Monday

The Dog has, at last, allowed me to have a look at her injured paw. My initial concern had subsided once I had seen that it hadn’t swollen at all, she was able to walk on it reasonably comfortably and wasn’t limping too badly. She was protecting it though and would sometimes wince when she caught it awkwardly.

What I found was that she had split one of her claws lengthways. The hard outer shell had detached from the softer core underneath. “Delaminated” would be a good word to describe it.

I didn’t think I could clip the loose bit off without hurting her and traumatising everyone. She’s managed cuts and scrapes for herself before. I’ll let her manage this for herself too. My hope was that new claw would grow behind the break and the loose bit would come away of its own accord. All we had to do was to prevent her from being too boisterous on walks so she didn’t tear it off before it was ready to let go.

That plan lasted all of 10 minutes. While I was on the floor inspecting her feet she decided to distract me by starting a wrestling match. She caught the broken claw in the rug and it ended up pointing at the same freakish angle that it had done when she first split it. She obviously knew she’d done it but didn’t scream in pain until I put my hand on her leg to lift it up. I let go instantly and she licked her claw straight again. I left her to it.

I busied myself with the mountain of paper we’d collected from Lesley’s dad’s house yesterday. It was more of the same. I did find his stash of unused watercolour paper though. Stacks of it.  Most of it was still in the bag the store had given him before he’d taken it home and hidden it at the back of a cupboard.

The rest was the same old collection of leaflets – he could never walk past a free leaflet for anything – and clippings from newspapers and magazines. The clippings were largely pictures for inspiration when he was painting. I got that. I save pictures to inspire my own work. I use Pinterest though. There were other clippings too and unfortunately he was a lifelong Daily Mail reader. For every 10 pictures there’d be something else. Either a column of jokes or an article that interested him. They were invariably about immigrants.

Occasionally, there’d be an advert. He liked to save adverts for computers or cameras from the Daily Mail and show them to me. He did it for years.

“This was in the paper. Is it any good?”

“It’s half as good and twice the price of anything elsewhere.”

“Oh!”

“They’re conning you. Just like always. They know that because you’re buying a print edition of the Daily Mail you probably don’t look at the internet. They don’t have to worry that you’ll check on what they publish and see how awful it all is. It’s the same with the articles. It’s a terrible paper.”

“All the papers are the same though.”

“No they’re not. The Mail goes out of its way to be different from every other paper. It gets more complaints than all the other papers put together!”

We had that conversation countless times. It would always end the same way…

“Humph… Well…”

Every so often he would add a slight variation…

“But they say they will deliver within 28 days. That’s good…”

“Listen, if a vendor says to me that I won’t get what I want within 24 hours then I look elsewhere. It’s not 1950 anymore.”

The 21st century was a foreign country to him. And he hated foreigners. 

Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. He passed away in March 2025. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved.

Image Credit

Original Image by Nick Gilmore. April 2025.