Death By National Trust

Big gap in blogging.  Time passes so quickly as I lurch from crisis with Gorgeous Girl, more maths demands from Special Boy and, of course, his school October Week.  Thank God for the National Trust (my words, not his).  We kicked off by visiting the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre.  Oh, how he moaned when I told him about the planned outing!  Oh, how his friend joined in and whined about their preferences for Xscape, Laser Planet and so on!  These suggestions fell on deaf ears and we set off anyway.  Fantastic!  It's always amazing that something so low-tech can be such fun for two twelve-year-olds.  I really did think they took some of it in, especially seeing where David Livingstone grew up - a single room shared with umpteen other family members. 

Apparently kiddies from the age of five worked in the mill.  The boys would rise at 5.30am and start work at 6am.  The girls had to get up half an hour earlier because they had the added chore of fetching water for the family from the well.  They had to carry it back up all the stairs in two pails held with a yoke behind their necks like something an ox would wear.   (Special Boy, who can make a song and dance when asked to unload the dishwasher, got to try this out with the pails weighted down to represent the water and, when pressed, admitted it wasn't easy.)

If all this wasn't bad enough, after they finished work at 8pm the kiddies then went to school! Until 10pm!  And in his spare time (whenever that was) David Livingstone would sketch, expertly, insects and plants he found.  When I think of what Special Boy does in his spare time I could weep! 

During the week we made our first ever trip to Bristol to visit a friend and her son near Wells and fitted in three more National Trust properties.  Thanks to an old aunty I've got a lifetime membership card and I love producing it.  Makes me feel rich.  We visited Barrington Court, Lytes Cary and Stourhead.  By the end of the day I couldn't tell which was which and had more than my fill of tea, cakes and quizzes.  Still, it's much better than Xscape.

What can I say about Revitalift trial?  After the October week I think I've regressed facially so I'm now applying it extra-thickly.  My friend suggested taking collagen capsules which are sold in health shop.  I will be investigating.

Wednesday Night Yoga

Last night I went to my yoga class, leaving strict instructions with daughter not to let son view any more "Saw" trailers on YouTube.  Yoga has transformed me, flexibility-speaking.  As I got near fifty,  my limbs and joints seemed to start seizing up, petrifying I think the word is.  Not good for morale.  When I had to pick something up off the floor I would glance around to see what else I could do while I was down there - just like that old joke.  Very funny.  Within six months I was a new woman, or a bendier one at least.  I can't quite get my ankles crossed behind my neck but this is good enough for me.  I can crouch right down to the lowest shelf in TK Max without feeling, or hearing, a thing.  And I can get back up again.

I was a bit gloomy going to my class.  Special Boy had come in from school with news of disastrous maths results.  For once he wasn't angry and defensive, blaming his pencil/jotter/teacher/me, just sad and apologetic.  I wanted to kiss and cuddle him and he actually let me.  I think he's had a wake-up call and he's promising to pull up his socks, knuckle down and generally start listening in class.  I left him doing maths revision from old workbooks I had bought for Gorgeous Girl at the same age.  She went through a similar maths crisis and her (mainly wrong) 12-year-old answers were still there on the pages.  But now look at her - third year of a law degree.  So I'm trying not to worry unduly about Special Boy, although I will capitalise on his remorsefulnes for as long as possible.  

After yoga I gave myself a bit of a facial.  I wish I could report the beginnings of a transformation but I would be lying.  I live in hope.   

Glaucoma - It's So Nursing Home

Being diagnosed with glaucoma made me feel pretty old.  I didn't even know what it was. I thought it was something like cateracts and only old people got it.  It's on all the nursing homes' application forms, along with questions about mobility and continence.   I only found out about it when I went for a free eye test because I fancied myself in a pair of reading glasses.  Now I use eye drops three times a day, which can make the skin round the eyes darken (but not in a smouldering, sexy way, as you'll see from the photograph).  I also attend the eye clinic every few months and  was there yesterday, waiting interminably for several hours.

The weirdest thing is that there are no symptoms so I feel a bit like one of those actors hired to help train doctors.  This time I had to use my yoga breathing to help me stop blinking.  First he numbs the eyes with drops. Then, holding my eye open by the eyelashes, he advances with a very bright light right up until it touches the eyeball.  Not easy.  The blink reflex is very strong but the doctors have got no time for any of that nonsense.  A bit more of the anesthetising drops wouldn't go amiss but they seem to be rationing the stuff.  At last I stumble out, dabbing yellow fluid from my eyes, looking and feeling not so very different from the old ladies in wheelchairs on a day out from the care home.  The things that hit you when you turn 50.

I'm so tired today.  I was awake half the night checking the time, scared I would sleep in for the guests' breakfast.  Plus my son, Special Boy, was having a disturbed sleep because someone had told him to have a look at "Saw" movie clips on YouTube.  I've never seen this film but apparently there are several of them and I get an idea of the content from the title.  He told me something about a bear trap and a key stitched into someone's eye (enough with the eyes!).   So that was nice bedtime viewing for him.

Lack of sleep has turned me into a bit of a horror story myself.   I'm trying not to be disheartened with the Revitalift trial.  It's early days...

Voluntary Teaching Assistant

It recently dawned on me that teaching is an ideal job for women.  Toying with giving up my bed and breakfast empire and finding some other more lucretive/less repetetive employment, I applied for a couple of jobs (one was with a firm of undertakers, which I was really quite keen on).  Then I remembered my 12 year old son.  I also remembered school holidays.  As I don't have a degree or the ability to get one I had to lower my sights and  found out about teaching assistants.  Not much money but I'm used to that.  It's also easier than being the real thing.   So, to set me on the path to my new career, I have started volunteering.

My first class were Primary 6 and I was helping the lowest group of the lowest class in maths. In my day this was called Arithmetic and it was never my strong point.   I had no preparation and the first thing I was asked by one of them was eight times six.  Eight times six?  Bloody hell, wait til I think.  Honestly, I had to work it out by remembering my favourite which was six times six and then adding on... how much?  Managed to come up with the answer but had to check it on their tables ready reckoner thing.  I stumbled along in much the same way and at the end of each class the teacher was so grateful for all my "help". 

It continued in this vein with frequent mistakes on my part.  One little boy asked for help with a graph showing plant sales during a fictional school fayre.  How many plants were sold between 1000-1015?  When were the least/most number of plants sold?  I stared at that question, my mind totally blank.  I read it and re-read it trying to pretend I was understanding it as I went.  Then I asked the girl opposite how she was doing it.  At the end of that term they gave me a bunch of flowers and an embarrassingly grateful card. They even asked me back after the holidays. 

Now I'm in my son's old primary school helping in Primary 3.  Unfortunately it's maths again but much more my level.  Some kiddies are quite good at it, in fact there's a wonderboy who's at primary 7 stage, but there are several who, like myself, struggle.  Yesterday it was division and multiplication, thankfully using the two times table.  No problem for me but some of them were completely stumped by ten divided by two followed by five multiplied by two.  I've discovered that's quite hard to explain (especially to a very sweet little boy who the other day couldn't take 9 away from 10 without counting extremely slowly on his fingers.)  I heard myself blathering on, "what's 10 divided by 2?  What's half of 10?  If I have 10 cakes and I divide them into 2 how many is that?  Look at my fingers... ten, take half away, how many now?"  Talk about confusing.  At the end of all that I'd forgotten the original question and the child looked like his spirit had left his body.  It was a blessed relief for both of us when they moved onto writing their diaries.  At least I can spell "Fruit Shoot" and "trampoline" but I did panic for a moment about the apostrophe in "Shepherd's Pie".

After that I looked distinctly haggard.   The Revitalift really has got its work cut out.

Care Homes for the Elderly vs NHS

Perhaps being one of the "Sandwich Generation" (caring for elderly parents and also still bringing up a family) is good preparation for what's ahead.  A few hundred years ago I would have been described as an "old crone", and my mother (the one on the left) as a "mad old crone" but times and sensitivities change and now mum, God bless her, is "elderly mentally ill".   We spent the day in Edinburgh yesterday visiting her.  Eighteen months ago I was happily ignorant about nursing homes but since then have been on a fast-track learning curve.  Poor Mother, who's 88, started off in one in Glasgow, very briefly, before we moved her to top drawer home in Edinburgh.  The teak laminate and wipeable wing chairs were removed from her room and replaced with her own furniture from her flat (which was sold to fund all this - it was over £900 per week).  She seemed to settle in ok but after a couple of months she was moved to their other unit for more serious cases. 

Again all very nice and with her homely stuff around her.  The room had French doors out into a walled garden with a little terrace for sitting in the sun.   She didn't last long in that room however, as she started a "dirty campaign" and completely trashed it.   Her next room had linoleum.  Things ticked on quite smoothly although she did escape a couple of times, once being found in Lasswade which is about 4 miles away.  She must have got on a bus which handily stopped at the door but with no money, wearing slippers and carrying a handful of cutlery, it's a mystery why the driver let her on.  Still, we'll never know and she was found and returned safe and well. 

A year passed before we received the call.  The home had decided they were "not the most appropriate place for her" and she was shipped off to the local psychiatric hospital for "assessment".   Apparently there were over 50 logged complaints against mum, many about relieving herself in other residents' rooms.  Even for £900 a week that's a bit much to put up with, so we don't blame the home at all.  What we didn't realise was that you could get thrown out of a nursing home.  A friend of a friend's grandmother was put out for inappropriate behaviour.  She got into bed beside one of the very few male residents and that was it.  Her feet didn't touch the ground.  Perhaps we were a bit naive and I suppose the nursing homes have to consider the other residents, some of whom are not barking mad.

So now mum is in the care of the NHS but has been deemed fit for placement in another privately funded home.  She's on several waiting lists.  When a new home has a place they come to see her for themselves at the hospital to decide if they "are the best place for her", although with long waiting lists they can pick and choose.  She's already been refused entry to one on the list.  So we wait.  But having had her in three homes and visiting several others I have to say that the hospital compares really well against them.  There are plenty of experienced, trained nursing staff looking after the ladies and the surroundings look the same, vinyl floors, laminate tables and wipeable wing chairs.  There's even French doors out onto a walled garden.  Very big difference in price, though. 

(PS - I look as if I am still in the old crone category and am wondering when this Revitalift is going to kick-in.  Noticed with alarm that the day cream has no SPF factor in it, but as this is Scotland in October I think I can risk it for a month.)

Brigitte Bardot to Vivienne Westwood

There are several women I'd like to resemble in one way or another.  I'll list them here in alphabetical order (just in case I spark off any jealousy between them):

1    Brigitte Bardot, obviously.  She was in the papers this week, turning 75, along with Sophia Loren.    Whereas Sophia was shown looking fabulous with coiffed hair and an off-the-shoulder gown, Brigitte looked like a woman of 75 who had never fretted about anti-ageing creams. I would like to have her attitude, relaxed and accepting of the ageing process, and I'd like her face too, but perhaps more as it was when she was dating Sasha Distel in St. Tropez.  (Sophia's not on my list - sorry Sophia).

2    Helena Bonham Carter.  Her hair, her face, her clothes, her voice, her slightly dishevelled, ungroomed style, everything.

3    Elizabeth Emanuel.  I love her hair and I loved Princess Diana's fantastically puffy wedding dress. 

4    Vivienne Westwood.  The wacky clothes, the orange hair - and she's not bothered about looking every inch of whatever age she is. 

5    Jo Wood.  There's a bit of the "Bardot in her Fifties" look about Jo Wood.  She's gorgeous.  I've not had her on my list for long as I didn't really know much about her until her husband left her for a teenager.  What was he thinking about?  Oh... yes.

6    Amy Winehouse.  Her singing voice.  And her hair of course.  I asked my hairdresser once to "backcomb my hair like Amy Winehouse" and was sorry I had.  I came out looking like Gail from Coronation Street.  

I could have Carrie Bradshaw on my list but I'm sure she's in big demand on everyone else's list so I'll leave her out.

The L'Oreal Revitalift trial is going well.  Now into Day 3 and managing to cope with the demands of a day and a night cream.  Funnily enough I now have a spot on my chin which perversely I am quite enjoying.  Makes me feel young again.  I'm sure it's nothing to do with the cream, probably just the last hormone departing. 

Thursday 1 October 2009 - Trial Number 1 - L'Oreal Revitalift

At last!  I thought I'd never reach this stage what with the ironing, shopping, cleaning and my other job as personal servant to both my children.  Anyway, the other day I bought from Tesco L'Oreal Revitalift Innovation With Elastin Anti-Wrinkle + Firming Day Cream at £13.69 and also L'Oreal Revitalift... Night Cream at £9.27.  The bombardment of all those "you're worth it" ads during every commercial break on Channel 4 has paid off for them.  My plan is to always buy both day and night creams, if possible, to give the product maximum opportunity to transform me.  Not too pricey for this brand but later, when I'm onto the more "exclusive" creams - the ones they don't sell in Tesco - well, I've started saving already. 

I am more concerned with sagginess rather than wrinkles because, believe me, it's much more ageing.   I had selected the most unflattering picture I've ever considered showing anyone (but the least awful from a hideous photoshoot courtesy of my husband (why does he not run a mile?  I don't think he can see properly)).  However I just couldn't sleep knowing it was out there and had to change it for one of me in partial disguise, so please just take my word for it.   The lava-down-a-mountain slipping of flesh from the cheeks, the overhang on either side of the chin, the pouches of flesh beneath the hollowed eye socket.  Is it nature's way of letting you see yourself as a cadaver?  How kind.

The leaflet in the box is printed in French, Spanish, Italian, German and English.  I like that.  Conjures up images of glamorous, groomed Continental women.  It must be good.  The product contains "Elastin,  similar to that found in the skin...: skin feels firmer and more toned."  The Results claim that "Day after day the skin's elasticity is improved: wrinkles appear reduced and skin looks visibly smoother," and " Skin feels firmer: 96% agree"  Yes!  Now you're talking!  This seems to be based on using it for 4 weeks.  I'm giving it 4 weeks and I can't wait. 

What a day!  It's not raining and my children are not coming in for tea!  Whatsmore, I'm on the road to transformation!

Or am I?