Woodland Walk

By Nick Gilmore

Published: 12 Jan, 2025

Sunday

Another day home alone for me and The Dog. Another trip over to see her dad, sister and brother-in-law for Lesley. It was brother-in-law’s last full day in the UK so they were going out for lunch.

A quiet day for me and The Dog. A short walk round the sports field and through the neighbouring housing estate before getting home so I could get on with fixing the back gate, doing some laundry, cooking dinner and going out for another walk.

A horrendous day for Lesley. Attempting to fend off a fire hose of false logic, pathetic over-sensitivity,  toe-curlingly fake empathy, spurious arguments, deliberate ignorance, oversight of the bleeding obvious and distortion of facts over egg on toast in a garden centre café. 

She’s at her wits’ end.

I’m left at home. Powerless in the knowledge that anything I say, any detectable hint of influence that I may have had, can and will be used as the root cause of monumental offence.

The brief messages that Lesley was able to send left me fuming. So angry in fact that I turned to what was left in the Christmas Cupboard.

“I’m so angry that the Twiglets got opened. I’ve had a bit of a snackcident.”

Lesley unloaded the full horror of the day when she got home. It sounded like mental torture in contravention of the Geneva Convention to me.

“I know you write about how what’s going on affects you and your mental health but please don’t say anything about this. If she ever saw it there’d be a massive rift.”

“What, you think there isn’t already?”

Bloody hell.

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

You may also like…

Wednesday

Wednesday

Wednesday While Lesley had been keeping her sister up to date of yesterday's developments, I had been updating our...

read more
Tuesday

Tuesday

Tuesday Today was supposed to have been a relatively clear day so I arranged to collect Mum's ashes from the funeral...

read more
Monday

Monday

Monday Lesley had a much more settled day today and was buoyed by the feeling that more people are supporting her and...

read more
Sunday

Sunday

Sunday Taking The Dog on a long, wet and dirty walk was the order of the day today as Lesley was determined to get to...

read more
Saturday

Saturday

Saturday The Dog's morning walk was dominated by a conversation - a post mortem - on the decision to move Lesley's dad...

read more
Thursday

Thursday

Thursday A trip to hospital in Oxford for Lesley's dad today for his rescheduled MRI scan. "I've had no sleep again."...

read more
Tuesday

Tuesday

Tuesday. D-Day + 1 Lesley had hit a wall. The stress of months and months of being her Dad's primary carer, the...

read more
Monday

Monday

Monday. D-Day Everyone had a slow start today. Even though Reggie had got to Dad's as planned, The Dog and I were...

read more
Sunday

Sunday

Sunday The car dashboard had given a reasonable impression of the Christmas lights we hadn't been able to enjoy on the...

read more

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *