DEMENTIA CARE: A MILD FESTIVE SEASON.

Care teams come and care teams go. Irregular faces earn regular places. Old hands disappear to new runs, and occasionally pop back when the blue moon shines. They say you see everyone in the service eventually. And they are pretty much right. People are press-ganged into a run from several towns away, and no one bats an eye.
   The carers come in and ask how Christmas was. Quiet. This is the best answer possible. No mess, no fuss, no crisis, no crises, as little worry as possible, and all is right with our tiny patch of the world.
   It’s a world devoid of bad stories. The television is for entertainment, and not news. You’ll find plenty of channels that don’t show news items at all. No awful images, dreadful stories, or calamitous happenings to trouble someone with a scrambled view of the world.
   I promote laughter as much as possible. Luckily, there’s plenty of comedy. The tragedy is lack of concentration, infirmity, vulnerability, and all of the above at once. Winter is a time for stocking up on supplies, and making sure we are covered – no matter what.
   The surprising thing this year, after many years of mild winters, was, you guessed, a mild winter so far. I’m typing this up after two days of frost, mind. But I was surprised at the number of days back in December when I didn’t have to put the heating on at all. Highly unusual.
   There was very little winter in our winter. Even with the heating on, I experienced plenty of days when I had to reach over and turn the heating back off. Yes, I’m prepared for a big freeze, and one may happen yet.
   January can be mistaken for a very long December. Not this past while. There were cold days in June and July. Then September decided to visit twice, and slipped on a mask marked December for a while. It was all rather autumnal in winter.
   No complaints. Merely observations. The salt is piled high in the box, ready for spreading. A snow brush, a shovel, and a snow shovel all hang about waiting for the moment. The moment never quite comes.
   It’s been a mild festive season. At times, windy. Yes. Not fully stormy. Just a bit windy. Winds swirling around from the Mediterranean brought milder conditions. I’d watch the wind map showing great looping systems of mildness fobbing off the intense cold threatening from the North Pole.
   Santa steered his sleigh wearing bathing trunks and not a stout red coat, this time around. Not Christmas in July. July felt chillier. Maybe not where you were – and I’ll grant you, the weather is so changeable that you could be fifty miles from me and in the grip of Jack Frost who came to stay with a vengeance.
   I can’t plan for the mildness. Must plan for the harshness. The place is festooned with winter coats, fleeces, and other accoutrements fit for the year’s end/year’s beginning. An extra layer from that winter scarf. This is the one that serves me from chilly September’s end through to some vague time in early April if the sun decides not to come out to play.
   September and October weren’t months exhibiting scarf weather, though. I like to go out into the cold – the November/December/January cold – in as many layers as possible. But I left layers off, lately.
   Walking home past massive Christmas trees, on a long walk at night, I should have been cocooned in protective layers. But everything felt light and easy. Again, not a true complaint. Just an observation here, there, and everywhere.
   You feel, when the weather is mild like this, that it must soon change for the worst – taking the sharpest turn into an endless freezing hell. You believe it can’t last. Then it lasts, and you don’t know what to think.
   I think…let it be mild when I must be out and about at this time of year. Every precaution is close to hand if a vile storm descends. The worst thing I had to do so far was right a bin. It was out for emptying, heavy, and resisted overnight winds. But, a minute from being emptied, there it was, upturned by a gust.
   Out I went to bring it in off the street, and back into shelter where sudden gusts have no power. For carers, and those looked after, the mildness is a good thing. If the worst that happens is a toppled bin, claim that as a victory.
   Some items were close-run. The weather was mild, but the delivery of pills was tight. Christmas Eve delivery, just in time. The telephone call was expected. Just…not that late. Would I accept a delivery of pills? Is it okay to come out this afternoon?
   A thousand times YES. The problem with winter delivery, Christmassy delivery, is the whole system. I used to be able to order pills two weeks in advance. The pills would arrive after two weeks, and we’d move seamlessly from one batch to the next.
   But that changed. Now I can only order one week in advance. Pills generally arrive after two weeks, meaning a week without pills. Each delay feeds into the entire year. It is calculated, very precisely, to create a delay that means you stand a high chance of missing pill deliveries thanks to the holidays.
   Made it by a few hours, but only just. For once, the pills arrived in nine days instead of fourteen. But if they’d taken fourteen, they’d have been delayed a little more by holiday action. There’s nothing to be done about this. It’s random.
   Even then, the pharmacist made the decision to send out the order incomplete. Rather than delaying until everything was available, the pharmacy came through the light rain. I’d love to say through a blizzard…but light rain is what we had.
   And the delayed pills? Fifteen days to arrive. And that was a delivery at the last gasp, offered on the final day of the year. If I accepted a delivery that afternoon. A thousand times YES, all over again. Otherwise…it would be today or three days from now, if I hadn’t had the chance.
   What use is mild weather, if you are out of pills? No storm. And no loss of power. Cuts to power in storms are rare here. We are well-served. And being in a care situation, we were added to some sort of priority list in the event of emergencies. Never had to make use of the service. Can’t tell you how it runs.
   So…yes…everything is running more or less okay. Next is a new fridge, to sit beside the old fridge. The emergency fridge was the first to die. They don’t make the broken part any longer, so there was an insurance payout.
   The death of the old fridge goes back a bit. I adjusted accordingly, and made it through the mountain that is Christmas dinner. In the caring business, with an all-milk diet, I need an emergency storage solution. Two fridges. If one dies, the other one takes over. Well, the main one kept running while the spare fridge died…but the plan worked, just the same.
   Why have two fridges? The fridge engineer complimented me on having two. Told me it’s a great idea, especially if your fridge breaks down at Christmas or in high summer. Fridge repair engineers are swamped. The part might not be in stock. Have two fridges.
   That was the engineer’s view, along the basic lines of…you can’t order a new fridge for next day delivery around Christmas. But my view was a carer’s one – have a spare fridge to cope with an all-milk diet.
   Even this technological upset wasn’t upsetting – I’d planned for it. The fact that the part was no longer made meant the company paid out – a rarity. This softened the cost of a new and much-improved fridge.
   Tomorrow, I deal with that. Today, writing after the arrival of frost, I was interrupted by carers who explained their lateness as dancing on ice. This is what they did to reach the car, and what they did in the car.
   Everyone was caught short by the late arrival of December – in early January. Well, it’s what I prepare for. There’s not a cloud in the sky, and the winter sun is burning the frost off. The street, once icy, is now slick with water – reflecting the imperious sun crawling across a blue sky dotted with aeroplanes leaving trails far above.
   Dazzled by the sunlight on the road, I check the path. Still dry and free of cold, luckily. No need for the salt. Or the brush, shovel, snow shovel, and so on. They wait, in readiness, for what the rest of January may bring. If lucky, I won’t call on their services until November.
   Before long, it’ll be the other tools called to the front line. Dealing with weeds, trimming grass, cutting back bushes. It’ll be as if winter were never here. Not that it was here. We’ve had an endless autumn that just grew darker earlier at night, accompanied by grace notes of frost and a drop of snow that was far from being called a blizzard.
   The next drops of snow should be snowdrops. Then the trees will start to wake. But winter is not done, yet. I’ll cover apocalyptic levels of snow in my next monthly entry if the weather turns. Plan for the worst. Experience the mild. Hope for the best. As with weather, so, too, in caring.