DEMENTIA CARE: NOZZLE MAINTENANCE.

Those towels don't fold themselves.
   On that basis, I decided that things around the house and in the garden, and in the street, needed fixing. The Pandemic has ruined the streets. Every pathway is a garden, now.
   I’ll fix things in the house. And I’ll tend to the garden. As no one is hacking through the urban jungle with a machete, occasionally, reluctantly, I’ll fell a large tree out in the street.
   Roadsweepers come by, hastily, giving the impression that they are not to blame for the kerbside shrubbery. They aren’t. No one is. A big disease did this and ran away.
   And so…I spot a medium-sized shrub threatening to block traffic. All you can do is bomb it with chemicals and check on the progress of your attack after a few days. The forest soon parts and allows light in, once more.
   That is outer maintenance of the mobile menace. No more walking trees around here. Garden maintenance is something I must spend time on. Maintaining the road is not my vocation, and a quick spray-by shooting of the worst monster will suffice out beyond the castle walls.
   But inside the garden, there are plants that march as armies do. You know you haven’t kept the green tide in check when you are stepping over plants as you march along the path. The lines between paving slabs are suddenly markers for a hurdling event. Someone must take action.
   Those towels don’t fold themselves.
   I resort to the secateurs for the larger mutants. This gives me something to do. Away from being a carer, you feel that you are away from being a carer. I topple the more vivid Triffids in the wildlands of oot the back door.
   The front door receives more shade. It is as overgrown as the back door garden is, naturally. Very naturally. Plants exploit cracks in the sci-fi concrete surfaces. For general warfare against the forces of nature, I employ the sprayer.
   For the last time.
   This is a tub of weedkiller with a spray arm attached. The carrying handle is also the handle of the pump that puts the vessel under mild pressure, creating the trigger-released spray. And this thing is dead on its feet.
   I haven’t used the awkward device in an age. Summer hits with the force of the inevitable un-Scottish heatwave, and with all that daylight burning and no sign of clouds…it’s time to spray like a maniac.
   Unfortunately, this is what I do.
   I time my spraying to follow a meal. Never spray chemicals just before eating. Spraying after the noon hour is a brutal experience in that severe heat. I have several meals and all the pills out of the way by the time we come around to the hour of six in the evening.
   And the heat just won’t leave. Spraying is still a brutal experience. I’m in a shirt, and a light one at that. Lugging the tub around and periodically restoring pressure is awkward. It’s not the weight I carry with me. No. It’s the design of everything connected to the tub.
   I soon discovered that the main connection to the tub, the arm, was definitely past its working-life. The nozzle was all to hell. Adjustable. I adjusted it. The nozzle was all to hell, headed straight to the arse-end of hell and back again. Taking a detour to hell at the beach, just for the hell of it.
   My battle, in the front garden, went badly. I could smell the chemicals. Normally I don’t catch a whiff. The nozzle was doing its job in its death-throes. I tackled the worst of the greenery and retired the sprayer.
   But what to do? The garden doesn’t look after itself. When the garden looks after itself, it stops parcels in their tracks. I remember the time when rather hardy grass crept into the garden. I quite liked the look of it, and allowed it to stay.
   One day, standing in front of the door, peering through the frosted glass window, I saw a jungle out there. The grass lined both sides of the path. If left unchecked, it would’ve made parcel delivery a living hell.
   I removed all of the grass. Some of the grass hid. As summer mingles with autumn, the grass returns. Not with a vengeance. Every year, it returns in a smaller wave as I steadfastly deal with a problem going back into the mists of rainy days.
   The grass problem isn’t a problem, now.
   Without a sprayer, I’ll increase the toil I must do. And I decide not to replace the sprayer with another similar device. Instead, I drag gardening kicking and screaming into the future. And the future is electrical spraying.
   Spraying of chemicals that are less toxic than the ones we are using now. That’s the future.
   Gadgets are useful. Carers rely on gadgets. The alarm clock. Microwave oven. Tumble dryer. Blender. Temperature gun. Electrically-powered bed, same goes for the chair, and same again for a chair in the bath.
   Anything that is convenient is convenient.
   I test temperatures daily, checking for highs and lows. The blender makes short work of the dietary milkshake. I won’t sleep in if an alarm goes off. And so on.
   The electric sprayer arrives. It is a backpack. I feel like I am using a flamethrower. Battery charged, and I am ready to go.
   Water. That’s the safest test of the equipment – spraying water. The machine worked. And it worked again, with a different nozzle on the front. Several nozzles later, I’d settled on the right one for the job.
   Then I filled the backpack. I say I filled it. But a full tub of weedkiller doesn’t even register on the scale. This thing takes several tubs. I don’t need several tubs at once. Or do I? The spray action is good. I direct the spray precisely. The results are terrific.
   This test is in the front garden for the water and the back garden is where I try out the real deal. A piece of the old sprayer falls off as I transfer the chemical from one receptacle to another. Not before time, then.
   Usually, I replace things before they fall apart or after a sudden breakage. That one there, with the weedkiller, was a little too close for comfort. I didn’t have a full tub inside the new sprayer. After tackling the worst of the problem in the back garden, the machine blurted to a halt. It ran out of weedkiller.
   Luckily, I’d ordered more. That’s how I know a full tub doesn’t even register on the scale. The electric gadget is very useful. Unfortunately, it pours weedkiller out as if going over Niagara Falls.
   There is a problem with introducing every piece of equipment to a house where someone is looked after. Every item that assists with living a reasonable life is automatically a tripping hazard. Even something that assists with mobility is, potentially, a tripping hazard.
   The small tub of weedkiller, stored out of sight under the sink behind other gadgets – therefore doubly out of sight – goes away. Its replacement is huge. I can just about store the electric sprayer under the sink if I take a bunch of gadgets away.
   There is no danger concerning weedkiller stored in that cupboard under the sink. She’d need to be in the kitchen. Well, she hasn’t been in the kitchen in a long time. The cupboard conceals the weedkiller. Other gadgets hide the weedkiller. The weedkiller must be pumped out under pressure – and I always opened the tub to remove the slightest hint of pressure before storing it away.
   The spray is impossible to activate if you have arthritis. It must be extended. And then pumped up. The tub is clearly marked. And it is too heavy to move if you are elderly.
   I am talking about the old weedkiller sprayer. The new sprayer is electric, with a detachable battery. And that battery is kept elsewhere. The tub is too heavy to lift and too awkward to open. I consider safety when folding towels. And I consider safety again, for the complicated things.
   There’s another problem with introducing every single piece of equipment to a house where someone is looked after. Every item that assists with living a reasonable life is automatically going to take up just exactly the amount of space you’ve allowed for it – unless you wildly miscalculated. If you mildly miscalculated, you might still get away with it.
   Caring is all about maintenance. Spares. Maintenance of spares. There are tools downstairs and more tools upstairs. Why waste time going from one floor to the next. You manage your moments, as a carer.
   I made garden maintenance safer for myself. Basically, I bought a new nozzle. It came with an electric sprayer attached. I must still spend time in the garden. It’s a way of getting away from being a carer. Even though I am reminded that I am a carer, when conserving the many plants my mother placed in that garden.