In a World Gone Mad: Sunday 3 May 2020

Sunday 3 May 2020

After the worst morning yet, yesterday we had a good afternoon.  When Arthur got up after his nap, he had reset and forgot his episode. I don’t think it will ever leave Max.

Arthur came outside where I’d escaped.

I covered my eyes.

“Found me: One…Two…Three…Four…Five…You’re it.” I think he got the joke and we laughed.

He looks frail and gaunt and since the Covi 19 got him, he’s started shuffling. He’s never done that before and has always been sure of foot.

“I’ve been thinking…”

“Go on Arthur, what you been thinking about?”

“I want to go travelling.”

“Okay, so where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere I’ve never been. I’ve done the North Americas and the South Americas and Canada…I know I’ll go to China.”

“You’ve been to China,”

“I know, but I haven’t done all of it. I haven’t been to every village and I only walked part of the Great Wall—I want to do it all.”

“What, all 136 thousand miles of it, that’s a lot of walking?”

“Why not?”

I know the length because we used to have this conversation five times a day, he hasn’t had it since pre-Covid. He once offered me an all-expenses paid trip with him as his companion. I was dreaming of bamboo hotels, and beautiful Chinese ladies serving my meals dressed in black and with tiny silent feet. It lost its glamour when he said we’d be sharing a two-man tent and I’d have to carry my own backpack. My three pairs of stilettos would fill that.

The rest of the day maintained a level of four out of ten crazy.

It’s been tough this week, I’ve had a book to edit. I’ve be in partnership with a friend for five years and I think we offer a pretty good service. I do a three way edit—line by editing, comment box editing and a 5,000, word overview of the book.  We had a hundred percent rating until last year, when one of my many times returned authors took exception to a remark I made and said she’d never work with us again.

To lighten the edit and give them something to smile about, I try to inject humour into the comment boxes. She was writing a romantic scene and wrote something like, ‘I felt his penis burning against me.’ I commented that you can get tablets for that, and she said she’d never work with us again. We’ve had one author that didn’t pay us. I put a week into that book working all hours to get it out. But I was gratified that it was nothing to do with my edit. The other half of our team had words with her before the edit was complete, he warned me two days in, that we might not get paid. We sent the book to her anyway in the hope that we would, and never heard from her again. I’d prefer to get fifty percent up front, but the boss has always worked on trust and wants to keep it that way. One nonpayer from fifty authors isn’t so bad and almost all of our authors are return clients. The lady I’m working for this week is a new addition to our client base.

I’m panicking because I can’t get on and bang it out with having the other three in the house, and I’ve got to say that it’s Max who is the biggest preventer of working.  

We have two deadlines.  The customer deadline is two weeks; however, our deadline is a week. When they aren’t expecting to get their novel back for two weeks and it drops in their in-box after six or seven days, they are delighted with the service. That and the fact that I’m thorough maintains our reputation. In addition to that, we are one of the cheapest editing services in the country, with great accreditations.

I got the book a week Friday and am on my third day over first deadline. Max doesn’t take it seriously, and sees it a nice little hobby, but it’s helped us out a few times when we’ve been short. This is a first-time author with us, and I want to do a good job for her, but the distractions have been endless. It’s the only income I have until after lockdown and I’m damned grateful for it. But it’s brought home the problem we’re going to have after lockdown.

The country needs an exit strategy for after lockdown—so do I.

With having Arthur living with us, I’ve arranged to go back to work on permanent home working so that I can still be his carer. However, that means strict working conditions. I have to log on, and I’m on the clock with every phone call and key stroke being tracked. Because I have no office distractions, my targets will increase, and I’ll be monitored closely with a team leader on chat at all times to ensure that I’m doing my job and they are getting every second of shift time out of me.

How the hell?

When Arthur moved in and we had the awful day when I realised, I was signing my life away, Max came up with the perfect solution.

“It’ll be fine Sarah, don’t worry about it. I’ll put you a lock on the office door, and we’ll have a laminated sign saying: Sarah Working, Do Not disturb.”

Oh well, that’s all right then, problem served. I can easily bang out two hundred calls a day as long as I have my sign. Why didn’t I think of that?

Over the last few weeks, he’s amended his thinking.

The big plan now is having all our eggs in one basket. Max suggested taking early retirement. Good God and Sweet Jesus, No. Having Arthur here is bad enough but there is no way that I can do a demanding job with the pair of them driving me nuts. That is not an option.

So, the plan is to put him in day care—Arthur that is. He will be picked up at eight and dropped back home at Four thirty and I can accommodate my shifts around that.

He didn’t live with us initially, but we were still his carers and although he was independent living, he was anything but independent. We were visiting twice daily to do his shopping, cleaning, lawn mowing and meal making.  And this was after his decline while living in Epping. He’d come to stay with us for six weeks in a malnourished and dishevelled state. We’d take him back home—his choice—It’d break my heart to leave him there. We knew it wasn’t working and were expected the call to say he’d either killed himself, blown the house up, or was in hospital,  but the stubborn old bastard would not give up his home. And why should he?

It came to a head after his neighbour rang us. Arthur had fallen in his fishpond in February 2019 and couldn’t get out.  The passing neighbour heard his shout, otherwise he’d have died in the pond. We drove down to pick him up and take stock. We hadn’t seen him for two months and talking to him on the phone was increasingly erratic. He had no food in the house, and he was wearing the same clothes that we’d dropped him off in two months earlier.

He came home with us.

His house sold quickly for over four hundred grand. We wanted him with us then, but Arthur and Max’s brothers decided that he could manage alone with daily help.  He bought a much better house in a coastal village five miles from us—which was bloody inconvenient for us, but in the same village as Archie lives. Archie found him too much and abandoned him to us.

And the rest is history.

We had him mentally assessed in January before Covid was an issue. He was diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s seven years ago.  The doctor said he was doing well and the progression of the disease over seven years was very good. Arthur put on a good show, he can dial down the crazy when he has to, but his incapacity score was bumped up. The doctor said he’d be passed to the Adult Social Care team and a case worker would be assigned.

We have never claimed a penny from anybody. Archie looked into PIP but that’s only available to people of working age. He enquired about Motability but that’s not available to people with dementia. Max and I have managed Arthur alone, and financially unaided, especially since he came to live with us on a permanent basis.

Andy for his part, has a regular take home pay of over a thousand pounds a week—and pays us fifty pounds all in. More often than not he has an excuse for not paying—and since he was furloughed, he hasn’t paid us a penny.

Three weeks ago, after days of nagging from me, as it wasn’t my place to do it, Max chased up the referral. Adult Social Care had never heard of Arthur. Neither had the County Council, neither had Social Services. I know the country is in crisis, but this referral was supposed to go through in January. Max rang the doctor and said we must have something in place for Arthur by the time we go back to work.  The doctor said that probably isn’t going to happen. He’d passed on the notes to his in-house mental health team and they are all on furlough. What bloody good is that?  We need council day care for Arthur otherwise one of us can’t work. We aren’t asking for anything else. We aren’t putting him in care at a cost to the government of at least nine hundred pounds a week—and upwards of that for an EMI unit. All we want is a day care facility—even if it’s only two or three days a week and I’ll go down to part time hours.

Nothing is being done—we are alone, and now we have the worry of Max’s mum and Ivor and what’s going to happen to Joan when Ivor is gone.

It’s all a bit of a pickle really.