As this is my life i’ve a right to be glum; my poor Dad was sent back to Old Kent Road again last week, by getting a chest infection, sent back to the place he couldn’t wait to leave, not because he wasnt recieving the care he needed but because he couldn’t receive any visitors. Covid, so only phone calls and “can you keep it quick as theres a lot of folk in the same boat” Its a clusterfuck, a real shame, a very sad time. He’s on the stroke ward , ward 29, waiting for something to happen, and of course nothing does. Seeing an old man who likes to sit at home and watch that awful Noel Edmonds telly programme with the boxes, and after maybe walk slowly up the garden to look at the fields and talk to the neighbours, and to suddenly not be able to do that, must be and IS wretched. Poor Michael. We can’t see him, and it wasnt looking good when he was refusing the pills, when the lack of Hope was the biggest thing in the world; a huge hole of No hope, a gaping Maw ready to swallow him up with a dry raspy throat.

Waking nightmare, with nothing to do and every morning he wakes up to the same nightmare, its easy to see how Hope is lost, suddenly Noel Edmonds on the telly with that awful box show manifests itself for what it is; vacuousness sucking the air from an already airless daytime television schedule.

From my point of view the daily commute is tinged with a sadness that I’m going to call the hospital around 2pm after the rounds, and call my Mum on the way to wherever I’m going to see how he was the night before; Frail, Weak, Quiet, Tearful, Bored.

“I want to go Home”

The saddest words, clinging to the flotsam of sunk Hope in a Medical Ocean, Islands and safe havens a long way off.

But on a positive note I’ve bought a complete set of socks and jettisoned the old ones away, and I feel totally liberated, I’ll get my dad some Slipper socks I think.