Tuesday

Had more trouble than usual getting off to sleep than normal last night. Probably “Have I got all the documents I need?” anxiety before the appointment with the Registrar. But I managed to avoid disappearing down another YouTube rabbit-hole before heading off to bed. It was still pretty late though.

I lay there deleting all the rubbish from my inbox as I failed to go to sleep until I found something alarming. A notification from PayPal about a money request from some company I’d never heard of. And then another one. I got back out of bed to take a proper look on my computer. It was almost certainly a phishing attempt but it looked remarkably plausible.

The wanna-be fraudsters had found an email address that I used to use for a PayPal account I stopped using years ago but never closed. I needed to reset the password to log in and thought I’d be best off just closing the account. But I couldn’t.

Bloody hell.

I’d transgressed some term of use or other and the account was so locked down that I wasn’t permitted to do anything – close the account, remove the linked bank account, report an issue – nothing.

After an hour of faffing around with increasing panic there was a tap on the study door. I opened it to find The Dog standing there wagging her tail. She didn’t have a “You’re still up. Are you alright?” face on. It was definitely a “You need to take me out because I need the toilet. Now!” face.

We had talked about not having any nice, fresh, unsliced bread for the Traditional Christmas Afternoon Turkey Sandwiches. We agreed (two words which should pronounced “Lesley Told Me”) that the only bread worth having was from Sainsburys and noted that the nearest store was going to open at 6am on Christmas Eve.

So after a bit more faffing with PayPal and then just forwarding the offending email to PayPal’s Phishing team with a note telling them that if they didn’t get my account deleted pronto and I lost money then they would be accessories to fraud, I headed back to bed. Back to bed when I was due to be getting up to head out to the shops.

“It’s our tradition. It’s not The Law. Don’t bother.” Lesley said.

The visit to The Registrar was… I nearly said “dead easy” but, yeah, it couldn’t have been more straightforward. There was only one awkward bit.

“And what was your mother’s place of birth?”

“Good question. We haven’t found her birth certificate yet. Her passport says one place but the publicly available details on a genealogy website say something different.”

“No problem. I’ll look it up myself.”

And that was as difficult as it got.

As I was walking back through Town I saw two ladies walking towards me with the aid of walking frames.

“Ooh look!” said one, “That gentleman is wearing a kilt!”

“Ooh yes! I do like seeing a gentleman wearing a kilt.”

“Thank-you very much! Have a wonderful Christmas ladies!”

Next stop was The Home. It was nice to get there in normal working hours as all the admin team were still there. Everyone was kind and supportive. Everyone asked when Mum’s funeral was. Everyone said that they wanted to come. I thanked everyone for all they’d done. I thanked those, where applicable, for telling me off for not having taken more care of myself and for staying too late and for telling me to “Go HOME!”.

I told them that I’d come to see the ladies upstairs and mentioned my concern for Eleanor.

“She’s been really struggling recently. Her anxiety is always high. It’s either the soft toys she calls her babies, her sons, her husband or her mum and dad she’s fretting about.”

“Or home… It’s always home now.”

“Really? On the odd occasion she’s mentioned leaving to me I’ve told her that the bus timetable has just changed and she’s got quite a wait before the next one. I tell her to take a seat in the lounge and I’ll tell her when it’s on its way. That settles her for a little while.”

“Oh, it’s “I want to go home!” all the time now. It’s constant. I told her the other day that if she gave me the address I’d take her home myself! She couldn’t remember where her house is though.”

I headed upstairs to see Reggie. He ushered me into the staff room. He wanted a proper chat. But before we could get going, Eleanor joined us. She was sobbing. Again.

“My mum’s died! She died last night and I couldn’t get home to see her!”

Reggie was lovely with her. Within minutes she was smiling and we attempted to escort her back to the lounge. We hesitated outside the nurses’ office. Reggie asked if I was staying around to talk to Audrey.

“Of course!”

“Ah, Lord Gilmore, she’ll enjoy that!”

A head emerged from the office

“What did you call Nick!?”

I attempted an explanation.

“I was talking to Audrey ages ago and it was a bit of a strange conversation. She was talking about a meeting she’d had that day and there had been Cabinet Ministers there and members of the House of Lords. Audrey was especially pleased with herself for telling them off and for something she’d said to The General. The more she talked, the more she was convinced that i had been there too. Reggie’s called me Lord Gilmore ever since.”

And Audrey turned out to be on good form today too. She was delighted to see me, as she always is, and I think she called me Lawrence.

I don’t normally get to talk to Audrey until later in the day. By then she’s pretty tired and struggles with her vocabulary. But she’s always excited to tell me something and doesn’t want her inability to find the right word spoil the rhythm or pace of her tale. So she makes words up to fill the gaps.

Today was slightly different. It was early afternoon and she wasn’t so tired. She still struggled to find the word she needed to tell the tale but this time she was picking random words that were recognisably English. It somehow made it much harder than usual to get the gist of what she was trying to tell me.

When it came time to take my leave I waited for a notification on my phone. Any notification would do. It just needed to generate a noise. And I had my escape line prepared too. I’d recently started telling her that my phone was reminding me that it was time to go to an important meeting and I’d been using names that might prompt her to reveal a little of what she used to do. Some of them were actual clients I’d had in a previous life.

“What’s that noise?”

“A meeting reminder. I’ll have to go.”

“Who’s it with?”

“The Ministry of Defence. I’m security cleared.”

“Of course you are. I knew that! What’s it about?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is that they’re an absolute shower the lot of them”

“Oh, I know. Let me tell you something about them…”

And she did. For 25 minutes. I didn’t understand a word.

But she loves to be listened to, loves for me to look like I’m taking her seriously, loves for me to ask her advice about my meetings and she loves to laugh. She loves to laugh a lot.

And I really appreciated that she was always able to take the edge off a tough visit with Mum.

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely