The Unscripted Carer – 9th March 2008

This has been a very strange week or so. My going on the Creative Writing course seems to have fired up Nicola to start writing some short stories. She has written one, and another is in the gestation period. Unfortunately she has had several days of a really bad back, so she has been scribbling away on a pad, and dictating it to me. In the meantime my short story is stuck, and seems to be turning from a three page story, to a “Sherlock Homes” length short story. We have both been amazed at how our ideas change as we put it down on paper. Nicola originally had the beginning and the end of her story, and the middle evolved as we wrote it down. Ironically, having written it down, she changes the last paragraph every time I sit down at the PC!

Over the past few days we have a number of those days that you would wish on your worst enemy, and during this time I made the huge mistake of filling in a questionnaire (probably from Carers UK) that totally concentrates on all the negative aspects of caring – and it has really got me down! I guess the advice is to look forwards, and not dwell on what has changed, but that is quite hard to take at times.

So, what are the positives of the last few days?

We have used the Squash soup as a spring board to create a few different soups – a mushroom one was delicious and used up the old mushrooms in the fridge. We have also made, but not yet eaten, a broccoli soup – it tested really nice on the “tasting samples” when making it, so I am quite hopeful. I also quite fancy experimenting with a rhubarb soup when the time / crop comes.

At last week’s Rugby Carer’s Forum, a lady from Social Services presented a draft version of the Carer’s Strategy up to 2011. Her passion and enthusiasm to make things work was quite inspiring.

Finally, while doing the shopping, one of the Tesco ladies that lives in the village made some really nice comments about the article in the Observer – unfortunately she did not give me another 5p a litre off the petrol! When we did the article, we hoped it would help others that found themselves in our position – the unexpected thing is that it is helping us as well.

Bye for now

Graham