So much damage

One of the things I have learned from being with my mother at this time, is that dementia harms more than just the person who has it.  And oh, how it damages them!  My mother's dementia probably started as long time ago as 10 or 15 years; and so much of what we have taken for granted about her for all this time was probably the result of the dementia unrecognised.  I can remember saying to people that my mother seemed to have lost a lot of her filters and put it down to growing older and being less willing to be tolerant.  She used racist language that I would never have heard from her when she was younger.  Moreover, she became far more critical of both family and friends, and people she encountered in the street.  If she felt someone was over weight, she said something about it and sometimes, she was quite cruel.  It seemed that those thoughts she would once have kept to herself, were now to be spoken aloud.

I have heard that a number of her grand children have been quite upset by her words and actions.  I don't think the she will ever have the opportunity to mend these relationships.  It is even possible that she forgets who they are as she has forgotten me.  However, perhaps one day they will come to understand that it was all part of the dementia and that she would be devastated if she realised what she had done.

Again it's been a long time

The title says it all and I won't add to that.  I have picked this blog up again because it seems to do me a lot of good writing here in times of stress.  I started it originally as a way of communicating with friends and family when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.  Now I think I will be using it to help me cope with living with my mother, who has dementia, during the  Covid-19 lockdown.

It has been very difficult.  I think that is one of the biggest understatements I have ever made.  I have even lost track of how long I have been here. I arrived in Thetford just days prior to the lockdown in late March when my mother's part-time carer had to self-isolate due to illness in the family.  I am still here and likely to be so for at least another 3 weeks.

25 things I want people to know about me...revisited

I haven't thought about this since 2009 but it is interesting to revisit it and see if I can possibly come up with 25 things that anyone other than me (and perhaps my family once I am dead and gone) would be interested in knowing.

My first in the 2009 blog was that I love New York, though not as much as Paris.  I am not sure if that is still true but I do like New York or at least the New York I remember from the last time I was there.  Then there is the question of the 100,000 words.  Still no book but creeping towards it.

So here goes:

1. I love New York but not as much as Paris and perhaps I love London more than either of them but that could have to do with familiarity.

2.  I haven't bothered counting how many words I have written since 2009 but still no book.  I do think that I am edging towards one though.  Interesting to see if I get anywhere with it by this time next year.

(This is the point when I wonder what anyone would be interested in knowing!  I have far more than 25 friends on Facebook now but how many are good enough friends that they would want to know more than the superficial.)

3.  If Beale Street Could Talk is one of my favorite books (as I have recently said on Facebook) and I can't help but wonder why I haven't reread it since the late 70s.

4. I wrote my master's thesis on a text written in Anglo Norman French (French spoken in Britain after the Norman Conquest).  As I didn't go on for a PhD, I don't suppose that it was specifically useful in the rest of my life but the skills I gained from doing it certainly were.

5.  I am a Star Trek fan and am loving Star Trek Discovery.  I have been a sci-fi fan since I was about 10 when I was given an adult library card and discovered the science fiction section along with Heinlein, Asimov, Larry Niven and so many more.

6. Though I do like being in New York, Paris and London, my favorite place in the world at the present time is Gladstone's Library in Flintshire.  I would give anything to spend a month there, or even a full week.

7. I have become both more and less tolerant as the years have progressed.  Funny how that happens.

8. I have few regrets but one of them (and it still haunts me...how silly) relates to an event when I was 16.  One morning, I grew impatient with waiting for my ride to school and took a ride with someone else.  No mobiles in those days to tell them what had happened.

9. I still have dreams about not having finished high school when I was admitted early to university.  Yes, I don't have a high school diploma and really why should that matter at my age.

(When I have a problem coming up with 10, 25 would be impossible.)

10.  I don't dream in French anymore.  Hopefully next month's visit to Paris will help with that!

It's been a while

Yes, it certainly has been a while.  Not that I haven't been writing but nothing systematic and in one place.  I've written academic pieces relating to education; I've written about the work I've done or planned on doing for my classes and I have written in a diary.  It's all over the place.  I am considering making this blog private since I'm not sure if I want others reading it any more.  I am also considering trying to turn the blog into a editable document and then deleting the blog from the internet.  We shall see.  I find it easier to type my journals than to hand write them, though I do have a written journal in a book entitled Alexandre Dumas, just in case anyone ever decides to look for it among my possessions when I shuffle off. 

I am looking at how I want to improve my life at the moment.  I need to work harder or more consistently at sorting out my medical needs - my diabetes, my aches in my knee and the big toe of my right foot and my right upper arm.  I swam today and that was a mistake for my arm.  Back stroke is not good when you have tendinitis...if that is in fact what it is.  I am trying to carry my bike only with my left arm and I have switched my bed around so that I sleep on my left side instead of my right.  Time will tell if that helps.  What didn't help, was falling off my bike just before Christmas.  At least my left leg is better now.  Hopefully my arm will be soon as well.  I sound as if I am falling apart, don't I.

I also want to work on my diet.  I had tried to eat only within a 12 to 10 hour period.  That fell by the way fairly quickly because of eating with the family.  I am going to have to plan better now.  I also would like to improve my quality of sleep.  It is obviously so important and in order to maintain my quality of life and my ability to continue teaching and writing, I need to ensure that I sleep well.  I haven't been because of my arm, the cats and the need to go to the bathroom more than anyone should need to.  I have booted the cats out at night, changed my bed around and have found that I don't wake as often, if at all, and thus don't need to go to the bathroom.  Now I just need to stop my screen time 90 minutes before bed and try and read from 8:00 till 9:30 each evening, or work on my Latin.

Finally, I am going to write every day.  Let's see what happens!

Never Did Finish the Second Round of 28daysofwriting

And no, I never did!  However, I am about to start my trip across the states and I will easily be writing most days.  There may be time between blogs but that will only be because I am on the road and where there is no wifi.

I have talked about the itinerary before but here it is again!  I fly to Toronto and spend two nights, I then take a train to Windsor, cross the border to Detroit, and take Amtrak to Ann Arbor where I am going to stay with a former colleague for a few days.  After that, it's back on the train to Chicago and then down to Kansas City.  I'm there for 3 days and then off again on Amtrak to Reno, Nevada.  I'll be there for nearly 2 weeks and then I do the final leg on Amtrak to San Francisco before flying back to Canada.

Along the way, I'll visit friends and former colleagues, read books set in the cities and towns I'm visiting, listen to my music and study a bit of Latin.  I am really looking forward to this!

Back Again!

(I hadn't meant to take this much of a break from writing during the better part of April.  It just seemed to happen that way.  First I was in Taipei, then I was coping with jet lag (which didn't make me sleepy tired by destroyed my cognitive abilities), and finally we arrive at this week! )

So, #28daysofwriting round 2 post 16!  My, my March has gone on a long time!

I hadn't meant to talk about Taipei in my #28daysofwriting posts but my slow debrief (if that is the right word) after my visit, has led me to some observations.  One in particular jumps out at me since we are in the lead up to a general election.  In 2012, the voter turn out in Taiwan was over 76%.  For presidential election in 2000, it was 82%.  In the UK, it was 65%.  In 2001, it was 59%.

I've been pondering what conclusions to draw from this.  I did notice that Taiwan's voter turnout has generally been on the increase, especially since the death of Chiang Kai-shek.  The voter turnout in western countries such as the UK, the United States, Canada and France, have gone from high turn out in the 50s and 60s to ever increasing lows.

When I was in Taipei, a lady I met talked about life under the nationalist Chinese and Chiang Kai-shek and compared it to the North Korea of today.  Since people have been able to vote freely and had options other than the one party, they have taken to democracy whole heartedly!  Do we need a few years of a dictatorship to shake off our lethargy and indifference, (and I do talk here of the west as a whole and not the UK in particular), and make us realise the value and importance of our democratic freedoms.

Oh dear, I do sound as if I am beating a drum here.  I don't mean to.  Furthermore, I do understand how this could have happened.  Slowly the major parties have been merging and at one point during the labour government under Tony Blair, Labour seemed more conservative than the conservatives.

Scotland seemed this fall to have rediscovered enthusiasm for the democratic process and I do envy them the excitement that seems to have been generated.

Post 15 part 2 of #28daysofwriting: Taiwan and First Impressions!

I did wonder at one point if I would ever take off from Heathrow and then later, whether or not I would ever get off the plane.  Having said that, I did take off and I did land, first at Bangkok, and then finally at Taiwan, oh so many hours later.  I had decided before leaving that I would have a device-less flight and instead read a book or do some writing.  Well, that plan fell apart before we ever got off the ground and after a two hour delay, all I wanted to do was sleep once I got on board.  I packed 3 books in my backpack...well I was on a 17 hour flight!  I will take a lesson from this and not take so many books when I go to North America.  Why didn't you take a mobile device, I hear you say.  Well, as I said, I wanted to go without my I-pad and truth be told, I much prefer physical books!  I learned another lesson from this flight as well.  The next time I fly a long distance, I am going to spend the money for a more comfortable seat.

Enough of the flight!  Despite the delay in London, we arrived only an hour or so late in Taiwan. As we drove from the airport to Taipei, I couldn't help comparing the city with many I have seen in the US, except of course, for the Chinese-English signs.    There were wide highways and sweeping overpasses.  The traffic sped along and then emptied into the wide treed, city boulevards. At intersections, the stoplights counted down, often as much as 90 seconds, giving pedestrians plenty of time to cross. Western shops lined the streets, many of them high end designer labels, interspersed with local ones and on every corner, or so it seemed, a 7 Eleven. I was later to discover that 7 Elevens are so much more in Taiwan than their counter parts in the US but that for a later post.

And then my taxi started to climb, up through the ever narrowing streets.  I had no idea till this point that Taipei is surrounded by mountains and that my daughter lived part way up one of them.  The taxi took a sharp turn, dipped down a narrow road and crossing a bridge, we arrived at the entrance to the complex of appartment buildings where I was to stay.  Even though it was dark, the street lights revealed a mass of white bricked buildings with red tiled rooves and over hangs.  It wasn't beautiful but it was impressive. And standing outside one of them was Emma.