Ted The Shed, Chapter 30 - New Lease Of Life

Hello there,

It's Mandy here.

Welcome back to Ted the Shed,

My memoir about my dad and his allotment.

We've reached early November 2018 and tonight's chapter is called New Lease of Life.

Before I begin,

Please go ahead and make yourself really comfortable.

Settle down into your chair or your bed.

Relax your hands,

Release your shoulders and soften your jaw.

That's wonderful.

Okay,

So if you're ready,

Then I shall begin.

New Lease of Life.

At the care home,

Cleanliness is achieved,

Albeit at the expense of liberty.

Never again is dad to see the inside of a hospital.

This is a result,

As is the fact that he's eating well and enjoying chats with some of the ladies at the dining table.

When the fortnight is up,

We ask if he can stay longer.

Dad himself has no idea how long he has been there.

When did I first start coming to these places?

He asks me.

Sometimes he says,

When am I going to get out of this hole?

I've been banged up here for years for a crime I can't remember committing.

But he enjoys the view from his room and the fact that the ensuite toilet is only a few steps away.

He is also delighted by the fact that when I visit,

Which is often,

He can push his emergency call button and ask for a tray of tea and cake.

The cakes are delicious.

The lemon drizzle overload incident was obviously a one-off.

What's more,

It's all free,

Dad crows.

Hardly,

I think.

The fees for the care home are astronomical and he gets no government subsidy.

I don't tell him that.

Talking of astronomical,

Down at the plot,

I spend £75 for someone to re-roof the leaky shed before winter comes.

This is another thing that would scandalise dad,

Partly because the entire shed only cost £99 in the first place,

And partly because he'd have loved to do the job himself.

Right up until the day he left the flat,

He was still finding tasks to do.

He spent several weeks making a plywood mount to fix his phone to the sitting room radiator.

As he refused to turn the radiator down,

He paid a flat rate for his so light to have it on full blast,

Winter and summer alike.

The phone became a hotline in every sense of the word.

We discover there are no real opportunities to do tasks in care homes.

There are only contrived ones.

Would your father enjoy making a Model Eiffel Tower out of drinking straws?

Asks the activity lady.

I wheel dad quickly out of her vicinity before he can reply.

He goes on looking for genuine projects,

Asking repeatedly for his tools.

In November,

Mr MS and I finally dare to head off on a five-night break.

Before we go,

We bring in a few tools,

Probably out of guilt.

Mid-break,

We ring dad from our hotel room.

He says he's fine and things are going well.

He sounds very chirpy.

We're surprised and not entirely reassured.

On our return,

We're summoned to the care manager's office.

While you were away,

Dad flooded his own room and the room below,

She says,

Managing to combine sentimentality and frost in one sentence.

I must ask that you no longer bring him any tools under any circumstances.

Dad's version of the story is more detailed.

The cistern of my toilet wasn't filling properly,

And the handyman here is a waste of space.

All I did was take it apart to fix it.

But we're forced to confiscate his tools,

A betrayal that feels almost as bad as getting him admitted to the home in the first place.

He isn't beaten though.

In the coming weeks,

He works out that he can turn his TV on and off from his bed by aiming the remote at the mirror.

He filches various items of care home cutlery and twists and bends them until a spoon and fork work as two different kinds of screwdriver.

Then he takes his wardrobe door off.

It gets in the way.

The room works better without it and removes the safety cables from all the windows.

Let's get some air into this hole.

And that,

Says the care home manager during another tete a tete in her office,

Could get us closed down.

I'm sure you understand.

I nod,

Pretending I do.

Inwardly,

I stay on Dad's side.

When the handyman puts the cables back on the windows and replaces the wardrobe door,

Dad takes it surprisingly well.

But I'm irritated.

The room,

In my opinion,

Worked better without them.

The last weeks of November are quiet,

With Dad seeming more settled.

After sporadic autumn attendance at the plot,

I start visiting more regularly.

A funny time of year to do that,

Perhaps.

But as noted before,

I enjoy low season when growth,

Even of weeds,

Is slow and plants can't gang up on you to water or harvest them.

And even though I call myself an extrovert,

I love being there when no one else is around.

It is the opposite of being in the overheated care home,

Where proximity with other people is the name of the game.

I persuade Mr.

MS to take an hour off from work,

Having a cold,

Writing illegible lists in his diary,

Or whatever it is he does these days,

And come and enjoy the peace and solitude with me.

As others in long-term relationships may confirm,

Being with one's partner can be almost as nice as being on one's own.

Oh,

And while we're down there,

We might as well prune the apple trees,

I say,

To give the visit a focus.

Mr.

MS,

A kindly man,

Agrees,

Knowing from the get-go that I didn't just have his well-being at heart.

In Nigel Williams' comedy novel,

The Wimbledon Poisoner,

The main character's wife tells him,

You block me.

That's a line often repeated in our house too.

But at the same time,

We're happy to spend an hour or two blocking each other outdoors.

I speed walk on the way there,

Because Mr.

MS says he only has 90 minutes to spare,

And we've already wasted 20 of those in the garage,

Locating the pruning saw,

Which he put somewhere safe.

He ambles behind.

It's a dynamic so familiar,

We barely notice it.

But once we're down there snipping,

Good humour and enjoyment reign.

Following in Dad's footsteps,

I have recently bought a home blood pressure monitor,

So I can tell Mr.

MS all about the results they're from,

A subject that as a hypochondriac,

I find fascinating.

He parries by listing Yorkshire football grounds and the sorts of pies they serve.

The low verbal of our utterances bounces lightly off each other's eardrums,

With neither of us straining unnecessarily to hear them.

For a novice pruner,

Mr.

MS ends up doing an excellent job.

He also finds the top set of a pair of false teeth.

I plant out my garlic and some autumn planting shallots called Giselle.

Because Mr.

MS has his walking boots on,

He is able to firm them in.

I'm trampling Giselle,

He cries nonsensically.

So intoxicated am I by the chemicals in the soil that I laugh immoderately.

After he's gone,

I take a few pictures of our progress on my phone,

But all you can see is bare trees and earth.

I give up and sit on my homemade bench to drink my coffee,

And that's when the main event happens.

With a sound like a gunshot,

The bench seat splinters and I fall through it to land on the ground on my bottom with both legs in the air.

It's so sudden I don't even have time to yelp.

Questions hurtle through my mind.

One,

Am I hurt?

Two,

Why have my coffee cup and flask remained undisturbed on the bench arm?

Three,

Will I still be able to play table tennis tomorrow as planned?

Four,

Does this prove that my joinery skills are indeed as limited as Dad suspected?

Five,

What's the point of a comedy accident if it goes completely unwitnessed?

I am suddenly furious with Mr.

MS for having gone home.

He will be sympathetic later,

Of course,

But what's that worth compared to the brownie points I could have scored from my ability to see the funny side of things in the face of minor injury and major indignity?

As it is,

I have to extricate myself from the bench's innards alone.

Before starting on the long hobble home,

I take a few shots on my phone camera and realise that one good thing has come out of it.

The demolished seat makes an excellent picture.

To be continued.