Plumbing

Twas on an July morning that the ceiling first fell down,
Our lodger had a panic and ran into the town,
To find a phone and ring us where we were away
In Italy with family to have a holiday.

Oh it all made work for a working man to do! (copyright Flanders and Swan)

We replastered the ceiling, after our plumber assured us that he'd fixed the leak in the shower above. But this holiday it leaked again. Our plasterer looked horrified - I don't blame him because he's done a beautiful job - but at least we had a working shower for our guests. Because:

1. In September when fixing the leak, the plumber also fixed the plumbing so that the toilets stopped flushing hot water
2. But that meant that the family shower gave only luke-warm showers, never hot.
3. So he came back and diagnosed that both showers needed some replacement part.
4. In October we ordered the shower parts, and most parts arrived but not all.
5. In November we had all the parts
6. In the first week of December the plumber put them in.
7. In the second week of December the en-suite shower gave only scalding hot water.
8. In the third week of December the plumber fixed the en-suite shower.
9. In the fourth week of December the family shower leaked and apparently it doesn't work properly if someone else is using water in the bathroom, or the washing machine is on at the same time.

Now what do we do? We're still thinking, but we've survived the holiday and most have us have managed to wash or shower or bath enough.

Terrible trio leave church

I took three of my favourite octogenarians to mass. Afterwards, coming out - well not coming out because I was till talking to me mum, who was telling me a story - which I now forget because I was distracted to see my Dad charging off. When he gets on the straight, his two sticks and two legs go,

tap tap tap tap.

He hared off down the aisle to the church door where a crowd would obstruct his way and he might topple. I abandoned mother and hared off after him - cleared the way and met Father J, our friendly parish priest that the door greeting people. I warned him that Dad couldn't let go of his sticks. Father J patted his shoulder in greeting and as I dashed out of the door to check Dad's way to the car, I warned Father to say his name to my mother as she wouldn't be able to see him!

With Aunty trotting docilely along behind us we arrived safely at the car. Dad fell into the front seat fairly gracefully. Mother wanted to go round to the far side on the road, and can more or less see the traffic but I went round to check. Then back to the pavement to close doors on Dad and Aunty, but where I found Aunty collapsed against the car. She was having a dizzy spell!

As we drove off, me Mum said that'd be the last Xmas that I'd invite four octogenarians. Well maybe in a couple of Christmases I'll have some nonagenarians to entertain me.

Xmas day

Xmas eve farce

Christmas starts:

• Mother has forgotten the spare batteries for her hearing aid.
• The flat roof above the visitor's room is leaking, so has dripped onto mother-in-law's bed all night.
• Aunty is cold.
• Husband is stressed.
  

Mother-in-law has spare hearing-aid batteries for mother. We've moved mother-in-law's bed, covered it with a plastic table cloth, put a bucket under the drip, and woken up teenager in the attic to go through her bedroom to shovel the snow off the darned damp roof!

In the sitting room we now have two radiators on and a halogen heater and a oil filled radiator.

We go and watch a pantomime this afternoon.

Driving octogenarians

I've brought my three octogenarians home for Christmas. They live in Yorkshire and we had to drive through what might have been difficult weather conditions, but they sat there like lambs, cosy and dozy. We stopped for comfort breaks and lunch, and then wobbled back to the car. I checked they had their four walking sticks between them.

Now they're chatting away with another octogenarian, my revered first mother-in-law. All seem happy and I'm looking forward to Christmas with them, starting with the pantomime tomorrow.

Sunday before Xmas

Husband has in the last week:

• made many batches of mince pies,
  
• boiled Xmas puddings,
  
• practised making vegetarian pies and soups for the vegetarian visitors,
  
• bought brandy butter (which is delicious on his home baked walnut and sultana bread)
• set up the Christmas tree
• wrapped Christmas presents
• written dozens of cards
  
• put lights on the stair window
• fixed a broken fuse
• explained the problem with the shower to the plumber.

Today I've:

• moved a double bed and two singles into different rooms
• made five beds
• shopped for a new duvet
• done three loads of laundry
• put lights up in the conservatory
• written a dozen Christmas cards
• wrapped some more presents
  

As sister-in-law used to say, "we've been diliging" - that is we've been very diligent and done lots of work.

Roll on Christmas! Let the visitors arrive!

Lost keys

Aunty found the keys. She doesn't know where they were, but suddenly they were lying on her table in front of her.

Lost keys

Aunty's getting a new flat, but she's lost the keys already. I've been getting emails and phone calls asking which way we came back from looking at the flat because perhaps we dropped them on the way. Or

"have you put them in your handbag?"

I hope not - but I look anyway. I found a chocolate, which was nice, but no keys.

Where are the blessed keys?

Tight squeeze

My new car is a tighter squeeze into my garage than my old Volvo estate. The door handles and the wing mirrors have a tendency to scrape along the breeze block.

When son visits for a weekend during term time, he borrows a self service pay-as-you-go Golf from Streetcar, and he reverses it into my garage. Goodness knows how he does that. I'm amazed and admire his skill.

Growing old

My mother's loosing her sight. So's my father. She's got the dry type of macular degeneration. They can't do anything for it. My father needs a magnifying glass to read the computer, or any official papers - none of which are ever written big enough.

His sister remarked sadly how he always used to have a book in his hands.

My mother can't see the smudges on her own clothes, but depends on someone else to warn her. If someone comes up to her in the street to say hello she doesn't know from looking at them who it is, so she's asked people to say their name, but they forget she can't see. I forget.

My mother now can't comment on what I'm wearing, whether I look business-like or smart. I miss that. We forget she can't see us, so my father nods when she asks a question, or says things like, "I'm just putting this here" and she can't see what this is or where here is.

I mustn't come into the room silently because she may not hear me, either because she doesn't hear too well now, or because she's listening to tapes. My father has discovered BBC podcasts and is going to download some to burn to a CD for her to listen to on her mp3 player. You need a good friend like that when your facilities fail you and you get dependent on others.

Sheltered housing and councils

I've been visiting octogenarian relatives, partly because one, my auntie has seen a flat in a really nice set of sheltered housing, and wants to move in. This requires working with the district council that provides the housing. Neither relatives nor I have ever had to do that before, and I can't recommend the experience.

I turned up on Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock for a meeting with:

• the housing officer,
• two octogenarian relatives and
• a helpful friend who's done this before through his work with the St Vincent de Paul society.

The brief a relative had given me was that a bedsit was on offer, aunty had seen and liked it, and the meeting was about finance to decide how relative would pay. The council would tell us how much it would cost and we could work out what to do next.

However the housing officer had a different agenda. Apparently, she'd thought the friend who'd rung up to make the meeting had told her that relative was definitely taking the bedsit and would sign there and then.

We were all affronted because

1. the friend is a friend, so the officer had no authority given to her to assume the decision was made
2. at that stage none of us knew anything about the costs, not even how much the rent was.
   

The officer got louder and more agitated, announcing that it wasn't necessary to sign today, but that she had to go at three o'clock (it was a quarter past two). The meeting didn't get any better as we gradually elicited some information from her, but weren't allowed copies of the tenancy agreement to take away and read.

We all left at three without signing anything. We go back on Thursday.

Friend said he'd never been in such an awful meeting and he had some experience of meetings with the council. Aunty complained about the officer's loud voice. The council seemed to have no understanding of the needs of older people. Aunty can't think quickly enough to absorb the information yet this officer was reading the tenancy agreement very quickly. It seems the council expects aunty to sign on Wednesday and pay rent from next Monday. It's all very quick, and the meeting seemed as if aunty was being bulldozed, bludgeoned and bullied into making a decision and signing up to something without full information.

Fortunately, I'd got permission as soon as I'd arrived to record the meeting, so octogenarians could play it back later and listen to the information, ready for the Thursday meeting. In the meantime, I'll ask the CAB for advice on moving into council properties.

Ethical business

Nestle, that huge company that markets baby milk powder in the third world has succumbed to moral and competitive market pressures by announcing its first Fairtrade product - the four fingered Kitkat.

Its cocoa farms have been manned by child slave labour so it is the effort of organisations like StopTheTraffik that have persuaded customers, including school children to stop buying chocolate that comes from such unfair practices. As other companies such as Cadburys moved to Fairtrade, Nestle could only follow.

Stop the traffik's cheerleader, Ruth Darnley, was on my train this morning, delighted at Cadbury and Nestles moves. Despite being blond, petite and female, she and Stop the Traffik have taken on these giant organisations and through the power of the customer got them to change their behaviour and stop traffiking slave labour.

High fives to Stop the Traffik.

Fox on escalator

See http://twitter.com/RadioKate

What she met on the underground!

More working relatives

While I'm blogging about relatives to be pleased to know, I've realised at least two more whose activities may make a difference in the world. My various cousins have several children, two of whom are involved in a petition save the Mansour family from deportation. Here's what a Facebook page says:

Description:
At 7am on Wednesday 1st July neighbours in a Moss Side street watched in horror as the Mansour family were forcibly removed from their home by a large group of police and immigration officials.
Five years earlier, the family led a prosperous and successful life in Egypt. After months of harassment and serious threats to the family, Mr Mansour sought help from the police. Shortly after this he was arrested on false accusations of insulting Islam. He was detained in solitary confinement for seventeen days and tortured.

Having fled Egypt leaving all his possessions behind, he was then helped by the Bishop of the Christian Church he attended who gave him refuge and arranged and paid for his flight out of Egypt. After a short period in Dover, they came to Manchester where they have settled. The children have thrived at school and the family have formed good relationships in school, at church and the wider community.

How then, have we arrived at a situation where the family is in detention awaiting deportation?

After having twice been let down by law firms who despite being paid up front failed to represent the family at vital hearings, their status was downgraded from asylum seeker to illegal immigrant. This has put them in line for immediate deportation. The family fear for their lives if deported and Mr Mansour would almost certainly be arrested and tortured on his return.

What can you do to help?

• Sign the petition at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/29140.html
• Email Phil Woolas, Secretary of State for Immigration and Alan Johnson, Home Secretary at: Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
• Pass this message on to as many people as possible to do the same

The Mansour children go to a school not far from where my family used to live, a school that my mother probably visited as part of her work, so they're in my kind of community. See this link to the Catholic Independent News on the campaign.

My cousins' children either work at the Mansour children's school in Whalley Range, or are providing legal representation for them.

Business woman

Looking for dancing costumes, I found my relative in the Times Online here under
How I made it: Anne Walker Founder of International Dance Supplies
My night at the ballet led to £7m dancewear empire

This year's she's won a business woman of the year award here

I'm glad to know we're related - wish I had business skills like hers. What's interesting to note is that she says her success is due to laziness - she has to find the easiest ways of doing things:

"That has been my strength.”

I can lay a claim to laziness too!

Dancing for Children in Need

The OU belly dancing club made over £400 for Children in Need. See some of the photos here.

Photography

It's not a crime to take photos in public places, so the police shouldn't be stopping photographers as much. Look at today's news, here, where you can't take a picture of Saint Paul's Cathedral!
But you can be stopped for taking pictures of the lights in Brighton, here.
You can be stopped even if you are BBC photographer, here.
These are photographers, not terrorists.
This one was taken nearly 25 years ago - the photographer suspects he'd be shot now

See http://www.not-a-crime.com/ because it's not a crime.

Party season starts

Three parties this week:

• Aylesbury Old Town residents party,
  
• husband's work colleagues and
  
• tae kwondo.
  

So we're a tad busy being sociable.