Shortly after we moved from North London to Wavendon, I drove, for the first time, along a country lane about a quarter of a mile from our house. I was in a bit of a hurry but as the lane is narrow and bumpy, I was only doing about 15 miles an hour.
As I rounded a bend, I saw a pretty cottage on the left but what grabbed my attention was the sight of an owl perched on the roof. I stopped and stared. This was not the kind of thing one ever saw in London.
The owl just stared back at me while I took out my phone and took a photo through the rain-spattered windscreen.
I would have liked to have stayed longer and watch as it flew off but I was late, and so I drove on. A month later, I drove down that lane again but this time, with Caroline.
“Do you remember that photo of an owl I showed you? It was along here somewhere that I saw it. Just round this bend, I think.” I slowed down.
“Oh……. It’s there again. It must have a nest nearby.”
After a short time, Caroline started laughing and suddenly, I was feeling a bit silly.
“Stop it,” I said. “But you’ve got to admit it looks very realistic, doesn’t it?”
“No, not really,” she sniggered. “I think you may be starting to lose it.”
*******
Caroline’s car seems to have a leaky tyre valve or a slow puncture. She has had to add air to the same tyre three times in the past month. The warning symbol was showing as we pulled into a garage this morning to get petrol.
“I know what will save time,” I said. “You fill it up with petrol while I go and check the air pressure…….”
*******
We bought an ‘intelligent heating control system’ recently. When it is first installed, it learns your temperature preferences and requirements over the course of a few days as it memorises how the thermostat was set and when the heating was on or off. The boiler is then left on constant and the house will be at the temperature you need 24/7.
Ramble:
24/7! I hate that expression and I’m irritated by people who use it instead of “continuously” or “always” almost as much as I scorn those who talk about “back in the day” instead of “in the past” or “once”. As for those people who preface almost every remark with “Yes, but at the end of the day…,” words fail me.
I heard this wonderful exchange during a news broadcast in November 2013. The BBC had sent a reporter and a camera crew to the HQ of the British Red Cross, to cover the collection and organisation of materials to send to The Philippines where Typhoon Haiyan had caused widespread destruction.
Interviewer: Long hours, difficult job?
John Cunningham (Red Cross manager): Yes, we’re doing about 18 hours a day, 24/7.
Something that really got on my nerves was the reporting of the results of the local elections. Seats no longer just changed hands and parties did not seem to win or lose seats.
Today, it seems, a party will “sweep to power” if seats are gained or they are “wiped out” if seats are lost. When and why did politics become so aggressive, unpleasant and antagonistic? Every issue appears to bring about an extreme polarisation of opinion.
Anyway, back to our new heating system: What makes our new heating control system different from an ordinary thermostat is that I can alter the setting when I am away by using an app on my phone.
We spent some time in Yorkshire in March. Before we left home to drive up the M1, I had set the temperature to only 5°C which meant that even though the boiler was on constant, it would not fire up and so the heating would stay off unless the temperature fell below five.
A few days later, driving home in a blizzard, I checked the app on my phone and saw that the ambient temperature in our house was 11°C. I turned the thermostat up to 22°C using the app and so, when we arrived two hours later, we walked into a warm, cosy home. (In case you are wondering or even outraged, Caroline was driving.)
The weekend of April 21st and 22nd was hot and the house temperature never dropped below 20°C. Consequently, I dropped the thermostat setting by ten degrees and hoped that was the last time we would need the central heating until October.
But I was wrong. On the following Thursday afternoon, I was cold and I reached for my phone to access the app but I couldn’t. The phone was dead. I wasn’t too surprised because it is more than three years old and recently, the battery has been losing charge very rapidly. It had finally died.
I’ve been receiving text messages from Carphone Warehouse for several months telling me that I’m due a phone update and it seemed that this was the right time to do it.
I walked into the store, put the phone on to the counter and told the assistant why I was there. He disappeared into the back and when he reappeared, he brought a new phone and went through the paperwork with me.
“Would you like me to transfer all the data for you,” he asked.
“Yes, but you’ll need to plug it in please because as I told you, it’s dead.”
He got a cable and connected it to the phone. Ten seconds later, he looked at me and said,
“You know it’s turned off?”
I realised instantly what had happened. The previous night, I had been woken at three in the morning by my phone vibrating when an email came through. To stop that happening again, I had switched it off and then I forgot to turn it on again in the morning.
I’m reminded of the time about six years ago when a friend rang and asked if I had read the email he sent.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I may have done. What was it about?”
“It was a test to see if you are likely to get Alzheimer’s.”
Do both dementia and Alzheimer’s disease arrive so slowly, surreptitiously and stealthily that, when someone is eventually told that they have one or the other, that information fails to register with them because they are so far gone?
Or, is there a time when people who suffer from early stage dementia or Alzheimer’s realise that they are in the early stages of that condition and are able to react accordingly?
I have no idea what the appropriate response to that news would be and so I hope that I’m just a bit forgetful at times.
