Etched Behind Eyelids | February 2023
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28.02.2023
This visit was much better than December’s. Mum has settled in well at her nursing home, and her agitation has lessened. We arrived at lunchtime and one of the carers was feeding Mum the last of her pudding. There was no hint of recognition when we walked in, but Mum let me offer her the final few spoonfuls of sponge pudding and custard and then we sat with her for about 90 minutes whilst an old episode of Morse played in the background of the common room she was in. The visits are hard, because there’s no conversation and no recognition of us as family, but I just told her what everyone’s up to with the hope that she felt included and loved, and perhaps understood the odd snippet. One brief moment of lucidity surprised me. When I told her that Dad was soon going to go and visit old university friends of his, she replied with “known a long time” to their names. Lewy Body Dementia is weird, it’s like a glitchy computer. Mum doesn’t know me, her daughter, yet the names of old friends trigger a memory and a brief moment of clarity. After we left, we drove up the coast for a walk at Sand Point.
Management have been arseholes, and insisted that everyone clear their balconies for fire safety reasons whilst they dither and delay replacing the flammable cladding. They’ve decided to enforce a poorly worded clause in the lease which prevents us from putting anything on our balconies other than a small table and chairs. We’ve had to take down all the netting and reeding, so the balcony is now exposed and not safe for Gustave to spend time on unsupervised. To try and give him a new vantage point from which to watch the birds, I bought him a window bed. It’ll take a bit of fiddling to get the suction cups to hold, but hopefully he’ll enjoy it.
The allotment fox. He’s actually far too bold for my liking, because our plot neighbour feeds him. I won’t be crouching down to take photos of him again because he approached me like a dog looking for treats and it scared me.
We finished digging over the plot to remove bricks, plastic, and perennial weeds!
Moments before he ran towards me thinking I had food to offer him. I ended up sprinting away because I was afraid he would bite me. I know foxes don’t normally attack adult humans, but at the same time foxes aren’t usually fed like pets, and this fox is a dangerous mix of wild animal and semi domesticated pet thanks to our friendly plot neighbour and his habit of feeding it.
