Ramblings

Edinburgh used to have a Royal Infimary in the city centre, and lots of small specialist hospitals and clinics built decades or even a century or more ago, all usefully accessible to the people who used them.

Then we got an NHS Trust that looked at this spread of healthcare and said OOH PRIME CITY CENTRE BUILDING SITES, and sold all the land off to property developers and used the money to fund a Public-Private Partnership (ie, a big con) to build a giant hospital an hour's bus ride out from the city centre. Miles and miles from anywhere.

So while I love my dad and want to see him, I am getting really increasingly pissed off with the decision that means my evenings are occupied from 5:30-9:00 by travelling out to the Royal Infirmary, having visiting time with my dad, and travelling back again. There is nowhere to buy a cup of tea or coffee - the only cafe closes (I assume) at 6pm, since I've never seen it open. There is a sort of mini-mall in the main entrance, but the only shop open when I get there is WHSmiths, which closes at 8pm, which has tail-end sandwiches left by the time I get there.

(My first time, I thought to buy one of the meal bargains - you get a sandwich, a bottle of water/soft drink, a packet of crisps - but they'd run out of water the size that went with the meal bargain, I don't do soft drinks, and the sandwich / crisps were both being sold at the kind of inflated prices you see when a shop has (a) a captive market (b) a hefty ground rent.)

I'm feeling kind of lost and isolated at work right now because my colleagues are all frantic about other things and I'm feeling mostly "OMG DAD!" which of course no one else is. And I can see why they're frantic and would be sharing that franticness except that I don't have room for it past "OMG DAD!"

Off for my long bus ride now...

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Composing a note to my dad, I realised I was actually not sure how to address it. I have for years avoided it because one simply doesn't write letters these days. E-mails begin with "hi". Cards and presents are formally addressed.

How do I think of him? He's his name, of course: he's Father, which is how I speak to him more often than not: he is "my dad", which is how I reference him to others more often than not: he is "Pops" or "Granpops" to my siblings and to my nephews, respectively, but I've never thought of him as either one, though I can and do switch to their terminology when speaking with them. I addressed the note, in the end, to "Dear Name", on the basis that the nurses would realise more easily who it belonged to if it got cleared off the over-the-bed table at night. He is also half of the collective referent "the parents" which is how me and my brother and sister discuss them as a joint problem. Er, yes.

He was asleep when I arrived (late: bus breakdown) last night, and I sat watching/listening to him sleep, feeling that it would be a mistake to wake him up. He woke about quarter to eight, and concurred. We sat together till about ten past eight, or shortly after the trolley came in with the evening tea, and then I went home, because visiting hours officially end at 8pm and I thought it better to leave before being formally asked to go.

Sleeping did him good, though he is clearly getting better: he suffers pain now (he says) only in the broken bone, not all over. He was out of bed for an hour, and while it exhausted and hurt him, he didn't actually feel he was going to collapse, as on Saturday: and he is off the oxygen which was cleaning out his system after the anaesthetic. He rang my mum Sunday morning to remind her about the newsletters for the Quaker Meeting he had meant to deliver on Thursday, and was about to call her again after I'd left to let her know that the publisher of his book should know he is in hospital and not available to respond to e-mails. (Fortunately, he won't receive the proofs till 13th January - "your birthday", he said with a grin - and they don't have to go back to the publishers till February.) So. But, he is still not well enough to focus - to read/listen to radio. Though I brought him a new set of earphones, the sort that actually fit inside your ears (you don't know until you've tried them how much better the sound quality is) and a travel radio as an early Christmas present.

(Unfortunately, his ward is in a transmitter shadow, so he can't use the radio in hospital, though there is a hospital radio behind his bed.)

He's better. He will be getting better. Hopefully, he will be out of the hospital for Christmas, though that only leaves the problem open for now about where my parents are going to go, for how long, and how. (My mum planned to contact the university to ask about a flat with disabled access, available on a short let, as for a visiting scholar: which would be perfect if possible. If she does. Um.)

It's not much, just a dusting, but it's pretty, and it's the first snow of the season for us! Sure puts you in the holiday spirit, if you weren't already (which I was and AM!)!

Woohoo!

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( The Rules )

1. For my dad's broken bone to heal cleanly and without complications.
2. Anything on my Amazon wish-list
3. A holiday somewhere outside Edinburgh.
4. A big glass goblet candle-holder, the sort that can hold a 30-hour candle
5. For my parents to see that the only workable solution to their current situation is for both of them to take a short let on a nice furnished ground-floor flat with a walk-in shower and let other people clear the guddle out of their duplex four-flights-up flat so that it can be sold and they can move properly.
6. 30-hour scented candles in cinnamon, vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and cardamom. (I have never seen a cardamom-scented candle.)
7. For my parents to admit that they see (5) and actually follow through.
8. Starbucks Chocolate Covered Graham Crackers
9. Time to write.
10. A Swiss Army knife

I met my mum for lunch, we had delicious vegan soup and talked in a fraught way about their home and then she went off to the hospital to see my dad while I went shopping. Afterwards I went to see my dad and he was very tired and I got the 8 back to have mulled fruit wine and other interesting fruit wines in good company. I got home late, tired, drunk, and slept irregularly till noon. It's sunny. I suppose going out would be a good idea, now I've had breakfast. And coffee.

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After a late breakfast, I made the grocery list with Bunnicula; then he and Cat'r went shopping, stopping over at Cat'r's apartment to put the beautiful futon cover on his...futon.

Meanwhile I worked on songs and played my cigar box ukulele.

When they got back we played games: Assyria (Cat'r won), 8 1/2 (I won), and Cosmic Wimpout (Bunnicula won).

We're about to watch an episode or so of "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" on DVD.