General stuff

[undyingking]

We're going to the house we're buying this afternoon, to do all sorts of exciting measurements so we can work out what's going to go where. Otherwise, on the day of the move I will panic and tell the removers to put all the furniture in the dungeon. Our friend Paul (nolj) said that for his last move he built a database of the dimensions and uses of all his items of stuff, printed out custom labels for each box, and at the new house marked out with masking tape on the floor where each thing was to go. That seems slightly overkillish to me, but who knows what I'll be saying in a couple of weeks' time. My sort of feeling at the moment though is that as long as the bed, sofas and washing machine end up in roughly the right place, anything else is remediable.

I had the chilling realization this morning that this move is the most expensive thing I've ever done. I don't mean buying the new house, which obviously you'd expect to be rather expensive -- I mean all the fees, taxes, charges and God-knows-what-all that you have to shell out for. For the cost of shifting two people and their kit to the other side of town, we could have got married again, got a nice new car, taken the whole family to Tanzania... Well, it pretty much guarantees we won't be doing it again in a hurry.

I spent yesterday afternoon purging a load of old videos taped off the TV. The newish, and a few blank, ones got Freecycled: the old ones got binned. And some were really quite old -- the first one I could date definitively was from Dec 31st 1989, a long show assembled by Anne Dudley (of Art of Noise fame) reviewing the music etc of the 80s. (Actually I kept that one, I have to admit -- along with the ones featuring / made by my sister.) I did though get rid of the opening ceremony of the 1994 Winter Olympics, from Lillehammer -- it had these cool little multicoloured trolls popping out of holes in a mountain slope of white fabric. Goodness knows why I'd kept that all this time. Ah well, the memory will live on. After I'd irretrievably got rid of them, T helpfully suggested it might have been an idea to keep some for my Dad, who is unlikely ever to move past VHS technology. Probably best not to encourage him though, he already has far too large an archive of EastEnders episodes.

Speaking of Dad, at Easter we're taking him down to my sister's place in Hove. He's not been there for nearly ten years, since my middle nephew was born. At that time there was no door on the bathroom (they'd just moved in, and it needed a lot of work), and I think that traumatized him beyond recovery. This time we were pretty insistent that it was about time, but he still rang my sister several times to get her to confirm that the bathroom door was now in place.

Did anyone see Tony Robinson's programme the other day about his old mum / general stuff about care for the elderly? I thought it raised some very interesting points. There was no 'turkey twizzler moment' to capture the public imagination, but it's an issue that does deserve as much attention. I suppose it's in my mind particularly because Dad's now getting on a bit, but we're all going to be involved wth it sooner or later, in one way or another. My other sister's been trying to get Dad to do a living will -- I think she has in mind something along the lines of "if I can no longer recite the bones of the skull in the correct sequence, push a pillow over my face" -- but failing that, we can always bring him up here and keep him in the dungeon. If I've managed to get all our furniture back out by then.

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

When we moved last we didn't go so far as to worry about a database of where furniture was going to go, as long as it was in the right room (at that point we didn't have any furniture which would have required more than two people to move). What we _did_ have was a list of what was in which box (the boxes being numbered) so that one of us could advise the removals guys where the boxes concerned needed to go. After the twentieth or so trip upstairs with boxes marked "caution - heavy" (i.e. most of the ones with books in) I think they were starting to tire of it a little...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, most of our books are going to be going up to the second floor... fortunately they're quite small boxes.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've moved several times and I number the boxes and write the room they are going into on them as well. Saves lots of time. Must buy some smaller boxes for books for my move next month.

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

We take Fat Boy to see old ladies + the odd gent at a local nursing home as part of the Pets As Therapy scheme and, OK, this is anecdotal rather than some wide-ranging research involving double-blind testing etc, but things seemed to have cheered up of late, coinciding with the arrival of one or more young staff from the East EU. God bless EU enlargement eh?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I guess maybe they have more of a culture of respect for grannies than we do...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I don't think the problem is old people. The problem is people with particular disabilities (such as dementia) which make them no fun to be around.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Yes -- although I guess a greater and greater proportion of old people are suffering from such disabilities these days.

Touching on that, Tony R had some interesting anecdotal stuff in his programme, suggesting that some of the less-fun-to-be-around aspects of dementia are essentially manifestations of anxiety and so to some extent ameliorable if the carers have the time, patience, energy, love etc. (This may have been to some extent him beating himself up over his own mother's situation, though.)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I've been lucky in this respect. None of my grandparents lost any of their lucidity before the end and both my parents and lathany's parents show no signs of slowing down yet. (Indeed, Dawn's mum still wins medals for running !)

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Tony R had some interesting anecdotal

Oh dear god. For a second, I thought you meant Rickey!