In a World Gone Mad: Tuesday 26 May 2020

Tuesday 26 May 2020

It is 01:45 and I am up.  This is ridiculous, I’ve got that I hate going to bed because the night times are awful—and it’s not Arthur, I can cope with him in a half-asleep daze. But Max makes me so damned angry with his utter selfishness that once I get mad there’s no way that I’m going to go back to sleep.

I nodded off watching House and he woke me up to ask me if I was asleep.

We turned the light off at half twelve and I went to sleep within seconds.

I woke up to Arthur screaming his head off at Andy.  He’d been standing outside Andy’s bedroom door for fifteen minutes. Andy knew he was there, but we’ve found that when he’s wandering at night it’s best that Andy doesn’t come out of his room unless he has to because Arthur doesn’t know who he is and the fact that there’s a strange young man in the house that he believes belongs to him always causes a major kick off.

The strange thing is that he didn’t open the door and walk in. He walks in on Andy at least six times every night. He hasn’t got a lock on his door yet and neither has the lounge door. We’ve been waiting for two months for Max to do it.

He just stood outside his door. He was outside the bathroom door too, because they are at an angle to each other, but Arthur always gravitates to Andy’s room because it’s the door at the end of the corridor. We’ve joked that Andy should move into the bathroom.

At first he sang, Somewhere there’s music. How high the moon. And then he, doop-de-dooped, and then he whistled. And then he got frustrated and started huffing and sighing.

Andy texted Max: Please come and get Grandad.

It woke me up, but it didn’t annoy me.

The text came thirty seconds too late. Arthur blew.  He hammered on Andy’s door, and yelled the house down.

‘How much longer are you going to be in that bathroom?’

‘Dad. Come on Dad, that’s not the bathroom, that’s Andy’s room.’

‘Who’s Andy and what’s he doing in my house?’

And we were off.

It took Max ten minutes to get Arthur back to bed, he’d forgotten that he was going to the bathroom and when Max tried to get him to go in, he wouldn’t.

 I knew what was coming next and I anticipated getting annoyed before I got annoyed.

Max came in to tell me that his dad was back in bed.

I kind of heard—the entire street heard.

And then he went out again to have a pee himself.

And then he came in and took his dressing gown off and got into bed. Every time he has one of Arthur’s screaming confusions it upsets him in a way that it doesn’t upset Andy and I. He was wired, he lay for five minutes and got up and put his dressing gown on.

‘Where are you going, now?

I already knew.

‘I’m just going down to let the cat in.’

‘Don’t lie to me, you’re going out for a cigarette.’

‘Well yes, but I’m going to let the cat in, too. I don’t think I opened the window for him.’

I didn’t have to anticipate getting annoyed any more, I could feel it coming.

When he goes down for a cig in the night, I don’t go back to sleep because I know he’s coming back up and will wake me again.  If it’s five minutes I don’t get too annoyed, but if it’s longer I end up furious.

He was nearly half an hour.

I got up, took my toothbrushes from the bedroom—I use both electric and manual. The electric cleans my teeth better, but it doesn’t froth. The manual froths up better and leaves my mouth feeling fresher. I had a wash, brushed my teeth, got dressed and brushed my hair putting it in a ponytail—Good morning world, my day is here.

Max doesn’t understand why I get so angry. He thinks I’m overreacting and every time, he tells me to go back to sleep which just makes me more angry. I probably am making a big deal over nothing, but I’ve got to the point where I’m so sensitive to it that he only has to move his leg in his sleep and I’m awake—and then there’s Arthur. Max is a heavy sleeper, so I have to sleep with one eye open to keep an ear out for Arthur.

Max is like a Japanese Torturer. I think it was the Japanese that used sleep depravation as a form of torture. I wish he’d just tell me what he wants to know—I’d blab and tell him anything.

He wakes me up to tell me he’s got bellyache, that there’s a noise outside that’s of no concern to us, that he can’t sleep and to ask me if I’m asleep. He’s up and down the stairs like a whore in a two-storey brothel—he’s just been down for a cigarette now. I don’t think he dared come into the office. Having his father living with us is hurting him. The lockdown and not being able to work is affecting his ability to sleep—me, I could sleep. I’m at the point where I don’t care if Arthur falls down the stairs in the night, he’ll still be there in the morning and it might stop the bugger wandering. I don’t mean that, not deep down  subconsciously—but I do on the surface. I can sleep. I could sleep, I’d love to sleep—if I was allowed to.

It’s difficult for both of us. I don’t know how much longer I can cope with it. I’m tired, literally all the time. I’m getting headaches. I’m short on patience with Arthur. I don’t enjoy our music nights. I can’t watch anything on telly because it sends me straight to sleep and I’m tired when I’m editing. God knows how it’s going to be when we’re all back at work.

And therein lies the next problem—we are on our own with him and we’re not going to get any help. If he’s going to live a long and miserable life, then we’ll pay for a couple of weeks respite here and there to give us a break if we hit the skids—but Lord only knows what that will do to him, it’s taken three months to get him in some sort of settled state here.  However, to put him in a day care centre, the daily rate is a third more than my daily wage plus a twenty-pound a day bonus.

Max said it doesn’t matter, we’ll pay to do it two or three days a week so that I can keep my job. But it’s stupid, it doesn’t make any sense and will unsettle Arthur for nothing. I guess it was always inevitable, but I’ve offered to look after him while Andy and Max work. It makes sense. Max said he’d retire but I can’t think of anything worse. I’d resent working while he lies in bed until one every afternoon, not happening. I love my job and don’t want to lose it so I’m going to try and make it work with Arthur. I’ll leave him an enormous plateful of food and his telly on in his room and check on him at every break—what can possibly go wrong? I give it a week before I get the sack and I think that’s optimistic.

I wrote yesterday about the Ellie Williams story, there have been further developments.

But first our claim to fame—this little industrial town is in the arse end of nowhere. It should have a natural containment because there is only one road in and one road out to the motorway, to connect us to anywhere. However, this is the highest recorded town in the country for confirmed cases of Covid19.

Unbelievable—but I’m not surprised. Barrovians would feather and tar me for this, but per capita, I would lay money on us having a lower intelligence than most towns. Most people here are up there with the rest of the country—but there’s a faction. The, ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ brigade. Nobody tells them what to do. They are hard, they are. They piss in the wind of authority. The thick bastards don’t get it that all they have to do to stay healthy and alive is keep to themselves. It’s too much for their little, drug lobotomised brains to comprehend. This section of society probably accounts for more than the same group in some other towns. The rest of the town are like everybody else and do what they are told.  Another reason for the high numbers of Covid19 is possibly the fact that we’re so isolated here that people think they are less likely to get in than in a big city. People don’t get it. They were good for a couple of weeks and the roads were quiet—never empty but quieter than pre-covid19. They got bored, bless them. Staying in their homes and dossing in front of the telly, drinking cans of cheap lager should have come as second nature to us, but no. Every day for the last six weeks, the streets have been busier. Duh, there’s nothing open, nothing to do, nowhere to go, but does that stop them?

Even in our household we’ve broken the rules. I don’t like it, but when Belle makes plans the rest of the family falls in. A couple of weeks ago we had Belle, Annie, Krystal, and Ocean. This weekend we had Kila and Scott. Marty has been with the kids. We sit in the garden and distance. But the rules since relaxing clearly state that one member of another household can join you in the garden. Max has this thing that we’re all safe when we aren’t. I hate it. Other than that, though we’ve been good and combine Teagan’s run with everything we’ve got to do for everybody. Joan asked us today, to go and see Pam again—I saw that one coming a mile away. Ivor has been off loading his plants on us. He’s given me a huge lupin and half a dozen tomato plants, some peppers and a money plant. He’s running his garden down  in preparation for the end.