Yesterday was a strange day in some ways. The night before, Meg had experienced one of the periods of extreme agitation to which she is prone on occasion and the only way to get her to sleep was to lie on my camp bed and attempt to hold her hand (which is not easy when she has one of these agitated episodes) She had the normal complement of pills half an hour before being put to bed, at least two of which are supposed to have sleep inducing properties but instead we had to witness some verbal aggression directed towards the carers. Fortunately, they understood all of this in dementia patients and coped with it as best they could but I find it a bit difficult to cope with when these incidents occur. Meg seemed to be all right when she first woke up this morning but then her mood suddenly darkened, as though a light switch had been turned off in her head so I wondered what kind of day might be ahead of us. It was a very dark, gloomy, wet and windy day and Meg intimated to me that she had no desire to be pushed down the hill to have coffee in Waitrose and, under the circumstances, I was inclined to agree with her. But once we had breakfasted and got washed up, I settled Meg in her chair to some music and then made a lightning visit in the car to pick up Saturday's newspaper (which contains all the TV programs for the forthcoming week) When I returned, Meg was fast asleep and stayed asleep for the best part of the morning. When this happens, I do succumb to the adage of 'let sleeping dogs lie' and I wonder if all of this is a reaction to the disturbed night that she had last night. But this time when Meg was asleep was handy for me to do some tidying up and to sort through the pile of newspapers to see what can be junked and which 'nuggets' are to be saved. I also took the opportunity of a certain amount of 'play time' using the Alexa built into the Toshiba we have in our Music Room but have not really explored in very much detail. For example, I have tried the commands of 'Alexa, play random Mozart' and 'Alexa, play soothing music' I have also been exploring some of the films available to us as part of our subscription to Amazon Prime and think that we might view 'The Way' (account of one man's journey along the Camino de Santiago taking the place of his son who died in the French Pyrenees at the start of the route) which is well worth another watch.
When Meg and I watched QuestionTime recently, it was remarkable to see practically everybody piling into the government over the issue of both rises in inheritance for farmers but also the cuts in the Winter Fuel Allowance.This latter policy is really going to come back and bite the government and one wonders whether in the fullness of time, there will be a backbench revolt. The government announced soon after winning the election in July that only elderly people in receipt of pension credits would receive help of up to £300 this winter, instead of every pensioner as before, with the aim of saving £1.5bn a year. But figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) this week found 100,000 extra pensioners could be in poverty by 2027 because of the decision. As a result of those figures, the cross-party Work and Pensions Committee launched a review on Friday into the challenges and mitigations of pensioner poverty. It will look into how pensioner poverty differs across the UK's regions and communities, how it affects different groups' lifespans and to what extent the state pension and other benefits for older people prevent poverty. It was pointed out in the QuestionTime program that the government knows that several categories of pensioners will be left much worse off but their official answer is that up to about 700,000 should claim Pension Credit. As Pension Credit is worth nearly 4,000 per year and 700,000 who should be claiming do not, then the theoretical total cost to the government if all entitled were to claim would be of the order of about ££2.8 billion. So we have the ridiculous situation where the government knows that not many will claim but were they to do so, then the total cost would exceed the amount saved by cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance in the first place. In other words, the government are relying upon claims not being made to make the savings anticipated. The claim form for Pension Credit is long and complicated and older people are having to fill out a 243-question form to access pension credit and winter fuel payments - a task that will be 'daunting' for some, charities have said. So the way to ensure that everyone gets the credit is to pay it in the first place as a flat rate increase to pensions and then claw some of it back by taxing more those who do not need it, thus making the effect neutral for the better off pensioners.
With the two young carers who often put Meg to bed at the weekend, we often have a bit of a laugh and a joke with each other. Tonight, we somehow got onto the discussion of party clothes and I was having to explain to them what a kaftan was. These were quite popular in the 1970's and although they were generally associated with those of a hippy disposition they were quite often worn as casual wear. I had a couple of quite interesting designs, as I remember, and I wore them particularly at the Open University Summer Schools where I was a module leader in the mid 1970's at Nottingham University. The partying at these summer schools often went on into the wee small hours (and beyond) and I think that many of the OU students wanted to feel that they were 'proper students' so there was extensive drinking and then partifying. These were the periods when we had long hot summer evenings which aided the holding of impromptu parties in any case and although you would not turn up with a kaftan during the day, it was a sort of a signal that you were off-duty as it were after 9.00pm. All members of staff had to give some specialist guest lectures on subjects of their own choosing between 8.00pm and 9.00pm so as the Summer Schools started at 9.00am we were working 12 hour days as tutors in any case.
© Mike Hart [2024]