Today is another day, as they say. Last night was not a particularly happy night for us as Meg was put to bed at 7.15 but did not finally go to sleep until 10.15. It might have been the heat or something else but Meg repeatedly threw off her bedclothes and attempted to get out of bed. After I tried to put her back properly into bed on about half a dozen occasions, I gave up until she fell into a doze with no bedclothes on and with her legs out of bed. I dragged her back into bed and put a heavy blanket on her and now, after an agitated three hours, she fell and then stayed asleep. I resolved to take some remedial action in the morning but in the meanwhile, I tried to get done some of the things that I had intended to get done during the evening. The one thing that I did manage to do was to take the couple of videoclips of me wheeling Meg along the ‘de facto’ ring road which I will eventually send to the County Councillor who has not, as yet, responded to the email which her colleagues had forwarded on to her. I shall try again this evening if I can snatch some quiet time for myself. This morning just before the carers came along to get Meg up and ready for the day, I got the two videoclips into a website which I had managed to create very quickly (having a template which only needed the most minor of adaptations) The point of the website is that I trust that it should be quite accessible via an iPad or a mobile phone where the native files might be too big to download by themselves into a standard mobile. After breakfast, we knew that the weather was going to be fine so we repaired down the hill with Meg in her wheelchair but with a large sunhat because we knew that later on today it was going to get seriously hot. Whilst in the cafeteria we got into conversation with a lady who had lived in San Diego, California and we swapped stories with each other first about our lives whilst living under COVID regimes and then about life in Mexico, where evidently I could expand upon our visits to the country as our son had spent a scholarship year before going to university. Then our University of Birmingham friend turned up as we had arranged and we had a pleasant chat, as always, before it was time for us to leave. Our friend knows Switzerland quite well having holidayed there for extensive periods as a child so I wondered out loud to him why the Swiss had the reputation that they did have for cuckoo clocks on the one hand and for fine chocolate on the other. Both of these mysteries may be solved for us both in the fullness of time. Once we had arrived home and Meg had received the attention of her carers as she always does late morning, I set to making a salad. Normally I have some tins of tuna in stock but I had forgotten to replenish these but instead I had bought a can of corned beef several weeks ago and this served the occasion well. Like yesterday, I made up my own coleslaw and I was as pleased with this today as I was yesterday.
It was a very hot afternoon and we spent a little time outside at the front of the house. Eventually, though, we retreated indoors and I searched YouTube using the search term of a ‘Life of Mozart’. This generated two or three possibilities and Meg got absorbed by one of them, I am pleased to say, before the two young carers turned up for Meg’s afternoon visit. These two young people, one male one female are best mates with each other so in the morning we had promised them a little treat of vanilla ice-cream. So for our afternoon treat, I treated Meg and myself and the two young people with a serving of vanilla ice-cream enhanced by a dollop of ‘Orange Blossom’ honey which the young people had never had the opportunity to try before. So this was very welcome on what might prove to be the hottest afternoon of the year and this heat could extend into the evening as well making for a hot and sticky evening. Having said that, tonight is the first night of the Proms and Beethoven is often performed on an opening, Friday, night and tonight it is to be Beethoven’s 5th. To try to learn from the events of last night when Meg lay awake for hours, tonight I am going to ensure that as soon as I have got her into bed I will discourage her from going to sleep and we can follow the Proms concert which is to be broadcast from 7.00pm-9.00pm tonight. In this way, I hope that Meg can fall asleep naturally and without the benefit of some of the ‘sleep’ preparations of which I have purchased several varieties and none of which appear to work.
In the USA, it now looks as though some of the leading lights of the Democrats party are trying to put pressure on Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race but, so far, he has shown all of the obstinacy for which old men are often notorious. It is rumoured that even former President Barak Obama has given his view that Biden should withdraw but the way in which Joe Biden is being encouraged to leave the Presidential race seems long and protracted and the eventual outcome far from certain. But it does appear that the Democrats must get Joe Biden to relinquish his hold on the presidency soon because time is very rapidly running out in which a replacement can be found, approved by the Democratic Congress and then a campaign mounted to start to fight with Trump. I personally think that Joe Biden may not be able to hang on until after Sunday but we shall have to wait and see.
© Mike Hart [2024]