Raymond Briggs
Having been incarcerated in a care home for the last few weeks, I have been surprised how quickly you come to accept as normal behaviour things that until recently would have been unthinkable; almost shocking.
When you need a wash, you go into the shower room naked with a nurse who controls the shower head and squirts it at you. ‘How’s that?’ she says. ‘Not too hot?’ She then washes you all over – front, back, ins and outs, nothing spared – and all the time you are chatting about this and that with no embarrassment. Then, yesterday, when she had finished the drying, she knelt down and put my underpants on for me. Now this for the first time seemed odd. It infantilises you. If you can’t put your pants on without help…
Another pastime has been noticing how many names of countries and places end in ‘ia’. So, to stay sane while living in one room for several weeks alone day and night, I have been making a list of them.
How many can you think of? Even if it is not always ‘ia’, it will almost certainly end in ‘a’. The larger the place is, the less you notice this: Asia, Australia, Africa, Austria, Antarctica, Argentina – oh, and that other one … what’s it called? Oh yes, got it – America. Also names you have had a personal connection with: I even forgot about Korea until today. (I just missed serving in the Korean War because my National Service ended before I could be called up.) Then there is another quite big one, but with a very short name beginning with C – China.
Talking of names beginning with C, there are also California, Cyrenaica, Catalonia, Czechoslovakia and Canada.
Then, with L, there are Louisiana, Lithuania, Latvia and Libya.
And then with P, you get Persia, Pennsylvania, Prussia, Polynesia, Pomerania, Philadelphia and Patagonia. Anyone for T? Tanzania, Tasmania… Doing this becomes a mania, but the end is in sight. Alterations to my house to make it safe for a decrepit 85-year-old to live there are well under way… HO HO! The ancient Turkish curse: ‘May you have the builders.’ With a live-in carer, whom I have yet to meet. Haven’t set foot in my house for over six weeks now – so that in itself will be stressful. Can’t remember the layout now… Will I be able to find the bathroom when they have not only moved it but rebuilt it? The care staff here have been wonderful. Kind yet businesslike, and with a sense of humour. Were it not for my iron self-discipline, I might have signed up for staying on.