Why do some elderly people not want to bother people when they are in need of urgent help?

People may say that I'm wrong to be angry about this, but it's just so frustrating.

My partner's elderly mother pays for a telecare system, which comes with an emergency button worn on a necklace.  You press the button, and it goes straight through to a call centre, and their staff can talk to you via a box on your wall.  It's loud enough to be heard in every room in her house.

Twice in the past couple of months, his mum has telephoned us in such severe pain that we have had to call for an ambulance and she has had to stay in hospital for several days.  

Yesterday, she phoned my partner who broke off the call to ring for an ambulance and then called her back, and talked to her whilst she was crying out in pain for over an hour waiting for them to arrive.  Because the phone line was tied up, the medics couldn't get back in touch with my partner, and had to leave a voicemail which we discovered only after the ambulance had arrived.

Both times, we have asked her why she hasn't used the emergency button which she is wearing around her neck, and she has said that she doesn't like to bother people.  She rang her GP surgery, who told her to ring 999.  She didn't - she rang us instead and had been lying there in agony for several hours before she even called.

What is the point of paying for the damned emergency button if she won't use it?

Something else that I'm really not happy about - later in the evening, my partner rang the hospital to try to find out what was happening.  After being passed around several departments, someone told him rather abruptly that his mum was "in the departure lounge" and then hung up.  We assumed that that meant that she was being sent home.  One of my friends said that she thought it meant that she was dying.

After a few more calls, we discovered she was actually in the Surgical Assessment Unit, waiting for a consultant.  This morning, I did an Internet search on 'departure lounge' and found that it's hospital slang for the geriatric ward - and she wasn't even on the geriatric ward anyway.  

I am absolutely appalled that a medical professional would use that term when talking to an extremely stressed relative, worrying about what's happening to his mum.

Three and a half years

Blimey, three and a half years since I last posted.  That's a bit poor.  I'm so busy that I haven't even had time to rant about things.  Oh well, here's a short digest from the past week:

• I hate working from home.
• My oven blew up.
• My glass top of my hob broke.  Actually it broke ages ago but I've been struggling away with it and it's only because the oven blew up that I finally got round to replacing it.
• AO charges £100 per item for installation, but won't disconnect the old ones - the local electrician charges £40 for the lot.  Support your local tradesman!
• Why do electrical appliance suppliers advertise free delivery, but then when you buy the items you have to pay £30 for delivery because the free delivery is only on a Saturday?
• After bragging to the electrician that I've never had to rewire a fuse in this house, the lighting fuse blew when we removed the dead light bulb from the outside lamp.  At least that's one job I can do myself.
• Why does my neighbour's car have such a loud exhaust and why does he have to leave the house at 5:30 every morning and wake up the whole sodding street?  (No, he's not a shift worker - he's self-employed)
• My garage door is broken so I can't get my bike out, not that I'm allowed to ride it anywhere under lockdown anyway.
• My shower leaks again.  I've only had it re-sealed 5 times so far.  Another job for later today, then.
• Lockdown has made me realise just how many DIY jobs I've been putting off.
• Lockdown doesn't mean anything to one of my neighbours who has had people coming and going almost every day, landscaping the garden, using cement mixers and disc cutters and annoying everyone with their loud radio playing shit pop music.
• The Government.  There's so many things right now that are so wrong that I don't have the energy to list them.

Stationery spending

Linked foolscap suspension files - £30.00.  Nope.

20 x mini foldback clips to link together my existing suspension files - 14p.  Yep.

I win.

Drive like a dick season has arrived

What is it about autumn that makes people drive like dicks?  This morning, I've seen a bloke in a van, holding his phone in his left hand, placed against his right ear, whilst trying to do a U-turn on a busy road.  I was cut up by a bimbo, who then went straight through two red lights, and then had to wait whilst someone driving on the wrong side of the road made a decision whether to get on the right side of the road, or just stop in the middle of the road.  Then there's the plethora of people who don't know what a handbrake is for, and just sit there either blinding you with their brake lights, or holding it on the clutch crawling forwards and slipping backwards.  I hate this time of year on the roads.

Dark Morris Dancer

"Morris dancing?  Isn't that all about hankie waving and prancing about?" I hear you say.  Well, yes, if you're watching Cotswold Morris, then some of it is.  But there's other types of morris too, and my particular favourite is Border Morris.  

I would argue that Border Morris performers have more fun than the other types, but that's because I am one, and my side is made up of a wonderful bunch of fabulous people who are absolutely potty.  Rain or shine, wind or hail, these vivacious folk can be found causing mayhem on the streets of Britain, scaring small children and loitering within tents (beer tents, usually) at folk festivals.

One of this hardy breed is the wonderful Dark Morris Dancer, whose funny and informative blog is one of my 'must reads'. It tells me of the things I missed when I wasn't there and it tells me of the things I missed because I was there, but was too drunk to notice. The Dark Morris Dancer also happens to be a friend of mine, a fellow Crow and an all-round good egg.

Head off to the Dark Morris Dancer blog to read tales of dancing, drinking, music and fun. You never know, you might feel inspired to come and join us in a field somewhere.

Attempt to go plastic-free - update

Our Council won't recycle any plastics other than those which are bottle-shaped.  So, even if a yoghurt pot or a food tray is the same type of plastic as a milk bottle, they won't take it.  I decided to try to avoid buying food wrapped in plastic, but it turned out to be much harder than I had thought.

So many things come wrapped in plastic, probably because it's easier to stack and display, and even my attempts to buy as much as possible at the local market were thwarted by those horrible black polystyrene trays.  Since then, a new butcher has opened up on the market, and he sells meat loose in thin plastic bags, rather than using trays, so he's getting my business now,

In just one month, I gathered one black bin bag full of plastic food trays, yoghurt pots and other plastics which our Council won't recycle.  Eventually, my other half dropped a huge hint by leaving my bag of recycling right in the middle of the kitchen floor.  In the interest of peace, I decided it was time to dispose of it.

Knowing that one of the recycling centres nearby had a specific skip for these types of plastics, I set off to get rid of the bag.  However, the traffic was so bad that I diverted to the tip nearer to work instead.  When I got there, I couldn't find a receptacle for plastics, so I asked one of the site workers, who told me that they don't have one, and that I should throw it in the general waste skip.  I asked him why this was, and he said that few places will buy recycled plastic at the moment because 'new' plastic is cheap enough, so it is all sent to the Thermal Recovery Facility, where it is burnt in order to generate electricity.  The man also told me that the other site no longer recycles plastics either.

OK, so it's not recycling, but at least it's better than going into landfill.  I still think it's stupid that they won't recycle any plastics which are not bottle-shaped.  Other Councils manage it, so why can't we?

You were never me!

Why on earth do some people insist in using the word 'revert' instead of 'reply'?  

I've just had an email from someone who says they will revert to me by the end of the day.  

What?  

You were never me, so how can you revert to me?

What the hell is 'plusness'?

TSB has an advert on the telly at the moment, advertising a new bank account.  Its says their new Plus Account has 'all that lovely plusness'.  Well, thanks for giving us all the information we need there then.  Did an eight years-old come up with that one?

Trying to go plastic-free

Seeing as my local council is one which recycles only a very small selection of plastic types, I have decided to try to avoid buying the stuff in the first place.  They did tell me that it is burnt in order to produce power, but I'm not entirely happy with that, either.

As I do my food shopping mostly on my local, and excellent, market, I am able to buy all my fruit and vegetables loose, and the meat and fish wrapped in paper and then in a thin plastic bag.  It all goes into my one huge shopping bag, which I've had for about ten years now.

However, when I go to the supermarket, it's not so easy.  All the meat seems to come in plastic trays, sealed with film or shrink-wrapped in thick plastic.  Sometimes, products which come in a cardboard box will have a plastic tray inside, and I really don't see why they have to have one.  If something really needs some sort of reinforcement to protect it, can it not be done with better recyclable materials?  The Japanese art of origami can produce some amazingly strong structures.  Even just corrugated paper or cardboard is strong.  There's several companies out there who make fully recyclable cardboard packaging, so supermarket bosses should start looking at using them.  If more people chose not to buy stuff in plastic, then the supermarkets would have to take action.

So, anyway, I'm trying to reduce plastic packaging waste in my home.  Whatever I do manage to accumulate, I am putting in a bag to take to the recycling point at the supermarket.  Let's see how I get on.

Black. Just black, please.

Why is it so difficult to find a pair of black trainers?  Just black.  No colours, no stripes, no white sole, no flashing lights, no sparkly bits, just plain old black.  What is wrong with just black?  Why do women's trainers always seem to have to have pastel colours involved?  I hate pink, I don't want baby blue, I just want black.  Size 9.  Narrow.

Why are we still wasting food?

Today, on the BBC News Magazine website, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has an excellent article about the scandal of food waste in the UK.  In a time of austerity, when over a million people are relying on foodbanks and taking food out of supermarket waste bins, should we really be throwing away perfectly good food, simply because the computer thinks it doesn't look right?  I've ranted before about food waste, and there's not much point in me going over it all again, because Hugh sums it up very well indeed.

A couple of years ago, the French supermarket, Intermarché started selling 'les fruits et légumes moches' - ugly fruit and veg, 30% cheaper than the 'perfect' food.  It was a great success and people did eschew the better-looking produce in favour of the ugly produce. Why aren't our supermarkets doing this?  Why is so much wasted, not even being used for animal feed for or being composted back into the ground to help to fertilise it?  Why are we spending a fortune importing food when we're throwing away so much in our own country?  It just doesn't make sense to me.

Not all of the food waste occurs at the production end, though.  Households throw away a phenomenal amount of food, because the computer tells them what date to throw it away, instead of using their common sense, or because they bought something on a 'BOGOF' (Buy one, get one free) deal and then don't bother to eat it.  As Hugh points out in his article, people do a weekly or monthly 'big shop', buy far more than they actually need and then end up dumping a lot of it.  It's a waste of money, a waste of food, and is a complete and utter disgrace.  

It's time to start thinking, and stop wasting food.

I am not Sasquatch!

Why is it so hard to get women's shoes in a narrow size 9?  That's a 43 in EU sizes or 11.5 in US sizes.  It's not like it's enormous. I'm nearly six feet tall, which is not at all unusual, so why should it be considered unusual to have feet in proportion to my height?

I hate shopping for shoes; it's such a depressing chore.  I trail from shop to shop and get more and more angry and despondent as the day wears on. I'm fed up of being told that "women's feet only go up to a 7" (yes, I really was informed that in one shop) or finding that the size 9s are so wide that I could almost get both feet in side by side.  When I do eventually find somewhere which stocks 9s, they are usually really ugly and impractical.  Who the hell wants to wear size 9 imitation ballet shoes?  Really?  I bet it was a man who came up with that one.  I've even had it suggested that I try a size smaller.  Are you trying to cripple me?  I don't even bother browsing the shoes now.  I just find an assistant and ask if they have 9s. It saves me a lot of time.

I desperately need a new pair of hiking boots, because the ones I have are at least 15 years old and are falling to pieces. However, in every shop I visit, I am told that the largest size in women's boots is 8' and that I will have to buy a pair of men's boots instead.  Men's boots are far too wide and my feet just slide around in them.   I look on the manufacturers' websites and many of them do make 9s, but don't sell them in the UK, and I'm not prepared to buy expensive boots online without being able to try them on.   I have a similar problem with trainers. My current, completely inappropriate pair, are men's, but if I lace them tight enough to fit properly, the toe section concertinas up and looks ridiculous.  I don't want to look like I'm wearing someone else's cast-offs, I just want off-the-shelf footwear which fits.

The only boots I have which fit absolutely perfectly are my Alt Berg bike boots.  They fit perfectly because I made a 220 mile round-trip to their factory so that they could measure my feet and make the boots just for me.  They are the best pair of boots I have ever had and worth every penny.  I cannot recommend them highly enough.  Alt Berg's customer service is second to none and their products are really high quality.  However, I don't want to have to get custom-made footwear every time I need something - I don't have that sort of money.

So, a plea to footwear manufacturers: please realise that some women do have larger feet, that women who take a size 9 don't necessarily have great wide feet, don't want to wear men's shoes, and that we would like decent shoes which look like shoes and not like river barges.  Thank you.

Stop spoiling my news feeds.

Dear News Channels,

News is news.  Sport is sport.  Sport is not news.  Please stop putting sport in the news RSS feeds, it's really irritating.  If I wanted sport, I would sign up to the sport feed.  I don't want sport, I want news.

Yours ever, etc.
Disgruntled Unsubscriber.

Drive like a moron season

What is it about the autumn/winter period which turns drivers into complete morons?  Over the past few weeks, the standard of driving on our local roads has gone from 'rubbish' to 'dreadful'.  I've seen near-misses, people driving so close to the car in front that they could probably read the dashboard of that car, people jumping chicanes (and not just one car, but five in a row), people ignoring red traffic lights, blocking box junctions, and others driving at 50 in the second lane of the motorway when the first lane is completely empty.

This morning, in the space of only half a mile:

• I stopped for a lollipop man but the idiot behind me couldn't wait and tried to overtake me, before realising that there were several small children in the road, accompanied by a man dressed from head to toe in high vis clothing and carrying a bloody great big sign with the word 'STOP' written on it;
• A driver pulled out of a side road, straight across the path of a cyclist who was wearing a high vis vest and enough lights to furnish a Christmas tree.  Fortunately, the cyclist managed to stop in time and wasn't hurt, not that the driver would have known that, because he hadn't even seen him and just drove off;
• A driver pulled out of a side road by driving up and over the pavement because he couldn't wait the extra three seconds for a car on the main road which was turning right.

Drivers really do need to sort themselves out before someone gets hurt, or killed.

Next time, I'll rub your nose in it.

I am really really angry this morning.

Yesterday, we were out at a Lancashire Day event, and some idiot kept feeding our dog on tuna sandwiches.  As soon as we caught him doing it, we told him not to give the dog any food but, a short while later, caught him doing it again.  I explained that it wasn't good for the dog and that it would make him ill, and he said 'OK, sorry.'  A few minutes later, was the sound of chomping, and there he was, feeding the dog another sandwich.  After telling him again, we ended up walking away, because this guy clearly wasn't listening.

Some time later, we went back to where the entertainment was, and the idiot was nowhere in sight, so we sat down.  Within minutes, we felt a tugging on the dog's lead and, guess what?  Yes, the idiot was back, feeding him on another tuna sandwich.  At this point I got very annoyed and told the lad, yet again, that he should not feed the dog.  "But he likes it!", came the indignant reply.  Of course he bloody likes it!  He's a Labrador - a self-propelled stomach who will eat everything he can get his chops round!  That's why we tell people not to feed him.  We took the dog away again.

This morning, I came downstairs to an extremely unpleasant scene in the living room.  The multiple tuna sandwiches had taken their toll and there was one hell of a mess.  The dog was extremely upset, but it's not really his fault.

Today, I am looking for a dog vest which reads 'Do Not Feed Me', in the hope that it might have some effect, and if I find that lad again, I will rub his bloody nose in it.

My lifestyle choice is not to be ill

My local Tesco now has a whole aisle full of gluten-free, wheat-free and dairy-free products.  I should be rejoicing, but, somehow, cannot bring myself to do so.

Firstly, thank you Tesco - I'm really am pleased and impressed that there's such an amazing range of products there.  There's some fabulous stuff, and it's all really tempting.  However, it's so prohibitively expensive that I can't afford to buy most of it, so I came away with just one  bag of lentil chips, just to see what they were like.  They were lovely, incidentally, but at £1.49 a packet, I'm afraid I won't be buying any more.  I have got used to doing without, because I simply don't have that sort of disposable income for 'unnecessaries'.

The thing which really got my goat, though, was that the aisle and the associated promotion has 'Lifestyle' emblazoned all over it.

Pardon?

Are you implying that my allergy is some sort of lifestyle 'choice'?

It is a lifestyle choice that I 'choose' to eat products which won't make me very ill?  Coeliac Disease, wheat alleriges, lactose intolerance, dairy allergies, etc. are not a lifestyle 'choice' - they are sometimes life-threatening, and I find it extremely patronising to label it as a lifestyle, as though sufferers are faddy children who will grow out of it.

Perhaps this perception of it being a choice rather than a necessity is part of the reason why these products are so expensive.  Yes, I am aware that there are higher costs in producing allergen-free products, but £3 for a gluten-free loaf as opposed to 75p for a normal loaf is just ridiculous, particularly as 1 in 3 gluten-free loaves are utterly unuseable because they fall apart or have massive holes in the middle.  This photograph shows one loaf, exactly as it came out of the bag.  I'd say it was very expensive bird-food, except that when I threw it out, the birds wouldn't eat it.

I've all but given up on ready-made gluten-free products now.  It's far cheaper either to  make my own, or do without.  Usually the latter.

Orange are still rubbish

It's been a few years since I ditched Orange in disgust over their rubbish service and, tonight, I have had my poor opinion of them reinforced.

My friend has purchased an Orange SIM, which came with an inclusive £10 topup.  However, upon attempting to claim this topup, the website tells me that the SIM number is not recognised, and to ring 450 for help.  So, I rang 450, only to be told that you can't contact them without any credit.  So, in order to get the credit, I have to ring a number which you can't actually ring without having any bloody credit!

Orange are still rubbish!

Are you human?

Yes I am, and that is why I find this virtually impossible!

I understand why some websites use 'captcha' devices in order to ensure that it's a real person entering their details, and not some automated process but, seriously, how can anyone be expected to read these?

Oh, and before anyone suggests it, I've tried doing the audio versions and there are equally unintelligible.

Sunday shopping

Sunday shopping hours are an outdated, annoying pain in the posterior.

Surely, in this modern, multicultural and increasingly secular world, there is no need to restrict shop opening times to six hours?

This morning, I checked the Boots website to find their opening times. Seeing that it was listed as 10:30, I planned my morning round the 10 mile round trip to purchase one single item, which I really need to have this morning and which only Boots sell.

I arrived just after 10:30, picked up the item and went to the till, only to be told that the till doesn't open until 11:00.  Apparently they open the doors half an hour early in order to allow people to browse. Pardon? Who the hell spends half an hour browsing in a chemists? Really?

So, I decided to stay here for the half hour's wait and rant instead.

The day after Halloween is...

the day that the cheesy Christmas adverts begin.  HELLO?  It's the beginning of November!  Christmas is 7 weeks away, almost two months.  Stop your unashamed, money-grabbing commercialism and pack it in!  I'm sick of it already, this constant bombardment of sweet, sickly, mushy sentimentalism.

Christmas is great, but please can we have it at the end of December, and not now?  I think that some of the TV adverts are going to make me barf.

Thankyouverymuch.