Notes from a Care Home

Notes From a Care Home Pt.3

Night of the living deaf.

I need to start this post with an apology as it has been months since my last one.  If you read part 2, you may remember that I had become convinced that Mum in Law was trying to do me in with COVID19 and she finally succeeded.  It’s taken me this long to recover to the point where I can write again!


Fortunately by the time she got me I had been double jabbed, but it was touch and go as she and my wife had been jabbed months before and this seemed to have the effect of making H’ even less careful about not bringing the ‘rona’ into the house as she presumably felt untouchable with two doses in her arm.

This is the odd thing about the whole vaccine roll out. Team Johnson decided to vaccinate the part of the UK population that are least economically active and most able to isolate, whilst confining the productive part of the population under house arrest and in the process nearly collapsing the economy!

A less charitable person might think that this was simply a tactic to keep Boris’s voter base alive!

I remember clearly that when I took my wife and Mum in law to the Harrogate vaccination centre, I could not believe what I was seeing.  I hadn’t seen such a mass of shuffling and stooped figures moving together since I last saw Caesar Romero’s zombie movie ‘Night of the living dead’ although ‘Night of the living deaf’ was more appropriate.  The vaccination centre was in a converted exhibition hall at the Yorkshire Showground and looked like it was hosting ‘MobilityEx 2020’ there were so many Zimmer frames and scooters there.

As I watched with envy at all of the oldies trouping in (what I call ‘The Wizends’), I started to notice that although there was a steady stream of Wizends going in, there was only a trickle coming out, and I started to become concerned that a large number were leaving by the rear exit, feet first. 

Old people go in, but they don’t come out again!

My other slight peeve about all this was that Wizends like H’ were banging on about how they got through the war and this pandemic is nothing, all the youngsters are making such a fuss because they are snowflakes etc. However, they do not like having it pointed out to them that eating spam & sawdust sandwiches in a bomb shelter did not in anyway give them a tactical advantage against COVID19 but this all fell on deaf ears of course.

“You don’t need to worry about getting COVID19, you’re a Wizend Harry”

Notes from a Care home Pt.2

Hands – Space – Blank Face

“It is perfectly reasonable to believe that someone is out to get you!”

So, lockdown continues and life in the Newland Avenue Care home has settled into a cycle of walking, eating, walking, eating and after another cheerful documentary about mass murder on Netflix, it’s back to bed. As the weather continues its determined attempts to make things worse, the highlight of the week has become a weekly drive to Knaresborough McDonalds for a drive through coffee and cheeseburger.

Patient ‘H’ also has a daily routine and somehow manages to make breakfast last until about 11:30, following which she gets dressed and arrives downstairs just in time for a short walk to the local Co-Op supermarket before lunch. Now this would of course be fine with the staff if it were not for the fact that she returns from the shop a walking bio-hazard!

As I write this, I have not yet had my COVID19 jab, unlike my wife and ‘H’, so I am naturally feeling vulnerable. You can imagine then my dismay at finding ‘H’ wandering around the Co-Op without a face mask. When I point this out to her she looks blankly at me for a moment before announcing “I know”. There are a few explanations for this reaction, a, she was embarrassed when she realised that she had forgotten, b, she knew that she didn’t have a face mask but decided that her need for crumpets outweighed my need to continue breathing or c, she, like the rest of her generation believe that they are indestructible.

“Don’t mention the war!”

I have come to learn that there is a strange attitude, common amongst the generation of British people that lived through World War II as children. Unlike the generation that actually fought in it, ‘H’s generation never shut up about the war. “Oh well, after what we went through, we just get on with things” she was heard boasting to her best friend when talking about lockdown restrictions. Apparently us younger ‘wishy washy’ types are not getting on with it by going out running, walking, getting coffee’s and shopping, whilst her generation are battling bravely on by sitting on their arses and watching back to back TV quiz shows starting with ‘Countdown’ at 2pm and not leaving the lounge until ‘The Chase’ ends at 6pm when we call her through for dinner.

They have an attitude of superiority about their wartime experiences but ‘H’ was 9 when it started and 15 when it ended, so wasn’t even old enough to serve as a ‘Land Girl’. To hear her and her friends bang on you would think that as little girls they had kicked off their sandals and with their pretty little floral dresses fluttering in the breeze, charged screaming up the beaches of France, their machine guns spitting death at the terrified Germans.

As the evidence shows, Harrogate (where ‘H’ and her friends spent the war) was not even a target for the Luftwaffe with only one bomb falling on the town and that appears to be by mistake. Unless of course Hitler had decided that if he could destroy the Harrogate springs, the devastation caused to supplies of expensive fizzy water would deal a crushing blow to the moral of the British.

This arrogance about the war feeds into that generations sense of being impervious to anything and therefore not needing to concern themselves with trivial matters such as not giving me COVID19!

PS: Since writing this I have now had my first jab but that is another story.

Notes from a Care Home Pt.1

Part 1 – ‘Near-death In Paradise’

I’ve decided to keep a diary of recent events to try and get them clear in my mind, and Andrea suggested that I should share them with you.

It’s coming up to four months since my wife Andrea and I retired to Harrogate to unexpectedly find that we had set up a private care home. It’s a small affair, with only a single resident, who we refer to as ‘Patient H’, the Mum in Law. Conversion of the former dining room into the office and staff relaxation area is nearly complete, as are the private staff sleeping quarters.

I say private, but they are regularly invaded by H, who still can’t remember that none of her stuff is still there. My underwear drawer was on my bed while I was refitting the drawer rails to the cupboard, when H casually wandered in and without a word, started to rummage through my collection of boxer shorts! Quite disturbing really.

As with all care homes, when we first arrived it smelt of piss and Ralgex, but after some considerable effort, we can say that it no longer smells of Ralgex.

It has been an eventful few months, including H having a car crash that happened without even leaving the driveway and two attempts to assassinate me with COVID19!

If I make it past the next few days I will update you again…..