DEMENTIA CARE: MAINTENANCE WORKERS.

All of the maintenance was arranged for October. Even the maintenance conducted in September. The community alert was going to receive its annual maintenance on the same day as the new door went in.
   But that was a clerical error, and the alarm guy turned up in September to explain a mistake was made in the office. October appointments were really September appointments in disguise. Knowing the power would be off in October for some gas and electricity maintenance work, I mentioned this to the alarm guy. He gave me a number to call on the day.
   That way, the alarm guy wouldn’t show up at the door to check out the loss of signal. If I phoned the office and explained why the power was off, it saved him a journey. Reorganisation of the job would also save his making a return maintenance trip in a year. Annual alarm maintenance is now going to be every eighteen months.
   I did a fair spot of maintenance myself over the past week as I anticipated the arrival of various technical bods. Hardly a day went by without my adjustment of a door, a drawer, something under the sink, a thing that pinged off the fridge, or, sometimes, even the tools themselves.
   First to arrive was the gas guy. He’d have the electric guy come in as well. Gas and electricity meters will now be upgraded every decade. We were overdue for an overhaul. Each meter took an hour to remove and replace.
   The machines may be standardised, and many houses are supposedly the same, but every locale is different. I’d made the phone call. When the electricity was switched off, we could all hear the alert telling us the power supply was disrupted. Then restored. And then disrupted again. Finally, restored. No one came out to ask why, so the phone call to the office worked.
   I wandered the upstairs portions of the house with a torch in my hand as I went about various daily duties. Just like a murder mystery in a mansion during a storm. Without the storm. And no mansion, it’s true. Also, no one died.
   The electricity guy decided to be cautious and he switched the electricity off a second time. Better safe than sorry. That was me to him. He agreed wholeheartedly. There were a few glitches based on the standardised house not being as standardised as you’d expect…which is something you should totally expect.
   Then they were done. Two hours of disruption. Good for ten years. I had a new gadget, reading off gas and electricity in the kitchen. It would take a few days to filter through the readings. Now the meters provide even more regular data straight to the alien mothership on the dark side of the moon.
   While casually reading about smart meters I discovered the Smart Meter Conspiracy Enthusiasts. Like Flat Earthers, they don’t trouble my sleep. Aren’t Flat Earthers great? I love a well-rounded conspiracy as much as the next person.
   You have to be careful not to disrespect Flat Earthers, though. They do have a global reach. Flat Earthers come from all around the world to attend the big conventions. Even so, that view of theirs still falls into a niche sphere. Don’t enter into debate with them. You’ll just end up revolving around circular arguments.
   Can’t be bothered with those Flat Mooners. They are the worst.
   With the alert well out of the way and the gas and electricity seen to, al I had to do was discover loads of things in need of fixing around the house. I’d do this very scientifically by opening a door or reaching for a utensil, only to be disappointed with the end results.
   Now I was the maintenance worker. Part of the maintenance was all about the new door. I had to clear the hall. For safety, I took away the pictures hanging there. This was the memory gallery for my mother. She would have a carer escort her through the hall to the kitchen and around to the stairs.
   This longer route up to the bath offered her the chance to talk about places she’d been to. And she did talk. Mobility, loss of strength in the knees, put paid to that taxing trek. But the pictures remained. I moved a few from the kitchen through to the main room, to keep the talking-points going.
   Taking pictures out of the hall reminded me of the difficulty I had in putting them up in the first place. Endless measurements. First, find a poster service that would handle the photos. Easy. Next, match the poster to a clear frame. Focus attention on the pictures. Easy.
   Print them up, frame them up…easy. Hang them up. Fucking hell. Fiddly. I created a themed walk. And it worked. This time around, hanging them didn’t involve measuring the walls up and knocking nails in. But I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect.
   I uncovered webbing. No spiders. They hadn’t lingered. I dismantled the mat alarm and I undid the wiring. Motion-sensor lights had to come out of the way. I switched the radiator off. It wasn’t on. But it had to go fully off at the dial.
   Carpet runners. Ancient. Beyond time. Difficult to remove. Then I folded the carpet up and around the corner. This seemed to take all day and all night. Stop. Check a thing. No damage. Carry on.
   I’d placed a sign on the door, to say where you are going before leaving the house. That was there when there was no door alarm. Immobility brings its own challenges. But it takes away the business of wandering off into the streets when you have no concentration.
   So. I finally removed the sign on the inside of the door. The blue goo holding it there was soft. It just wouldn’t come away clean. I had to use older harder blue goo to attract it. Eventually, I removed all traces of the blue goo from that door. (If not entirely from my fingers.)
   With the carers gone at night, I locked the door for the last time. I’d set the alarm early so I’d have my coffee well before the arrival of the workman. Next morning, I unlocked the door for the last time.
   A van arrived and dropped the new door off. The delivery guy sat it out of the way, over there. There’s a mat on the step. I moved that out of the way, over there. Exactly where the door would end up, of course.
   Then the workman arrived. He checks to see if you are home so that he can start. The door does need to be open for that. We covered a few fine details, and I left him to it. Later, he let the care team in. They weren’t used to coming in to silence. There was no mat to give off the jangled alarm of the bells.
   So they shouted out to me when they were finished. And away they went. After just over three hours, the door was in place. It looked very clean. I was warned not to wash any of the plastic surround. Just let the glue set. Okay.
   I was given a tour of the mechanism. The old door had a proper keyhole. You could see through it to the outside. No more. There wasn’t even a keyhole. Just a thumb latch. You don’t scramble for your keys in a fire. Instead, you just turn the latch to unlock from the inside.
   So I really had locked and unlocked the door from inside the hall, with a key, for the last time. This has changed morning routine. I start caring with pills I carry through from the kitchen. On the way, I jangle the keys out and unlock the door. That’s one thing I need never do again.
   What else changed? There is light. The old door had two tiny windows high up. Monks in their cells had access to greater illumination. Now, from the kitchen, it looks as though the door must be open with all the light streaming through. When you reach the corner, you see the door is shut.
   Takes a bit of getting used to. Did I change anything? Yes. The carpet runners and the carpet are more or less the same. Radiator still radiates. But I took this chance to rearrange the wiring for the mat and the alarm.
   The wire goes from the mat up the wall, over the toilet door, and across the hall ceiling, down the wall, and to the socket there. I tidied up the cabling a bit. This was long and involved. But the door, which is very snug and shiny and new, shouldn’t be replaced for an absolute age. So I won’t be rewiring every few weeks.
   It took a few days for the first cobweb to span the door. And not at the top. Maybe the freshness is keeping the last of the feisty spiders at bay. There is no number on the outside of the door. It is textured. So I won’t be adding stickers to the surface, the way I did with the bins. Delivery drivers are almost always on satellite navigation. Or they have it and make educated guesses. These guys never read the instruction manual.
   I was handed three keys. One is now inside the keysafe on the outside wall. Another is in my pocket. The third is spare. In a drawer for now.
  The front door has a handle that lifts up the way. Now, finally, the back door operates in the same fashion. This places a hook inside the frame, keeping the door secure against severe winds. I’ve just received the door in time for worsening weather. There was a chance I’d have to wait until mid-January for this replacement.
   With the door in place and the workman away, I set to business installing the mat. At the very bottom of the whole assembly, the new door frame reduced the area of step available. I set to work with a measuring tape and a ruler. Cut a bit here. Trim a bit there. We were back in business.
   You wouldn’t care about any of this if you weren’t a carer. Being a carer, though, you plan a lot around the event. You work out which team is going to be in on that day. The door guy is there in the morning or the afternoon.
   The morning squad is told in advance. Leading up to the day itself, I clear the front hall in case the carers knock at the front door. I’d put all the pictures from the back hall into the front hall, and realised that might cause an obstruction. The front door is hardly used, so it didn’t bother me. But it could have bothered the carers coming in.
   Carpets. Doors. Fittings. Fixtures. Tools. Keep them available. Not inside the cupboard that’s going to be blocked off by the raised carpet. It’s all easy stuff. But it comes with that extra layer of…wait, will this interrupt caring routine? Answer. Of course it will. And that’s why I planned ahead. The whole thing went smoothly.
   And the door? Well. It is just a door. What did I expect? I expect…the door to last a long time. It keeps the weather out. And it lets the sunlight in, warming the hall. Taking the chill off autumn. I imagine the hall will be like an oven in summer.