Looking After Mum - 2 days away

Mum visiting Hev and me in Edinburgh in 2016

On Wednesday morning I flew down to East Midlands airport and took Earth’s cheapest hire car (£12, about which later) to Kibworth, to join Jude in looking after Mum.

I cancelled two nights of shows in Edinburgh, for the first time, because of the ominous sounding news about Mum that came in last weekend. She’d had another fall, which it turned out was one of four last week. This time she was taken to hospital, and this time Mum was pretty sure she didn’t want to go back to Windmill Gardens. 

As the most recent prognosis showed that the cancer has spread to her brain, and thought the recent course of radiotherapy had only finished the previous Monday, it was clear her condition wasn’t getting any better. Dizziness has caused earlier falls, and now it was physical weakness that was to blame. She is having too much difficulty walking, and even getting in and out of bed, to be left unattended. And so, while she is physically alert and totally compos mentis (a phrase that, can I just say, autocorrect will not tolerate, whatever device I’m writing on! Mum has been composed mantis and compost mentos in recent messages), she’s ready to go into a care home.

So, while the first half of Wednesday was spent with Jude and Mum waiting for an ambulance to take them from the Royal Infirmary in Leicester to St Luke’s cottage hospital in Harborough, and me getting on with work at Windmill Gardens (I script edited the show, changing the running order to great and successful effect), the later afternoon saw us getting Mum settled in at St Lukes, and discussing with nurses and various practitioners what our options were. We lined up three care home visits for Thursday.

Jude has been magnificent, doing far much more in this process than I’ve available to do, and possibly capable of. The arranging of the care workers who’ve been tending to Mum at home for the past month or so has all been Jude’s doing. And though I’ve taken on Power Of A Turkey (it’s what we call it, allow us our moments of levity) and taken charge of the money for funeral arrangements, Jude’s sorted out the paying of the bills so far. Her job is such that she’s able to work away from the office for great lengths of time, and has been spending every night in Kibbie going through mountains of email in her role as Whatever The Hell It Is She Does at Ealing Council. (She must have told me 50 times by now, it genuinely never sticks).

Mum visiting her alma mater Edinburgh College Of Art, for the first time in 60 years, August 2016

Thursday morning we went to visit Mum, who’s sleepy and wanting rest, but is her normal mentally alert self beneath the sluggishness. We learned more about the difference between CHC and FNC (forms of care funding, neither of which Mum is sick enough to be eligible for now) and spent a lot of time just chatting. We did marginally well in providing Mum with TV shows to watch. She has a Hudl, a downmarket tablet thing which I find really hard to operate, onto which I downloaded an Eastenders and a Poldark (she watched the Eastenders and informed me “I don’t like bloody Poldark”). I’d also brought with me my old iPhone 5s onto which I’d loaded two earlier Eastenders, a Casualty (which she watched), the movie Florence Foster Jenkins (which we left her watching on Thursday), and Poldark again (I didn’t know at the time!). Unfortunately she has no wifi in St Lukes, so unless some kindly nurse has the time and the inclination, and can get their heads around the working of the iPhone (easy) or the Hudl (nightmare and with less capacity than a wristwatch) and can take it to somewhere with wifi to download more show for her, she’ll just settle for the TV in the room, which she’s sharing with an equally quiet women of a similar vintage.

I realise I’ve devoted more column inches to Mum’s TV viewing than her medical condition. Which is how it should be. We’re all three of us quite resigned to the inevitability of the situation and frankly Mum doesn’t want anyone going over and over it when you can’t change anything. What we could do was sort out a nice place for her to stay.

And, hopefully, we’ve found it. Subject to an assessment next week, when they decide whether she’s in the right state to go there (and everyone so far thinks she is), Mum should be going into Kibworth Knoll. We looked at three places of which the Knoll was by far the best. One, in Harborough, as a residential and nursing home, which was too clinical and more than Mum needs right now; and one, in Kibworth, was a bit of a joke, being run by a well-intentioned but not very professional couple who were entertaining but not for us.

Implicated by Walter Tottle, performed by Nick, Kev and Noddy, written by me & Nick, filmed at The Knoll, 1981

The bonus about the Knoll is that it’s where my childhood best mate Nick Tyson used to live. Between 1976 and 1983 I spent many a long hour there, from doing sleepovers and rehearsing with the band - our first rehearsal room The Mission Hut was in the garage building which is now a two storey house - to filming pop videos. In the low-tech classic Implicated (1981, above) you can see the central staircase, which is still there, and the main lounge which still survives, and glimpse the fifteen foot long stained glass skylight over the central balcony, most of which is now covered by suspended ceiling, the balcony converted into rooms and corridors. The back garden where we filmed half the video, and the video for Take The Wires Out (1982), has long since been built over by an extension as long as the original house, and more. So Mum’s going to be living at Nick’s, ain’t that perfect?

Again, the second longest paragraph of this diary is about my old pop videos, rather than Mum. What can I say? You knew I was a shallow egoist before you took me in.

Mum’s happy with the Knoll decision, which was ultimately hers, so while I scooted off home to Edinburgh, and Jude will be going back to the Family in London for the weekend, she’ll be back on Monday to tend to Mum and the transfer, while I’m liaising long distance with various people. Now, did I mention I got a hire car for £12?

Now I know why Green Motion cars at East Midlands Airport are having to hire cars out at twelve quid a time. They are impossible to return the car to. Their office is at the Hilton Hotel, a 10 minute drive from the airport. This was easy enough when I was picking it up, I was met by a man in a van at the airport. But on returning the car one suddenly finds that the roads are being rebuilt and, certainly in my case, satnav doesn’t know where the new roads are. So the turning for the Hilton, which looks really clear and goes left off the M1, isn’t there any more. After overshooting twice, I found myself in a panic at missing my flight, being talked-through on the phone by the poor guy at Green Motion, who’s clearly having to do this with every other customer, then as soon as I dropped off, leaping into the waiting van to be driven to the airport. In future I shall pay the extra to ensure I get car hire which picks up and drops off at the airport. At least they sign-post airports when they move the roads.

Second longest paragraph again, all about me. I’d better stop now before we forget Mum is supposed to be the subject. Here, let’s enjoy a few more photos of her visit to Edinburgh back in 2016.