In A World Gone Mad:Tuesday 5 May 2020

Tuesday 5 May 2020

I got the book off to the client last night, three days after our deadline—but four days early for customer deadline, that’s another one in the bag. Max’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks and the money from the book has all been earmarked for bills. I have no wage coming in, so I don’t know what I’m going to do for him.

Yesterday morning is the first in three days that we’ve woken without major drama. I was up with Arthur at seven, made him a cup of tea, gave him his medication and persuaded him back to bed. I’d slept through the night as had Max. Anything could have happened. Andy, by the fact that we had both fallen unconscious, took unofficial night duty from half one to seven. There was no shouting and Arthur spent the night backwards and forwards to the bathroom.

Andy is at the opposite end of the house to us. His bedroom is at the end of the corridor. The bathroom is next to his bedroom. You walk along a corridor, go up four stairs have another corridor and then Arthur’s bedroom is the next door, with our room at the end. 

Andy said that Arthur spent forty minutes in the corridor in front of his room. He’d go to the bathroom, bang about in there for five minutes, walk the eight paces of the corridor outside Andy’s room and then go back in bathroom—he never made it to the stairs to his bedroom because he kept forgetting he’d been to the bathroom and had to go back.  He was quiet and any interference, especially in the night or first thing in the morning tends to set him off, so Andy left him to it.

I was at the point of zero function. One of my ‘things’ is that if I’m putting washing out, I have to have it on the line by nine o’clock.  I did my morning routine, fed and watered cat, fed and watered dog, same with the iguana and gave the snake water. I put the washing out, did the housework, sorted Arthur and guided him back to bed and then went back to bed myself, all by eight thirty. I almost never do that, I’m one of those people that once I’m awake, I’m up.

Max and I are polar opposites in our sleeping habits and couldn’t be more incompatible in that respect.  It’s been an issue between us for the three years we’ve been together. When I’m working, I like to be in bed and settled by midnight—he never turns the light off before one thirty and sometimes it’s three or four. Add to that my menopause and we’ve endured thee restless years.  When the world is behaving normally, Max is up at seven for work, manages to work the week and then dies at the weekend. His habit is to get up between one and two in the afternoon Saturday and Sunday, which makes for a short weekend, but I don’t mind because it gives me Saturday and Sunday morning to catch up on the things I want to do.

But that was all pre-Arthur, sleep depravation is our permanent state of being.

I went back to bed with my guilt of sleeping through the night on my mind. I woke at ten forty-five in a state of panic. I didn’t take a second to wake up properly and flung myself into the first clothes on my shelves and ran downstairs unwashed and dishevelled.  I checked both external doors, both locked. There was no sign of Arthur, but he’d been up. Half of the cupboard doors were open, there were three teabags in the washing machine and five bowls dotted across the kitchen floor with milk for the cat. Navigating the kitchen was like taking part in the Crystal Maze. He’d shut the kitchen window, locking Echo out—he was a disgruntled and very vocal cat. There were seven slices of bread laid out on the worktop with a half empty packet of bacon beside them. The fridge door was wide open and the remaining milk—most of it was in bowls on the floor, was on the windowsill along with a packet of pasta.

He’d eaten three slices of raw bacon and presumably some dry bread.  Not being up and about is like leaving a three-year-old unattended. I didn’t check on him, to add to my guilt, if he was dead, he’d be no less dead when he didn’t materialise asking for a cup of tea.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard him go to the bathroom—and another, better one when he didn’t come downstairs and went back to his room. We didn’t see him again until Max woke him getting up mid-afternoon.

I heard Max telling him through gritted teeth that he was using the bathroom and to come back later.

Max was a grumpy bear and was sitting in the kitchen when Arthur burst into the kitchen with his arms spread in victory and a huge smile on his face.

“We did it, Boy.”

“Did what, Dad?”

“We won.”

“Won What?”

“Well I don’t know now, but it’s something big. A Lot of money. It’s going to be headline news and everybody will be out and clapping and cheering.”

“We haven’t won anything, Dad.”

“Yes, we have. I’m telling you we have. It’s coming today and it’s a lot of money, we’re rich, boy. What do you want? What do you want me to buy you? You can have anything you want. Do you want a new bike?”

“I’m not six years-old, Dad and we haven’t won anything. Who’s bringing all this money? Where’s it coming from? What have you done to win it? We haven’t been out of the house for weeks.”

Arthur was sitting at the kitchen table doing the thing with his face. He put his head in his hands and shook his head.

“We haven’t won anything.”

“No.”

He went very quiet.

“I think I’m crackers, son. What’s wrong with me?”

He had a drink and his lunch, but he was quiet all the way through it. I asked him if he felt all right as he was shaking.

Max thinks he was shaken up because he realised that he was losing his mind.

We should have let him have his fantasy—he’d have forgotten it next time he reset.

He did forget it.

We went for a walk in the woods. It was fantastic and did us all good, though I’d have preferred it if it had been just the two of us.

“I want to climb a tree.”

“Don’t dad, you’ll hurt yourself.”

They had the argument about how fit Arthur is and he sulked because he wasn’t allowed to climb a tree.

“I’ll have you know; I’ve climbed ever tree in this forest a hundred times, I know every branch.”

He’s never been there before.

Teagan found some dogs to play with and ran herself out in the field and I blanked Arthur out and tried not to listen to the craziness for an hour.

Max didn’t want to cook last night—he does almost all the cooking. I wanted to do it, but he said we’d get a Chinese.

We were eating when Marty, called with Steph and the kids. We went outside and did the social distancing. We were on one side of our garden wall; the family were on the other. I kept commenting that it was odd that Arthur hadn’t come out to be nosy.

He appeared as we were saying goodbye with his empty dish in his hands and another one below it.

“Have you finished, Arthur. I’ll take your plate off you. Is that mine as well, I haven’t finished yet, love? I eat very slowly.”

He showed me the two empty dishes.

He’d eaten his own and mine as well.  I couldn’t believe it; he knew exactly what he’d done.

“Dad, you’ve eaten Sarah’s dinner.”

“Yeah, I know.  I couldn’t resist it. Yum, Yum. I’m full up. Yum, yum.”

Marty was howling.

I’ve started editing one of the books I began years ago.  I want to finish writing it this time.  It is about a lady suffering from early onset dementia. Pure coincidence, but I’m getting loads of new material to add to it—every cloud.

We’ve been watching back to back Wire in the Blood from Season One. That is Max has been watching them and I’ve been watching half of them. We are on Season Five and I think I’ve seen two episodes all the way through. I never find out if I’ve guessed right who the killer is. My eyes start pricking and that’s it, I’m gone.