I chatted with Paul last night about the rigours and demands of caring for Dad. Funny enough, he asked whether I had written much about him in my blogs, so I’m making a mental note to include something about him in this entry.
Paul was in fits of laughter after reading through my description of what played out when I was at the reins yesterday, which I will henceforth refer to as ‘Custard-gate’. I have a different bond with each of my siblings. The bond with Paul is perhaps a bit more complex than that with the others. It’s always a challenge to write openly about my brothers and sisters. I think there are two reasons for that. Firstly, my blogs are more about me and my perspective, so I tend to focus on how I see things rather than how they might. Secondly, it’s not really my place to discuss openly things they might otherwise not choose to share. Even brushing up against certain subjects could cause me to cross lines I ought not to cross. It can be a delicate balancing act. I must tread tactfully when referring to anyone other than myself, because you never know whether an innocent comment might land the wrong way. Take Paul, for example. I know it’s a modern world we live in, and there’s really no shame in it, but if my second older brother chooses to keep his Victorian-era gay porn addiction private, then who am I to interfere with that? The addiction has been a struggle for him for many years, admittedly, but we remain optimistic he will make a full recovery, that the constant stream of male visitors will one day stop, and that he’ll regain the full use of his right wrist. Fortunately, he has managed to get the syphilis under control, so that’s at least some partial progress.
In all seriousness, if push comes to shove, I know that Paul would step in front of a bus for me. He has demonstrated that on many occasions—even in the face of personal adversity. You really can’t ask more than that from a brother.
I awoke this morning with no clear memory of having fallen asleep or what the Nothing Much Happens podcast was playing. I’m taking that as a good sign. I’m not ready to call this experiment a complete success just yet, but it’s certainly leaning in that direction.
I packed all my things away in preparation for my morning departure. The plan today was to drive to Little Jacky’s in Stevenage and to stay there the night before heading back to Wales for a few more days. She has been nagging me about building a website for one of her clients, but she keeps forgetting to give me the details I need. With high hopes we’ll finally tick that task off the list today, I set the satnav’s destination accordingly and pinged Jacky my ETA. That immediately elicited a reply suggesting she had forgotten about this arrangement. Doh! She was profusely apologetic, and we discussed an alternative plan, involving me spending a night with her next week instead. Once again, I took this last-minute change of plans in my stride. After all, the schedule was artificial to begin with. There was nothing riding on any of the dates involved. John and Lisa have an open-door policy and have told me I can come and go as I please. I let them know I would be arriving back a day or so earlier, to which their response was something akin to ‘No worries. We’ll see you whenever we see you.’
It was another scorcher today, with the car registering temperatures in the upper thirties once again. Just sitting stationary in the car while going back and forth with Jacky felt like being baked in an oven.
With my plans to visit Jacky having temporarily fallen through, I decided to treat myself to a Maccas breakfast. Despite being here for nearly three weeks, this will be my first trip to a McDonald’s. I was especially keen because the Maccas breakfast menu here in the UK has pork sausage patties. Back home, they are beef. It’s like eating a regular beef burger with an egg on top—not really to my liking. They used to serve pork at the Dutch McDonald’s, but they switched to beef-only for some reason a few years back. I much prefer the pork version, so breakfast this morning held high promise for me.
My double order McMuffin Sausage & Egg did indeed go down a treat, putting me in a chipper mood. Alas, that wasn’t to last. The Maccas I went to was the one near the massive Lakeside shopping centre. Unlike the womenfolk in my family, I’d just as soon as poke myself in the eye with a red-hot poker, while walking barefoot across molten lava littered with Lego bricks, than go willingly into a large shopping centre. However, I did promise Sandy and Joey I would check in at The Entertainer, a small toy shop that often stocks Beyblades, Transformers, and Bakugans—some of Joey’s special-interest toys. I am a man of my word—particularly when it comes to promises to the children. I was planning on doing this errand on the day of my final departure, but I was here now, and I had nothing compelling me to set off towards Wales right away, so I thought, why not?
Lakeside is huge, and surrounded by surface car parks. Given it was scorchingly hot today, just walking from the car to the building would be a draining exercise, so I wanted to minimise my time outside by parking as close as possible to the best entrance. I checked my Apple Maps app and noted ‘The Entertainer’ was at the far end of the main drag, so I parked my car accordingly. It was still a fair slog to get to the building and into the flaming inferno of hell that people euphemistically refer to as a shopping centre. I then had to dodge bustling shoppers in Primark—oh, how much fun that was—before getting into the lift to the lower floor. Right at the far end of the lower level, I found…a coffee shop. This was the correct location according to my map. Looking gloomily at the phone in my sweaty hand, the little icon showed me looking directly at ‘The Entertainer’. All I could see were mindless zombies sipping on expensive cups of coffee. I was here a few months ago and bought something at this store, so where did it go? Did it move? Did they go out of business? With no proof, Sandy was never going to believe this, so I snapped a photo and showed her I tried, but the store simply wasn’t there. A short while later, she replied, telling me I was at the exact opposite end of the hellhole shopping centre. By now, I’m sweating from the walk through 38+ºC heat, tired from having to walk hundreds of metres, dodging other sweaty humans through a clothing megastore, across a sea of Lego-brick-topped molten lava; I’m disoriented and stressed to the hilt. And to make matters worse, I now must not only walk the full length of this festering pit of capitalism to get to where I’m supposed to be, but the full length back again to get to my bloody car, which will no doubt be hot enough by then to speed-roast a chicken, two pigs and a bloody side of beef with all the trimmings. On balance, there probably wasn’t a single spot I could have found that was worse for me to park in to pull off this task. Terrific! The things I fecking do for my bloody kids! But hey, at least I’m finding time to relax on this trip!
All the while mumbling to myself about how much I’m enjoying this trip, I made it to where I needed to be. Fortunately, the shop was indeed still in business and was still there. Finding it missing once I got there would just about have sent me over the edge; I shit you not.
Anyway, after a quick video call with Joey, we found a couple of small items for him, so it was mission accomplished after all. Thank the Lord for small mercies!
This does leave me with the dilemma of what to bring home with me for Jae. She’s much harder to shop for than Joey. Joey has a few special interests, including Lego, Beyblades, and Bakugan. Anything from those toy lines brings an immediate smile to his inner self. I say inner self because he’s often completely expressionless—even when he experiences joy.
I had earlier told Paul I would do some supermarket shopping for him and Dad when I pass through again next week. Since I had no specific time I needed to be in Wales, I figured I’d pop into Tesco while I’m still in town after all. It would be a nice surprise for Dad to see me again anyway.
Paul had earlier sent me a modest shopping list. Now, if there’s one thing I hate more than shopping centres, it’s supermarket shopping from someone else’s list. This is one of the banes of my existence. I live within walking distance of a supermarket and sometimes go there twice a day, reading through a list sent to me by Sandy or Jae. I’m forever frustrated at the ambiguity of what’s on the list. Oh, so you want ‘cheese’? What cheese should I get? Shredded cheese? A block of cheese? Old cheese? Young cheese? Sliced cheese? Cheese with holes? Cheese for pizza? Long cheese? Short cheese? Fat cheese? Thin cheese? What fecking cheese!? In addition to telling me ‘precisely’ what you want, leaving zero wiggle room for doubt, I’d also much prefer you tell me exactly where in the shop I can find it. I’m notorious for missing things—even if, indeed, especially if—they are staring right at me. Often, out of frustration, I’ll photograph the racks where I’m supposed to find a product and send it defiantly to Sandy as proof the article she swears blind is there is actually nowhere to be found…only to receive a copy of that photo sent back to me with about a minute later with a big red circle painted on showing the product I’m looking for right there at eye height.
So, I’m wandering through Tesco, trying desperately to ‘complete this task successfully’, which required me to find everything on the list. I found many, but not all of the products Paul listed, which was really starting to frustrate me. I was especially having a hard time finding something called ‘Tescos mini cakes’. Tesco has its own-brand versions of most products, so how hard could it be to track them down? I looked high and low, but try as I might, I couldn’t find that combination of words on any product in any aisle—even after I was directed to the aisle where they were supposed to be by a staff member. Out of exasperation, I sent Paul photos of the cake sections. Then he hit me with his clarifying description. It turns out there are no products with that exact name—I was never going to find them. He was referring to a generic description of the types of products he was hoping I would pick off the shelf. To paraphrase, what he ‘should’ have written was, ‘Find some of the Tescos home brand of small cakes and pick a few out for Dad’. That would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress. Once that penny dropped, I was okay. Did I say how much I hate shopping with someone else’s list?
So, with my shopping in hand, and with my stress levels returning to baseline, I popped back to Dad’s to drop it all off, via a quick detour to a convenience shop near Dad’s to pick up some chocolate I had promised I would get Paul…but ‘forgot’ to do so.
Having bid Dad and Paul yet another farewell, I refuelled the car and made my way once again across the countryside towards mid Wales. During the journey, I gave some thought to the homework I still have to complete. My therapist wants me to write a letter to my body. If I did this today, it would be a short, to-the-point letter telling my body just how much it has let itself go over the past decade…or two…or three.
About halfway to Wales, I pulled off the motorway at Rugby. My condition was G+28, and closing in on G+29. If I let it get all the way up to G+30 or more, I could start getting quite jittery and might even need some serious intervention. Incidentally, those figures have nothing to do with blood chemistry. That’s just the number of hours since I was last at a Greggs buying a sausage roll.
I was distracted in Rugby by a decent-sized butcher, doing a brisk trade. I figured I would be helping John and Lisa by contributing with some meat products. If I’m buying them, not only do they not need to, but I also get to buy what I choose. Anyway, I left there toting a bag loaded with two T-bone steaks, a couple of plump pork chops, some lamb chops and a couple of different types of delicious-looking pork sausages. I’m almost certain that will last me through to the end of this weekend…if I ration myself. It is only Saturday, after all.
Being a vegetarian, Lisa won’t benefit from the meat I brought in today, but I did pick up some cherries and fresh strawberries to help balance out the equities a little. John did ask me to pick up some milk on the way in when I passed through Caersŵs to get here. He also mentioned bananas, but then clarified that they would be too expensive in Caersŵs, and that he would get some the next time he went shopping. I told him he was incurable. That’s ironic since technically I’m the one actually incurable right now.
After getting home, I showered all the sweaty grunge from my body and slipped into my PJs. It was a real relief to finally feel a bit more human again. We rounded out the day after some relaxation in the garden with some scrumptious sausage sandwiches and another round of LIJONG.
I had an impromptu video call with the family back home. Everyone is doing well, and they continue to call upon me to rest and relax. I intend to follow those instructions to the very best of my ability.
PS: For those who haven’t clued in to me and my brother’s very British sense of cutting wit and humour, the gay porn and syphilis thing was a joke, which I knew Paul would enjoy, and he did. Out of respect, I showed it to him before posting it live to this blog, which explains the delay in me posting it. Paul is still a happy chappy…and his therapy continues. Maybe I’ll write some more about him in today’s blog. I feel almost certain he’ll appreciate that…almost.