Another Day In Paradise? (No, It's Dexter House)

 Thursday. 5.40 p.m. Another mild and pleasant morning and I have already been out with Alfie.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd bought a gimbal which works with a mobile phone, the idea being that you can make videos and take steady photographs because of the mechanism within the gimbal. I had bought one from Amazon, but, going through the set-up procedure and following what manual which came with the device, I could not get it to function properly. I decided to return it to Amazon for a refund (read the previous post where I described all this.) I was surprised when the refund went through and appeared on my Amazon account. I was expecting it to take at least a week. As a result, I looked at a replacement on Amazon. It is really difficult to decide, unlike in a shop where you can pick up an item and try it out (which I have done in John Lewis's Milton Keynes store, with several of their cameras.) So I took the plunge and selected a Hohem gimbal (having seen a video on YouTube which was a review of the model I chose.) It cost quite a bit more than the price I had paid for the earlier gimbal, but I thought I would make up the difference. It was ordered early yesterday morning and the device was delivered yesterday evening at around 5.30. It was easy enough to set up, and I've had it working successfully. If you are interested, the model is an iSteady M6 and comes in a kit which includes the case and fill light and AI movement sensor, which fits on the device with a powerful magnet.

Friday. 5.30 a.m. Yet another mild and relatively pleasant morning. It took Alfie a while to wake up, which isn't something I thought I'd ever write on here. We were out briefly and I have now come back to the flat and have the television on with talk going on about the local elections. 

10.50 a.m. When I went out with Alfie, it was dry and mild, but at just after 9.30, when I went out to go to Sainsbury's, it was drizzling, that is, a very light rain. As it's Coronation Day tomorrow, there is the prospect of rain in central London, so those people who have camped along The Mall, as seen on BBC Breakfast early this morning, they are likely to get a soaking.

4.30 p.m. I have been out around  Oldbrook Green with the gimbal set up and videoed around 20 minutes of footage. I have downloaded it onto the MacBook and have been viewing it. Considering it was my first attempt to use it, it wasn't too bad. I am getting to grips with the various functions, which take a while to fathom. It is considerably better than the gimbal I returned to Amazon. The manufacturers have included a manual which is easy to understand, and I have been viewing YouTube videos on how to use it, so it is likely to take a few more attempts using it to get a better result.

Saturday. 1.40 a.m. I have woken up. I couldn't sleep. This is quite normal for me. I did my Bible reading. (Actually, a good time to do this, because there are no distractions, no noise, Alfie not staring at me or prodding me.) I make a cup of tea (not a cup, a mug. I don't have any cups or saucers, and, thinking about it, who on earth, in this day and age, has a tea set, with cups and saucers? Everyone uses mugs. Thinking further, nobody makes tea in a teapot. Just a teabag in your mug, pour on hot water, give it a few seconds, and take out the teabag, milk and sugar (optional) and that's it. Life made simple, or is it laziness? You decide.

I digress. I put on the television, with a mug of tea, a bag of crisps and a few chocolate digestive. BBC News channel. There are Americans, those who are obsessed with the Royal family and are going to be watching the Coronation. Then a piece on people who are camping along the Mall, towards Buckingham Palace. King Charles actually did a 'walk-about' and chatted with some of the people. Then a piece about people who either remember the late Queen's Coronation in 1953, either watching it on television or being part of it. A lady, who was 17 at the time, and did some of the embroidery which was on Her Majesty's wedding dress and a man who was a trumpeter in Westminster Abbey on the day. 

Saturday. Coronation Day. 5.35 a.m. It's here! Today is Coronation Day. It's something that is historic and as far as I'm concerned, and possibly quite a lot of people, I'm not likely to see it again (unless, of course, God forbid, Charles falls off his perch and William takes over.) I would have been 2 when Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, although at that tender age, I wouldn't have been aware of what was going on.

I took a sleepy Alfie out as normal and we walked around Oldbrook Green. There must have been a very light rain overnight as there were dry patches below the trees near the Green.

More of The Same?

Sunday. 7.40 a.m. It's raining, although it's very light. In fact, I would so as far as to say it isn't really proper rain, more like drizzle. I will need to take Alfie out again before I go off to church. The kitchen is tidy. The washing up from yesterday evening is done and there's not much more to do. There is nothing worse than coming home to a pile of dirty pots and pans in the sink.

2.15 p.m. We did go out and then I went to church. On the way home I went into Tesco in Oldbrook Boulevard and got a sandwich in one of those offers where you get a sandwich, a drink and a snack.

3.55 p.m. Now watching the Jubilee Pageant, which is on BBC1. Some incredible creations moving along The Mall. Extremely colourful and dramatic. This is the final event of the four-day special weekend. A lot of amazing floats, really clever and funny. Just shows that we can produce this sort of thing as good as anywhere else in the world.

I have signed up to Britbox. It streams through my Fire TV stick on my television. A lot of BBC, ITV, Channel Four and 5 material, particularly what I  would call 'classic' comedy, such as Dads Army, Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em as well as drama series. I'm surprised there's Shakespeare, from the RSC, material which is from 'live' recordings which have been streamed to cinemas in the past. The first couple of weeks is free, then £2.99 a month and then £5.99 a month thereafter. 

Monday. 6.20 a.m. I was out a good bit later than I have in recent days.

So, Bojo (Boris Johnson) is to face a vote of no confidence this evening. The required 54 Conservative MPs have handed in letters to the 1922 Committee, which is what triggers the vote, which is to happen sometime tonight. I think it can't happen soon enough as he can't be trusted, and if you can't trust your Prime Minister, then he must go. As regards the so-called Partygate Scandal, which is behind this confidence vote, and the fact that he and many of his ministers as well as civil servants, broke the Covid-19 rules by holding parties within Number 10 Downing Street, while the rest of us in Britain followed these rules more or less to the latter, then he must go. But the question is, if he loses and is forced to resign, who will replace him? Frankly, in my opinion, the regulations were unnecessary and people should have been able to make their own minds up as regards their behaviour to have people fined was a step too far. Also, if the PM didn't understand the rules he had enacted into law, then how could you expect the members of the public to understand them? 

11.25 p.m. The British Museum currently has an exhibition I would have liked to go to on Stonehenge. I also knew they were publishing a book and thought, rather than visit, which would have been quite a strain, knowing my health issues, unfortunately, I would buy the book. I looked on the British Museum website but couldn't get it to function (not good as they will lose customers.) and I attempted several times to buy the aforementioned book. I then searched several online bookshops and avoided Amazon (as I give them plenty of custom as it is!) I then went on the Blackwells website and found the book, which I ordered last week (I think possibly Tuesday or Wednesday. The four-day Bank Holiday has obviously disrupted the delivery (and I had several emails from the courier company telling me it had been dispatched etc and then this morning another saying it would be delivered before 11.30 a.m. I heard footsteps on the stairs and realised it could have been someone delivering my parcel, which it was. A large, very well wrapped parcel marked Blackwells and inside, a somewhat spectacular book all about Stonehenge! Really well produced and presented and will keep me interested as it's a subject which intrigues me and I visited with Carol a few years ago and where we joined English Heritage, which manages the site with the National Trust. 

Tuesday. 5.40 a.m. Another really mild and quite beautiful morning. A mist hanging over Oldbrook Green and the rising sun glowing through the mist. I was lost in thought as I walked around, with Alfie sniffing every blade of grass. Suddenly I was approached by another dog, which I see regularly, with a lady I have spoken to on several occasions. This dog jumped up at me, which jolted me out of my thoughts.

Yesterday evening at 9 o'clock, the news came through that Boris Johnson had won the No Confidence vote, although many of his MPs had rebelled. He keeps on saying he can now 'move on,' but it means he's not in a safe position. Around 40% of his MPs don't support him, which isn't a good place to be in. He is, in effect, hanging on by a very thin thread.

Congratulations, Ma'am!

Thursday. 8.00 a.m. So, we are about to start a four-day Platinum Jubilee weekend, I can never remember anything anywhere near similar to this. I easily remember the Silver Jubilee in 1977. Children at the local primary school were given special commemorative mugs, but how many of these survived? In 2002 we had the Golden Jubilee, but I don't remember much of that. Then, in 2012 there was the Diamond Jubilee, and an amazing concert was held in front of Buckingham Palace. I don't think anything like it had ever been organized before. I believe a similar concert will again be staged this year. 

1.05 p.m. I am currently watching live pictures of a flypast over Buckingham Palace, with H.M. Queen and other members of the Royal Family and amazing numbers of the public crowding the area immediately in front of the Palace and along The Mall, with flags waving and cheering. 

Friday. 6.10 a.m. Up out of bed and walked with Alfie around Oldbrook Green at 5.15. I don't think Alfie was fully awake, and as I write this he is back in his bed. I can't blame him, curled up and comfortable.

9.15 a.m. It's great to now have no less than TWO new washing machines at Dexter House, both in full working order. But the only problem for me is, how to operate them! The old machines had the old-fashioned mechanical controls, where you merely twisted a dial to the setting you want and the correct water temperature and length of cycle, which was easy and, frankly, common sense. But these new machines have a touch screen, much like an iPad or iPhone. I don't have a problem with them, but I'm not entirely happy using the touch screens on these machines. I don't want to wash my clothes at a temperature which ruins my clothes, so I end up shrinking things. I think I have the machine set up correctly this morning and, as I write this, I am waiting for a tumble drier load of clothes to complete drying so I can remove the load and put it all away on hangers. 

Saturday. 6.00 a.m. A pleasant and cool morning here at the heart of the universe here in swinging Milton Keynes. Alfie was fast asleep just before I took him out to walk the entire circuit of Oldbrook Green. 

11.20 a.m. I can't get the photographs which I took at the History Festival at Milton Keynes to upload onto my MacBook. I used to have a cable which you plugged into the Canon digital camera and the other end into the laptop, but I can't find it. It got lost when I moved into Dexter House. I had a card reader which you used with the card out of the camera and plugged into the USB port, but it doesn't work. None of the photographs shows up on the laptop. So I have gone to Curry's this morning to buy a replacement cable and did some top-up shopping in Aldi which is just along the parade of units. I had a good excuse to browse new digital cameras as I am considering upgrading mine. New digital cameras have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, so you don't need to have cables to connect to your laptop. Also, some are capable of recording video for vlogging, which is a term I have only just discovered. You can make videos to upload onto the internet, for example, on YouTube. The Sony model I have seen has all these features, and you can attach a Bluetooth-connected handle which transforms into a tripod.

1.20 p.m. It continues to rain. Not heavy, but enough to damp the ground and to be disliked by Alfie. He is currently sleeping in his bed.

I am currently watching a BBC documentary series presented by Lucy Worsley which investigates several historic incidents in British history, such as the Black Death, The Princes In The Tower, The Madness of King George III and The Witch Hunts of the Middle Ages. She uses newly released documents as well as modern technology to dig a good deal deeper to uncover new evidence which over-rides the usual historical narrative to reveal a great deal of interesting material. An excellent and absorbing series.

Working In Care-Part 7

I have to say it was quite pleasant working in residential care when we took the client group out for the day. Not that it wasn't that streightforward, far from it. There was the packing up of the minibus, loading the wheelchairs, making sure we had all the group's medicaton, as well as a picnic, which was usually prepared well in advance by the staff who had worked on the night shift.

The whole client group were involved in choosing where they went for their day out. It was never a decision made entirely by the staff. It would have been easy to just say 'let's take them out to a zoo' and just go. A short list was made and then all the residents could choose the one place they wanted to go to, and the one place with the most votes was the place to go to for a day out.

At around the time of the Queen Mother's death, the residents at Everton decided to visit London, as some wanted to visit the places that were shown on television and used during her funeral, such as Westminster Abbey. A group had only just been on a trip to visit Buckingham Palace and been on the London Eye, the entire trip having been organised carefully, as special permission had to be gained so that the minibus could be parked close to the Palace.
We had taken a group out for the day to Hunstanton, up on the Norfolk coast not far from Sandringham. I don't remember it being particularly eventful, but it was quite hard work pushing wheelchairs up and down the seafront with parts being quite steep, which, considering it was in Norfolk, a county noted for being flat. The Senior Support worker I've mentioned in the earlier post (who will continue to remain nameless.) went somewhat over-board when we went to one shop (I seem to recall we did spend a great deal of time in shops of one sort or another.) This shop is typical of the sort you seem to find at seaside resorts, selling a wide range of items, such as the usual buckets and spades, beachballs, postcards and general souveniers you get at any seaside resort, a great deal of it absolute rubbish and the sort of things that you wouldn't willingly clutter your home up with. Anyway, each of the residents was allowed to spend some of their own money on anything they liked as a souvenier of the day and each of the carers had been given an envelope containing the cash and then we helped our resident choose an item, being careful to get receipts so that the money could be put in their care plans when we returned to the house in Everton. This was all straightforward enough, but the Senior Support went crazy when he saw the cakes, biscuits and sweets that were also on sale in this shop. He obviously knew from an earlier visit to Hunstanton that this shop existed and then proceeded to purchase a quite considerable amount of these biscuits and cakes, which were being sold at very low prices  quite large quantities. He had become a bit like a child in a sweetshop when told that it can buy what it likes with money being no object. We than had to cart all these purchases back to the mini bus to be taken home. It was a bit like buying stuff from a wholesaler. I really think he should have toned down this as it was somewhat over the top and not really the sort of behaviour for someone who had a position to uphold, but it was obviously up to him how he spent his cash.
Returning to the trip to London. I arrived really early at the Everton house and we got all the residents loaded into the vehicle. I sat in the front with the driver (the Senior Support Worker who I mentioned earlier. In fact he seems to feature quite prominently in these blog posts it would appear.) As we were about to leave the house I turned to him and said "Shall I go and get the A to Z ?'" (of London, a street atlas.) which I had bought with me and was left in my car. He turned to me and said, 'No. We won't need it." I then said "We might need it to find our way around the centre of London." To which I got the reply: " We won't need it. If we need to find our way, all you have to do is wind down the bus window and shout to a passing cab-driver. They are all good at giving directions." I was totally dumbfounded and by now we had left Everton and were heading for the motorway and central London. So, I thought, you really expect me to stick my head out of the window and shout across the street to the nearest passing cabbie? Did he not think it was going to be highly dangerous? And what sort of response do you really, honestly, expect to get back from your typical London cabbie? More likely a mouthful of abuse and not directions to the next tourist attraction. Did he not think that they had better things to do with their time?
We got into the centre of London and made for Westminster Abbey. As can be imagined as it's a major tourist attraction, parking was very difficult but we had got a space booked near enough that we could unload the wheelchairs and get the residents out and then wheel them into the Abbey,  down a specially-constructed ramp for wheelchairs, going through the visitor's entrance and in front of a lot of people who had obviously queued for some time to get in. I don't think we paid, because these were people with disabilities and I'm sure none of the carers had to pay. It was not easy manoeuvering the wheelchairs plus residents around the extremely crowded Abbey. The ancient floors are not really suitable for the tyres of a wheelchair and members of the public do not want to move out of the way either and walk very slowly around such buildings so there would be jams of people at various points of the tour round. I would have liked to have had a better tour myself, having an interest in history, particularly Poets' Corner. I don't honestly think any of the residents were that interested but it was quite an interesting tour. We can't have been inside Westminster Abbey much more than an hour and then we had to find toilets which were not very well suited to wheelchair users.
Having left the Abbey and got the residents loaded back in the mini bus, the driver (my dear Senior Support Worker person, who shall remain anonymous.) said "Where next?" It was decided to go to Buckingham Palace (we were eventually going to end up at London Zoo.) so it was decided and it was myself that managed to get us down to The Mall, the avenue that leads from Admiralty Arch and directly towards Buckingham Palace. As we drove along The Mall, this driver person (who shall remain nameless!) suddenly shouted out, "Look! Soldiers!" as a groups of horses, being ridden along the street in full dress uniform, appeared from a side street. He then insisted on stopping at the side of The Mall and me getting out to take photographs with a camera he thrust into my hands. I immediately said 'No, no, we can't stop here! You mustn't stop on The Mall!" I recalled the incident some years ago when Princess Anne (now Princess Royal) had been involved in a near-disasterous incident with a stranger who threatened to kidnap her, and how it was now illegal for any vehicle to stop anywhere near Buckingham Palace. But the gentleman insisted on stopping, and at the precise moment I was about to get out of the vehicle there was a knock on the window and a soldier in full uniform told us, in no uncertain terms to please 'move along!' I was right of course, but it took some convincing to the Senior Support gentleman that we shouldn't have stopped where we had on The Mall. Some people don't want to listen when they are told or are just plain ignorant, but we could have been done for all sorts of things, from terrorism to attempted kidnapping, just because he would have it that it was perfectly alright to stop the vehicle with only yards from the Queen's residence.
We drove on and round near Buckingham Palace to give the residents a glimpse of the Queen's home and from there we went on to London Zoo. It was myself who managed to navigate as our driver had no idea where he was going but still insisting that it would be fine to ask the nearest passing cab-driver. I have a fairly good knowledge of central London, managing to find my way around because I know where most of the West End theatres are. We got to London Zoo without incident and spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the animals (well, let's be perfectly honest, what else do you expect to do in a zoo?) It was a very hot day, so we had to find the shadiest places to go and make sure some of them had sun-screen on and had hats to wear.
We eventually had a rather pleasant picnic and then drove back to Everton and arrived back late.