Whose reality is it anyway?

My mum used to be one of the most practical, down to earth people I knew. She now lives in a completely different world to the rest of us. This manifests itself in many different ways. At a very basic everyday level she is completely baffled as to the whereabouts of toilets. She will ask quietly, “Is there a toilet I can use here?” This happens in both the flat and the house we have been living in for two years now.  Once pointed in the right direction, she is fine.  That is her reality. 

The TV and the DVD merge in her world in rather bizarre ways.  She has no clue about their differences.  Despite carrying around the DVD South Pacific in her bag everywhere, when I ask her if she wants to watch it, she will invariably say, “Oh, is it on the TV now?” The sailors in HMS Pinafore, which she watches on DVD as she loves the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, reappear a day later when she spots a tanker out at sea in Galle and remarks, “Oh that’ll be where the men sing and dance at night.”  

If characters on TV can be transferred to the real world, it also works the other way round.  The sprawling mansion and grounds of the family house in the series Revenge becomes the Fortress. “There’s that place we go,” she exclaims when she sees it on TV.  When Wimbledon was on last summer, there was a clip of the Queen at a previous event shown repeatedly throughout the week of tennis.  This was proof to my mum that the Queen was in attendance throughout the tournament.  She always remarks on how well my Aunt Margaret (in reality someone who looks like her)  looks  in the audience of one of the Viennese Andre Rieu concert’s  even though part of her knows she passed away a while back.  

Then there’s confusion of place and time. The outskirts of Colombo are pretty consistently Motherwell and Wishaw. She often wants to get on a bus and go and see Flora in Edinburgh.  All high apartment blocks are the JAIC Hilton which I went up one day for a work meeting. This obviously impressed her as she comments on them all by asking me if I was up that one.  Then there’s the neon sign that you can see from my apartment window in the evening. It says “Pearl Hotel”. She remarks, “Oh that’s that garage over there.” This confuses me because I’m not aware she has ever lived anywhere where you could see a garage from the window and certainly not one called the Pearl Hotel.  Then there’s the ‘tennis courts’ in Galle Fort. Every time we are in Galle Fort she will remark on how we are about to see the tennis courts where people play. She is right in that they do look like they have been tennis courts at some point in their history but never have I seen anyone actually playing there. 

Then there’s the things she sees but I just don’t. In the morning we look out over the balcony in Colombo and I see a few buildings, the sea and the some birds soaring over the trees. My mum sees a classroom of children on a rooftop being taught, she presumes, by (these days) two men in black. There was only one for a time but now there seems to be two. She worries about the kids when it rains. The only thing I can see that could remotely be interpreted in this way is a rooftop with a couple of large black water tanks and the tops of some smaller ones.  When we are down south just off the highway and facing the sea just before turning left for Unawatuna, she invariably sees three boats on the horizon regardless of how many boats there actually are. These are three rock formations to the right. This prompted me when she first came over to get her eyes tested but even with the right glasses she still sees the three rocks as boats.

Then there’s her possessiveness, her insecurity and paranoia. A napkin in a restaurant belongs to her, not the restaurant. We now have quite a collection.  Her bag is a constant source of worry as are her watch and glasses. They must never be left anywhere unsafe. This translates into anywhere that is not on her body or in her bag. Everyone (even when nobody is anywhere near) wants to steal her bag, glasses and watch. They must be protected at all costs and hidden frequently.  Even when she is going for a shower every morning, the glasses and watch must be placed hidden on her bed side cabinet just in case someone steals them. I have given up telling her there is no one else in the apartment apart from us. Then of course she does not remember where she put them and then they do become lost (or stolen in her reality).  

It’s a bit of a steep learning curve. You need to know which reality you are in to keep up with her. Otherwise you could get dreadfully confused.

Lost and Found

When I was growing up I don’t remember hiding things. The only time I remember things being hidden was at Christmas when mum (and dad when he was there) would hide the Christmas presents somewhere in the house.  Either because I spent a long time sharing a room with my mum or because I was naturally curious, I would invariably be the one to find the presents long before Christmas. I don’t ever remember believing in Santa though I guess I must have done at some point.  I never really got the point of leaving sherry and shortbread out for him on Christmas Eve.  My brothers would sometimes take to hiding things from each other, but I don’t remember doing it at all.

Now I live in a world of continually vanishing things which later turn up in the most unexpected places.  Why? I share an apartment with a toddler and an octagenerian with dementia.  The toddler is less problematic than the octagenerian. This is because he is fairly predictable.  Although saying that as he gets bigger his range of possible targets expands.  I’ve given up having an apartment with everything in its place. I did try for a while but I surrender to the endless energy and tenacity of the toddler.  Now all low tables are bare, reachable shelves are empty, plant pots are up high, the dining room table has nothing near the edge, the bin is on the kitchen top, my car keys and sunglasses no longer live on the chair by the door, and the plungers are no longer on the floor but on a shelf in the bathroom. When I can’t find something, I look up high for it. This works only if the little person has been the cause of the item’s disappearance.

The octagenerian is more difficult to predict.  Things vanish either due to her ‘packing’ mania or because she is ‘tidying up’. Some things are easy to find though. Her green cloth bag (that goes everywhere with her) ends up with the strangest of contents.  The cloth bag is the first place to look for a missing item.  Packs of cards, TV remotes, nighties, socks, t-shirts, slippers, pens, wrapped up pieces of cake, hotel napkins, tissues, money, keys, letters and cards all end up in the bag. If the item is not in the bag then the drawers in her room are the second most likely hiding place. Scissors, packs of cards, shoes, cakes, coasters, toothbrushes, all end up hidden in the bottom of the drawers.  Sometimes though it takes ages to find things. Shamalee and myself will search high and low for something that was there an hour or so before.  It might turn up under the mattress (which is pretty difficult to move), under the cushions on the couch, in the bin, or in a kitchen drawer or it might never turn up at all.

The result of all this is that you need to have safe places for essential items that neither the toddler nor the octagenerian can reach or see.  One pack of cards has disappeared completely; the other now lives on top of the bookshelf. Remotes move hiding place frequently. Keys live with the cards.  Another result is that you always need to check out what is in the green bag. You never know what you might find! This is difficult to do though as she is never without it and rummaging through it in front of her would be a definite 'no no'.  

These days I can usually take the knowledge of the missing items in my stride. But sometimes when you’ve had a crappy day the last thing you need is to discover you can’t find the TV remote when you come in.  Asking her produces no satisfactory response. She will claim no knowledge of the item – which is true in her world as her short term memory barely functions.  Then begins the usual frustrating search round the apartment for the missing item – sometimes found; sometimes not.

The Pond

We moved a lot when I was growing up. But we were always near to water, whether it was the River Calder in Tannochside, the River Clyde in Bothwell or the loch at Strathclyde Park. Me and the boys went to one of the many primary schools we attended in Tannochside where my mum was also a teacher.  We stayed in a scheme across from the River Calder. I remember being sent out to play with the other kids in the neighbourhood and ending up down at the river’s edge playing on the rope swing, scrambling across a tree trunk which had fallen across the river and become a challenging bridge, or chasing after each other in the mud on the banks of the river.  I can’t imagine kids these days being allowed to do the things we did.

I had a Cindy doll complete with wardrobe and boyfriend who instead of getting all dressed up in outfits to go out with the boyfriend, turned her wardrobe into a jeep and went shooting down the river bank getting caked in mud in the process. She enjoyed all sorts of adventures!  My mum coped with all the mud and the eternal washing of mucky kids, dolls and clothes (this was pre automatic washing machines), and was ready with refreshments (diluting orange and sausage rolls) before chucking us out of doors and back to the river. My memories of those days are all sunny and warm though the mud and the geography would suggest otherwise.

These days my main stretches of water are the sea and the pond. The pond provides a mini stage for all sorts of drama and stunning beauty.  It is right next to the porch in the house down south so provides a natural television when you are sitting have your meals. It is small but teeming with all sorts of wildlife and attractive to all sorts of other wildlife.  It’s one of the best birthday presents I’ve ever had.

Like the regular appearance of the monkeys, mum takes the pond drama in her stride.  We’ve had a baby mongoose who got into the garden, was chased by the three dogs and was so traumatised that it panicked, ran straight into the pond and drowned.  We have a water snake who during times of drought adopts the pond as its home and freaks out everyone in the vicinity.  Mum watches oblivious to danger.  Then we have the sneaky birds. The kingfisher who sits on the gate or the tree overlooking the pond then swoops down in a flash of blue and scoops up an innocent fish and swallows it. A wading bird appeared one day. We sat and watched while the bird stood on the side of the pond, seemingly mesmerised by the water, gracefully stretched out its neck into the pond and picked out a fish. It then flew onto the wall and swallowed it whole.  Mum was put on lookout to scare that one away; to no avail. She forgot the instruction and just sat and watched as one fish after another got eaten.  

Then there’s the frogs! They were the bane of my life for over a year.  I tried all sorts to keep them out of the house. The living room window was covered by mesh half way. I watched as one frog lept over the mesh. I put the mesh higher; the frog climbed up the mesh and then over.  When the mesh went higher still they came in the front or back doors.  I had to install cupboards in the kitchen as I kept finding them in the back on the shelves with the pots behind the curtains. These days there is one that has taken to sleeping behind the trunk that the TV sits on. Mum watches TV and tells me of ‘the thing’ that is crossing the floor. She can’t always remember the word ‘frog’.  Nothing bothers her though – which is just as well.

She loves the beautiful water lilies in the pond. She watches them opening and closing. She anticipates the emergence of others.  She is perplexed when they are not there at the end of the day.  It’s not exactly the River Calder or Clyde or any of the Scottish lochs but it does have its own drama and charm and you don’t have to go anywhere to appreciate it.

 

Locks

Mum is a bit paranoid about doors.  She doesn’t like doors left open at night so she is not too happy down south when the outside door is left open in the evening to allow the cool area to circulate. There are three dogs (one looks like a scary alsation who of course isn’t) so if a stranger was to come into the garden and up the path, you would certainly know about it.

 

Towards the end of her stay in her own house in Scotland she had an extremely complicated way of locking the front door at night which involved numerous elastic bands and 4 separate locks (it was so complicated I worried about being able to get out quickly in a fire when I stayed there – especially when I was on crutches!)  This was because of ‘the boys’. She had a thing about ‘the boys’ breaking into her house, stealing from her and using her shower. (‘The boys’ was the term she used to use for my brothers when they were small but these boys were not my brothers).  

She would get herself into a state because she had to cook for ‘the boys’. She frequently called the local police to report ‘the boys’ banging on her door or wandering around the house. The police would dutifully come out, visit, check the premises and declare there to be no boys in the neighbourhood.  One time the police arrived and she had the gas rings on the cooker all on because she was cooking for ‘the boys’.  Consequently social work came and did something to the cooker so that she couldn’t operate it. The police must have got a bit fed up of being called out. This figment of her imagination was one of the symptoms of her Alzheimer’s.

The outside door in the apartment in Colombo needs to be locked (and the key hidden) to prevent mum’s escape if she is in one of those moods. The internal doors though definitely do not need to be locked. The problem with them is that if mum locks them there is no guarantee she can unlock them so in the flat Shamalee has stuffed most of the locks with wads of paper to prevent the locks working.  Unfortunately mum’s bedroom door slammed the other day because the balcony door in the bedroom was open and there was a gale blowing.  After this, the handle turned on the door but the snib did not react. It just stayed put.

This happened in the afternoon. By evening I had completely forgotten about it. I put mum to bed and went to watch some comedy on the TV. She got up to check I was still in the apartment and then went back to bed. I pulled the door to and instead of it being a bit stiff and stopping before it shut, like it usually did, it just pulled shut. Then of course I tried to open it. And then I remembered what had happened in the afternoon.  The handle just turned and nothing happened. 

I didn’t want to make a big deal of it as if she had realised she was locked in a room and I couldn’t open the door, she could have panicked.  Luckily I have a very understanding and practical landlord. He answered the phone on his road home from work and he must have heard the panic in my voice. He said he would go home, get his toolbox and come right over. By the time he came over an hour later I was a nervous wreck and mum was fast asleep. I had managed to remove two screws from the top of the handle but couldn’t budge the one at the bottom.  He and his helper managed to get the handle off easily. But they still couldn’t open the door. He fiddled about inside the lock and pulled out lots of little bits of it – it was all smashed inside – eventually the door opened.  Mum woke up to find me and two strange men in her bedroom taking the lock and handle off the door. She asked what we were doing, I told her, and she went back to sleep.  She now has neither lock nor handle on that door.

Strangely, when we came south that weekend and I went to give her a shower, I pushed her bedroom door shut – it is usually very stiff to close. It shut too and locked and I couldn’t get it open from the inside. Luckily someone was in the house and could get it opened from the outside.

I’m now waiting to lock her in the car as these things do tend to happen in threes.

Motorways

I’ve always associated motorway driving with holidays. Probably because the first holidays me and my brothers had, involved long car journeys on the motorway. I remember clearly being in the boot of our Volkswagen Beetle with the boys facing out of the back window, scoring points for all the white lights and red lights we could spot on the cars behind us and in the opposite carriageway.  Jam donuts were also memorable. In those days jam donuts had not hit Scotland and the good thing about travelling through England was the jam donuts in the motorway services. The bacon, eggs, sausages and beans for breakfast were another favourite (in my pre veg only days of course).

So I was quite delighted when the first expressway opened in Sri Lanka and doubly so because it reduced my journey south every weekend by an hour.  In fact that’s not quite true. My initial reaction to the expressway was one of horror: I imagined mass pile ups caused by 4x4s being driven by idiots. So I waited a good month before trying it out. The horror was never realised because (1) it is a toll road so not used by many and (2) most vehicles are not allowed on it. Once I had experienced it though I never looked back. The only time I have not been on it since it opened was when a landslide closed it.

The expressway is like nothing else in Sri Lanka. If you didn’t know better you would imagine yourself in Malaysia or Singapore. It’s a toll road but worth every rupee.  It is very quiet – no motorbikes (except police), bicycles, tractor engines, bullock carts, tuk tuks, or cows. Although being Sri Lanka, it is impossible to stop dogs sleeping in the middle of it and snakes and lizards from crossing. After a while the services opened half way down the expressway. These are signalled by a sign depicting the services it has and hasn’t got. Half have been crossed off. I live in the hope that petrol will be available there but so far no. The only available things are lots of parking, very large and clean toilets, good coffee and food outlets (one does a mean apple pie), a small Food City supermarket and small Laksala’s just in case you want to pick up a craft elephant mid way. 

My mum and me are on this expressway twice a week between Colombo and Unawatuna. She feels she is in China when she is on it. I am not sure why – the only thing I can think of is that at some point early on in her stay here I mentioned the fact that the road had been build partly by Chinese.  She says there is “too much green stuff” by which she means trees and paddy fields,  and not enough houses on either side. She worries about how the people in the houses manage to do their shopping. She likes the clean straight road and the lack of traffic on it. What there are lots of, is police, either on motorbikes or in cars or standing at the side of the road with speed guns.  The ratio of police to other travellers on the road is very high.

The other week, we got more than half way just passed the services when mum declared she needed to go to the toilet.  I therefore put my foot down in an attempt to get to our exit quickly and therefore get to the nearest toilet quickly. Normally I keep to the speed limit. This time I didn’t. I noticed a police car on the opposite side of the road and reduced my speed but it was too late - he had got me. When I pulled off at the exit the police asked for my license and proceeded to fine me. I explained quite frantically that the only reason I was speeding was so that mum could get to a toilet and could he possibly help in directing us to one preferably before the whole fining drama and before we had a little accident. He must have seen the growing panic in my eyes so he told his superior and soon we had a little crowd of police all listening in to the problem.  The superior, Mr S K, was a very pleasant chap and took charge of the situation. He said she could use the toilet in the police building across the road. So the key to the toilet was found. Unfortunately it was upstairs so the little crowd watched as mum walked across the road and I helped her to climb the stairs. The toilets were immaculate. Obviously not that many ladies had ever been in the building. The deed done we then climbed back down the stairs where I received my fine. 

Mr K was most apologetic about having to fine me. He explained that the speed gun was computerised and his building had cameras. So there was nothing to be done. Mum was quite amused at the episode. She liked all the lovely young men who had come to her rescue by providing her with an immaculate toilet.

The baby

 

I’ve never really been one for babies. They always strike me as far too wobbly and breakable. They are noisy, make a mess and need to be constantly watched.  If someone offers me a baby to hold I’m likely to go in the opposite direction. My mother though never had that problem. There’s two years between me and my younger brother and ten months between him and my youngest brother. This means that at some point she had three children under 5 for quite a while. She managed fine. Even when she started teacher training college when I was about 5. Since then she worked as a primary teacher until she took early retirement at 55. She juggled kindergarten, primary, a divorce and we all turned out fine.

I never really thought I’d be happy to have a baby around every day. However with the arrival of Erin, I’ve learnt the value of babies. Another carer who I was reading the other day said that she could never understand why old people’s homes and creches were not near each other. Old people and babies get on fine.  One’s with Alzheimer’s even more so.  My mum and Erin, who is now 11 months, are a case in point.

 I remember when it struck me that my mum’s carer must be pregnant. She was getting bigger and bigger and I could no longer really ignore it. For some reason she avoided telling me. But eventually I had to ask.  When it was confirmed, I was dreading the day when she wouldn’t be working for me anymore because of the baby. However that’s not what happened. She left on the Friday, on the Saturday morning she had the baby, then she had about 6 weeks off and was back at work, baby in tow. And he is a charmer. One of the happiest babies I’ve come across.  The only time he’s not smiling is when he’s sleeping.

So Erin arrives in the morning with his mum and stays with her all day. I come home at lunchtime and there’s the baby in the middle of the living room floor and my mum on the couch involved in some engrossing activity with him. He wriggles, he wobbles about, he watches the fan, he responds to my mum, he smiles when she talks to him. We’ve gone through the sitting up stage, the crawling all over the place stage and we are currently in the standing but very wobbly and often falling forwards or backwards stage.  Mum has been mesmerised by them all.  And then there’s Baby TV. Now that’s a new one for me. Would never have dreamt such a thing existed. It’s quite hypnotic and puts me to sleep, but has a very pleasant effect on the baby and my mum.

Mum worries about him too. Our living room has had to be rearranged. Mum thought the baby could pull the stools down on top of himself so they had to go. She was probably right. Things are being moved higher and higher up. Potential tunnels are being blocked. These days he can fairly move around the living room. Mum follows on hands and knees to make sure he doesn’t bump his head on things he has a habit of going under.  They  make quite a sight.   This is the woman who usually has trouble getting herself out of a seat.  Both me and Shamalee used to get into a panic about her being able to get back up again off the floor. But she manages, slowly and carefully. Shamalee filmed the whole thing with her phone. Proof that when there’s a will there is flexibility and strength.

The Great Escape

When I was growing up a popular movie on at bank holidays, Xmas and weekend afternoons was The Great Escape.  We watched it whenever it was on. Me and my brothers lived in the hope that Steve McQueen would finally manage somehow to ride over the fence to freedom.  Of course he never did but I am sure that film instilled in me a lifelong love of motorbikes and a passion for freedom.   Therefore it strikes me as rather ironic that one of my current daily tasks is to make sure my mum doesn’t escape the safe realms of either the apartment in Colombo or the house down south. Recently she won.  First the shoes went then she went.

She had had her white sandals since she got to Sri Lanka. She didn’t wear them at first but gradually they became her favourite shoes.  This suited me because they were quite wide, didn’t put pressure on her toes (which helped the ongoing toe issue) and could be slipped on and off easily. That was until the buckle started acting up on the left shoe.  Instead of catching, it would slip out in a matter of seconds which meant that her shoe could not be fastened.  Drastic action was required and the shoes were sent to the cobblers via tuk tuk to be fixed. Our trusty tuk tuk driver Ranjith was despatched to solve the problem. I forgot about it until hours later a rather sheepish Ranjith turned up and explained that the shoes had fallen out of the tuk tuk and, despite going up and down the route he had taken continually for a few hours, could not be located. I am now on the lookout for a person in Colombo wearing my mum’s white sandals!

This did not go down too well with my mum. In fact she didn’t really take it on board at all. Repeatedly she would ask me where her white shoes were and repeatedly I would tell her that they had fallen out of the tuk tuk and they were lost.  I would then get this accusing look that said , “You have hidden my shoes because you are an awful person put on this earth to piss me off”. This went on for about a week. I then took her to Clarks in Crescat, a shopping mall in Colombo, to get her a new pair. We must have tried on all the shoes in the shop.  Either they weren’t wide enough or she hated them or  they didn’t have them in her size or she couldn’t walk in them. Eventually I bought her one pair of brown rather smart looking shoes which she was quite taken with.  I now can't get these off her feet. They are cutting into one side of her foot but she refuses to wear slippers and immediately puts these on in the morning so she is sporting a continual plaster to cover where they are rubbing.

She must have been wearing these when she escaped.  I was in Chennai on work when it happened. I didn’t know anything about it until I got back though my suspicions were raised when I got a text message from a friend asking when I was back – this was unusual as it was a very short trip.  Shamalee, mum’s  carer, was with her and the baby was with Shamalee.  Shamalee was ironing in another room, the baby was sleeping,  and the next thing she knew mum had gotten up, unlocked the front door (something she has never been known to do before), gone out the door,  locked the door after her, and taken off.  For an 85 year old lady who is incredibly unsteady on her feet and has no clue where she is going at the best of times (even inside the apartment) this was indeed rather remarkable.   Goodness knows where she was going. Usually when she tries to escape down south she is on route to either her friend Evelyn’s in Hamilton or her friend Flora’s in Edinburgh.

Shamalee phoned some people on the emergency backup list for when I was away and one started for the apartment immediately. Mum had taken Shamalee’s keys with her of course. Luckily the kitchen door opens onto the apartment block hallway (in order that you can put your rubbish out). This is the biggest secret in the apartment as mum could easily just walk out of it as you can’t lock it from the inside. However she doesn’t know where that door goes and has never attempted to open it; it has also never been opened in her presence. So Shamalee with the baby, who had been woken up abruptly and was howling by this time, went out this door and started looking for her. The apartment is on the third floor. Eventually she found mum who had managed to climb down the three floors using the stairs and was sitting on the bottom step being watched by the building security guards.  By this time my friend she had phoned  had turned up and started the long process of calmly coercing mum back into the apartment. Can’t hurry this or get angry as that is totally self defeating.  A long conversation about dogs, trains, boats, babies, caravan holidays and all sorts was had by mum, Shamalee and my friend, under the rather perplexed gaze of the security guards, until finally the offer of a cup of tea got her into the lift and back into the apartment.  All was well again.

The key is no longer left in the front door and is well hidden.

 

Trains

 

Mum’s fascination with trains in Sri Lanka started when she came with my brother for Christmas in 1989. This was when we hired the Viceroy Special, a steam train, to go up to the hill country for Christmas. A colleague had suggested getting a group of people together to hire the steam train to take us all up to the hills for the holidays. Despite my natural inclination to run a mile from large group events, this one seemed like too good an idea to miss. So he set it up and we all boarded the train in Colombo. There must have been about 20 of us and it seemed a bargain. Mind you, there were not a lot of tourists around in those days; too many people intent on killing each other. The journey was from Colombo to Nanuoya which is the closest you can get to Nuwera Eliya by train.  It did take a long time or so it seemed. The track stems from the planters' desire to avoid a 12 day bullock cart journey to take their goods to Colombo for shipment. The section we were on was completed in 1885 and took the best part of a day.   

Mum loved the majesty of it all. I'm sure she felt like the Queen! Kids ran after the train waving at everyone. Villagers stopped what they were doing to wave at us as we went past.  Crowds gathered every time we stopped to fill up on water (which happened too many times to mention). We could stop the train anywhere. You just needed to tell the driver you wanted to take a picture. We travelled through lots of different landscapes, climates and geographical elevations, stopping to enjoy the valleys, mountains and waterfalls on route.  The railway viaducts, bridges and tunnels  are still  impressive engineering feats today. It was one of those experiences that stay with you,  and mum always talked about the time we hired a train.   At the end of it mum got a commemorative plate with a picture of the train on it and this hung on her wall in her house in Bothwell right up to the day she moved here.  We stayed in the Hill Club that Christmas.  My brother had to borrow a tie before he was allowed in the dining room.  It was cold but we were well provided for with fires in the rooms and a hot water bottle each.

Like boats, mum seems drawn to trains. And they do seem to be part of our landscape now. The Swimming Club in Colombo where we often go for lunch or dinner has got the main railway track south running between the pool and the sea. Mum can sit and count the trains that go past at frequent intervals. She does try to count how many go up and how many go down but totals elude her. Despite the fact that there are some new trains around the majority are still very open and certainly the commuter trains are typically jam packed making mum worry about casualties. She is always happy to go to the Swimming Club; she never remembers its name but the minute you mention the trains, something clicks and she readily gets her shoes on.  

The track south follows us as we drive up and down at the weekends. There is a stretch at Moratuwa  that runs along the coast parallel to the road. Considering the usual state of mum’s memory  it never ceases to surprise me that  the minute we hit this stretch she will ask “Where are the trains?” and even more surprisingly  9 times out of ten, one will appear. This is even wierder when you discover she thinks she is in Motherwell at the time.  Trains running along the same track (but much further south) can also be heard from the poolside at the Fortress as the track runs parallel to the coast but just a little inland.  She can be watching for the ships passing when all of a sudden you can hear the train horns in the background  warning people and cars not to cross at the railway crossings behind the hotel. “Train,” she will say.

Even in the flat in Colombo trains intrude. Again the same rail track is only a block or so away. And amidst all the other noise of colombo on a busy day, the train sound can be heard distinctly. Unawatuna is no different. The Galle-Matara track runs a fair distance away behind the house. Nevertheless when  there's a train (and it's a popular commuter and tourist route) mum spots it. She even imagines trains when there is none to hear. The noise of the fan on the porch in Unawatuna she always claims is a passing train. This would be a bit of a feat if it was the case because it is always on. But I've given out pointing out the noise is from the fan. If she wants it to be a train, then so be it!

Small feet, processed food, VIPs and bras

 

Mum always had a sense of humour . A stock phrase of my mum’s when I was growing up was, “Oh you’re very funny!” said in a very sarcastic tone of voice.  This was her response to numerous incidents in my childhood.  I  often wondered about her interpretation of reality even before the onslaught of Alzheimer’s. One of my earliest memories of her is her explanation of the ancient Chinese habit of foot binding.  The Chinese (and apologies in advance to the Chinese for her rather politically incorrect statement), according to her,  had to have small feet so that you could fit so many of them into the country.  I still don’t know if she was serious. It was said with such a straight face.

The fact that she was a primary teacher for years is a bit worrying. Goodness knows what she was teaching. I grew up surrounded by bits of projects that she happened to be doing at school. That year must have had something to do with China. One year it was the Mexican Olympics therefore me and the boys had to learn all about Mexico.  Another year it was the Kon-tiki expedition  therefore we had various raft building attempts scattered round the house.

 Alzheimers doesn’t tend to be the funniest of things. But occasionally her sense of humour still surfaces. “Well that’s one problem I’ll never have,” she declares sitting next to me on the sofa. I’ve been engrossed in some mundane office work on the laptop so am completely oblivious to what she could possibly be referring to. "What?" I ask.  “That,” she responds, pointing to the TV. “That” turns out to be the BBC news which is doing a piece on processed food making people die young.  “I’ll never die young!” she says.  “Neither will I!” I respond and for some reason we both found this hysterically funny.  

Another giggle resulted from my unusual dress one morning.  I was en route to the president’s having been invited to the launch of a new educational product of the Presidential Office.  Not a very formal person, a jacket is not usually part of my work clothes.  When I donned one on my out to work that morning, she asked why. I responded, ”Got to go to the President’s house this morning, mum.” To which she replied, “Why? What have you done?”

Last weekend we were driving along the highway in broad daylight when coming in the other direction was a procession of military vehicles guarding some fancy black cars with some no doubt equally fancy VIPs ensconced inside definitely not respecting the speed limit.  All of them were sporting headlights -  beams full on. “Look at that”, says she, ”Can’t they see where they are going ? Oh maybe they have all been drinking!”

The most recent giggle revolves round bras.  Bras have been an issue for a while now.  It  started when she broke her shoulder shortly after I broke my leg and ankle whilst in the UK a couple of years ago.  We were a fine pair. In the kitchen she could reach cupboards with one arm and I could just cook while balancing on crutches – transporting meals or cups from A to B was an issue – she could do it with one hand; I could do it with neither.  Bras were another issue. With her broken shoulder she just could not put on a bra. The problem was solved temporarily by buying her front fastening bras. 

When she came to stay it became my problem again. It’s not very easy to put a front fastening bra on someone else. It’s a bit of stretch in more ways than one. She does not like taking off her bra at night and there’s no point arguing.  (Anyway she’s in good company;  Marilyn Monroe also slept in her bra.)  I usually give her a cup of tea while I have my shower in the morning. By the time I get back to her she has magically managed to remove the bra without removing her nightie and it lies folded beautifully on her bedside table. 

I decided to ease the bra situation by buying some regular back fastening ones. I reasoned that although she would not be able to fasten them,  it would make my life easier.   So I took advantage of a friend going to the UK to order some new bras from Marks and Spencers  (M and S don’t deliver to Sri Lanka) and got her some back fastening bras. They arrived and are a dream to put on. What I hadn’t anticipated was getting them off.  The first morning she had one on I went in to give her a cup of tea.  She was looking incredibly worried and I wondered what was wrong. “I can’t get it off!” she said in a completely perplexed tone.   It took me a minute (it was first thing in the morning) but the penny dropped and I realized what she was taking about.  She couldn’t remove the bra.  I had to laugh and soon so was she. I had to remind her about the new bra and that it was back fastening.  

Unfortunately Alzheimer’s being Alzheimer’s she often fails to remember this.

This little piggy went to market

 

One of my early memories is me and the boys climbing onto my mum’s bed before she got up and coaxing her to endlessly dramatise  the classic nursery rhyme  “This little piggy went to market” accompanied by the obligatory tweaking of the toes. This resulted in hysterics all round after the classic line “and this little piggy went wee wee wee wee all the way home,” which prompted her to abandon the toes and tickle us all over.  I had to ‘Google’ the rhyme. It turns out it was first heard in 1728 but not published till 1760. I always thought she had made it up.

Apart from that early memory I have never really given toes a lot of thought. In fact, can’t say I’ve ever seriously considered them.   I can see why fingers and fingernails are necessary but toes and toenails – that’s  a bit of a mystery. In the last 6 months though toes have been on my mind a lot. My mum has two rather problematic big toe nails. They have completely different issues. Both of which probably stem from her previous long term and long distance walking habit. She used to go walking round the village, walking to Tesco and back (quite a walk), walking round Strathclyde Park (I could barely keep up), walking into the next town and back, walking anywhere and everywhere.  She couldn’t stop either – she has a condition where if she stands still she wobbles and falls over so it you met her while walking you had to walk with her if you wanted a chat. She had a thing about walking and I seem to remember her going to a chiropodist on a regular basis. Now that may have been for her strange toe nails. I have no clue and she can’t remember.

Both toe nails were a bit dicey when she arrived over a year ago.  Both very much thicker in places than they should have been. One was growing at a slant and looked completely askew. The other was prone to infections and was beginning to curl inwards.  After looking for a chiropodist and being told that they didn’t exist in Sri Lanka by my local hospital, I reluctantly succumbed to cutting her toe nails fairly often in order to combat the peculiarities that were the 2 big toenails. Despite my attempts the big toe nail became ingrown and infected  which was very painful and therefore had to be faced up to and acted on.

I dreaded the whole doctor thing. I reckoned the nail would have to be removed.  Visions of torture scenes in the movies loomed large in my brain. I typically imagine the worst possible scenarios. (I’m very good at risk assessment).  I imagined my mum screaming  while the doctor struggled to pull her nail out  while she was held down by numerous nurses;  this was followed by a heart attack because it was all too much for someone her age. If I could get beyond the actual pulling out of the nail, then I had the resultant wound being infected, going all horrible, then getting gangrenous and the whole foot having to be removed. Like I say, I seem to be a pessimist.  I think I ended up being closer to a heart attack than she did. And this was even before it was confirmed that it had to be removed.

The pain continued and we did end up at the hospital. Strangely enough we ended up at the same doctor who supervised the healing of my ankle and leg after my op in Scotland. This was good as he had proved sound on my healing so I reckoned he could probably deal with a toenail.  Just as I had imagined it, he confirmed that the toenail would have to be removed;  but he said that he might be able to just cut the sides of it and not have to take the whole thing out. And this could be done under a local anaesthetic. This hadn’t been part of my horror scenario – either the part removal or the anaesthetic!   Mum was put on two very large tablets which became known as the toe tablets  the week before the op. 

I worried about it all week. Mum forgot about it completely. She was only reminded about her toe when she accidentally touched it with something and it was sore.  I wasn’t sure how much she was understanding exactly what was going to happen but we had had a rather coherent conversation at the beginning of all this because of the pain. We turned up and she had to get a test to make sure she wouldn’t react to the anaesthetic. This involved the nurse taking some blood and then writing on her arm round the needle site. This intrigued mum and we spent a good while trying to figure out what it said. Her writing wasn’t very clear.  Then she was taken away into an inner room.  All I could hear was laughter which turned out to be at her attempt at climbing onto the rather high bed. She couldn’t do it so she came back out to where I was and I was kicked out of that place.  I tried to focus on Facebook on my iphone while waiting for the screaming. There was none. The doctor came out and said ‘come and see’.  My immediate reaction was that I really didn’t want to see a bloody toe and could happily live without that particular experience.  Of course you can’t really say that to a doctor so I followed him and looked. No blood – there must have been some earlier but not when I looked.  He’d managed to just cut the edges down the sides off. It actually looked like a normal nail for the first time in over a year.

She got a huge bandage on her toe which continually surprised her whenever she noticed it. She didn’t remember the small op or the whole hospital experience. Sometimes Alzheimers comes in handy.  The toe nail has now healed beautifully.  We visited a beauty salon today for her to have a pedicure. She loved it.  Hopefully regular pedicures will keep the other big toe nail under control and we won’t have to go back to the hospital.  I doubt though that I will be tweaking her toes anytime soon to the accompaniment of “This little piggy went to market.”

 

 

 

Going to the seaside

I have fond memories of going to the seaside when I was a kid. These were day trips at the weekend. Mum’d prepare a picnic and steaming hot flasks of tea, pack spades and pails, blow up rings, travel blankets and large towels, and we'd all pile into a car and head for the coast. Prestwick or Ayr were the usual destinations involving a drive through the countryside over the Eaglesham Road. These days there’s a motorway all the way there if you go via Glasgow. But in those days the only way to go was over the moors to the coast. There was always great excitement in the car on route. Who would see the sea first? There is a long straight road and you come over a hill and there is the sea in all its glory. “There’s the sea,” we’d all scream from the back of the car. We only actually lived about an hour away from the sea but in those days it seemed to be an expedition to go on these trips. Now,  I do not remember the cold. But it must have been freezing.  I do remember running around in a swimsuit in and out of the sea (in Scotland??) with my brothers. And racing over the dunes, building sandcastles with moats, watching the holes fill up with water and then disappear and then refill with another wave. And when it must have been too cold even for us hardened Scots, we just ran about in the sand fully clothed,  collecting shells, getting our shoes wet when we didn’t run away from the waves fast enough and poking about in the rock pools to see what we could find.  

Food and drink always tasted so much better by the sea. We would have ham sandwiches (before I became vegetarian),  juicy salmon sandwiches with lots of mayonnaise, and lots of tea to warm us up. We’d even have hot Heinz tomato soup sometimes. In fact I can remember fighting with the windbreak to keep it upright as we all huddled behind it protected from the cold gales drinking tomato soup out of mugs. This was summer in Scotland.

These days though in Sri Lanka I am far away from the west coast of Scotland. We still go to the seaside.  I’m fortunate enough to have ‘a seaside’ at the bottom of the road from the house in Unawatuna. The beach there is one of the best in the world. We don’t though spend a lot of time on it because of the difficulty of walking on the sand. We do though spend time at the beach restaurants and will sometimes walk down the road and sit on the beach at sunset, then phone for Chaminda to come  and pick us up in the tuk tuk as the hill back up is a bit of a challenge.  

Where we do go most weekends is the Fortress. This is a lovely hotel in Koggala about a ten minute drive from my house in Unawatuna. It is right on the coast. Turtles come in to the shallow waters caused by the reef in front of the hotel.  It has large grounds and even when it is full it nearly feels that full. There is always plenty of space for everyone. There is a 50 metre pool which must be one of the best in the country for swimming.  And you often have it all to yourself. The pool boys can organise a shady space for me and mum either poolside or under the trees. I can swim and read and mum can watch the ships out at sea, the squirrels racing around,  and the people and their antics or she can doze on the lounger. Lunches are good. We share margarita pizza cooked in their pizza oven which is great. Or if we are just there for the afternoon then she has pots of tea and I have ginger beer.  She gets looked after. The pool boys and the waiters spoil her. She is probably the oldest person in the place and the only one to keep her clothes on.  We do tours of the grounds to keep up her walking.  When I am swimming they check on her periodically.  When I have visitors I always ask permission to bring them to the hotel. We are members and it’s not a hotel where you can sign people in or buy pool tickets.  They have always let me bring people in. We spend days there and have lunch and she can feel part of a larger family. The pre-dementia her would have loved the place and been really impressed by its grandeur.  As it is, she just likes the peace and quiet by the waves and the tankers in the distance. It’s not picnics at Prestwick but it suits the pair of us at the moment.

A Way with Words

 

Mum was a master crossword solver. The books tell you that crossword puzzles and other word and number games help stave off alzheimers.  Perhaps if mum hadn’t been such an avid crossword addict she would have succumbed to alzheimers earlier than she did. When she retired  her day would start with the crossword. She might finish it quickly in which case there were other word games and Sudoku in the same newspaper; or you might find her at midday still puzzling over one of the clues surrounded by thesaurus, dictionary and encyclopaedia.  She always got there in the end .

And even when she first arrived in Sri Lanka  and I was doing crossword puzzles by the beach, she could still have a go and get the odd one or two. These days though she doesn’t try.   Working in the field of English language teaching I am on one level professionally interested in what is happening to her language. On a personal level it is very sad. She always had a range and depth of vocabulary to be envied. These days though there are a lot of signs that her language ability is not just diminishing but disappearing.

Every three months she has an appointment with the neurologist,  a calm Indian gentleman with a lovely friendly manner. We visited him last week. He tests her memory .  Her visual ability is fine. She can still copy diagrams quite successfully.  Reality is a puzzle though. She has no clue as to day,  month or time.  Thankfully he didn’t ask her where she was as I’m sure she would have said Wishaw or Edinburgh.  She scored really badly on two areas: naming things in a group and remembering  4 simple words 5 minutes after being given them. Asked to name as many animals as she could in a minute, with serious prompting she managed cat and dog.  Remembering  4 words even when she had said them a few times with the neurologist was almost impossible. Even with serious prompting she only got 1 out of 4.

She loves language; but increasingly she has issues.  She forgets the names of things; so squirrels become wriggly things; the BBC news on tv becomes the newspaper;  sky and sea become blue stuff. Things that have specific names become  generic, collective or more high frequency things. For example, lorries become cars, glasses , cups.  Pool and pond become confused. “Were you in that pond?” She says of the Fortress pool.  She is losing pronoun use. This manifests itself in gender confusion where kids are concerned. Himashi down south who is a little three year old girl, is invariably talked about as “he”. Arran, the baby in Colombo, is mostly referred to as “she”.  I suppose it’s not a surprise as neither of them really wear gender specific clothes. Himashi prefers to run about in as little as possible – although when going out visiting with the family can be clearly seen in a dress. Arran is usually in a one piece. So perhaps the pronoun confusion is understandable.

She is though almost desperately hanging on to language and she still gets enjoyment out of it. She names things all the time.  “’Flying fish,” she declares at the start of the drive south last Friday. I’m not sure how I am meant to reply to that. She had seen it on a shop. “Cow” she’ll exclaim as one crosses the road in front of us. “Dog,” as one is spotted in the middle of the highway. This usually produces a conversation of “Dead dog?”, (referring to a time when there were lots of dead dogs on the highway), “No, I think it’s sleeping.”  “Don’t drive down the hole,” she says quite a lot. This refers to the drainage ditches alongside most roads in Sri Lanka.  “Caravan – that’s not a caravan,” she says, referring to the brand name of the van in front of us. She reads everything, the ticker tape across  the BBC news, TV programme names at the bottom of the tv screen (though she has no hope of following the actual programme) , the Ceylinco Insurance sign on top of a building outside the apartment window in Colombo, any and all shops signs, license numbers of vehicles in front of us she takes particular delight in reciting especially if they have double numbers, the places on the buses (that can be tricky – Ambalangoda, Karapitiya -  but she’ll have a go). Her ability to read certainly is not deteriorating. Her ability to remember and use language accurately certainly is.

Shoes or Slippers

At this late stage in my life finding myself in charge of clothing another person is to be honest a bit of a burden. I’ve never been fussed about clothes. As long as they were comfortable that was fine.  And I’ve never been responsible for another person’s clothes. Now I am.

When mum was a teenager her Aunt Ann made her clothes and she was always immaculate in lovely dresses for her tennis match teas and her Scottish country dancing. I’ve seen the photos.   She refused for years to throw away gowns and other untouched clothes until me and my friend Anne took her in hand one day and went through her wardrobe (cos you couldn’t find anything in it and couldn’t get anything else in it) and threw out anything that she hadn’t worn in the last 10 years and wasn’t likely to wear.  By that stage in the Alzheimer’s she was ok with it.

Clothes have a special significance for mum. When she was sectioned in hospital they took away all her clothes and only brought out for her what she had to wear that day. All her clothes were locked away in a walk-in-cupboard in another part of the hospital. The reason for this was to prevent her from walking out of the hospital.  The rationale being that if she didn’t have outside shoes and a coat she wouldn’t walk out of the main door. Needless to say it didn’t work. The main door was meant to be locked; but if you waited long enough someone would open it and it didn’t close very quickly. Also the nurses would sneak out to have a smoke leaving another door open.  With nothing else to do all day mum must have just watched the doors.  She could frequently be found wandering in the grounds or the car park or trying to get into other wards. Her piece de resistance was when she had got out, walked all the way in her slippers and jumper over to a friend’s house on the other side of the town -a good one hour walk. Her friend was most perturbed to see her and phoned my friend who used to take her up to the hospital to visit her and asked her why Chris was there. Had she been let out? My friend told her to keep her there, phoned the hospital (nobody had noticed she had gone missing) and rushed over in her car to pick her up and return her to the hospital.

So the point is she doesn’t like being separated from her clothes. She has to know where they are and where they are going. This makes washing them a bit tricky and means she likes to keep them on if she can.  She is also always saying that she has no clothes. A quick pull out of the drawers in Colombo or a pointing to the clothes rack down south alleviates this concern.  She packs constantly. (In fact she has to be watched when out at restaurants as the napkins frequently end up neatly packed and shoved into her bag.) She only has a small Barefoot cloth bag but she manages to squeeze into it her nightie, a t shirt, her hankies, her comb, cards from her friends and family, and her purse containing lots of Sri Lankan coins. ‘The bag’ itself must never be lost. It goes everywhere with her. Since she continually puts it places and then forgets where she’s put it, hours are spent searching for ‘the bag’. On one level this attention to her clothes is a reaction against the hospital experience; on another level they are one of the few things that are actually hers here. She has some photographs but her house has been rented and her furniture now is in my flat. So clothes are precious.

Getting dressed is a challenge for both of us.  I wash and dress her.  Her trousers have to be turned down just so. I presume this was because at one point in the not so distant past a pair of trousers were too long and so she just turned them over at the top rather than turned up a hem on them.  Now all  of them have to be turned down regardless of their length. Trousers must have pockets for her innumerable bits of tissues. If they don’t, tissues will be found secreted about her person. And when going to bed, she calls nighties “ridiculous things!” and exclaims “Is that another one from Robert?” My brother brought over quite a few the last time he came. Socks must be whipped off quickly before she realizes they have gone.  Finding trousers for her to wear is a definite challenge. She has worn out the seat in a few because getting the right ones is difficult. They must be beige, brown or grey, elastic waisted (no buttons or clasps) and have pockets.  Also because we are in Sri Lanka they must be light weight.

 “Slippers” and “shoes” cause endless confusion.  She never understands why she has to wear one to go outside and one to stay inside.  Or why she has to keep changing them. I do try to remember to check before we go anywhere.  But it doesn’t always work.  At one point I only noticed that she still had her slippers on when we arrived at the restaurant on the beach – too late to do anything about it. Luckily it was dark and nobody noticed. Once though when we left the house in the car to go to the Fortress, we had to turn back because she had on her slippers, not her shoes.  It was broad daylight and someone would have noticed.  They are most definitely slipper looking – Marks and Spencer style.

I have tried to simplify the whole clothes scenario by keeping some clothes in Colombo and some in Unawatuna. And this works to an extent. However her habit of stuffing her bag with clothes has meant that tops that should be down south end up in Colombo and vice versa.  It continues to be a challenge.

 

 

Walking and Canoodling Couples

 

Mum used to walk for miles. I’m told that Alzheimer’s patients love walking which is part of the problem as they will head off knowing where they are going, forget on route and get lost.  Even before she got Alzheimer’s though mum loved walking. One of her favourite walks was round Strathclyde Park, a manmade lake and park just outside of our village – a good 90 minute walk.  She would try and get other people to go with her but if they wouldn’t she would just head off on her own. I would often worry about her especially as she got older as some of the paths could be very secluded and I could just see her getting attacked. However she was always fine.  Strathclyde Park was (and still is presumably) a haven for all sorts: there were the campers cycling or walking round the park; there were the sailing enthusiasts on their boats on the lake; there were the rowers, practicing on the water; there were the dog walkers, striding along with dogs everywhere; there were the families having picnics; there were the people feeding the birds usually surrounded by huge menacing looking swans. And there was a lot to look at:-  funfair with roller coaster and big wheel; waterskiers, rowing boats, sailing dinghies; swans, cygnets and ducks; football games at one side, a small beach in the middle, and the Water Sports Centre which boasted a rather good cafe overlooking the lake at the other side.

When she was sectioned in hospital I used to take her there just to get her out in the fresh air. Then she had been in hospital for a while without any exercise and really could not walk very far. That was the first indication that physically she was deteriorating. She would ask to sit down on one of the many seats, then resume the walk but we never made it the full way round. Suited me, because after having broken my leg and ankle not that long before, I wasn’t so much up to it either.  So we escaped to the cafe as often as not both for something to do and to escape the cold . And we would partake of the very typically Scottish fare: Tunnocks snowballs; plates of chips with lashings of salt vinegar and brown sauce, bridies and pies, bags of crisps, toasted sandwiches, steaming hot broth of one kind or another and endless cups of tea.

When she arrived in Sri Lanka, it was quickly obvious that I needed to get her out and about walking as she was slowing down and was incredibly wobbly – probably both as a result of 5 months in hospital with no exercise and also from generally getting older. Not the easiest of things to find in Sri Lanka – a place where you can safely and comfortably walk.  I thought it would be easy – lovely weather; long stretches of beach – what could possibly be difficult about it? However it was. Beach walks were attempted and quickly discarded. Sinking into the sand made her even wobblier. My ankle is also not that great on anything graded. Steps are fine. Slopes are not. So beach walks we don’t do.  

Galle, post tsunami, now has a long ‘promenade’ running along the sea front.  Ideal I thought. However with no shade, traffic belching smoke, menacing dogs and passed out people often strewn around to be walked over, not really. We did stick to it for a while in the early evening when it was cooler. Galle Fort you would think would be good. Again, tried it for a while. The walls make the roads cooler ; but there isn’t a view and the roads are cobbled. If you do manage to get mum onto the ramparts, a feat in itself, you quickly get sunstroke. Even with a huge umbrella, you sit looking out to sea wondering if it was all worth it. Another deterrent in Galle Fort are the rather large ladies who block your path insisting on trying to sell you lace tablecloths when they can clearly see that mum is about to fall over (if she stands for more than 10 seconds she keels over – not connected to Alzheimer’s; she has had this balance problem for a while.) Lace tablecloths I have never had any need for; and my mother certainly doesn’t need one now.   

So where is good? Here's the criteria:-

•  a flat walking surface that you can’t trip over
• some shade or times of the day that are cooler
• a view
• somewhere to sit quickly if need be - does not need to be an actual seat
• easy to drive to and easy to park at (ie no parallel parking)
• no people hassling you to buy things, visit temples, go on river cruises, visit craft shops, buy gems, and pledge money to various dubious charities (or any of the other million and one things that could potentially be on offer).

There are a few.  Down south there is a very picturesque and shaded walk just past the Fortress next to a children’s play park. It skirts the coast and there are stilt fishermen and regular fishermen with their boats. It’s also the place for the canoodling couples under their umbrellas.  Lots of motorbikes give them away. Nobody in sight until you see the umbrellas further in. Any time we turn up they have beaten us to it.  Luckily there are a lot of seats; they are stone and hot but we (like the couples) can live with that. The Fortress also has lovely grounds for walking and the staff greet us cheerfully as we do the rounds of the lawns and the corridors.

 In Colombo we also join the canoodling couples. Galle Face Green is the ideal place for walking. At one end is the Galle Face Hotel, colonial grandeur at its best; at the other is the Fort, the commercial centre of Sri Lanka. The Green has now been returfed, boasts lots of little stalls along the front, and looks out onto the Indian Ocean before it becomes the harbour. We go after I finish work when it’s cooler. A breeze invariably comes of the sea. Parking is easy though these days you have to pay for it. You can walk for as long as you want. And we don’t get hassled. Maybe the touts in Colombo can see how wobbly mum is. There are plenty of seats of different kinds. The seats that the couples prefer are tucked into the wall. The seats comprising a brick wall round the trees are road height. And there is always something happening there. Around 5pm groups of about 40 or so of the army or police doing their exercises on the green; they walk and run endlessly in circles; they do press ups and leg exercises.  Never very politically correct, “Those black men are at it again,” mum’ll say (to give her her due though they are all dressed identically in dark navy tracksuits).  We can watch the schoolkids running around; the kites flying high; the joggers belting along; the more sedate exercisers working out on the grass. Out to sea mum can count the number of her favourite tankers waiting to go into port.  It really is ideal. No lace tablecloths in sight! It’s a hive of activity but never so crowded that you don’t feel you have your own space.  So if you ever want to find me and mum on a late cool afternoon, look for the canoodling couples, and probably we will be somewhere nearby.