Dear Readers, after Damaraland we headed east to Etosha National Park – we had four nights here, the first two in the Okaukuejo government-run lodge in the west. Etosha means ‘great white place’ and the 22,000 square kilometres of the place are centred on a massive shallow lake, over 100 kilometres across. it’s usually dry, but on the first night here we had the second enormous storm of the holiday, signalling the start of the wet season.

What an amazing storm this was! Every time you thought it couldn’t rain any harder, it did. But this was just as well, because a few weeks earlier a charcoal fire on the outskirts of the park had started a fire that raged across a third of the park. You could still smell the burning in the air, but the plants were already starting to grow back, and everywhere there were baby animals and pregnant females, all hoping to feed on the fresh green vegetation.

The lodge here was fine – a bit more basic than some of the others, but perfectly adequate. And close to the restaurant you could sit and watch the masked weaver birds constructing their nests.

There is also an impressive waterhole where you can sit and watch the comings and goings. Naturally, we went to bed ten minutes before a pair of rhino turned up, but no one could complain about the sheer range of animals that we saw.

This lovely placid male elephant paid us very little attention: he’d been bathing in the mud which turned him pale grey.

There were lots of Plains Zebra….

…and the inevitable springbok. Oh, and these guys – there was a group of five young males. The springboks were on to them, though….

Later in the day we found a lioness with some very curious cubs. The female had been collared (part of the lion research project here).

The ground squirrels had already had their babies….

Oh, and here are some more springboks…

What a wonderful day this was – some people suggest that it’s better to visit Southern Africa before the rains start, as the animals are forced to use the remaining bodies of water, making it easier to find them. Well, I’m much happier to see the wildlife looking a bit more relaxed and happy, even if it does make them a little bit harder to find. It makes the sightings so much more special, and it’s a joy to see the animals able to drink to their hearts’ content. There is a feeling of relief in the air, and I loved it. Plus, as we’ll see tomorrow, the rains bring all sorts of plants to life.

 

Dear Readers, Dad was reasonably settled at the nursing home in the months after Mum died, but he could never hold the fact that she’d died in his head for very long. 

Dear Readers, a lot of therapy animals visit Dad’s nursing home in Dorchester, but there are none more unlikely than this pair of alpacas. The last time they visited I missed them, but on Monday my timing was perfect. I was sitting with Dad, who was munching on a custard tart and enjoying a ‘frothy coffee’ (one shot decaff latte – the last thing we want is for Dad to be any more hyperactive than he currently is) when a pair of alpacas were brought in by their handler. They had just been shorn and looked adorably naked. Plus they have the tiniest little feet considering how big they are.

Dad was instructed to stroke the handsome creature on the neck, and he did his best although it’s difficult to follow instructions when you aren’t as in control of your body as you once were, and your memory is shot. But the alpacas were very forgiving, and their handler was adept at reading their body language and moving them on if they were getting nervous or uncomfortable. I am sure that they are strong enough to vote with their (tiny) feet if anything happened that they didn’t like.

Dad has always loved animals (our house was full of pets when we were children) and although he isn’t quite sure who I am (though his face always lights up when he sees me) he remembered seeing the alpacas on a previous visit. He could not take his eyes off them. These moments are so precious and I was so glad that I was there to witness his pleasure.

I asked the handler about whether they were keeping the alpacas for wool, but apparently not: they have a herd of 34 animals at the moment, and when they are sold they either go as pets, or, occasionally, as guard animals for herds of sheep. Alpacas have a deep and abiding antipathy to all canids, and will kick dogs or foxes who trespass on their territory. Don’t let that innocent face fool you – alpacas can nip, kick and occasionally spit, although it is unusual for this to be aimed at humans. Certainly, these two were perfectly behaved (and regularly rewarded with nibbles), even after one lady resident asked if they were some kind of hunting dog.

I often wonder what goes on in Dad’s mind these days. When I visited on Monday he was very calm and happy, but at the weekend he apparently phoned the police to tell them that two people had been murdered and were buried under the patio. The police had to come out to make sure that this hadn’t actually happened, although it was always unlikely as there is no patio. So, when Dad told me with great glee that the home had been ‘crawling with coppers’ he gave me no indication that they were only there because he’d called them. It certainly livens things up for everyone.

At first, I wondered if it was something that Dad was watching on television that was triggering his fantasies, but now I think that he is trying to make sense of what is going on. Mum is gone, and so she must have been kidnapped or murdered, because nothing else would keep her away from him. For a while, he thought that Mum was jealous because other women were helping him to shower and dress, and so she wasn’t answering the phone when he called. And yet he sat beside me at the funeral, and at a recent memorial service at the home, and at the time he knew that she was dead. It’s as if his brain now has many rooms with no interconnecting corridors, and he can hold several paradoxical thoughts simultaneously, without the slightest sense of contradiction.

On Tuesday I popped in to see him before I headed home (we’re off to Austria this weekend so it was a flying visit) and when he spotted me he threw his arms open.

‘I’ve been waiting for you!’ he said, as we embraced. He is so thin these days. He eats everything and enjoys his food, but he is losing weight. He is too frail for any invasive tests and so we are just taking it day by day, checking that he is eating and drinking and as happy as he can be under the circumstances. We sit down and I make a cup of tea and he has another custard tart and a coffee.

And then I get up to go.

‘I’ll walk down to the station with you and we can get on the train and go and see Mum’, he said. ‘But don’t walk too fast because I’m not as quick as I used to be’.

The station is a quarter of a mile away and mostly uphill,  just to mention the most unimportant reason why he couldn’t leave the home to travel to London to see his wife (or his mother, it’s never quite clear).

‘Oh Dad’, I said, ‘You don’t really want to do that do you? It’s pouring with rain for one thing’.

‘But Mum’s in the hospital and she’ll want to see me’, he said.

And now it gets tricky because if I tell him that Mum’s dead, and then get my suitcases and go, he’ll be even more upset and confused than he is now. Furthermore, it’s not as if this terrible news will ‘stick’.

‘I’ll tell Mum where you are Dad, ‘ I say, ‘And she loves you and she knows you love her’.

He gets up to come with me. If I let him see the code to the lift, which enables him to leave the home, that will be something that he probably will remember.

I catch the eye of one of the carers.

‘Do you want to come with me and have a cup of tea, Tom?’ she asks.

‘No thank you, I just had one’, he says, following me down the corridor.

I give him a firm hug and a kiss and tell him that I’ll see him soon. He stands, swaying and a little unfocused, watching as I get into the lift and head downstairs. As the doors shut, I hear the carer ushering Dad back into the living room. His world has shrunk, largely, to his room and to the communal areas on the second floor. If he feels trapped it’s because he is: for his own safety, for sure, but he chafes against the restriction. He was always such an intrepid man, and I suspect that in his head he still is, solving crimes and stumbling upon nefarious goings on.

I am reading a wonderful book about homing pigeons (which I will discuss further when I’ve finished it), but one thing that has stayed with me is that, if you want your pigeons to improve their times, you need to make sure that they only see their partners when they get back from a race. For them, ‘home’ is not just a physical place, but their loved ones. For Dad, Mum was ‘home’ for 62 years. He may well be looking for her for the rest of his life.

It’s not until I’m on the train that I start to cry.

Dear Readers, what a nightmare this week was. Looking back, it was the beginning of the end. What a solace sparrows and sunflowers were that week. 

Dear Readers, I was  visiting my Aunt Hilary in Somerset last Saturday when I received a call about my elderly Mum in Dorset. Outside Hilary’s window, a flock of fledgling sparrows was gathering in the shrubs and carrying on a conversation that seemed comprised of a single note, uttered with different degrees of urgency. But on my mobile phone, I hear that Mum is in a sorry state, vomiting, feverish and getting on and off the commode every twenty minutes. Paramedics were called in the morning, but had deemed her not ill enough to be admitted to hospital so she was at home, distressed and with Dad not able to help much because of his own infirmities.

When the carer visited again on Saturday afternoon Mum had worsened and the carer called 111. She was informed that a doctor would be with her within two hours. Two hours passed. The carer called again, and was told it would be another two hours. The carer was so worried that she called 999 at 8 p.m. I asked her to call me when the paramedics arrived, however late it was. They arrived at 12.50 a.m. and again didn’t admit Mum to hospital, in spite of a day spent vomiting and passing water every twenty minutes.

I should back up a little here, and explain. For you or I, a urinary tract infection or a bout of norovirus is unpleasant, but usually clears itself in a few days after a dose of antibiotics for the former, and starvation/lots of fluids for the latter. For someone like Mum, with heart failure, diabetes, COPD and a whole host of other stuff, a simple infection can quickly turn into something nasty like sepsis, or at best can cause her condition to deteriorate quickly. But Mum’s vital signs were still good, and so there was not enough cause to admit her.

At 5 a.m. the doctor arrived and gave her some antibiotics and some tablets for the nausea. It’s hard to take tablets when you have nausea, but she managed it somehow.

On Sunday morning I grabbed a taxi from Broadway in Somerset to Milborne St Andrew in Dorset. My taxi driver was a delightful chap in a top hat and shorts. I sat in the front seat and we drove through the rain, while he told me about his life: how he was an engineer and inventor by trade, and how he’d almost succeeded in getting funding for his master project, a way of helping the companies who fill in potholes to operate in the rain. I was happy to let him ramble on with his tales of lasers and oil on surface water and the difficulties of gauging the depth of a pothole when the light is being refracted. It took my mind off the situation that I was walking into.

I  got to the house and walked into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Mum was half asleep. She didn’t have her teeth in, which always makes her look about 105 years old, and changes her voice. She hadn’t eaten, or taken any of her medication, because she felt too sick. She was burning up with fever, but said she felt a little better since starting the antibiotics. Her green eyes looked enormous in that little white face. I helped her onto the commode and realised how very weak she was. I’d no sooner got her settled into bed than she wanted to get out again. She was too hot, then too cold. By Monday morning Dad had decamped to the living room to sleep in his reclining chair because Mum was so restless, and I was starting to get a bit frazzled. I know how awful that feeling of a UTI is, the way you want to keep going to the toilet even when there’s nothing left in your bladder. I also began to understand how hard it is to keep lifting someone off a bed onto a commode, and then get them back into bed when they can do almost nothing to support their own weight. However strong your core muscles are (thank you, pilates!) sometimes the angles that you have to get into to lift someone put a terrible strain on your back.

On Monday the diarrhoea started, but I’ll pass over that quickly. The doctor popped in to visit her, and pronounced her vital signs acceptable. She still wasn’t taking any of her medications and what we now recognise as withdrawal was kicking in: some of her  medications are addictive, and without them she was starting to shake and become even more agitated.

On Monday night she needed assistance twice an hour. I would go to bed for half an hour’s shuteye and be roused instantly by sounds from Mum’s bedroom – the sound of the door banging against the bedside cabinet, a sure sign that she was trying to get up, or her cries for help. She would usually have already swung her legs out of bed and was laying at a most uncomfortable angle, which explained the urgency of her cries. No matter how many times I asked her to call out before she started moving, she was determined, even in her weakened state, to be independent. I sensed this was a recipe for disaster, and I was right.

At 1 o’clock in the morning I heard an even more desperate cry for help, and went into the bedroom to find her on the floor. There is no way that Dad and I could lift her back on to the bed, and besides I really wanted the paramedics to take another look. I dialled 999 and explained the situation, and they called me back to get all the details. They warned me that they were extremely busy, and that it might take a while for the paramedics to get to us, because the situation wasn’t life-threatening. I completely understand.

We covered Mum in blankets, tried to get her comfortable with some pillows and turned the heating up. Dad and I took it in turns to sit in the bedroom to keep her company.

Mum wasn’t happy.

‘I’m really uncomfortable’

‘I’ve got to get up’

‘I’m cold’.

‘I’m too hot’

‘Can you put a pillow behind my head’.

‘Can you take that pillow away it’s hurting me’

‘I’m really uncomfortable’

‘Somebody help me, please’

‘I want to get up’

‘Can’t you help me to get up?’

There is nothing worse than that feeling of helplessness, which so easily transforms into a kind of rage. I found myself getting inpatient with Mum, and close to tears. I went outside and sat on the bench in the dark to calm myself down.

A tawny owl called from very close at hand, a wild, otherworldly cry. It reminded me of someone calling out from the other side of a great divide,urgent and distressed.

Of course, this suited my mood perfectly, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the owl, who might have been in an excellent frame of mind for all I knew.

The paramedics finally arrived at 4 a.m., got Mum back into bed in a jiffy and, whilst worried about her, didn’t find enough warning signs to admit her to hospital.

I heard one of them say ‘How on earth is she managing?’

‘She isn’t normally like this’, I said. ‘She’s normally mobile enough to get about in the bungalow with her walker’.

And this is another problem – when you don’t know the patient, you may assume that she is always confused, or unable to get about, because you have no baseline to go by. It’s why I make sure to tell hospital staff that although Mum is a little forgetful, she doesn’t usually hallucinate or talk absolute rubbish.

And so Monday faded into Tuesday, and Wednesday. Several times I had to call on a lovely carer who lives locally to help get Mum back into bed when she got herself into a position where I couldn’t lift her on my own. I got better at getting her to and from the commode, but she was getting weaker and weaker. We managed to get her to eat some custard and a little porridge, and she was drinking lots of milk, but it obviously wasn’t enough. She was back on her medication, and at least had stopped shaking. Nurses popped in from time to time to check her blood sugar and see how she was doing.

The doctor visited while Mum was asleep. He took her blood sugar and her blood pressure, and she didn’t stir. He looked at her with concern.

‘I wonder if this is a turning point?’ he said. ‘She’s always been such a fighter. I’ve never seen her like this before’.

‘She’s still a fighter’, I said. ‘You might be surprised’. I was taken aback by the flare of anger that I felt.

Later, when Mum was a bit more alert, I opened the blinds so that she could see the garden, and I heard her call for me. I went in, and sat on the bed beside her.

‘Are they sparrows in the gutter opposite?’ she asked. ‘What are they doing?’

I leaned down so that I could see things from Mum’s eye-level, and we both called out as we saw a spray of water fly into the air.

‘They’re having a bath’, we said, and settled back to watch. When I looked down again, Mum was asleep.

On Friday, I had to leave to go home. I had had about three hours sleep in four days. I was bursting into tears over every little thing. I arranged for carers to be in the house for most of the time. I trialed some overnight adult diapers for when the carers couldn’t be there, because I didn’t want Mum getting out of bed when there wasn’t anyone to help her. I thought Mum would object because of the lack of dignity, but I think it’s a sign of how unwell she felt that they came as something of a relief, and they seemed to be comfortable and effective.

I sat by her bedside and held her hand.

‘I’ve got to go, Mum, but I’ll be back soon’, I said.

‘Don’t worry’, she said, ‘I’m getting better. You go home and don’t worry’.

And then I really did cry, which wasn’t very helpful.

‘Earlier on this week, I was laying here thinking that I was 83 and I’d had a good innings’, she said.

‘Mum, you’re only 82’, I said.

‘Oh!’ she said, and smiled one of those toothless grins that I’ve become so familiar with this week, ‘You’ve given me back a year, thank you!’

She thought for a minute.

‘Maybe I’m not ready to go just yet’, she said.

And so I left, and got on a train, and by the time I got to Bournemouth I got a call from the carer who said that she’d called the paramedics again and this time they were going to admit Mum to the hospital. I spoke to one of them, a chap called Alan.

‘Her vital signs are not bad, but there’s obviously something wrong so we’re going to admit her and see if we can get to the bottom of it’, he said.

I could have kissed him.

My train carriage wasn’t busy and so I spent the rest of the journey looking out of the window and being occasionally gripped by paroxysms of crying. It feels as if I am rebounding from one crisis to another, being pinged about like the ball in a pinball machine. I am encouraging the parents to think about getting a live-in carer, but Dad says having someone else in the house would drive him mad, and Mum only wants to do that if they can buy a bigger bungalow, which is completely inpractical – moving is stressful enough if you’re well. I feel as if they are one step away from disaster the whole time, and as if my whole life is on hold because I am trying to keep this little boat afloat by sheer willpower.

I get back to London, walk through to the kitchen, and see this.

The finches have been planting sunflower seeds, and this one has come into bloom while I’ve been away. And here I am crying again, because it is such a cheerful, hopeful plant, and I could almost believe that it’s looking through the window to welcome me back, and to tell me that everything will be well. And the cat comes down the stairs miaowing, and the buddleia that I was planning to cut back this weekend has a second flush of bee-covered flowers. I feel something in me that has been unanchored for days settle and grow still.

I will get through this, whatever it takes.

 

Dear Readers, things went from bad to worse with Mum and Dad over the next few years, with frequent visits to Milborne St Andrew in Dorset where they lived. Looking back now, I see I hadn’t realised how bad things had gotten.  It was another two years before Dad was diagnosed with dementia, but clearly the signs were already there. 

Dear Readers, last week I was on my montly visit to Milborne St Andrew to see my 81 year-old parents. It felt like the beginning of summer: for the first time this year, I didn’t bring a raincoat and felt very daring. Dad took me for a walk around the garden, and I treated myself to thirty minutes taking photos of the plants and insect life. I adore the ceanothus, with its heavy honey-scented flowers. For three months it thrums with the sound of bumblebees, as if it was singing quietly to itself.

We had already removed three queen wasps from the house: Mum and Dad had previously had a wasps’ nest just outside the bathroom, so this was quite concerning. Although they have such a vicious reputation, I have always found wasps to be relatively mild-mannered and tolerant. I think that they are somewhat attracted to the cotoneaster outside the front door, not so much for the flowers at this time of year as for the possibility of caterpillars or other small creatures.

And there were many bees on the geraniums and the centaurea, and a fine long-legged spider as well.

I had such a feeling of well-being that afternoon. We had chosen, personalised and ordered the invitations for the 60^th Wedding Anniversary party in September. I had spoken to the venue and found details of photographers and bakers and florists. Mum had even started looking for her outfit for the party.

Mum; ‘Maybe I could wear what I wore for my Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary Party’.

Me: ‘Blimey, Mum, if you can’t get a new outfit when you’ve been married for sixty years I’d like to know when you can’.

Mum: ‘You’re probably right’.

And then, just after dinner, Dad announced that he was cold, stood up and nearly fell over. It was 75 degrees outside, but I closed the door and Mum wrapped him up in her shawl while he sat there, shivering. After half an hour of this, he decided that he wanted to go to bed. Mum put the electric blanket on and he shuffled off.

Now, Dad has COPD, or emphysema as we used to call it. He had been a bit chesty, but not more than usual. He’d been admitted to hospital while I was in Canada with early signs of sepsis, but had been sent home, to all intents well, after 24 hours.

‘Shall we call a paramedic?’ I asked Mum.

‘No hospital!’ came a feeble little voice from the bedroom.

The night wore on. Dad became increasingly confused. This is never a good sign. Normally he is as sharp as a tack. When Dad (or Mum) are admitted to hospital, I have to keep repeating the mantra that they aren’t usually confused, and don’t have dementia, otherwise it’s assumed that they’re always this way.

At 11 o’clock, Dad announced that he was getting up and going to work. He’s been retired for 25 years. He actually had his shirt on when Mum went through and persuaded him back to bed. I could hear her telling him off from the living room in spite of Hercule Poirot being on at significant volume.

There is something deeply distressing about seeing someone you love in a state of delirium. It’s as if the person themselves has disappeared under a welter of strange beliefs and impressions, as if you’re no longer living in the same world. And, in some ways, you aren’t. It’s very hard for Mum, but with a mixture of exasperation and humour she normally manages to get Dad to do what she wants.

At this point, we really should have rung for an ambulance, and Mum and I both recognise this now. But no one wants to panic, or to be a burden on the already over-burdened health service. Dad dozed off, and sometimes he’s better in the morning. Come the morning, he was no longer confused, but he did say that he felt terrible, and believe me, that’s not something Dad normally says.

We rang for an ambulance. A bearded paramedic called Ian arrived, checked up Dad’s vital signs and pronounced that he didn’t have sepsis, but he did have a chest infection on his left lung. He reassured Mum that she’d done the right thing in calling him, and said that she should always ring 111 if she was a bit worried, and 999 if she was very worried. The paramedic also got Mum and Dad’s GP to come home for a visit. He prescribed some antibiotics, and within a few hours Dad was looking a bit less pale, and was talking sense again.

It is always such a relief when someone that you love is on the mend. For me, there’s the sense that things can start to get back to normal. I try not to catastrophise, but I can’t stop myself imagining stays in hospital, deteriorating conditions, and worse. Over the past five or ten years I’ve become hypervigilant – if the phone rings and it’s Mum and Dad’s number, my heart starts to thump. It’s much worse for them, of course.

The following morning I was packing to leave when there was a heart-stopping thud from the living room, a sound that had me running down the passage. Dad was sprawled out on the floor, having tripped over his slippers (they are alarmingly carpet-coloured and difficult to see). He peered up.

‘I’ve dropped me antibiotics’, he said.

And indeed, tablets were scattered like so much confetti all over the floor. Of course, that was the least of our worries.

Fortunately, Dad wasn’t hurt, but he was horizontal, and getting up from that position can be tricky, especially when one of you is 81 with a bad back and the other is 57 with a bad back. We managed to get Dad propped up against the chair, but there was no way that, even between us, we could get him any further. Plus, we were worried in case his fall had been because he had deteriorated further, and that he might have hit his head. Mum sighed and rang 111.

20 minutes later, two handsome, burly ambulance guys came in, checked that Dad hadn’t broken anything and got him into his chair. They made sure that the sepsis wasn’t coming back and one of them reassured Mum that she’d done the right thing – it was always as well to check when someone elderly had had a fall, he said. Not that Dad was really elderly, of course, he interjected when Mum gave him what I would describe as ‘an old-fashioned look’.

And so, what have I learned from my latest visit to Dorset? Firstly that when you are getting on a bit (not elderly, obviously) and have multiple health problems, an infection that a younger, healthier person might shrug off can come on like a tornado, and always needs to be taken seriously. Secondly, that dialling 111 is a good thing to do, because they will make the decision about whether or not to call out the paramedics, and then the paramedics make the call about an ambulance. But thirdly, what a remarkable institution the NHS is, and how much we all have to be grateful for. Everyone that we dealt with was kind, patient, competent and good-humoured. Everyone treated Mum and Dad with respect and helped them to maintain their dignity (even when Dad was stranded on the floor).

The NHS is the envy of the world. We are so lucky to have it. It will be one of the major factors influencing my voting next week on June 8th. If you would like to see what the main parties are promising in their manifestos, there’s a link here. Let’s not take the NHS for granted.

Dear Readers, every year (except 2024, when I broke my leg) I go to Obergurgl in Austria for a few weeks walking in the mountains. What a joy it is, and I love to share it with everybody…

Dear Readers, I am on holiday in Obergurgl, Austria for two weeks, so, as usual, I thought I would share a couple of my walks with you all. On Monday we went for a hike through the Arolla pine forest, a nature reserve that I can see from my balcony window.This is what I would describe as our first ‘proper’ walk, which means one where we actually break into a sweat, and where I notice that my heart rate, measured on my little Fitbit watch, has gone over 140 beats per minute. I should mention that once it goes that fast, I often demand a breathing break, or find something to look at that means that we stop. Like ‘ooh, an ant!’ or ‘Look at that tree!’ or even, once, ‘that’s a pretty cloud’. However, I think that my daily walks to the cemetery to feed the foxes have helped – the climb today, though tiring, required far fewer ‘ant stops’ than usual.

The trip starts easily enough as we skip through the meadow, and pass over a bridge. The bridge has a little shrine to St John Nepomuk, the local saint and a protector against floods and drowning. I notice that folk have started to attach padlocks to the metalwork to signify their undying love for one another.

I hope that this doesn’t become too much of a trend, as it can weaken the bridge, but at the moment, it’s just rather sweet.

The Alpenroses are gorgeous this year – they are actually azaleas, not roses. Normally by the time we’ve arrived in Obergurgl , they are already past their best. This year they are perfect. We stop on the edge of the forest for some water and some Toblerone (actually Swiss, but it feels like enough of an Alpine treat to indulge in in Austria). A woman in a white beanie hat is sitting on the seat, and we get chatting, like you do. She is watching her husband, who is doing some mountaineering on the rocks opposite. This little area has become very popular with daredevils who like edging around precipitous drops and crossing ravines via terrifying wire bridges, and I am impressed that her husband, who must be sixty if he’s a day, is giving the youngsters a run for their money. It suddenly occurs to me, writing this, that I shall be sixty in a few years. Funny how your impressions of age change as you get older. I have an Auntie who is 88 years old, and refers to a friend in her seventies as ‘a nice girl’.

We all agree that this mountaineering lark is  ‘not our kind of thing’, however. The husband takes his hand off the rocks to give his wife a cheery wave, and she heads off to meet him at the bottom of the climb. John and I head on up the path.

It’s so cool under the trees. There’s a chiff-chaff singing his heart out way up in the branches. I always wonder why some birds cross from Africa to Austria and stay, while others come all the way to the UK. It also occurs to me that most of the plants that I see here I could also see in Britain, though not in such splendid abundance. Our plants, animals and geology are inextricably linked with those in Europe, and until rising sea levels severed our connection to the continent as recently as 6500 years ago, we were physically joined to the mainland. What a difference that hop, skip and a jump’s worth of water has made to our national attitude.

We carry on up the zig-zag path, hearing the nutcrackers’ calls all around us, but seeing nary a one.Spotted Nutcracker (Nucifraga caryocatactes) (Photo One – see credit below)

For such big birds, the nutcrackers are very shy, although the evidence of their work is everywhere, in the tiny baby trees that are sprouting randomly at the edge of the wood. Nutcrackers plant the seeds from the pine cones all over the place, and don’t always get around to digging them up, which means that they spread the trees far and wide.  In this particular wood, all the trees are either very old, or very young, which the local naturalists think indicates that there was a forest fire in the 1880’s that took out all but a few of the ancient pines (some of the trees are over 300 years old).

At the top of the wood, we stop for yet more Toblerone and a look around. There is a tiny bog here, full of cotton grass, and dragonflies zip across it, making triangles and quadrilaterals in the sky. There are berry bushes here, growing close to the ground to avoid the worst of the winter weather. You get a wonderful view of Hangerer as well – this is the highest local peak, a fine pyramid against the sky. It’s possible to walk up it (allegedly) but this involves crossing snow fields and, as one of the mountain guides said ‘a degree of exposure’, so we will be admiring it from the ground for the moment.

A tough last climb brings us to the road, and our first view of the new Schonweisse hut. It used to be a classic Alpine hut, with a big sun terrace, the usual pitched roof and a tiny indoor area, where we would huddle if the weather was particularly inclement. Now, it appears to be a strange glass and shingle box. However, we are glad to see it, whatever it looks like. Inside, it has huge tinted glass windows which frame the incredible view of the Rotmoos valley beyond, but there is less outdoor seating than there used to be. We take a seat inside and, after a bowl of tomato soup with basil pesto, I realise, with some regret, that the berry pancakes that used to be on the menu are gone forever. Still, the food is good, the atmosphere a bit more ‘upmarket’ than it used to be, and the toilets are a lot less basic. Everything changes, I suppose, and there is much to like about this new incarnation. Except for the loss of the pancakes. Maybe I should start a petition.

As we walk back down the hill, we pass a herd of Haflinger horses, mares and some foals. These have to be among the most beautiful horses in the world, with their golden skin and flaxen manes and tails. I love the life that they have in the summer, out here in the mountains, free to wander and eat and behave like horses. They ignore the tourists who want to have their photographs taken with the horses in the background, and I am pleased to see that no one feeds them. Which is just as well, as nothing spoils the relationship between man and horse as much as getting the equines addicted to sugar.

So, after this hike I feel as if I’ve got my ‘mountain legs’ back. It takes a walk or two to regain confidence in my ability to get up and down tricky paths, but after all the years we’ve been coming to Obergurgl, we’ve finally worked out a way of making each day’s walk a little more difficult than the one before, so that we reduce the risk of injury or of just knackering ourselves out. It’s very lucky that we can come for two weeks – after a week, I’m just getting into the swing of it all! And there is so much to see and do here, if you like walking. It really is a small slice of heaven.

Photo Credits

Photo One : By Original author and uploader was MurrayBHenson at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3708573

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share, but please attribute to me, and link back to the blog. Thank you!

Dear Readers, having written about the way that flowers spark memories yesterday reminded me of this piece, about Dad and Mum and their love of roses. It was written in October 2018. A weeks after this Mum and Dad did, indeed, go into a Nursing Home. Mum died in December 2018, but Dad settled in and lived on until March 2020 when he, too, passed away. He was genuinely happy in the home, so at least that worked. For anyone out there who is currently going through something like this, my heart goes out to you. 

The roses are still going strong around Mum and Dad’s bungalow, lovingly cherished by the family who now live there. 

Dear Readers, my Dad has always grown roses. They seemed to love the heavy clay soil of London, and all that was needed was some pruning and a bucket of horse manure, and off they went. It has been a little more difficult in the light soil of Dorset, but there are fifteen varieties in flower around Mum and Dad’s bungalow. There is the heavy-headed ivory-pink  rose that Mum could see from the kitchen window, when she was able to stand long enough to do the washing up. There are the standard roses, one cerise, one velvet-red, that Dad’s sisters bought for their diamond wedding anniversary. There are blue-grey roses and yellow roses, and an apricot one that doesn’t have many flowers, but makes up for it in the perfection of those petals.

Hidden in the garden are fairies and fawns and meerkats, all peeking up through the undergrowth. There is a model of St Francis of Assisi who often has a live robin perched on his head. The twelve-foot high beech hedge is a-twitter with sparrows, and a blackbird nests there.

This week I went gathering roses in the rain. I found some blooms on the ivory rose that weren’t yet speckled pink from the rain. The red rose was bowed down, the edges of some of the petals dry and crinkled like the pages of an old book. A yellow rose disintegrated as soon as I touched it. I cut the loveliest blooms in the garden, arranged them in a rose bowl and took them into the living room. I put them on the table next to Mum’s reclining chair.

‘Pretty’, she said, ‘But they smell too much, can you put them over there?

Mum has been smelling things that aren’t there – fish, burning, faeces. It’s strange how she never imagines honeysuckle or jasmine or freesia. And normal everyday smells, like a bunch of roses or a roasting chicken, are overwhelming to her. She came out of hospital, after seven weeks, a shadow of the woman who went in, and with a worsened pressure sore, a lot of physical weakness and much increased confusion. Hospital has had a bad effect on both Mum and Dad – after a two week stay, Dad’s dementia symptoms skyrocketed.

So much has been going on, but the general trend is downwards. Take last night, for example. Dad had a doctor’s appointment on Friday, and he was anxious about it, so he popped into my bedroom at 11 o’clock, 1 o’clock, 3 o’clock and 4 o’clock to ask me if it was time to go yet. Then at four o’clock Mum woke up and was extremely agitated. She wants to get out of bed, then she wants to get back in. She no longer remembers the layout of the house. She no longer remembers how to operate her reclining chair. Sometimes, she doesn’t quite remember where parts of her body were. I managed to hurt my back moving her over in the bed, and when she was solicitous of my pain I had to walk outside for a quick weep and to pull myself back together.

And this morning, dad’s chest is bad (he has COPD) and so he didn’t get to the doctor anyway. As I write this, he is back on the antibiotics and the steroids, and we’re praying that he doesn’t end up back in hospital.

And it is to counteract scenarios like this that I finally talked to the doctor, who advised that finding a nursing home for Mum and Dad was now the best option. In a nursing home they could keep Mum and Dad together, and endeavour to reduce the amount and duration of hospital visits that they required. Plus, they would be looked after properly, 24 hours a day.

I was sceptical at first. I visited one nursing home that had an artificial beach and a dedicated cinema room, and still didn’t feel that it was right for Mum and Dad. I ruled out many on the grounds of their CQC reports. It’s hard to find a home that will look after both people with dementia and who are physically frail, (though this could be a red herring since Mum has been less coherent since she came out of hospital). And then I visited a home in the centre of Dorchester, and as soon as I walked through the door I got the feeling that this was an open, friendly, person-centred place. I talked to the manager, and we clicked straight away. And, unusually, she had two rooms available.

Do you sometimes get a feeling that something is fate?

The reason that I was going to this home was because Mum and Dad’s GP had had a relative stay there until she died, and he had visited it frequently. It soon seemed that everyone had a good word to say for it – one of our lovely carers had worked there, the taxi driver’s partner still worked there, the district nurse had worked there. All of them reported back to Mum and Dad that it was a good place.

Dad went from ‘I don’t want to try that’ to ‘I don’t want to sell the bungalow for less than £300k’ in 24 hours. I’m not sure that Mum really understands what’s going on a lot of the time. But I honestly think that this is the best chance they have for a fourth act in their lives, a chance to have a wider circle of people to talk to and things to do. They have both agreed to give the home a go, and so we have an assessment happening next Tuesday. I hope and pray that it goes well, and that Mum and Dad are prepared to try it, because we are running out of choices.

Certainly I can’t go on the way I am at the moment. I had terrible chest pains that turned out to be nothing when investigated, but which scared me at the time. I am exhausted, and stressed, and not, I fear, the good and patient nursemaid that I was when all this started several years ago. Not enough is written about how caring for people long-term changes the whole nature of the relationship. To me, for much of the time,  Mum and Dad are not primarily my parents, but have become patients, a project to be managed. I  don’t have time to sit down and actually talk to them because I’m sorting out medications, doctors’ visits, transport to the hospital, the online grocery order, the army of carers and agencies. I would like to be able to spend some real time with Mum and Dad, to listen to them, to hear their stories while there is still time. I want to know them as people again, and I have gradually lost that in the slowly rising flood of other responsibilities.

I am travelling down again next week for the assessment meeting on Tuesday and if all goes well, Mum and Dad could possibly be ensconced by the end of the week. It’s all happening so quickly that I’m struggling to keep up but if something feels right, it seems appropriate to go with the flow. We won’t do anything hasty with the bungalow until we’re absolutely sure that Mum and Dad are happy (in spite of Dad’s encouragement to do otherwise). I recognise that it will be a big transition for Mum and Dad, and that there will be bumps along the way, but it feels like the right thing to do.

And I also have to deal with my own grief that things are changing. A way of life could be coming to an end for me, too. As I cut the roses and bury my face in those soft, fragrant petals, I realise that this might be the last time that I am able to fill a bowl with them. Mum and Dad have loved this bungalow, and especially the garden, and so have I. But if things work out, this garden will soon be someone else’s delight, and that’s as it should be. And I will have to let go of my role as primary carer and organiser, and to let someone else manage all that, and that will be hard too. But everything changes, in nature and in our lives, and so much suffering is caused by grimly hanging on when we could be letting go. There will be much sorrow during the next few weeks, I’m sure, but in my heart I feel the tentative growth of hope.

Dear Readers, I am still feeling a little wan and forlorn what with my lurgy, which has now gotten into the coughing and blowing-the-nose phase, but I am so happy to have taken delivery of no less than 200 of the little chaps above – they’re yellow rattle, and they’re intended for the meadow over on Muswell Hill Playing Fields. Each plant has been grown with its very own ‘host’ of some grass, for yellow rattle is a hemi-parasite, getting some of its nutrients from the roots of other plants. In  meadows it reduces the fertility of the big, tough grasses, giving the more delicate plants a chance to flourish.

Getting this number of plants planted is a team effort – volunteers from Friends of Coldfall Wood and some lovely folk from Good Gym will be digging the holes for the planting, and we’re hoping that some children from local schools will actually pop the plants in. Then we hope for a good year, and that the yellow rattle will seed itself going forward. Here are a few photos of the meadow from last year. Only native species have been used

I know how effective yellow rattle can be in keeping a meadow diverse, having witnessed it in full flower in the Austrian Alps over many years. Below is a little piece that I wrote about it back in 2015. There’s also a mountain story at the end (because I love a mountain story). And now, it’s off for some honey and lemon…

Dear Readers, as I have been walking amongst the Alpine meadows here in Obergurgl, one plant has appeared over and over again – Yellow Rattle. In some places, it forms a lemon mosaic amongst the clover and the vetches and the many other flowers.

If it looks a little familiar, it’s maybe because the UK also has two species of Yellow Rattle, Rhimnanthus minor and Rhimnanthus angustifolius.

All of the plants look superficially like a yellow Deadnettle, but they perform a very different role in maintaining the biodiversity of grasslands, one that has made gardeners with dreams of a meadow in their front garden pay out for Yellow Rattle seeds and plug plants. For this inoffensive-looking plant is a hemi-parasite – it is able to photosynthesize, but obtains at least some of its nutrients and water from the roots of other plants.

Here in Obergurgl, it means that the Yellow Rattle ‘preys’ on coarse grasses, nettles and perennial weeds like dock, much reducing their vigour and giving the other plants a chance. UK gardeners are realising that it does much the same thing in their own gardens, hence the sudden market in plants. Sadly, in the wild in the UK Yellow Rattle is somewhat in decline, a victim of the prevailing attitude that the only good meadow is a monoculture.

The plant is a member of the Figwort family, which includes such diverse species as Speedwells, Foxglove and our old friend, Ivy-leaved Toadflax. Why only Yellow Rattle has taken up the parasitic lifestyle is a mystery, but it certainly increases the range of plant species here. I would be very interested to know if any of my gardening readers have tried planting it, and what the results were!

Incidentally, the plant is known as Yellow Rattle because the black seeds rattle away in the seed cases. The plant is an annual which sets seed early in the year, before the first mowing up here in the mountains, and is hence ready and waiting when spring comes round again.

Now, Readers, let me tell you a true mountain story. Yesterday, a group of walkers set out, with a long-established mountain guide, to walk the path from the Tieffenbach glacier down into the village of Vent, which is next door to the Obergurgl valley. Amongst them were the two other couples staying at our hotel. It’s a long downhill walk, across snow and sometimes ice, but this was a well-equipped group who were used to such things. To me, it sounds like several hours of hell, but each to their own. Anyhow. They started to inch along a precipitous, snow-covered pass. As one of the women walked under an eight foot tall boulder which was half blocking the pass, she slipped on some ice, slid down the hill and scraped her leg. As everyone was helping her, the next man in line passed under the boulder, touching it with his hand, and, as he too slipped and fell down the hill, the boulder, which may have been in place for thousands of years, uprooted itself and started to roll down the slope. Everyone screamed as the boulder bounced and careered towards the prone man. A guide ran down the hill, at considerable risk to himself, but with little hope of getting there before the boulder did. And then, the boulder struck a tiny rock, less than a foot high, rocked forward, rocked back, and settled in its new position, just a few metres from where the man still lay.

I heard all this from the couples at breakfast this morning. The man who fell has some cuts and bruises and a sprained shoulder, but is otherwise ok.  The woman who saw it all happen was still in shock.

“I have never been so close to a disaster before”, she said, her eyes brimming. “The stone that stopped the boulder was so tiny. We couldn’t believe it when the boulder stopped rolling. It could all have been so different. There was no way that the man would have survived if that thing had landed on him.”

And so, dear Readers, I leave you to draw whatever moral, or none, you’d like to from this tale. For me, there’s some satisfaction in the notion of a little stone stopping a great juggernaut of a boulder. But maybe that’s just me.

Dear Readers, I had been doing occasional posts from Milborne St Andrew in Dorset, where my parents were living, for a couple of years, but this post really marked a turning point, though I didn’t know it at the time. By October 2018 both Mum and Dad were in a care home in Dorchester, and on 18th December 2018 Mum died. This post reminds me of what a solace nature was then, and still is today. 

Dear Readers, last week I reported that my Dad had been in hospital for over a fortnight while I was on holiday. This week I rushed down to Milborne St Andrew, and Dad was at home.

The good news is that his ‘chest infection’ (actually pneumonia) is much better.

The bad news is that Dad isn’t really clear who anyone is, can’t find his way around the house, and thinks that his home is a new place that closely resembles where he used to live.

Sample conversation:

Dad: ‘That tree looks exactly the same as the one that was outside the old house’.

Mum: ‘What old house?’

Dad: silence

Mum: ‘This is the house we’ve lived in for 16 years, love. It’s the same tree’.

Dad: ‘If you say so’.

We call out the GP, who does a memory test on Dad. Dad does much better than we expect, but still badly enough to be referred to the Memory Clinic for a diagnosis. The doctor thinks that it’s not ‘classic’ dementia but a form of confusion brought on by the effect of not getting enough oxygen to the brain over a long period of time (because of the COPD) exacerbated by his recent pneumonia. COPD is the gift that just keeps on giving, and one lesser known effect is brain damage.

The doctor doesn’t think it’s going to get any better. The unstated conclusion that I’ve come to is that it will probably get worse. There might be peaks and troughs, and Dad might gradually come to feel more confident and relaxed in his own surroundings, so I’m not catastrophising, but it’s clear that things will need to change.

The doctor thinks that the options are residential care or a live-in carer. Mum doesn’t want either, but isn’t physically strong enough to cope with Dad if he needs help getting dressed or going to the toilet. Mum and Dad have always said that they want to be together in their own home if at all possible. So we’re going to investigate the live-in carer option. We are lucky that, as a family, we can scrape together the resources to even start to consider this.

I spend ten minutes in the garden, watching the bees riding the lavender as if each sprig was a bucking bronco.

We are lucky that Dad is such a stoical man – he takes each explanation of what’s going on with a surprised and suspicious scepticism, but is happy to sit in his recliner and take things as they come.  He is eating next to nothing, but can be tempted with creme caramel or anything with custard. There are long periods in the day when Mum and Dad are both snoozing peacefully away and I can get on with cooking and organising, or sitting in the garden with my camera. So often nature comes to the rescue. I am watching the bees and butterflies on  the buddleia when it occurs to me that one of these things is not like the others.

I think that this might be a drone fly, a type of hoverfly that looks superficially like a honeybee and probably gets some protection as a result. The eyes give it away, though – that line between them is indicative of a fly, not a bee. And for just a few minutes I’m immersed in something that isn’t care rotas or sorting out medication.

And then there’s a call from the living room and it’s back to that other real world, the one where people I love get sick and confused and cantankerous and infuriating.

I am stressed beyond anything I’ve known previously – I feel myself floating above some situations as if it’s not me at all. The first time I actually spoke the ‘Dementia’ word out loud I ended up crying all over the shop assistant in my local greengrocer. And yet, I also feel my heart opening. As I left on Friday I looked at Dad, with his hair all over the place like Sid Vicious, and felt such an overwhelming tenderness for him that all I could do was kiss him on the top of his head and tell him how much I loved him.

‘Love you n’all’ he said.

And I know that, whatever happens, he always will.