Today has proved to be an interesting day so far. We actually had three helpers turn up this morning but one of them was a ‘shadowing’ worker whilst she learnt what was involved in the job. Having said that, she had worked in a care setting beforehand and made a useful suggestion to us to help acquire some bathroom cleaning aids that might be useful for Meg. So after we had breakfasted, Meg and I set out on the road calling it first at a large store in Bromsgrove that sells the type of household products that we had just had recommended to us. But we parked extraordinarily easily and found the products for which we were looking, fortunate in that a store assistant was stocking the shelves and knew exactly the product for which we were looking. Then we swung by our newspaper shop but a swift look inside showed that they still had not got a regular supply of newspapers organised so we made straight for Droitwich. Here we had our normal repast of a pot of tea and a bacon butty before we popped into the Droitwich Association of Carers shop, which is one of our frequent haunts. Here I picked up a couple of what I can only describe as wooden framework owls for a song – whether they are designed as bookends or merely as decorative objects, I cannot say. But in any case they complement well our collection of other ‘owls’ that we have in place in our Music lounge and after a moment’s hesitation, I am glad I actually purchased them. Then I espied a fairly large goblet with a design upon it that I recognised as almost certainly a product of the Murano glass factory in Venice. When we visited Venice several decades ago, we made a tourist visit to the world famous Murano glass factory and bought a set of traditionally decorated liqueur glasses and a decanter. I remember well that as a sales ploy no doubt, the guide to the factory took one of these glasses and hurled it to the floor to show that their glass was so tough that it would not break. We have these glasses and decanter in a display cabinet and we would bring them out for special occasions such as Christmas time when entertaining close friends. So I recognised the design on the goblet in the shop but the trouble is that particular goblet was decorated with a ring of what looked like red glass stones, completely out of keeping with the wonderful amethyst style colour of the traditional Murano glass. This made the whole goblet look like a cheap piece of fairground ‘tat’ but was it actually tremendously more valuable than the charity shop selling it recognised? I took the piece over to the manager and he was going to do some checks on its provenance to work out what a correct selling price could be. Whilst this little conversation was taking place, I got into conversation with another lady who had disposed of some of her own pottery of which she was not particularly enamoured only to see it sold an enormous price some time later. In the course of our discussion. she made the telling observation that ‘after all, one person’s fairground tat is another person’s collectable’ but this has set up a dilemma in my mind. Should we return this Droitwich and pick up this piece which to some extent matches the rest of our collection (even though I do not like this particular exemplar) and/or is it too good an opportunity to pass by and displayed in a suitable way, its qualities might be revealed?
When we got home, I consulted my emails. After Meg had a fall last Saturday, I had communicated the event to the specialist nurse who looks after Meg’s condition in the hope that she could put my observations into Meg’s medical file lodged with the GP practice. As always, the nurse was extraordinarily helpful and had passed my email onto the GP, spoken with them to request a domiciary visit so that Meg could have any further assessment (for example a head injury assessment). She has also made an onward reference to the Occupational Therapy team because both the carers and myself are of the mind that Meg may be in need of some extra mobility aids to help her to get to the bathroom, around the house and so on. So it will be interesting to see how long it will take the OT team to respond and whether there are some additional mobility aids to assist in Meg’s painfully slow progress around the house. We lunched on ham, broccoli and baked potato and immediately afterwards, I was delighted to see that Meg availed herself of a little post-prandial sleep on our two-person settee which I am sure will do her some good, particularly after we had an interrupted night’s sleep.
The political row over the effect of the utterances of Lee Anderson (red-wall ex-miner MP who, until his resignation, was a Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party) rumbles on. The media circus are now going after Rishi Sunak who as Prime Minister must take some responsibility for the effect of the words of an outspoken ex-minister. So far, Rishi Sunak as admitted that the words used were ‘wrong’ but cannot bring himself to admit publically that the sentiments were anti-Islamic. In this respect, there seems to be a divide between Labour and the Conservatives because the former have admitted to anti-Semitism and have taken steps to do something about it but the Conservatives are not admitting to any Islamophobia within their own party. But Baroness Warsi (the female, ex-Conservative minister who is a Muslim of Pakistani heritage, hailing from Bradford) is scathing in her public comments about the extent of Islamophobia in the modern Tory party and reckons that the Tory party just ‘look over their shoulders’ when she has raised the issue with them.
© Mike Hart [2024]