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.   

 

Raspberry Jam and Water Lilies

 

 

Last weekend me and mum went plant shopping up the back of Galle.  While I was wandering around the grounds of the plant shop, mum was sitting in the sun responding happily to the owner’s queries and comments and enjoying watching his grandchildren running around the garden. I have no idea what she was saying but she seemed quite content. This started me thinking about plants and gardens and in long convoluted brain journey, I ended up pondering the caravan and camping holidays we used to have in Scotland when we were kids and we all picked raspberries for hours on end.  Was this an early Scottish version of child labour? I couldn’t figure out why we picked so many rasps as we couldn’t possible have eaten them all. It took a while but the brain eventually made the connection to raspberry jam. Mum was always making jam and marmalade. Jam jars would be collected all year and set aside in a cupboard. In the summer there would be fruit in huge quantities, sugar in similar quantities and lots of jam jars ready to be sealed with plastic covers and elastic bands.  The kids were allowed to seal them. Pots would boil away for hours.  The result: we always had an endless supply of home-made marmalade and raspberry jam.

As well as a keen raspberry jam maker, Mum was an avid gardener and wuld spend hours happily tending the garden. She always had a garden in the various houses we had. In her second to last one we had a large sloping garden which started as veg and flowers, then as she got older, it changed to grass which was easier to manage, until even that became too much for her and she moved from that house into her much smaller house in Elmwood Court (part of a sheltered housing complex) where the gardens were maintained by professional gardens, an extremely chatty elderly gent, well loved by the ladies in the complex,  and his two sons.

The Clyde Valley was a place we often visited over the years in Scotland. This was the site of  - way back - plant shops very similar to the one in Galle. Fruit and flowers were on sale by the river. It was a lovely shady drive, a twisty turny road following the path of the river as it flowed on its way to Glasgow and the sea. The shops were seasonal – at any one time full of daffodils or potatoes.  Much later when the area developed into lots of Home Centres I would take mum for a drive and lunch there. In her later years in Bothwell I liked to make sure she had an amaryllis which we bought there.  You could buy the bulb in October and it would flower at some point over the winter. She cared for it and even when the Alzheimers was taking over, she continued to tend the flower and loved to watch it grow and then flower. They were spectacular. 

These days the lilies in the pond have usurped the amaryllis.  We have two kinds, one a big bright purple plant and a few smaller lilac ones.  They are Nil Manel or blue water lilies and in February 1986 they were chosen as the National flower of Sri Lanka. When we arrive on Friday we check the state of the flowers in the pond. Are there any? What colour are they? Where are they in the pond? Are they open or closed? Are there any buds breaking the surface? Then later in the evening again she remarks that the flowers have gone. She doesn’t quite get that they close overnight and then open up again the next morning. In the morning at breakfast there is the same check of the state of the flowers in the pond (around the same time we check on the whereabouts of the monkeys). They are constantly changing and she seems to get as much joy from them as she used to get from the amaryllis.

Squiggly Wriggly Things

 

A friend of mine has just got a hamster for her daughter for her birthday. She’ll have a great time with it I am sure.  Growing up, we had a series of hamsters of different shapes and sizes staying with us from time to time. Mum was a primary teacher and her classes always had a pet hamster throughout the term but during the holidays they always ended up at our house. They were always in a cage with a wheel for exercise and toilet paper for a bed. Of course they would manage to escape when the cage was being cleaned or one of us kids opened it and wanted to hold the hamster. They got everywhere. Wriggly and slippery creatures, you could hold them for a while, but invariably they would escape round the back of your neck, down your back and away into the interior of the house. They were fast and you could lose them for days on end. They would often be found in various states of disrepair stuck behind heaters, behind fridges, in the back of cupboards, in completely different parts of the house (they can flatten themselves and get under very thin openings). They caused great anguish when they would disappear and a hunt would ensue for them. They sometimes turned up looking rather different (mum having gone and got another one to avoid upsetting us). A foray into larger pets was not very successful. We had a brown poodle puppy called Sandy one school summer holiday. Unfortunately when we all went back to school, the dog destroyed the kitchen, doors and walls included, and had to go. It went to a nice family where the mum didn’t work.

In Sri Lanka I’ve never seen a hamster though they may very well be here. Small squirrels on the other hand are here in abundance. Mum calls them squiggly wriggly things –“Look! There’s a wee squiggly wriggly thing…….oh and another squiggly wriggly thing!” They are palm squirrels (Iri Lena in Sinhala and Sinna Anil in Tamil) and have three very distinct stripes on their back. Their bushy tail, as big as their head and body, goes into a S shape when they sit and eat something held in their paws. They nest in the eaves of the house and can be seen dragging soft bark and dried grass and leaves along and up the roof often leaving a trail of debris in their wake.

They rule the garden. They race across the top of the gate which must be piping hot in the sun; they balance precariously across the telephone wire which connects my house to the one next door; they run up and down the tree to get to the bird table before the birds; they run along the inside of the branches of the ‘fir’ tree which must be tickly; they run around the roof beams; they chase each other round the garden (the dogs have learnt they haven’t a hope in hell of catching them); they are everywhere. I even found one down the back of my desk – I thought it was a rat at first and freaked out. It was a baby and must have climbed in the window and got kind of lost. Its mother eventually tracked it down and went off with it in tow.  Mum can sit for hours on the porch watching the squirrels racing around the garden. The squirrels cause hours of amusement.

The Fortress as well is crawling in them. Mum sits with her feet up on the sun lounger in the shade of the umbrella – the only person round the pool fully clothed – watching them intently. The squirrels' antics are accompanied by her running commentary. They race around the grounds chasing each other. Up and down the palm trees. Alongside the pool. In and out dining room tables. Leave food or drink around on a table and they’re up like a shot to investigate. They’ll also climb on your lounger (and you if you let them) if you have a plate on your lap. They can be a bit of a nuisance. And they make a racket. For the size of them they can certainly make their presence heard. 

They may not be hamsters and mum certainly doesn’t look after them in any way – except by surreptitiously dropping some of her lunch at the Fortress which has the desired result of bringing them nearer. But they cause the same constant distraction and amusement in their never ending and unpredictable antics as the primary class hamsters once did.  Thankfully there are no fridges and heaters to get stuck behind here!

Heroes and heroines

Heroes and heroines come in many shapes and sizes. For some people  they are firefighters, emergency doctors and de-miners. For others, astronauts, pilots and explorers.  For me it has to be the people who care for and tend to the elderly, especially those with dementia. It takes a special type of person to do this. As much as I try, I’m not that type of person. The weeks I spent with mum (24-7) before the arrival of my brother and cousin over the recent Xmas holiday dispelled any illusions I might have had about that. Part-time caring I can do. Full time is another thing entirely.

I first started evaluating carers when, after having fallen out of the loft and breaking my leg and ankle in many places, I was trapped for 3 months (instead of the planned two days) at my mum’s house in Bothwell because I could not fly anywhere until my plaster came off- luckily I was freelance at the time and could work from wherever I happened to be. Then, mum had one carer in every morning to monitor her pill intake, to wash her, and to make sure breakfast had been eaten. The quality of carers varied considerably. Some came in, asked if she had done this that and the next thing, to which she replied in the affirmative – invariably lying – and then went away again. There was no checking of pills beyond prompting. Her shower, she had to get three times a week. Again some carers accepted her statement of having had a wash earlier as fact, until I hobbled through on crutches and pointed out she was making it up. She hated showers and would avoid them like the plague. With some carers she just refused to have one. Others, though, through manner and attitude, managed to get her undressed, into the shower, washed, dried and dressed before she had really noticed. Quite a remarkable feat!   With breakfast, again they asked and again she said, ‘yes I’ve had it” which she had because I had made it in a rather wobbly manner. There was no evidence from the fridge prior to my arrival that there was anything like breakfast food in the house though. Some cared; some couldn’t give a shit.

I got the number of carers coming in increased during my stay as it became quickly obvious just how badly she could actually cope during my lengthy enforced stay in her house. She also fell over and broke her arm when out walking and therefore needed more help.  I was of limited use to anyone on crutches. When I left Bothwell she was up to 4 carers a day and had had regular food for three months. Unfortunately not much more than a year later she was found unconscious in the lounge by the psychiatric nurse who just happened to be visiting and was hospitalized.  She has not lived independently since.

Thankfully since coming to Sri Lanka, mum has had two gems of carers. Without them, I could not go to work or function in any way normally. The first, Shamalee, is wonderful. She has an extremely calm, placid, happy nature which works well with mum. She can cope with anything which is just as well as she has had to deal with some shitty situations. She went off to have her second baby early September. She worked on the Friday, was admitted to hospital on the Saturday morning and had the baby within an hour. She doesn’t waste time. The baby is now about 4 months old. Mum loves the baby but that is another blog.

Ajantha came to cover for Shamalee when was on maternity leave.  I first got to know Ajantha when I was working in the Emirates. She worked as a nanny for one of my friend's. She was there during my seven years in Al Ain and Sharjah. Now she is back at home in Sri Lanka. She is the mother of my caretaker down south - the man who looks after my house and dogs. Again she has a very calm, placid, cheerful personality and can cope with pretty much anything. As well as covering for Shamalee in Colombo, Ajantha mum-sits down south when I need to go out.  Both are 100% reliable and trustworthy. Equally important though, they can manage mum.

Both now play a mean game of rummy, know Sound of Music off by heart, are a dab hand at cheese sandwiches and lentil soup, are jigsaw experts and can hum along to Andre Rieu’s Vienesse waltzes. They understand the importance of ‘the bag’ and the necessity to know where it is at all time.  They know that the table in the lounge must always be aligned with the lines on the floor. They can cope with mum’s negativity and leave her to it till she snaps out of it.

Both of them make my life possible.