The Unscripted Carer – 10th April 2008

Our dogs seem to be settling in to a slightly different set of roles – they appear to be taking after us. For us, we have Nicola (the cared for), me (the carer) and Guideposts (to look after me) – the dogs seem to have adapted this structure as:

• Max – the cared for, now this his eyesight is getting a bit iffy
• Bijou – the carer
• Us – to look after Bijou, and give him more emotional support – that is, he is getting a lot softer!

Perhaps this structure is natural in any social environment?

Our lives tend to be dominated by relative mundane things, and trying to make the best of a bad job – I guess we are fairly typical as a matching set of “carer” and “cared for”!  Over the last year or so, I have struggled at times to produce two hot meals a day, with my total lack of cooking skills (I did woodwork at school when the girls did “Domestic Science” – which gives my age away!). I have become very reliant on a fairly old Kenwood Chef, which used to hide away, neatly boxed, in a cupboard. I recently had a fairly major catastrophe when the soup I was blending somehow came out of the bottom of the “goblet” and went through where the motor is and out the other side – with all the accompanying nasty electrical burning smells!  It was quickly unplugged and left to dry for a day, or so, and then I turned it on again, very warily – and it seemed to work – but only at top speed! Eventually it has seemed to recover, but we realised that a “spare” would be useful. Luckily, we found one in the “free paper” of a similar vintage – together with a different Kenwood cooking book. The style of the book is great, it tells you how to do things, without complicating things. For instance, I could never make a white sauce using the “proper” method of making a roux, adding milk etc and then throwing away a lumpy mixture! Delia Smith saved me by her easier method, but this Kenwood book takes it to the next step. Basically it encourages you to put all the ingredients in the blender, blend for 30 seconds or so, and then put in saucepan and serve. Even stuff I thought was impossible suddenly appears dead easy. They should have called the book “Cooking for Engineers”! The book also goes to great lengths to make you keep the Chef out, so that you just use it – because it is there.

The initial aim was to get a similar aged Chef as a “back up”, but now we will use both when doing our batch baking of bread, etc – it will save all the washing up half way through! I guess we have managed to find a silver lining, to what appeared to be quite a nasty dark cloud.

A while ago I mentioned that the Council (Social Services) are working hard on getting Direct Payments working for Carers, as well as for our “Cared Fors”, or as they are known to the Social Services by that horrible term “service users”. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, and the Council have made significant progress and have now been allocated “four blobs” (out of 5) for the progress they have made this year. This all sounds a bit arcane, but in reality I am dead chuffed, as I have been given a Direct Payment to allow me to attend evening classes at Rugby College, and I am also being provided with an In Your Place service while I am doing it. This seems to be the best of both worlds for me.

It was odd to go back to “school” after more than 40 years, even odder to see that the College had not really changed since I was an apprentice at GEC. The colours may have changed, but they still need cheering up, and the various carpets and fittings would grace many a skip! However, I really enjoyed my first evening, and am looking forwards to the rest of the course.

Bye for now

Graham