Mum has now become so frail that she can no longer climb the stairs to bed even with aid from myself or other people. I took the decision this week to place her bed downstairs so she no longer had to make the exhausting journey, for her at least, to the top of the stairs and into the bedroom. I had suggested this move many months ago but it was resisted by my mum until last week when she finally succumbed to the limits of her body. She is mentally sharp and has her wits but her legs will no longer take her where she wants to go. It may sound strange but it’s a relief to me as I now know she won’t be attempting to climb the stairs with out me knowing about it. However I can’t help but have reservations about the general state of her health and the slow but steady decline in her abilities.
Added to this worry is the fact that the smoking ban has affected me in ways that I had not anticipated. For example I have just been told that as I use my car for work and I am paid for mileage, the car is in effect the property of my employer for the duration of work usage. This means I can’t smoke in my own car while I am using it for work. This has irked me beyond comprehension. I own the damn car, I pay for the insurance, taxes and maintenance and it is registered to me. In short it is my car. According to the logic applied I would not be able to scratch my own bollocks if my employers said I could not while I was in it on work business. My morals and principles say to me that I should tell my employer to shove his job up his arse as he is directly telling me what I can do with my own property and yet; financial logic tells me I have no option but to acquiesce to the demands of my employer. Between the worries about my home life IE my mother and what I see as the unreasonable demands of my employer, I feel as though unreasonable demand are being made upon me. I know the short answer is to stop smoking but what if my employer demands that I don’t eat garlic before getting into a vehicle that I own or states what after shave I can or cannot use or what colour socks I can wear? It’s the start of a long slippery slope of the erosion of personal freedom by the state or employer and the slide back to fiefdom and doffing of caps to the lord of the land or memsahib.
The wettest May I can ever remember gave way to the wettest June on record in the UK. It’s only the third day of July and it looks as though things are only going to get worse. A number of towns in the UK are under water and an ever increasing number of rivers look set to burst through their banks and add to the misery as flood defences buckle under the weight of the elements. I could understand all of this if it was the middle of a typical English winter but it’s supposed to be the height of summer. This has meant that quiet summer evenings spent watching the sun go down with a gin and tonic and a small camp fire have been replaced by pulling the curtains early and switching the lights on and praying the water does not reach the back door.
As most of my friends and family know, I suffer from SAD (Seasonally Affected Disorder). This means that Serotonin which is produced in the body via sunlight entering the iris is replaced by Melatonin. Melatonin is the stuff that makes creatures hibernate or in the case of humans want to go to sleep when society dictates that they cannot either through work commitments or practicality. Normally in winter I have enough remedies to combat this such as a light box and laboratory produced Serotonin tablets which are enough to keep the black dog of depression at bay. I, like may others often reach a state of uncontrollable depression during the winter months which I have learnt to control and keep at bay through holistic remedies as there are no medically approved controls or prescriptions to cure.
Coupled with the increasing demands at home, problems with work, black clouds on the horizon and the ever growing spectre of the black dog of depression bounding over the horizon at a rapid rate of knots it’s no wonder that I need to leave this country and expand my horizons now and not tomorrow.