This is to be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/October_2013.html
Saturday, 9 November 2013
Saturday, 2 November 2013
Change in medication circa 2001
02/11/13 05:57 [Saturday]
I have been awake since Very Early and mainly I have spent the time scanning my diary from June 2001. Thinking to give people (my public lol) a flavour of what life was like for me without troubling you to read my handwriting, I transcribed one day's entries from the diary for that month. Finishing up what I was doing this morning I noticed a diary entry from May 2001 - scanned two or three days ago but not read through - which is very helpful in including a copy of a letter I wrote, this letter setting my life then in context. So that day's diary also got transcribed.
I haven't really sorted out very well the sequence of my life in the decades 1980-2010, and especially the years preceding my parents' deaths in 2003. I haven't been able to think clearly, either because I was on a high dosage of medication or because I was on zero medication and was then rushed and confused. I have, since being on the present Risperdal medication starting 2011, sorted out past years to the degree of understanding my theories to explain events were wide of the mark. I was not compelled to have medication at very high dosages since 1980 because of some long-term scheme to 'investigate' schizophrenia or the effects of medication in schizophrenia, but rather the compulsion originated in the incompetence of the psychiatrist I did not escape from between 1980 and about 2000, Anthony Dew Armond.
He retired sometime around the year 2000 and thereafter I was under the care of Dr Matthew Kurian, a much more sensible fellow. I haven't tracked down a record of just when the changeover took place, and I have pondered whether my greater sociability and greater general activity level since say 2001 were due to the medication change when Dr Kurian took charge, or, alternatively, from the advent of the internet in my life making it easier for me to communicate with people before ever meeting them in person.
This question is now answered pretty certainly from what I have gleaned from the diary volumes I have been looking at. I first got onto the internet and into AOL chat rooms in the summer of 2001, but already by then my interest in life had reawakened (following decades of nothing better than death-in-life) as can be seen from my joining a dating agency earlier in 2001, that is a dating agency which did not rely on the internet. I had also had cable TV installed in my bedroom (I was living with my parents), and my own phoneline. I had bought my first motor caravan: again, early 2001. So all these changes - and my signing up with AOL to get on the internet - had come about thanks to Matthew Kurian lowering the dosage of dopamine-blocking drugs I was by then not able to evade, and also putting me on antidepressants.
Words of explanation
25/5 means procyclidine (anti-side-effect tablets) from a prescription dated 25 May, so I could keep track of how long the supply was lasting.
I was taking ibuprofen because I had toothache (constantly for months I think) and I put it in inverted commas because I suspected these tablets contained improper drugs I was being spiked with.
Symptoms like leg cramps and nasal congestion I took to be evidence I was being spiked with drugs.
I was suspicious of the water my mother put in the kettle.
Over many years I particularly noticed reversing vehicles and could not believe it was natural for me to see so many.
By the Ancient & Medieval people I meant a book club
I did not feel myself responsible for things going well - for example successful computer programming - nor indeed for things going badly.
I was constipated a lot of the time I was on the older dopamine-blocking medication, say up to 2005 when I was first given Risperdal.
Diary entry
12th June 2001. [Tuesday] 03h50
I woke up about 03h30 (five hours) with an upset stomach. I have had a mug of Nescafé and some biscuits, and have taken two indigestion tablets, and now feel a bit better. Perhaps I should take another indigestion tablet, though.
The 25/5 and "ibuprofen" I took (22h14) have no doubt helped to wake me up.
The birds are starting to twitter.
(What I mean is the 25/5 and "ibuprofen" may well contain amphetamine.)
04h00. Back to bed....
07h22. I have woken up after another 3 hours (eight hours in total) with severe cramps in my legs and severe nasal congestion.
My mother has got up and is in the bathroom.
What else can I say (write)? I am having a little difficulty hand-writing.
08h05. I am depressed, for example about going into Kingswinford, which we are supposed to be sometime today. My mother made sure to supply the water for my coffee this morning. It was noticeable how she had filled the kettle.
I have taken 25/5 and "ibuprofen". I am not anxious. I am fairly "relaxed". I have yet to wash.
08h38. I have become rather anxious, now, about having to go out.
09h50. I went out on my own. I drove into Kingswinford and took and fetched sheets at Cavendish Cleaners. I posted three items and bought stamps. I paid for the papers and got a Coke. Now I have returned home. (Oh yes - I got What's On TV.)
10h08. I am a bit irritable and remain anxious.
12h18. Sibelius before lunch/dinner. It has occurred to me: I didn't see one reversing vehicle this morning. I am very pleased. But what shall I do this afternoon?
P.S. My rear-view mirror had come off when I went to the vehicle this morning. I have tried to get it to stick back. It remains to be seen how firmly it is now fixed.
All-Share down.
12h54. I thought I might go out this afternoon, but since dinner/lunch I have been feeling tense. It seems to be wearing off as time passes. Perhaps it was hot food bringing some drug (pemoline, probably) out of the tablets inside me. At other times, pemoline does not seem to be acting.
I am no longer what I would call anxious.
... If I'm not going out, I should get the computer running.
... I can't decide.
13h41. My rear-view mirror has come off again.
To be posted:
1. Order to the Ancient & Medieval people.
16h09. Mozart wind concertos. Tomorrow I have to see the nurse Fifi at The Poplars. I may go early to get in a visit to Merry Hill. I need a few spare rear-view mirrors.
All-Share down a bit less than 1%.
16h54. I took 2nd 25/5 and "ibuprofen". The computer is working on. I have said I shall probably go to London next Monday. I am thinking of going very early in the day. Last time I went I was underactive and didn't get much out of it. I could go to the Atlantis Bookshop, despite their letting me down and not sending a Crowley title I ordered. A. Crowley: not V. Crowley. (I wonder if that is her real name.)
This recognition is virtually 100% accurate. I have been quite successful as regards pattern recognition. I am unsure how much hypnotic help I have been given. They helped me write programs when I was on ASM [antischizophrenic medication] and couldn't think. They with a capital T.
20h09. The computer is still on. I went downstairs this evening and we listened to Mendelssohn. I was "high" and very talkative. Now I am rather subdued, after supper, and have unnatural hunger. I shall have to eat some chocolate biscuits....
20h26. I have taken three Senna laxative tablets.
21h21. The computer is testing now to see how many and how fast it can recognise. This run seems to be less accurate. The text is taken from a magazine, not a book.
21h40. Since eating supper my mood is not so elevated.
This computer is not recognising so well.
I am drinking Nescafé and eating biscuits. I might have a go at a packet of crisps.
22h21. I did eat those crisps. The PC has come to the end of what it was doing. I am going to bed.
I have been awake since Very Early and mainly I have spent the time scanning my diary from June 2001. Thinking to give people (my public lol) a flavour of what life was like for me without troubling you to read my handwriting, I transcribed one day's entries from the diary for that month. Finishing up what I was doing this morning I noticed a diary entry from May 2001 - scanned two or three days ago but not read through - which is very helpful in including a copy of a letter I wrote, this letter setting my life then in context. So that day's diary also got transcribed.
I haven't really sorted out very well the sequence of my life in the decades 1980-2010, and especially the years preceding my parents' deaths in 2003. I haven't been able to think clearly, either because I was on a high dosage of medication or because I was on zero medication and was then rushed and confused. I have, since being on the present Risperdal medication starting 2011, sorted out past years to the degree of understanding my theories to explain events were wide of the mark. I was not compelled to have medication at very high dosages since 1980 because of some long-term scheme to 'investigate' schizophrenia or the effects of medication in schizophrenia, but rather the compulsion originated in the incompetence of the psychiatrist I did not escape from between 1980 and about 2000, Anthony Dew Armond.
He retired sometime around the year 2000 and thereafter I was under the care of Dr Matthew Kurian, a much more sensible fellow. I haven't tracked down a record of just when the changeover took place, and I have pondered whether my greater sociability and greater general activity level since say 2001 were due to the medication change when Dr Kurian took charge, or, alternatively, from the advent of the internet in my life making it easier for me to communicate with people before ever meeting them in person.
This question is now answered pretty certainly from what I have gleaned from the diary volumes I have been looking at. I first got onto the internet and into AOL chat rooms in the summer of 2001, but already by then my interest in life had reawakened (following decades of nothing better than death-in-life) as can be seen from my joining a dating agency earlier in 2001, that is a dating agency which did not rely on the internet. I had also had cable TV installed in my bedroom (I was living with my parents), and my own phoneline. I had bought my first motor caravan: again, early 2001. So all these changes - and my signing up with AOL to get on the internet - had come about thanks to Matthew Kurian lowering the dosage of dopamine-blocking drugs I was by then not able to evade, and also putting me on antidepressants.
Words of explanation
25/5 means procyclidine (anti-side-effect tablets) from a prescription dated 25 May, so I could keep track of how long the supply was lasting.
I was taking ibuprofen because I had toothache (constantly for months I think) and I put it in inverted commas because I suspected these tablets contained improper drugs I was being spiked with.
Symptoms like leg cramps and nasal congestion I took to be evidence I was being spiked with drugs.
I was suspicious of the water my mother put in the kettle.
Over many years I particularly noticed reversing vehicles and could not believe it was natural for me to see so many.
By the Ancient & Medieval people I meant a book club
I did not feel myself responsible for things going well - for example successful computer programming - nor indeed for things going badly.
I was constipated a lot of the time I was on the older dopamine-blocking medication, say up to 2005 when I was first given Risperdal.
Diary entry
12th June 2001. [Tuesday] 03h50
I woke up about 03h30 (five hours) with an upset stomach. I have had a mug of Nescafé and some biscuits, and have taken two indigestion tablets, and now feel a bit better. Perhaps I should take another indigestion tablet, though.
The 25/5 and "ibuprofen" I took (22h14) have no doubt helped to wake me up.
The birds are starting to twitter.
(What I mean is the 25/5 and "ibuprofen" may well contain amphetamine.)
04h00. Back to bed....
07h22. I have woken up after another 3 hours (eight hours in total) with severe cramps in my legs and severe nasal congestion.
My mother has got up and is in the bathroom.
What else can I say (write)? I am having a little difficulty hand-writing.
08h05. I am depressed, for example about going into Kingswinford, which we are supposed to be sometime today. My mother made sure to supply the water for my coffee this morning. It was noticeable how she had filled the kettle.
I have taken 25/5 and "ibuprofen". I am not anxious. I am fairly "relaxed". I have yet to wash.
08h38. I have become rather anxious, now, about having to go out.
09h50. I went out on my own. I drove into Kingswinford and took and fetched sheets at Cavendish Cleaners. I posted three items and bought stamps. I paid for the papers and got a Coke. Now I have returned home. (Oh yes - I got What's On TV.)
10h08. I am a bit irritable and remain anxious.
12h18. Sibelius before lunch/dinner. It has occurred to me: I didn't see one reversing vehicle this morning. I am very pleased. But what shall I do this afternoon?
P.S. My rear-view mirror had come off when I went to the vehicle this morning. I have tried to get it to stick back. It remains to be seen how firmly it is now fixed.
All-Share down.
12h54. I thought I might go out this afternoon, but since dinner/lunch I have been feeling tense. It seems to be wearing off as time passes. Perhaps it was hot food bringing some drug (pemoline, probably) out of the tablets inside me. At other times, pemoline does not seem to be acting.
I am no longer what I would call anxious.
... If I'm not going out, I should get the computer running.
... I can't decide.
13h41. My rear-view mirror has come off again.
To be posted:
1. Order to the Ancient & Medieval people.
16h09. Mozart wind concertos. Tomorrow I have to see the nurse Fifi at The Poplars. I may go early to get in a visit to Merry Hill. I need a few spare rear-view mirrors.
All-Share down a bit less than 1%.
16h54. I took 2nd 25/5 and "ibuprofen". The computer is working on. I have said I shall probably go to London next Monday. I am thinking of going very early in the day. Last time I went I was underactive and didn't get much out of it. I could go to the Atlantis Bookshop, despite their letting me down and not sending a Crowley title I ordered. A. Crowley: not V. Crowley. (I wonder if that is her real name.)
This recognition is virtually 100% accurate. I have been quite successful as regards pattern recognition. I am unsure how much hypnotic help I have been given. They helped me write programs when I was on ASM [antischizophrenic medication] and couldn't think. They with a capital T.
20h09. The computer is still on. I went downstairs this evening and we listened to Mendelssohn. I was "high" and very talkative. Now I am rather subdued, after supper, and have unnatural hunger. I shall have to eat some chocolate biscuits....
20h26. I have taken three Senna laxative tablets.
21h21. The computer is testing now to see how many and how fast it can recognise. This run seems to be less accurate. The text is taken from a magazine, not a book.
21h40. Since eating supper my mood is not so elevated.
This computer is not recognising so well.
I am drinking Nescafé and eating biscuits. I might have a go at a packet of crisps.
22h21. I did eat those crisps. The PC has come to the end of what it was doing. I am going to bed.
Monday, 28 October 2013
Boisterous stimulation
28/10/13 08:06 [Monday]
I am in a bit of a condition of excitement, or perhaps a better word is urgency, which without a doubt has developed (or the propensity for it has) over the months I have been on the lower dosage of Risperdal instead of the higher dosage (in fact the dosage I was on was the middle one of three available dosages, and I am now on the lowest). One major point I wish to make is that this condition - an elevated turnover of dopamine, doubtless - has taken many months to work itself up and does not correspond hour by hour (or even day by day) with the reduction in Risperdal in the metabolism. I presume the condition has come about through some sort of slowly effective positive feedback by which the dopamine turnover has ratcheted up. One alternative hypothesis is that it has come about so slowly because it depends on changes in the synapses, that is synapses altering in the sort of way they do when memory traces are laid down, to gradually allow more transmission of dopamine. I believe there is evidence that people on dopamine-blocking drugs over an extended period develop some slight tolerance, as the synapses adapt and allow more dopamine through despite the dopamine blockade. So one would guess the number of receptor sites in the target plate increases as some of the existing ones are rendered ineffective by being blocked constantly. (Of course the trouble with that theory is it might lead one to expect the opposite on withdrawal or reduction of a dopamine-blocker, that is for the number of receptor sites to decline as a greater proportion of them become effective.)
I did not get a lot of sleep last night. I slept from about 8 pm to about midnight, and this is a feature I have in my nature, to get sleepy early but also to wake up early and what one would have to call disproportionately early many mornings. I have been logged into Twitter most of the hours since midnight, and I was finding that slight stimulation (which you can understand mostly disconnected fragments such as get through from Twitter provide) was capturing my interest and keeping me 'on the hook'. However, the interest I find in explaining myself here was enough - the foreseen interest, that is - to persuade me to turn Twitter off and start writing down my experience and my interpretation of it.
I have to say some nights I do catch up on my sleep and the following day feel refreshed and able to cope easily with any stimulation I need to process for. I suppose it strengthens what I think of as the positive feedback if I am tired (not having had enough dreaming sleep to post-process during the night) so that in the daytime I rush at things without adequately preparing. Deliberately removing stimulation (turning Twitter off) and taking time over what needs to be done surely is a method which despite the electrochemistry of the brain (versus the pharmacology) will improve matters. To be honest, that's one thing which hospitalisation has always provided - even before effective drug treatments - that is removal of factors needing processing in a version of a holiday, hopefully to interrupt the positive feedback loop. That was the ideal of hospitalisation, although on first arriving at the hospital finding a weird and unlearned milieu (and quite possibly unanticipated, if the patient was Sectioned) would worsen symptoms by giving more to process on.
As regards my situation today - I mean today Monday - while I was on Twitter I was not planning what I need to do, to make sure I cope efficiently and effectively; and I am not even planning adequately now, as I am writing this. If I had had more sleep (to show up with more exemplary detail how it would work) I would be doing the planning at the same time as doing other 'processing', on Twitter or composing what I am writing. Without adequate planning I will rush from place to place, from activity to activity, and tire myself out more than need be, and worsen the 'positive feedback' cycle of having to cope with more and more but having fewer and fewer resources (especially if I keep missing sleep).
What I actually need to do today is fairly simple, when thought through explicitly, and certainly is less taxing than if I were in a position where I needed to go to work and also cater for my home life. I need to go shopping, and the only slight complication is I need to go to two different towns, and what I call planning for efficiency and effectiveness comes down (to a large degree) to going to the towns in the right order, and (I suppose) at the right times. I am better off, in some ways, with spending my time writing this, as it is not actually costing me much physically - in terms of energy or money - and at least it is related at one remove to the genuine planning I would be well to engage in.
When I was awake in the night - possibly this was caused by the numerousness of the distinct stimulations on Twitter (separate Tweets, put simply), or more likely by less time having passed since the physical stimulations of yesterday at home (even if the additional passing time has not seen me sleep a lot of the hours) - I was feeling active and as though I might go out very early (say as soon as buses started running) which would have been a cost in money (because my Concessionary Bus Pass is not valid before 9.30 am) and a cost in worsening positive feedback from exposing myself necessarily to more stimulation out and about. (Incidentally, readers will see that getting into that sort of cycle is the very antithesis of leading the empty worthless life I lead on too high a dosage of medication.)
I think all I have to add now - before thinking more thoroughly about what time to go out and where to go first - is that mentioning 'physical stimulations at home' I had in mind the fullness of the house this week, my grandchildren (step-grandchildren, anyway) having come to visit their mother who with her dog is herself a semi-permanent fixture in our home now. What I mean is, my elevated level of mental activity, which risks turning into an elevated level of physical activity and elevated in the sense of variety requiring processing (not going for a brisk walk every day on a regular route at a regular time, which might be a beneficial increase in activity), could well have come about substantially because there are more people now in my day-to-day life, and they are more boisterous people.
I am in a bit of a condition of excitement, or perhaps a better word is urgency, which without a doubt has developed (or the propensity for it has) over the months I have been on the lower dosage of Risperdal instead of the higher dosage (in fact the dosage I was on was the middle one of three available dosages, and I am now on the lowest). One major point I wish to make is that this condition - an elevated turnover of dopamine, doubtless - has taken many months to work itself up and does not correspond hour by hour (or even day by day) with the reduction in Risperdal in the metabolism. I presume the condition has come about through some sort of slowly effective positive feedback by which the dopamine turnover has ratcheted up. One alternative hypothesis is that it has come about so slowly because it depends on changes in the synapses, that is synapses altering in the sort of way they do when memory traces are laid down, to gradually allow more transmission of dopamine. I believe there is evidence that people on dopamine-blocking drugs over an extended period develop some slight tolerance, as the synapses adapt and allow more dopamine through despite the dopamine blockade. So one would guess the number of receptor sites in the target plate increases as some of the existing ones are rendered ineffective by being blocked constantly. (Of course the trouble with that theory is it might lead one to expect the opposite on withdrawal or reduction of a dopamine-blocker, that is for the number of receptor sites to decline as a greater proportion of them become effective.)
I did not get a lot of sleep last night. I slept from about 8 pm to about midnight, and this is a feature I have in my nature, to get sleepy early but also to wake up early and what one would have to call disproportionately early many mornings. I have been logged into Twitter most of the hours since midnight, and I was finding that slight stimulation (which you can understand mostly disconnected fragments such as get through from Twitter provide) was capturing my interest and keeping me 'on the hook'. However, the interest I find in explaining myself here was enough - the foreseen interest, that is - to persuade me to turn Twitter off and start writing down my experience and my interpretation of it.
I have to say some nights I do catch up on my sleep and the following day feel refreshed and able to cope easily with any stimulation I need to process for. I suppose it strengthens what I think of as the positive feedback if I am tired (not having had enough dreaming sleep to post-process during the night) so that in the daytime I rush at things without adequately preparing. Deliberately removing stimulation (turning Twitter off) and taking time over what needs to be done surely is a method which despite the electrochemistry of the brain (versus the pharmacology) will improve matters. To be honest, that's one thing which hospitalisation has always provided - even before effective drug treatments - that is removal of factors needing processing in a version of a holiday, hopefully to interrupt the positive feedback loop. That was the ideal of hospitalisation, although on first arriving at the hospital finding a weird and unlearned milieu (and quite possibly unanticipated, if the patient was Sectioned) would worsen symptoms by giving more to process on.
As regards my situation today - I mean today Monday - while I was on Twitter I was not planning what I need to do, to make sure I cope efficiently and effectively; and I am not even planning adequately now, as I am writing this. If I had had more sleep (to show up with more exemplary detail how it would work) I would be doing the planning at the same time as doing other 'processing', on Twitter or composing what I am writing. Without adequate planning I will rush from place to place, from activity to activity, and tire myself out more than need be, and worsen the 'positive feedback' cycle of having to cope with more and more but having fewer and fewer resources (especially if I keep missing sleep).
What I actually need to do today is fairly simple, when thought through explicitly, and certainly is less taxing than if I were in a position where I needed to go to work and also cater for my home life. I need to go shopping, and the only slight complication is I need to go to two different towns, and what I call planning for efficiency and effectiveness comes down (to a large degree) to going to the towns in the right order, and (I suppose) at the right times. I am better off, in some ways, with spending my time writing this, as it is not actually costing me much physically - in terms of energy or money - and at least it is related at one remove to the genuine planning I would be well to engage in.
When I was awake in the night - possibly this was caused by the numerousness of the distinct stimulations on Twitter (separate Tweets, put simply), or more likely by less time having passed since the physical stimulations of yesterday at home (even if the additional passing time has not seen me sleep a lot of the hours) - I was feeling active and as though I might go out very early (say as soon as buses started running) which would have been a cost in money (because my Concessionary Bus Pass is not valid before 9.30 am) and a cost in worsening positive feedback from exposing myself necessarily to more stimulation out and about. (Incidentally, readers will see that getting into that sort of cycle is the very antithesis of leading the empty worthless life I lead on too high a dosage of medication.)
I think all I have to add now - before thinking more thoroughly about what time to go out and where to go first - is that mentioning 'physical stimulations at home' I had in mind the fullness of the house this week, my grandchildren (step-grandchildren, anyway) having come to visit their mother who with her dog is herself a semi-permanent fixture in our home now. What I mean is, my elevated level of mental activity, which risks turning into an elevated level of physical activity and elevated in the sense of variety requiring processing (not going for a brisk walk every day on a regular route at a regular time, which might be a beneficial increase in activity), could well have come about substantially because there are more people now in my day-to-day life, and they are more boisterous people.
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Variety and stimulation
12/10/13 05:38 [Saturday]
To put more of the full facts in proper order I shall need my Filofax. I hope I could glean from that information on the latest dog-sitting Dawn and I did, which I believe was around the beginning of September.
Our arrangements here at the bungalow have changed the past two weeks because of the arrival to stay with us, until she finds a place of her own, of Dawn's daughter, who (to mention a fact readers might not initially presume) is deaf. She has brought with her a flat-load of furnishings and as a result we have less room for swinging cats.
To put more of the full facts in proper order I shall need my Filofax. I hope I could glean from that information on the latest dog-sitting Dawn and I did, which I believe was around the beginning of September.
Our arrangements here at the bungalow have changed the past two weeks because of the arrival to stay with us, until she finds a place of her own, of Dawn's daughter, who (to mention a fact readers might not initially presume) is deaf. She has brought with her a flat-load of furnishings and as a result we have less room for swinging cats.
Prior to this we could have managed a certain amount of swinging after we got rid of our three-piece suite (which originated about five years since from my cousin), a hall-stand and a large wardrobe (the hall-stand having been bought as a semi-antique for a vast price from a place in High Wycombe circa 2007 and the wardrobe of 1960s vintage having belonged to my parents). The reason we disposed of our furniture was that we are moving home (sooner or later, I'd better say, rather than 'sometime soon') and not only did we want less to take with us but also those advising on selling houses say that if viewers see the place relatively empty they can more easily imagine their own stuff in. As I say, these good intentions have been rather undermined now.
The laptop I mainly use is no longer kept permanently in the living room, although this morning (unlike mornings over the past two weeks) I have brought it back into the living room. I had been using it in the bedroom but have finally determined that the seating I use in there is truly uncomfortable. In summary, I no longer spread myself about the bungalow, and specifically at night my pockets remain full of the impediments I carry about in the daytime, and my pockets remain in the bedroom. Hence (the upshot) I must go to the bedroom to fetch my Filofax ....
12/10 13 06:09
Saturday 24-Aug-13 my step-son (Dawn's son) and his girlfriend attended a wedding in Swindon, and drove there via Birmingham. It had been arranged that they would drive us to the part of North Nottinghamshire south of Doncaster where most of the family live, on their way home. In the event it was quite late on the Saturday when they arrived here on the northward leg so they stopped overnight and we all travelled to the final destination Sunday morning. What I'm saying is the latest bout of dog-sitting (or I should say distant dog-sitting, as we now have my step-daughter's dog here with us at our bungalow as a form of local dog-sitting) started on Sunday 25-Aug-13. That was August and it was still summer, this brought to my notice (amazement at the passage of time, which I often experience) through the fact that we have recent days needed to put our central heating on.
We were dog-sitting for my other step-daughter, the one who lives up there where I am always on about south of Doncaster. She and her family went to Wales that week (Bank Holiday week) for a camping holiday and Dawn and I held the fort at their home. The two daughters' dogs are different but each lovable in her own way. The one up north is too small to be any real trouble, and we have larked about with her several times already in the past. The deaf daughter's dog is larger and can be boisterous, and these two weeks have covered our first mutual encounter.
Telling a story of what went on the latest week of dog-sitting - late August - should be based on clear memories. Unfortunately my memories are cloudy. We took the opportunity to visit members of my in-law family, I know, as well as a friend Dawn has had from decades past. I must say I enjoy having people to meet up with, a thing we rather lack while we are living in Kingswinford. I have lost contact with the people I knew from my school days (this fact being made certain by my being so little capable of interest in things over a period of decades), and my own family have always lived at a distance. Apart from visiting, that week in August, my days were very similar to my days here: spent shopping at Asda (mainly it is Asda). The main difference is the cafés are fewer and further between in the sticks in north Nottinghamshire.
The holiday-makers returned on the Friday, and we stopped with them that weekend, coming home here on Monday 02-Sep-13. I find I have much clearer memories of that weekend than of the week leading up to it, and I can put this down to more variety and stimulation on the basis of more people in the house.
The thing is, one wants enough unpredictability and stimulation but not too much.
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
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