In A world gone Mad: Tuesday 12 May 2020 ...1

Tuesday 12 May 2020

As days go, yesterday was a good one.  There’s were no raised fists and no threats of violence—from any of us.  Arthur was Arthur and was a pain in the arse all day, but there was nothing of note to talk about.

I moaned at Max at one point, because I deliver Arthur’s meals. I ensure that he has a cup of tea in his hands at all times.  I do his washing and pick up after him all day—and he treats me like a servant.

He was sitting at the kitchen table. I put his lunch down in front of him.  A ham, mustard and mayonnaise sandwich cut into four triangles. A piece of homemade orange and date cake—made by Joan I hasten to add, not by me. An apple cut into pieces and a Fortisip milkshake, strawberry, his favourite flavour.

‘Here you go Arthur, lunchtime.’

His hand shot out to grab his first piece of sandwich, knocking over the milkshake.  He didn’t acknowledge it. I got a cloth and cleaned up the sticky mess and got him another shake.  During this exchange he didn’t so much as glance at me.  Never mind not getting a thank you, I didn’t even get a grunt or his usual, Yumyum. This isn’t his dementia, this is him expecting to be waited on hand and foot while he sits on his arse either in my chair in the lounge, on my sofa in the garden or at my seat at the kitchen table. My role and purpose in life is to serve him.

Seating is an issue.  I hate him sitting in my chair, particularly in the lounge. Wherever he is he has to have the best seat in that space. ‘But I want this one, it’s the best seat.’ The reason that I hate him sitting in my recliner on the sofa is that he picks his nose and wipes it on the chair arm. I can and do clean it, but it still feels contaminated. On the nights when Max has the telly on until three, I often get up and sleep on the sofa downstairs, my head goes right where his backside has been, and he farts. He often sits in just a pair of shorts with his wrinkly, naked torso against the leather on my seat—sweating.  It sends me into OCD meltdown. Max has one reclining end of the sofa, the middle is left empty and I have the other end, closest to the telly so that I can read the screen. On occasions when I’ve held fast and taken my end of the sofa, he’ll plonk himself between us. Because he only has one eye his perception is wonky and more than once, he’s sat on me, with his naked top half pushing into my body and his arm against my breast. Today I had the recliner up, with my legs stretched out and he sat on my feet and scrunched himself up three times until he was sitting half on my knee. I move—he wins. He has an entire sofa to himself under the window. There are two armchairs in the room that he could sit on—but no, he has to have the best seat in the room. We had his horrible beige armchair in our lounge, we had to rearrange the furniture to accommodate it and it meant that he was sitting next to me and our arms would touch if he leaned towards me. Everything in the lounge goes with everything else apart from his armchair, covered in snot. 

When we sorted his room into a bed-sitting room for him, his armchair went upstairs, and we are back to square one with the seating wars. He never spends time in his room and has to be wherever we are. He’s like a puppy following us around from room to room. I’m locked in the office writing because, prior to having a lock on the door, he’d walk in and go through all my books and papers—and later he’d steal anything that had taken his eye and we’d find it under his mattress, or in one of his drawers. Under his mattress is a treasure trove, Max excavates it every few days and replaces whatever we find to its rightful place. Seating is a small issue, there are seats to sit in all over the house—but we had our ways and our ways have all had to change. I like my ways and having to sit anywhere other than my usual places is an irritant. One I have to live with, one you can’t get cream for but it’s there, itching.

Max kept me up all night. He couldn’t sleep and was worrying about his dad and the escalation of the dementia. He was up and down stairs all night and neither of us got any sleep. Max slept until half one yesterday afternoon and I coped with Arthur. To be fair, I put a nature programme on for him and locked myself in the office for most of it and just kept letting myself out to ply him with more tea and cakes every half hour. I trade food for peace—sometimes it works.

And then he moans of belly ache, I’m not surprised, you greedy old bastard, you’ve eaten half a hundred wight of biscuits.  And that’s not fair of me. He is a greedy old man; he always has been and that is not dementia—but at the same time, his eating is seriously affected by his illness. He doesn’t know that he’s had breakfast, lunch and a barrel full of biscuits. I keep feeding him, he keeps taking them.

I will defend myself a little bit here. He did starve himself for months before he caught Covid19 and he did eat nothing at all after his infection. We are still building him up. Eating makes him happy and he’s going to die one day anyway. He says he’s going to live to at least a hundred and is aiming for a hundred and five—I try not to take this threat too seriously.  He enjoys eating. When he’s eating, he’s not worrying that I’ve stolen his wallet, or his books or his money. When he’s eating, he’s happy, I’m happy, and I’m happy to let him eat himself into oblivion if it gets me that hour’s peace.

After keeping the whole house awake all night, Max was fantastic yesterday afternoon. He thinks I was editing Jimmy’s book all morning, in truth I only did half an hour and the rest of the  time was spent on my own writing, but when he said I’d been ‘working’ all morning, I didn’t contradict him.  I was cranky about being treated like Arthur’s slave. Max can always tell when I’m tried because my patience is short. I manage not to take it out on Arthur most of the time, but I’ll snap and snarl at Max from the minute he gets up.

‘You go to bed for an hour, love.’

‘No, I’m okay, if I go to bed, I won’t sleep.’

‘Well go and catch up with your soaps. Take some time out.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah go on.’

I went to bed at two thirty in the afternoon, put EastEnders on and saw less than five minutes of it.  I took the dog with me because I don’t trust Arthur with her and woke in a blind panic at eight o’clock. I’d had over five hours uninterrupted sleep, that’s the longest I’ve slept without being woken up for months. At some point Max had been into the bedroom because the dog had gone.

I had to run the dog—and there was stuff that should have been done while I was sleeping. I went downstairs and Max heard me get up and put my dinner on, just beans on toast, perfect. They’d already eaten two homemade curry’s—one beef and one vegetable— with rice and poppadums. He’d done a week’s shopping, cleaned the house and run the dog—I’d done nothing.

We sat at the kitchen table and I said I wanted a bath.

Bathing, like seating is an issue. Gone are the days of getting up and going straight to the shower. My day begins with hearing Arthur going downstairs and me having to fling myself into clothes to follow him. I never drink enough fluid and only pee twice a day, it used to be three times morning, afternoon and night. But now I don’t even get my morning pee. It’s up and straight into seeing to Arthur after giving my hands a Happy Birthday—another Covid19 reference— wash at the kitchen sink.  I usually get upstirs sometime before lunchtime to clean myself and pee. More often than not, I don’t shower in the mornings anymore and make do with a quick strip wash.

I’ve developed an aversion to bathing and showering. Rather than doing it because I enjoy it, it’s become a daily, perfunctory act that I do to get clean and as fast as I can. I’ve always preferred bathing to showering, and in my head, I think that if Arthur pushes too hard on the door and manages to break the lock, I’d rather be lying in a bath than standing exposed in the shower. This sounds ridiculous but if he pushes against a locked door, he doesn’t accept that it’s locked and uses all his weight to open it. So far, he’s broken our bedroom door, the lounge door and my office door. I don’t like being naked and feel vulnerable in my own home.  I jump in the bath while it’s still running, wash, shower off to rinse my hair and I’m straight back out before I’ve turned the tap off.

 I never, ever get to use the bathroom –for any purpose—without Arthur either already being in there, or him coming and rattling on the door while I’m in there.  He drinks between fifteen and twenty cups of tea a day, that is without exaggeration and perhaps even errs on the low side.  He has two sugars in each one. I tried taking him down to one sugar, but the wily old sod can’t be fooled. The result of all this tea drinking is a very close relationship with the bathroom, he’s always in there, day and night every ten minutes Arthur is either in the bathroom or trundling along the corridors to the bathroom.

When one of us has a bath or shower, the others have to field it for them. Max and Andy aren’t so bothered when he comes rattling at the door—but it drives me insane when I’m trying to get a bath or shower in peace. I have to take my clean clothes in with me and dry and dress in the bathroom, it’s horrible. I want to dress in the bedroom where I always have.

‘Right I’m risking a bath, can you keep your dad away, please?’

‘If that’s the price I have to pay to have a clean wife.’

Max went into his Richard Attenborough voiceover.

And here we have the Alpha male in his natural habitat. His role is to keep the senior male occupied so that his hareem—of one—can wash. He’s been at the top of his game for forty years, and if he’s lucky—tonight he’ll be lucky.’

‘Huh, you’ll be lucky.’