Firstly Erna is being difficult about her custom built chair. For 20 years now she has had a creaky back, but she has convinced herself that the back ache/pain is due to the chair. Luckily, the morning carers are tough cookies who do not whimper behind the Health and Safety laws and put her in the chair. She does it more readily for them than for me but that was ever thus.

Strangely she likes the commode and insists on using it 3 times a day. This is because she has a pride about not soiling her pads or the bed if she can avoid it. We were also hoping to train her in her new, again, purpose built wheel chair and take her out on the terrace in it. Then the OHT man who was to set up the ramps and supervise this major step forward went sick on the crucial day. Some say it would not have been possible anyway because the weather conspired to produce teeming rain on the chosen day.

“Still all is not lost”, said one of our visiting wags, “if she doesn’t like the chair you can always take Erna for a walk on the commode”. Smart thinking boy wonder!

This last week everything has moved on apace. All the ramps are now with us and the OH therapist is coming on Wednesday to put Erna in the wheelchair and we will take her outside the house for the first time in 8 months. If it is successful, it will be a real red-letter day and we are praying for really fine weather.

Erna will violently disapprove of it (she would have done before the stroke, she is that sort of woman) but I am planning a reception at Flettons on 22nd July (her 80th Birthday) for all those who care for her or have helped us through this difficult 8 months.

Other things have made our life much easier. Having Dawn as cook/housekeeper every weekday morning frees me up to put my feet up to get my leg better and, when necessary, allows me go to the bank and other appointments without having the chore of finding someone to sit with Erna.

Switching in to “John Bulletin” mode, I am now nearly fully recovered and so must start the postponed build up to having a pacemaker fitted. Dawn has bailed out my family members from having to look after Erna, if I have to stay overnight in hospital. She will abandon her own family and move in for the night to be with Erna. But don’t worry, all her kids are grown up so they will not be neglected and will probably use her house to have a rave up..

Erna mentally is now getting brighter. I help her to do the Daily Telegraph quick crossword every day and she holds good conversations. But she still has some fixations that are hard to shift; such as refusing to believe she is in her own home. Yet at the same time telling everyone where they can find things.

We have had lots of visits from Alan and Fay, Steve and Jan, Alan and Audrey, Robert and Dea, Tom, Lesley and Joan, Glenn and Sharon and the marvellous Bill Usher who lets Erna order him to “Replaster this and fix that” and he does it without demurring.

We would like lots of other visitors and you won’t just have to talk to we two invalids. Touch your forelock to the “Mem Sahib” and then take a walk round our garden, which is currently bursting with azalea and rhododendron blooms.

We have had a rough 3 months but the worst is now behind us and, God willing, life has plenty to offer us again.

Do keep visiting, it does Erna and I a lot of good.

John