody else was around) I have told Treacle to keep the hell away from her. I am sick of parents not doing anything about their kids� headlice infections. Perhaps this child�s mother would like to come around and spend two hours of HER life combing eggs out of Treacle�s waist-length hair. I think not.
Ive been trying to find clothes to wear for my new job. Most of the stuff I already have is a bit �corporate� so Ive been scouting around for some slightly more casual stuff but still with a smart/stylish edge. Trouble is, Ive put on some serious weight in the last 10 months or so and am having a bit of trouble shifting it. Consequently, everything I put on just screams �fat mutton� to me. Thoughtfully, my mum sent over a couple of skirts that she doesn�t wear any more. Nice skirts; lined, not faded or baggy, one black, one cream so deffo wearable. I couldn�t get them on, let alone done up. As I couldn�t decide whether it was more depressing to be accepting clothing handouts from a 71 year old or being too fat to wear them, I had a little cry on both counts. L caught me and told me not to be so silly but its really shaken me. I know Im being trivial, but when you�re used to being the �slim, glamorous� one it hits a bit hard to find that�umm�you�re not either of those things. Oh, and Im not fishing for �of course you�re not!� comments btw, I know when I don�t look right for me and my current daily uniform of oversized t-shirt and ugly �soccer mom� jeans tells me its really time to man-up (can girls man-up?), stop making excuses and LOSE SOME FUCKING WEIGHT.
Just went over to svenhard�s place and clicked on his link for James Hance. Cheered me right up.
Tonight we�re off to some overpriced eaterie with Craig and Lina. Craig has his first solo gig there tonight so we�re pitching up en masse to show some support. I very much hope that there is something salady on the menu or I shall fall at the first fence and you may all come over and point and laugh at me. If you could possibly take down a wall of my house in readiness for my inevitable Jerry Springer appearance (�I eat my own body-weight in cake every single day but still believe all the men in here want to have sex with me�) that would probably be good too. A rousing chorus of �Who ate all the pies?� might also have the desired shaming effect if you could manage it. Ta everso.
When Im not eating (obviously) Im running a small sideline on �Relationship Counselling for the Gay Man�. I only have one client at the mo � Slaveboy is suffering most grievously from boyfriend trauma and is needing a great deal of�something, dispensed by text very late into the night. The poor old sausage has a new boyfriend � I feel partly responsible for this as I have been using the words �OH FOR GOD�S SAKE JUST FINISH WITH HIM, ALREADY� about his old boyfriend for some months now. The old boyfriend, lets call him �Dreary�, was one of those people who could just suck all the fun out of any situation and leave it dusty, dry and featureless. He was a human beige-ifier. Slaveboy, as I have recounted here on numerous occasions, is an amusing, spiteful, intelligent, cultured Bon Vivant in the prime of his life. Deffo not ready for matching knitwear, a tiny dog on a diamante lead and re-runs of Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday afternoon..
So, Slaveboy has trawled the deepest depths of Grindr.com and come up with a new squeeze who seems altogether more fun and more loving and more amusing and more sexier and, well, just MORE. Trouble is, Slaveboy has no idea how to deal with this as he is so used to the sanitised, homogenised, joyless version of manlove that he�s been experiencing over the last year or so. Gay men in the first flushes of a new relationship are a hideous hybrid of Man (commitment phobic, unable to vocalise feelings, trying a bit too hard and coming across as mental) and 14-year-old girl (giddy with excitement, over-analysing every utterance for hidden meaning, angsty, extravagant with declarations of devotion�. and trying a bit too hard and coming across as mental). Its exhausting. My last text to him (last night, around midnight) was �Why not try actually having some fun getting to know each other? Stop being so fucking�gay!�
L just phoned the place we�re going to tonight to check out the menu. There�s �home-made pies, scampi and chips, battered fish � all yummy stuff like that�. *weep*
Later
s
x
PS Guess this miserable pile of drivel makes nonsense of the �fat people are jolly� hypothesis.
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