DEMENTIA CARE: ATTACK OF THE INVISIBLE KITCHEN.

Things are quiet. An event is building up steam. Not the Festival of Hammering I expected. It is time for a new kitchen. Workers arrived before the dawn. Luckily, I was up and about BEFORE the bit that comes before the dawn.
   So, yes, I’d had time for a coffee. Electricity may be switched off for a short time. Gas, too. Water, perhaps. But right now, all is quiet. After a fashion. Joni Mitchell sailed through the airwaves, telling us they paved paradise…
   And put up a kitchen.
   Just as I type that all is quiet on the kitchen front, drilling starts. It is, mercifully, brief. As usual, the person comes into the house and is amazed that I made the place as ready as I could. He must be used to people who don’t even lift the carpet/linoleum/grass tennis court.
   I spent weeks getting ready. Moving a little bit each day. Spreading the kitchen across several rooms and two floors. Coffee is at the top of the stairs, though just around the corner. That way, I don’t fall back downstairs when I realise I’ve brewed up the other type of coffee by mistake. Oh, the horror.
   Just have to drink the wrong coffee. It is a rule. Then it becomes the right coffee.
   I’ve cut the old carpet into chunks that fit in the bin. Stripped the walls bare. Marked out dodgy sections of the floor, and unseen repairs that haven’t stood the test of time. I discovered a fragment of nail in one wall. Sheared clean off. Flush with the plaster. Very unusual. Strange history steps out of the mists…
   Leaving us mystified.
   There’ll be a spot of rewiring. Additional sockets. Fantastic. I can make better use of the toaster, in future. The new kitchen will have more storage space on the walls and a few new sockets specifically added to cater to caring needs.
   A second socket for the spare fridge, with its spare milk supply. We need that spare milk supply this week, as the regular milk just didn’t turn up. This is the point of having a spare fridge. Also, there’s the whole thing about having a fridge handy if the main fridge dies a death. Fridges are notoriously difficult to replace instantly.
   The kitchen is also notoriously difficult to replace instantly. It’s a four-day job. Today, the old cupboards go. There’ll be work on the floor, and on the walls. Different specialists arrive on a daily basis.
   And they have to work around my specialists. The care team. I have a pressure-pad on the door, to let me know when the carers walk in. That’s been uprooted. These guys are coming and going so often, the alarm is off. We don’t want constant chimes.
   But they are also moving bulky items out and bulky items in. And I don’t want the wiring snagged by any of those awkward pieces. That’s why the wiring was removed. The mat is hanging out on the top landing, along with assorted bits and pieces of the kitchen.
   Next to the coffee shop is my mini-kitchen. The microwave. Also at the top of the stairs, but just around the corner. If one of those fabled microwave meals burns me as I retrieve it, at least I don’t fall down the stairs.
   Collect bumps and bruises to go with your burns. No thanks.
   There’ll come a point in the late afternoon when these technicians retreat and leave me to assess the damage. It’ll be old stuff out, new floor sorted, and maybe a few of the cupboard units. There’s plastering and tiling to do. Rewiring. A bit of plumbing.
   Once it is all over, the real work begins. I’ll recreate the kitchen. More or less. Oh, there’ll be more storage. But I ditched a whole slew of things. Old cooking utensils. Stuff that wasn’t being used.
   It’s an opportunity to change a few stale routines. What’s different? There’ll be less light coming in the window, as a new cupboard goes up on the wall. But that’s not much of a problem. Light getting into the kitchen was never a great prospect to start with.
   That’s why the lighting was upgraded a few years ago. Got that covered. It’s as upgraded as it needs to be. Yes, there’ll be more space used. At the expense of a clock that perched on that wall. The cooker has a clock on it anyway.
   Drawers? I emptied them all. And that’s a great chance, right in front of you. A lot of the stuff that came out of those drawers…a lot of that can go. You find this stuff cluttering up your spaces and wonder how you reached that point.
   Time to clean, as it isn’t quite spring. The snowdrops poked their heads above the soil to say hello, after catching a few sunny frost-free days in late January. But judging by exciting levels of wind and rain, we aren’t free of winter’s grip just yet.
   What of the kitchen, scattered as it is? The fridge is in the front hall. And the spare fridge is in the main room.
   I stopped typing to explain the story-so-far to the carers, who came in without difficulty. We still have heat, light, power for the bed and the mattress…there’s water, hot water at that, and all is fairly okay in this small corner of the world.
   That’s because the kitchen squad downed tools to go and gather more supplies. It’s good that they aren’t all on the job at the same time as the carers. Any hassle we can avoid. Just as I say that, there’s more thumping and bumping downstairs. Let’s hope that’s the kitchen crew, and not the carers. There’s great cause for concern if that’s the carers making all the racket.
   So how to deal with this level of disruption, if you are a carer? This is a council house, with council carers and a council kitchen squad. The council decided to offer a new kitchen. It is disruptive, true. But it isn’t disruptive in the main room. No need to clear out.
   At this stage, waiting on a new wheelchair, transport to and from respite care would be a huge complication. No need to make use of that option as a break. I wouldn’t get a break, of course…I’d have to put up with the thumping in the kitchen.
   If you are in a council situation, you can always ask for extra help. There was an attempt to arrange the start of work nearer the beginning of the week…to avoid leaving us in the lurch over a weekend if the work started a lot later.
   And I am sure there’s a squad that will lift your carpet for you and deal with awkward quirks of old repairs and so on. But if you can do that stuff yourself, then do it weeks and weeks in advance.
   Tackle small problems on a daily basis. Move the kitchen into other spaces. I had to do a lot of work in upstairs rooms, piling things out of the way. Stuff I absolutely wouldn’t need to use for a good while.
   I piled rubbish there, in bags, just to avoid overloading the bins outside. It’s easy enough to dump the carpet in small doses over this time-period.
   After I took care of non-essential bulky items, I piled the kitchen onto the upstairs landing. Even if the heating breaks down, I can still gain access to the system upstairs. That door isn’t blocked fully.
   The one next to it is, though. That’s where I keep the toilet roll. Which is why I bought in more toilet roll before I blocked the door. The landing holds extra toilet roll, which lasted for weeks. It now only needs to last a few days. All good.
   And the landing takes care of coffee. Microwave meals. I bought in more microwave meals, knowing the gas cooker would be in and out of action. There’s tinned soup, in its own ad-libbed supply area if I want to heat up a filling meal.
   Towels are all over the place in unexpected areas. There’s a folding bed somewhere, but don’t ask me where. Technically, there isn’t a place to unfold it…as I put another folding bed in the only place that can take one. Life is compressed. Scattered across doors with racks on them holding towels and clothes. Compressed into the upstairs landing and the downstairs one as well.
   Move everything over the course of a bunch of weeks. You’ll soon discover what you need on a daily or weekly basis. And you’ll learn about all the different ways of running a kitchen from multiple locations.
   Cher is singing. And so is the workman. I guess Cher has him, babe.
   Now I am going to conjure food and drink from many different magical hats. The carers left when they could, with a minimum of fuss. I don’t think they met any of the workmen. On that note, with everything up in the air, I’ll juggle a wee while more…