It’s Dementia time my lovers!

I must beg all of you Grandma’s and Granddad’s and other old farts to de-clutter your homes before you pop-off this wonderful world, my serious advice is to look all round you at some of your collections of junky items most of them are complete dust collectors and probably you have oceans of them in every room in your home, on a good day you would may be lucky to raised 30 bob per room for this pile of crap at our boot sales!! By junk I mean most things that you own or were given to you and you too are frightened to get rid of because you may offend someone who is close to you FFS! Or you bought it all from a jumble sale or the local car boot sales, truth to tell is that you would be lucky enough to sell some of this toot for as much as a quid an item.
My father in law popped his clogs on December the first and it fell to me to be convinced by Lou my missus to ‘do the house clearance’ of the family home now owned solely here in Cheshire by Lou’s ‘still crying’ mum alias Julia alias my Dementia mother in law! She cannot be left alone and she can she be such a real pain in the arse at times but good honest clean fun if you have a warped sense of humour like mine. Julia and Gordon, dear of him and her collected so much utter crap (all clean and paid for) (loads from our Car Boot Sales) and they have been stashing it all over this 5 bed roomed house for over 50 years of marriage FFS! Then, you pop your clogs and some other poor buggers ‘mainly the family’ come to your house following the poor excuse that one of you has unfortunately without permission you has suddenly died and the partner you leave behind has Dementia FFS!

I am constantly aware of Julia and her old man who were/are in their seventies therefore there is a certain amount of what I call “Granny dust” or ‘flaking old gits skinitis’ which is accompanied by an odour labelled ‘old age people’ and it can be quite offensive to sensitive nostrils like mine at times, this is perfectly normal for all old fogies so let’s proceed with smog masks on FFS! Today and all week we are doing mummy’s and daddy’s bedroom and I certainly have not looked forward to the task!
We have been here for two weeks in all and I have been ‘putting off’ this job but let’s go for it FFS!! We clear all piles of piled up and bundled up crap off the floor taking day one up but we are filling sacks for the charities or the skip with huge amounts of items worthy of selling at the boot sales. Day two, we have got to do the 3 double fitted wardrobes absolutely crammed (no exaggeration) with dresses skirts blouses trousers and piles of shoes and sandals hanging from coat rails. Louise counted 237 T shirts and then gave up after finding a similar amount in one of the drawers under the bed in all the colours imaginable mostly unworn, you cannot see the bloody floor for shoes and boxes of ladies tight and gutkers (XXXL= fat arse) some dating back to the 70s and 80s and it is my job to decide what to send to the skip and what to send to Truro and believe me “haven’t the Charity shops done well since we arrived here” Then there are 3 wide 5 drawer chest of drawers crammed full with all the stuff that you women buy and you don’t or won’t ever wear (So WTF did you buy it for FFS) and surprise- surprise yet another drawer full of unopened tights and I will not elaborate on some of the dated sexy underwear in shot silk shiny material (the mind boggles) in all colours and styles catering to increase your sexual desires (all in XXXL) for the dear of her and the dear of him FFS! And, I might as well be honest with you about vibrators, there weren’t any, however rumour has it that the last 7 incher Gordon bought for Julia he presented it to her to demonstrate she turned it full on and broke all of her bottom teeth FFS!!!

Now we look into her husband’s one single bulging wardrobe and guess what? The poor bugger had got sweet fcuk all to wear cos his bloody wardrobe is three quarters full of her fecking stuff FFS!
We take her out to do some shopping to ‘keep her mind occupied’ so to speak, actually it’s safer to take her with us cos (A) she is a bloody good laugh and (B) she could go street wandering on her own amongst the heavy traffic and (C) you can play ‘go fetch me’ games! Go for it girl, bring it on!
I love putting her in charge of the trolley especially when Lou an armful of shopping and mother has ‘fcuk-ed off’ with the trolley FFS. Other shoppers stare at me as though I am losing control of myself cos I am standing there pissing myself with laugher watching my Lou with an armful of shopping chasing her dear demented mother for the trolley and she couldn’t GAF cos she is certainly off her own trolley FFS!! Hilarious fun!! Anyways up, when I am finished unpacking the shopping and trying to find some space in the kitchen’s crammed full of seriously out-of-date canned and other foods stashed in every kitchen cupboard. At the bottom of the last bag I find two more fecking packets of black pigging tights put into the shopping by Julia my very dear Dementia mother in law and paid for by my Lou who goes ape-shit to me cos I keep reminding her that Julia is nuts and Julia think she’s nuts herself but she still has a large part of her brain that works perfectly and is so far not affected by serious advance of Dementia of which I will have total patience with I hope however one of these days I can see such a ding-dong of a battle going on and the bubble will seriously ‘burst all over the fecking place one of the days very soon you mark my word’ there has been tears from Julia at breakfast time which creates a lovely warm atmosphere and tears from my Lou in another room and tears of laughter from me but I just wanna go home FFS’ all great fun. But in total fairness to Julia and Gordon everything in the house is clean apart from the usual thin layer of Granny dust but if ever a pair of collector-mania utter-nutters existed then these two win the Oscars.

Cheshire is a very attractive and friendly place to be, the neighbours here are all very pleasant helpful and friendly but not in your face so to speak but the ideal ‘cuppa sugar’ people just like the good old days when you could knock on a neighbours doors or get one of the kid brats to go and say in an all innocent fashion ‘May we borrow a cup of sugar as we have run out please’ My attitude, sod off you don’t need sugar!! Families are very close here with very happy kids and parents seem to adore their children which makes for a really happy local Community. A lot of the housing in Cheshire is built in red brick which looks far more attractive than some of our boring old fart looking buildings and fronts of houses in Cornwall.

Gordon and Julia were very proud that they owned a luxury caravan in North Wales on the sea front where they spent holidays and weekends. It is the best caravan I have ever been inside with two double bedrooms with one on-suite and a twin bedded room and a family bathroom and certainly the portable building has all mod-cons. Called ‘The Lodge’ by the manufacturers it is 40 foot long and 20 feet wide and has to be delivered by two heavy vehicles with a crane involved at both ends of the journey part escorted to Cornwall. It cost them brand-new £135,000.00 and I am selling on behalf of the family. I met the owner of the caravan site whose company has offered £42,000.00 he told us that if we sold it we should ask for £80,000!! Now then, if we did want to keep it the estimate could cost up to £10,000.00 to bring it to Cornwall. I will copy the advert with pictures when we start to advertise.
The weather here is far worse than Cornwall and much-much colder than at home and it is has just started snowing on Saturday at 5.00 am, the bloody BBC have forecast that the whole of the country will be covered with snow within 30 hours but once again the bloody BBC got it wrong. I am expecting our large transit van to arrive for the second time to load up all the household items with lots of real bargain for Lou to sell either on eBay of some of our Car Boot Sales for many months to come. I cannot work this couple out Julia & Gordon I have just cleared 180 bottles of decent named wines ports liquors and spirits (no beers) to pack into the van but truth to tell neither of them drinks nor are they sociable enough so they do not and did not invite friends and family neighbours or others in for a drink FFS!

Lou and I spent all day yesterday clearing out the 5th bedroom which was fitted out with floor to ceiling cupboards and shelving and used as a ‘sewing room’ by Julia. I was getting pretty pissed off packing what was like small shop of all types of haberdashery with huge collections of absolute crap with boxes of cotton reels and boxes of ribbons all cut in various lengths and in hundreds of colours, Julia walks in and asks but doesn’t really mean it “Can I help?” so I grab a huge bundle of these bloody ribbon and say to my Dementia mother in law who owns and collected this pile of crap ‘Yes my lovely, now then if can you go into another room and sort all of these ribbons out into their various colours and lengths for me please’ which kept my dear demented mother-in-law amused for over 3 hours, I walk in and ask her ‘What have you been doing?’ “I don’t know” her says, dear of her.
Just imagine that, she has been working for three hours and she does not know WTF she has been doing which is a lot like having the odd spliff or two and you seriously don’t GAF about anybody or anything which is the best part of the day FFS! Warning; whenever I compliment people by adding ‘dear of her or him’ it actually means that he or she is a total pain in the arse at times!! So the bottom line to keep a Dementia patient person in a ‘get up and go and be happy mood’ is to keep their mind occupied with new ideas and to treat them with respect (difficult) and to be patient with them (doubly difficult) which will keep them alive for much longer but it kill you in the effort. Sometimes I think my dear wife Lou would like ‘it all to go a bit fast-track’ at times including me FFS dear of her!
So, am I missing the Car Boots? No not really but I do know there is trouble brewing for the season which will start soon price increases on the horizon? I still love Cornwall but it’s bloody good fun here apart from yesterday surrounded by all the floor to ceiling crap in the sewing room Lou nearly reduced to yet again more tears says to me “Do you know today should have been the first day of our holiday in the sun in Cuba in the Caribbean today for 3 weeks?” FFS! FFS!!
19th February, we will travel back to Cornwall tomorrow then return here for one more week then it’s back to work and still more house hunting. Miss you ‘all. XX
Geoff