A Poya Weekend

Mum is sitting on the porch talking to Dusty. The conversation goes from an encouraging “That’s it. On you go up the stairs!” (I don’t have stairs). To a threatening, “ Oh shut up! That’s an awful noise.  Nobody will want you. I’ll put you in the water.” Referring to the pond next to her.  Dusty is tied up and not happy. Understandably – she hasn’t exactly had that great a weekend either.

It should have been a good long weekend. Friday was poya and a British Council holiday. I had planned to pick up the puppy, renamed from Destiny (cos I couldn’t see me running around shouting Destiny) to Dusty because with the mix of white and black she looked like a Dusty, on Thursday afternoon about 3 leaving enough time to drive down south before dark. I had forgotten what travelling with an untrained puppy was like in a car. She was everywhere, trying to get into the front of the car, between the seats, under the seats (I felt my accelerator foot being licked) and between the seats again. Eventually she settled down and slept. But it took a while.

Going through Panadura, a seaside town on the outskirts of Colombo, I squeezed the car through a space at the roundabout. Unfortunately the tuk tuk next to me had its rain covers down and didn’t see me, therefore set off and hit my side mirror. Right in the middle of a busy roundabout. Police were off to the side and we stopped with the tuk tuk driver and family inside looking very serious. There was no real damage and had the police not been there I doubt either of us would have stopped. It was one of those situations where the driver looked to make a quick buck by pointing out all the damage – scrapes, torn rain cover, none of which were in the right place to have actually been hit by my side mirror. The policeman didn’t even ask us for our paperwork. Obviously he had been primed. However with a mother with Alzheimers aged 90 in the front seat, a puppy in the back seat, the obvious solution seemed to be to offer to pay for the ‘serious’ damage and  get back on the road. This having been done, we all left on our way quite happily.

The Dusty on arrival at the house eyed up Crazy, my other dog, as did she. They did this most of the night, eventually settling down to a ‘I guess we have to live with each other’ attitude. Crazy whose chilled out life of sleeping and eating had been completely destroyed by the puppy’s youthful exuberance retreated to a cool spot under the fan in the living room and stayed there with the odd bark to deter the puppy from approaching too closely.

The next morning I wanted to take Dusty to the vet because I had noticed what looked like a rash and under the more careful scrutiny of my reading glasses some very small animals. So we headed off to Habaraduwa to see the ‘dog doctor’. Chaminda was driving. I had gotten a text message about there being queues at petrol sheds in Colombo the night before and that morning I had gotten another about there being a run on petrol. Something to do with contaminated petrol from India and a break in the supply chain. Therefore we ended up in a bit of a squashed, but slowly meandering queue for petrol in Habaraduwa. After that the vet confirmed what I suspected – the dog had ‘animals’: lice. This immediately made me feel itchy and I still do. She was given two injections (which she really didn’t like) and some pills and we were instructed to get some ayurvedic oil and coat her and Crazy in it for a day, then give them a sea bath and finally a proper wash with special dog shampoo. Joy! The tasks for the weekend.

Then we went to Galle to do my usual Saturday shopping, once more stopping off at a petrol shed this time in an even longer and more squashed queue to get the tuk tuk filled up.  Part of the shopping consisted of lots of insect spray and washing powder.  Had to fumigate the house and spray all the covers and everything she had been on and then wash everything. This was not the way I had wanted to spend the weekend. On Sunday morning after having kept Dusty tied to the bars on the window to limit her access to anything, she was methodically covered in the oil with a toothbrush. We hadn’t bought enough ayurvedic oil so Chaminda had to go back to Galle to get some more to do Crazy. Crazy didn’t look like she had lice but who knew and better to play safe. Finally the dogs were set free to lick their way through the oil.  At least the noise disappeared. Then it was a case of keeping away from the dogs because they were covered in oil. This was easier said than done and I spent most of Sunday washing the oil off me. I can still smell it. My house was shut up (which it never is) and so was Chaminda’s.  Crazy looked for safety under mum’s seat and Dusty sprawled out on the porch. Everywhere the dogs had been there was oil left behind. Hopefully tomorrow when the dogs are given their sea baths then properly washed, I will come back to the house on Friday to exceptionally clean and animal free dogs and a much cleaner house. 

Could do with another poya weekend next weekend to recover really!

The Mess

My mum is quiet now as we pass the house on the corner of the hill up to my house down south.  When she first came she used to proclaim in an exasperated tone as we passed the house, “What a mess! They need to clean that garden.” Recently this statement had been truncated to, “Mess,” with still an element of disgust.  Now though she is quiet.  Both she and the garden have changed; she very gradually, the garden rather dramatically. The garden which covers a fair amount of ground, was overgrown for years and seemed to be the dumping ground for all sorts of garbage. Every so often someone would cut back the bushes and trees that began to block the lane but that was as much as I had ever known anyone to do. As well as being on the corner of my lane, the house has the additional personal significance of being the one that my car ended up in the back of during the tsunami. When we got round to looking inside it we discovered the petrol had been stolen and all the documents in it had disappeared.

On the way home from dinner last weekend Whisky Galore flashed into my mind. Whisky Galore is a film I remember from years ago. Classic Scottish true story of a ship that goes aground off the coast of a small Scottish island. The locals quickly learn of its whisky cargo, but since it is a Sunday and therefore not a working day, they must wait till midnight before they can set to sea and secure the goods without exposing themselves to the increasingly suspicious local customs officer. They eventually get the goods and hide bottles and whisky everywhere round the island while the customs officer does his best to track it down.

What made me think of Whisky Galore coming home from dinner the other night? Well, Sri Lankans seem to share a particularly Scottish characteristic of never looking a gift horse in the mouth and exploiting situations to their own advantage. An example of this from tsunami days took place in a tsunami camp, lots of which had sprung up everywhere inland from the coast. The tsunami attracted thousands of very young foreign volunteers on ‘gap’ years. Some genuinely wanted to ‘do good’; others just loved the beaches and the night life. One group of young ladies in their late teens got some voluntary work building tents in the camps. They would turn up every morning at one camp and get to work in their short shorts and multi coloured vests and build the tents. Along the wall watching them sat numerous local lads. The ladies were amazed that every morning the tents would be flat on the ground again. And so they would build again.  How the lads loved the show! I don’t know how long it took the ladies to realize the tents were being taken down every morning by the lads before they arrived because the show was just too good.

Anyway to get back to the house on the corner.  This particular weekend I had watched as every time I drove past the house on the corner, the garden was becoming more and more under control, constant fires were lit of rubbish, and the ground appeared from a place where I had never seen it before. Maybe someone had bought the property. Maybe someone was thinking of selling the property. Maybe the uncle who owned the house and was working in Dubai was coming back. There was so much activity. Clearly, something was up.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the series Good Karma Hospital, a British TV series shown on ITV recently. Despite the series claiming to be set in south India, it was actually filmed mostly in Unawatuna.  It uses the local teacher training college as the venue for the hospital exterior scenes.  The local college got a beautiful coat of white paint in return. They are about to start the filming of series two. Recently friends of mine who have a guest house down the road agreed to rent the whole house to people working on the series for a few months. Their guest house doesn’t have parking so a deal was struck that the house on the corner would clear their land and provide parking for the inhabitants of the guest house, no doubt at a small cost.

Water Water Everywhere....

 “Water…. Water…. Water…. Water….”my mum continually exclaimed relatively excitedly (for her), as we proceeded south in our tiny Maruti Suzuki along the expressway on Friday afternoon heading to Unawatuna for the weekend. The highway, usually surrounded by lush paddy fields and trees of all kinds, had turned into a causeway. My mum’s language is now rather limited and very often inaccurate but that day she was 100% correct! And as the water continued and we continued along the causeway, I started to think about foundations. The previous week in Wellawatta in Colombo an apartment building in the late stages of construction had collapsed injuring quite a few. I started to wonder about whether the road construction workers had put a lot of effort into getting the right mix for the foundations. I tried to forget about the stories at the time of the road construction of people stealing the materials for the highway in the night and replacing them with cheaper ones or not replacing them at all. But that’s me. I worry. In the end we made it safely to Unawatuna. No storms, no flooding. All fine.

Saturday I tried to get to Matara to visit a friend for dinner. Got to the turning onto the road for the highway and read the signage, “ Rahula junction closed because of flooding.” Was pleased with the correct English (not always the case in these signs). Not pleased with the message. You could get to Matara on the highway but you couldn’t get from the exit to Matara town because the road was flooded. So that put a stop to that. The next day tried to get back to Colombo on the highway. Got as far as Aluthgama – halfway – then all vehicles had to exit. I asked the toll guy if the road between the exit and Aluthgama town was ok. He must have been asked this in various languages all morning by everyone coming off the highway. But he had kept his sense of humour. ‘Yes yes’ he said emphatically and ‘you can swim, no?’ I thought but didn’t say, “Well I possibly can but I don’t think my 89 year old mother with dementia has a hope in hell of swimming anywhere never mind in a flood.” Despite my dad’s best efforts to teach her over the years she never really got beyond a breadth of the local baths. Not a water lover my mother at the best of times. We eventually got back to Colombo – it just took a bit longer.

Over 500,000 affected by the flooding. Over 200 dead and 100 still missing. Sri Lanka doesn’t have much luck with water. 

Thoughts from the Jambu Tree

Thoughts from the Jambu Tree (or how to maintain sanity in 2017)

There’s not often you get a distinctly bad year. In recent history some stand out. 1845 saw the start of the Irish potato famine. 1914 and 1939 brought years of war.  1918 was the flu pandemic, 1859 the Chinese famine, 1981 the African drought, 1995 the North Korean famine and floods, 2004 the South Asian tsunami.  2016 was a particularly bad year. I think most people would agree. Perhaps not in the scale of the above so far, but certainly the signs are there. In politics we had Brexit and Donald Trump. Celebrities died in droves  – David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Jean Alexander, Ronnie Corbett, Carrie Fisher and her mum and George Michael to name a few.  Terrorists were getting more impactful in the West – the Nice attack, the Istanbul airport attack, the Brussels attack. Natural disasters were making the news – Hurricane Matthew, the Zika virus. The refugee crisis was getting worse every month.  2016 is never going to go down in history as a cheery year. Too many omens point to it continuing.

By December 2016 I had had a number of reactions to this (1) go into hiding – a caravan in the wilds of Scotland with a small dog, an electric heater, lots of good fiction, quality DVDs and a supply of cider  – still a very strong pull; (2) buy a gun or lots of drugs, lock the door, curl into a small ball and end it all – another statistic for 2017; (3) go with the flow, believe Brexit will bring prosperity (especially for Scotland), nod when Sean Spicer, Trump’s White House press secretary, states Hitler did not use chemical weapons, cheer when the US boasts about firing missiles at Syria and dropping the biggest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan – that would require a complete brain transplant; (4) embrace the day when the Orwellian 1984 is complete, the Ministry of Truth and Love take over and Newspeak is the new norm – not that far off ; or (5) search for, identify, note down and focus on the things that still make life worth living – even if it may not be for very long. 

For those of you who know me, I am not a renowned optimist. I am, being Scottish, a realist. A cynic and pessimist by default.  Before I resign myself to the caravan in the wilds with the small dog, I have to have a go at number 5. Is it possible to change from a negative pessimist to a positive optimist? Or at least move the dial more from one to the other.  The question often is, “Are you cup half full or cup half empty?’ Being a realist and interested in the concept of and capacity for change (be it personal, institutional, national or global), I claim to be neither. I would rather see myself as the person with the jug of water next to the cup.

When I was about 19 I used to say ‘amazing’ all the time. Everything was ‘amazing’. The park was ‘amazing’, the food was ‘amazing’, the outfit was ‘amazing’, the joke was ‘amazing’. Everything was just ‘amazing’. And I meant it. I was constantly amazed by everything and this was when I was pickling gherkins in a factory in Lubeck in Germany wearing huge blue mechanic style overalls and ginormous green wellies and at one point had the worst ever toothache so there was nothing inherently amazing about my average day! I just had a positive outlook.

Where did that go? How did I become a person who, despite living in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, can only see the black side to everything? What happened? From an external point of view, I have not suffered great hardships, I have my health. I am working, I have a lovely apartment and house. There is no logical reason for me not to be upbeat and if not see everything as amazing, at least see some potential in it. Now you can blame the outside world, you can blame people around you, or you can just accept that you do, as an individual, actually have some power and responsibility to change.

I started this blog in 2012 when I first brought my mum, who has Alzheimer’s, out to Sri Lanka to live with me. It helped me to come to terms with the changes in her and in our relationship and helped me to cope. She is still with me, oblivious to the challenges and complexities in today’s world. She has enough of her own. Her comments though are often hilarious, sound and perceptive, although unconsciously so.  She is still with me and will be drawn on for commentary relevant or not in future blogs. I would like this blog now to help me do (5) and explore  being the person who can fill the cup.

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.”