DEMENTIA CARE: COLD HOUSES.

Between heatwaves in June and July, there were coldwaves. A clear sky and cold wind rising off the sea combined to steal heat from the world. The wind rolled clouds in to block the sun and keep that heat at bay.
   And, as a result, I had to pile the duvet high and invest in a handy woollen garment. There was no question of putting the heating on in June or July. For a large unbroken chunk of the year, there’s no frost. And no need for heating to protect the water pipes.
   If it’s a cold day inside, put extra clothes on. Learn to live with layers. Why? It’s sheer lunacy to heat the house in summer, purely from the viewpoint of cost. But this is also true of autumn, as the dying heat of August makes way for the cool of September.
   Mostly.
   You endure cold days in May and June, and even freaky ones in July. Then you find yourself experiencing balmy summer nights in October. What the hell?! This is why I say MOSTLY. The ever-changing weather isn’t meant to surprise you. You are used to it by now.
   I have a rule. Never heat the house in summer. If you can define the summer. It is a smooth-edged creature that defies viewing in the heavy camouflage of its surroundings. But there is another rule…
   Summertime officially ends with the changing of the clocks come the last Sunday of October. But we are well into autumnal weather, come September. A chill on the night. Little risk of true frost, by morning. The pipes are safe.
   And so. The other rule is…never heat the house in September. Add more duvets to the bed. Switch away from summer blankets. Reach for a handy woollen garment. Layers. Wear more layers. Add layers where they didn’t exist before.
   Throw on a throw. With the cost of gas and electricity rocketing so high that bills are now pure science fiction from another world…never heat the house in September. March sees the last of heating the house routinely…
   From April to September, no heating to speak of. Maybe short bursts of it in March, and shorter bursts in April. Half the year, we get by without heating. And you’d think the direct debit going to gas bills would stock you up mightily for the winter.
   Not this year. We’ve had our Russian bonus applied to the cost. It was cheaper by far to buy an extra two duvets and a throw and a handy woollen garment…than to heat the house in September. For swathes of October, there was little need to heat the house…
   A nurse came in and noted the house was a bit cold in September, one morning. Maybe I could put the heating on. She didn’t stay long. I didn’t put the heating on. Carers told a different story.
   They were reaching for extra layers rather than using the heating in September. “We’re all doing that.” They saw the changes in clothing, the difference in gear for the bed, and so on. They were planning to turn to robbing banks, in anticipation of the winter bills. Anything that takes the edge off that gas-pocalypse is welcome.
   And so…
   Extra layers in September. No frost, so no heating. We’d wait out the cool days and fire up the furnaces of hell when the weather really took a dive. There is money in the system for cold weather. This year, the winter fuel allowance doubles. I hope that’s enough.
   Talk of a cold house in September is nothing.
   It’s early November now and we had the threat of a frosty morning. It receded. Still, the heating is on. Take the chill off the morning. Switch off as it gets a bit too warm. Heat the house at night.
   We aren’t at that December stage of heating all day long. The December stage is also the January stage, of course. And don’t start me on the foul month that is February.
   I am told, repeatedly, that my mother is lucky to have me. They say I am organised. Everything is ready. And if something is forgotten, well, we’ll soon find it. There are spares and extras for just about everything.
   When I am told all this, I know that there are houses out there where there isn’t a ME to help with every little detail. Or with every big detail. The care team is a care team, now. And when a team comes in, you pick up the chatter from the whole organisation…
   There was an assessment recently. And the carers were told nothing. I’d be told something. Well, I wasn’t told anything. Sheets of paper arrived to show that assessment boxes were ticked, and no one was doing anything wrong, so, just go with business as usual.
   Everyone wanted to know what was what. In the end, it was a whole fuss about nothing. So I had nothing really to give in terms of information. The traffic was strictly one-way in the other direction. I heard the chatter…
   And the chatter, in November, is that there are houses they go into that are COLD. There isn’t a ME there to handle the big detail of heating. Or to handle the smaller detail of layers, leading up to the heating later.
   It is November, the risk of frost is rising, the pipes must be protected, and vulnerable people need to keep warm. Our financial assistance is rising this year, so we can heat the rooms. That situation isn’t helped by the gas company changing the website layout and the look of everyone’s accounts…
   We’re getting this bonus discount monthly. I haven’t been able to see it. Oh, I am sure it is there, amidst the chaos. The double winter fuel allowance should roll in, shortly. And this discount must be there…
   Rules have changed for the warm home discount – a separate thing you must be aware of and must apply for. I remember the gas company telling me about it in a phone call. You could apply for it in August. These days, it’s been pushed back to November and I’m waiting for the site to be updated.
   So there’s assistance out there for the elderly. It’s online. And there’s a ME to help with all that. Some of the help is automatic. At the sharp end, it takes a ME to hit the button to heat the house when the house needs heated.
   I look at the smart gadget that tells me how much we’ve spent today, so far. The cost looks absurdly high in the morning, but I don’t give it too much thought. Over the summer, the direct debit to gas must have had some effect in an unheated house. I felt like a squirrel, storing nuts away for the harsh months.
   Only to find an evil Russian squirrel had stolen the lot, artificially pumped up the prices, and gave all the other squirrels in charge of gas companies the excuses they needed to artificially pump up the prices some more.
   Squirrels don’t have to deal with the knock-on effects of “damaged” undersea pipes. Usually, I only ever gave thought to protecting the water pipes in winter. Didn’t realise we’d all be worry about protecting every single fucking gas pipe out there, as well.
   But there is little I can do about this. I can, and do, add layers of clothing, break out the winter clothes, add the throws, pile up the duvets, and do not leave the back door wide open to the wind.
   I have three duvets and two throws on that bed. Hell, I am sitting on a duvet in this chair with a throw over me right now. I suspect the extra financial assistance for heating will just about cover our situation. But that’s a blog post for another time.
   My concern isn’t about the battle between heating and eating. If something tragic happens to me, there won’t be a ME here to deal with the small things. The large things. Any of the things. If I died, my mother wouldn’t long outlive me. She couldn’t survive alone, and would have to go into a home. The disruption alone would shorten her life. Covid is the great risk, there. It’s still a risk, here.
   So I think of the cold homes where there isn’t a ME to handle the details. The homes that don’t have a ME to go hunting in the wild for the warm home discount. She should still qualify, this year.
   One year, no one qualified. There was a glitch in the system. The poor bastard on the other end of the telephone was having a very busy week fixing everyone’s problems. I sympathised. That was about all I could do.
   Why are homes cold? Fear of debt. Skyrocketing prices, shooting out past Mars. It’s a mild morning here. But there are places in the countryside rivalling Narnia for levels of chill. Daycare, when available, will get cold people into warm centres for a few hours.
   None of this is ever enough. We’ll see the results in winter death statistics. Everything feels mismanaged. There’s food on the table, and heat in the pipes on the coldest days. We’ll worry about the cost, later. I think it is going to balance out. Did we store enough nuts and berries when the sun was shining high?
   I just don’t fucking know. The last energy statement I checked had no data in it while the system reset. Thanks to the timing of that redesign, I know less about the cost now than I did with the “obsolete” system in place.
   The end result was a massive credit to gas and electricity. I don’t believe that. Something tells me they just couldn’t update the numbers while the site was given a new lick of paint. The time to do that was in the summer, for fuck’s sake.
   Where do we stand? I think we are going to be okay. Squirrel-like, I did the bulk of the Christmas shopping already. All the tins, jars, and frozen goods are pretty much in place. Even ordering ahead of time, a few items were still out of stock.
   Getting there.
   Just along the way, a distant neighbour threw up Hallowe’en decorations on the first of October and Christmas decorations on the first of November. We’ve all become anticipatory squirrels, now.
   For months, with all the changes in the layout downstairs, I’ve been planning where to put the tree. We’ll see if planning pays off, in the December blog. On the day, we’ll be fed and watered and warm in our house. The ultimate financial cost is something we’ll learn about in February. Another reason to hate the shortest month in the year, when the weather is too foul for that time and my passion for winter is at an end.