A bitter day

Normy wakes me at a quarter to seven, wanting to be let into the garden. It is cold outside and he returns quickly, running into the kitchen for breakfast, so I give him some Baker's dog food and still feeling tired and sleepy, slip back into bed for another hour. It is almost eight o'clock when I get up again and boil two giant pullet eggs for breakfast and make rye toast, using scissors to cut the hard bread into soldiers. After breakfast, I hang out my underwear on the line and then put this weeks socks, shirts and pyjamas into wash before leaving for Cherry Burton. The grey weather continues, along with the bitter easterly wind, but the dogs don't seem to mind and scamper happily through the woods and onto the common, as we take our morning walk. On the corner, travelling in the opposite direction, we meet Elaine Julien and her Jack Russell, Milo, and chat for a few minutes. She tells me she ran seven and a half miles with the running club last night and is getting back into the swing of things. It is six months since her husband died of pancreatic cancer and she nursed him for almost two years before that, so it is pleasing to see that she is starting to put her life back together again. Despite the cold, we extend our walk a little this morning and take in Newbald Pits Woods as well, before making our way back to the car. After dropping off the terriers, we call in at the supermarket on our way home, to buy milk and shaving foam, the last splutterings of the previous can, just sufficient to lather my face this morning. When we arrive home, I am suddenly very tired again and meditate for an hour, after first feeding Norman. I don't feel ill exactly, more like my batteries seem to be running out after just a couple of hours of mild exertion. It is now a quarter to two, so I make a pot of tea, eat the last slab of Madeira cake and then change, before driving into Hull to visit Leslie. Normy wants to come along for the ride again and I leave him to sleep on the back seat of the car in Mark's car park in Linnaeus Street, while I walk the short distance to the hospital. There are crowds of people waiting for the lifts again, Hull is deprived city and most of those waiting to visit, are poorly dressed, overweight and look quite sickly themselves. Defying my lack of energy, I take the stairs again, there are eleven steps in each flight and two flights between each landing to the seventh floor, 154 steps in total and so I am starting to blow a little when I arrive outside ward 70, the geriatric ward. After washing my hands, I make my way to Leslie's room and find two women taking blood from his left arm, one is an Asian doctor and the other a Scottish medical student. Leslie is laid with his frail and thin body exposed, apart from his incontinence pants, he has bruises everywhere, as the slightest touch causes bleeding under the skin. He looks like Christ crucified. The poor old chap is also delirious and asks me to pull the curtains around the bed opposite, where he says there is a German man and his wife. They are in fact another ninety one year old RAF veteran and his daughter. She kindly agrees to have her curtains drawn, if that will make Leslie more at ease. The doctors finish there task and Leslie asks for his pants to be changed, moments later a nurse appears to undertake the task and clean him up. I wait outside in the corridor while this is done and find Leslie's doctor, another young Asian woman, who tells me his observations are OK and that she thinks the delirium will clear when his chest infection responds to the antibiotics that are being delivered intravenously. The blood samples are going to the lab to look at the response to the treatment of the infection. When the nurse has completed her work, I take a chair and sit at Leslie's bedside, the tea lady delivers a beaker of tea with a straw in it and once it has cooled a little, I give him sips to drink and then hold his hand. His mind is rambling and he talks continuously, worried that he will have to pay the hospital bills and that he needs to explain things to Julia, his wife, who has been dead for sixteen years. I try to reassure him that his daughter, Margaret, her husband, William and I, have everything in hand and that he has nothing to worry about and only needs to rest and get better. I stay at his bedside for a quarter of an hour after visiting time ends at four and then leave, promising to visit again at the weekend. As I make my way back down the stairs I wonder whether the antibiotics are having any effect, he has been taking them intravenously since Monday. He has also been in bed now for a whole month and will hardly eat anything. Norman is still asleep when I get back to the car and we drive home via Wawne again, arriving at five. The washing, when I gather it in, is dried, the cold easterly wind has at least one redeeming feature. Normy chews on another rib bone while I do this and then runs to the kitchen, when I shout to tell him that his dinner is ready. My tiredness has returned, and I don't feel like cooking, so I heat a tin of beans in a bowl in the microwave and when they are hot, pour them over some rye toast and then eat these for dinner. Afterwards I phone Margaret, but William answers and I relay the news about Leslie, but there is very little positive to tell them. They are visiting tomorrow and I say I will go again on Saturday. Hopefully there will be some improvement in his condition by then. Later I text Sarah to confirm that I will take Louis to school in the morning and then read a few more chapters of Salvatore Scibona's, "The End", he really is a fine writer. Then feeling tired, I go to bed early, around nine thirty. It is possible that my energy problems may be due, to some degree, to depression, but I don't think so, it is more likely linked to my catarrh.