Women With Pushchairs Rule The World

I have been waiting to use the title "Wheels of Steel" for when I took Mum out in her new wheelchair, but after my experience today I think this title is far more appropriate. I took Mum to buy a new wheelchair before the snow came again just after Christmas and today was the first chance we have had to give it an outing. It's very lightweight, so it's easy to get in and out of the car, and to push about, so out we went to the shops.

You don't have to spend much time either in a wheelchair or pushing one to see that there's this strange hierarchy in the shopping centre world. The people in wheelchairs come pretty much at the bottom, with counters that are too high, obstructions to the aisles when shops cram too much in, being spoken to like they are idiots and mothers using their pushchairs as battering rams in front of them. We had been to W H Smith today and Mum agreed to have a coffee, which was a great improvement on the last time we were out. We didn't go to Costa in W H Smith, as I think it's too hard for Mum to go there as she always used to go with Dad. I know exactly how this feels, as I still can't bear to go to a football match without him. Instead of Costa we wheeled round the corner to Starbucks. We were just trying to find somewhere to park/sit, when a woman pushing a toddler in a buggy barged in front of us and tried to take our table with her friend. What is it with some mothers? They ram around their fortress of a pushchair as if they are saying "Here is the fruit of my womb! Obey me!" When I pointed out that we were trying to sit down and I was bluntly told that there were two tables, so they took up most of the space and Mum and I made the best of the remaining room. Obviously in this instance that bag hanging off the back of the pushchair wasn't full of nappies. I think it contained her brain. All that hassle in the search of a skinny latte...

Despite pushchairs and Mum being patronised by various shop assistants, I think she had a good time, especially in Paperchase, a stationery-lover's paradise.

Whilst I know that I'm really helping Mum by taking her out, trips like this are filled with sad vignettes that will stay with me for life. We went to find the cashpoint in Boots and Mum said she would like to find out how much a small bottle of Channel No 5 costs. She had tried a sample of the perfume in a magazine and said that she would like to treat herself to some with the points on her Boots advantage card. She didn't have quite enough points, so she said she would wait until another time. There is something very poignant about this. Here is a 68 year woman, not far off the end of her life because of illness and she's still thinking about things she'd like to try. She'd never had a bottle of Channel No 5 and I never knew she wanted one before today. Such a simple thing like Mum wanting to buy a bottle of perfume that she'd not had before moves me to tears. And it's more than just the materialism of having something luxurious. It shows me she's not giving up just yet.

Chrismas Shopping

The weather has made things more complicated than they should be this week. That and the fact that I hadn't realised how popular the online shopping deliveries were over the Christmas period, so I missed being able to book a delivery slot for Mum's supermarket shop this week. I looked at the end of last week to find no slots available for this week at all, on all four supermarket sites that I checked. I REALLY didn't want to have to brave the supermarkets, but as time was running out before Christmas I knew I would have to face it. Surprise, surprise it was snowing when I was planning to go yesterday, but I kept ringing Mum and she said it was better where she was, so I decided to go for it. Tesco was like hell on earth. Some things had completely sold out. Others I realised I hadn't got by the time I got in the queue, but you could hardly get round the aisles, so I decided that the Christmas crackers were going to have to be missing this year.

I waited such a long time in the queue and eventually got to Mum's two hours after I started off shopping. It's not an experience I want to duplicate in a hurry. As a consequence I have blocked off a delivery slot of next Wednesday already and have reserved it with two bottles of milk. I'm sure this will be filled up with the things that Mum has run out off in the next few days, so I can add to it as and when.

The snow has also meant that I haven't been able to get over to Mum's when I thought I would this past week, so I have been very grateful that the carers are going to see her. Sadly Mum has asked that they only go in twice a day, as she has dropped the teatime visit. This was something that the MacMillan Nurse sorted out for her, as Mum had obviously complained about the number of visits. Of course this now means that Social Services want to do another full assessment after Christmas, something Mum is quite unhappy about, even though she has brought it on herself. It also means that Mum has no-one going in between about midday and the following morning, which seems a very long time to be on her own if she isn't feeling well one day. I have left a message to speak to the MacMillan Nurse about how quickly the care can be reinstated when the time arises. It seems a whole lot of faffing about for something which could have stayed in place. Interestingly Mum did all this without my knowledge. I expect she knew that I would have objected to her decreasing the number of visits again, so sorted it out without me knowing about it, until she casually dropped the fact that there was no teatime visit into the conversation...

At least the snow isn't as bad as it was in February. It has lasted for a very long time, as the temperature has stayed around freezing even during the day, but the amount that's fallen isn't as bad as it was earlier in the year. I took the above photo on my way to visit Dad in Weston Park when he was an inpatient in February. I had to walk there in the snow as all the buses had stopped. He'd been admitted as an emergency with an infection, so I was picking up the basics like a toothbrush and comb on the way to the hospital because he'd had nothing with him when he went in. Taking photographs on the way seemed to brighten the day, even though Dad was very poorly when I got there and didn't feel much like chatting. At least I made the effort to go. I really miss him.