We’ve Had Better Weeks

I had plans – some essential shopping for clothing I need for an upcoming special event. I was going to fit in a spotting trip or two as well. Instead I’ve been confined to the house…🙄

The special event is an engagement party for a daughter of one of Epi’s Ghanaian friends. The week before last I spent quite a bit of time trying to track down a Dashiki – A West African style top. I couldn’t find any in the likely shopping areas and I think we’re going to have to order on line or opt for something more European but in the White top-Black trousers specification that meets the requirement. Combined with an Optometrist’s appointment followed by a field of vision test, that tied me up for much of the week – no spotting😒

Epi came home that Friday and said she was too tired to cook – Alasdair stepped up to the ‘plate’ and sorted dinner that night. It was not clear what was wrong with Epi and she seemed ok on Saturday. I went off to Football to perform my club duties…

…Photographing an entertaining draw against Aldershot Town. Come the evening, although she had prepared dinner, Epi was feeling sweaty and had a sore throat – yes, she had brought Covid home from work. Of course, it was guaranteed I’d get it too😅 So that put the kybosh on any out and about ambitions I had for last week – I’m still positive currently. The good news is that despite sharing the house with us, Alasdair has avoided catching it largely because we have a compartmentalised lifestyle outside of eating the evening meal. Anyway, Epi’s off work at least until the end of next week and hopefully we’ll see off the infection by then.

I haven’t stopped doing my exercises while I’ve been ill. I’ve just had to be more circumspect. Accepting 20 minute miles instead of the 15:30’s (and occasionally faster) that have become the norm was painful, but on the first walk after contracting Covid, that was all I could do – there was no real energy. It has improved over the week. I’m back to 16:30’s now. On Thursday I was on my warm down when I heard the sirens and was able to catch a mobile phone shot of Finchley’s Pump Ladder Appliance on its way to an incident…

It was Thursday evening when Epi got a phone call from her Sister. One of her Brothers was in hospital, detained under the mental health act. Whilst not what we would want to hear, it was less of a shock than you might imagine. The brother in question, despite having a Masters Degree, has very seldom worked. Instead he has spent his life living off the charity of the rest of the extended family while looking down his nose at them and us. Slowly, those free living options have dried up as family members have become fed up with the freeloading attitude and his ability to insult people who are being generous. He had taken to living in the park until we pointed out that he could apply for housing from the Council – something that they provided. Even so it had been apparent for some time that he was having mental issues and close family have, as often as possible, urged him to seek help – advice he has ignored.

This is the point where I need to talk to a wider audience. Our Brother has been swayed further into his condition by watching conspiracy theory videos while sitting in internet cafes. He believes that he is being continually watched (True for most of us with CCTV) and followed by a government agency (unlikely). He see’s normal activity by pedestrians as part of this. I spent some time explaining the patent fallacies of that with examples of my activities and how I can so easily seem to be being followed due to perfectly normal convergence of travel destinations. He seems to take this on board only to lose it again once back to his conspiracy podcasts. He’s latched onto the fear of AI though he seems to call them A1 and again relates that to government agency activity against him. I hope from this you will understand the dangers of reckless conspiracy podcasts when they become a source of information for persons with mental health issues.

My Brother-in-Law is a vulnerable individual. It wasn’t obviously so 20 years ago. He was just one of those academics who don’t think they should have to work to progress up the ladder and I think I rightly made a mix of disapproving and encouraging noises at the time. He wore out his welcome with us mid-2023 when he suggested to Epi that she could have done much better in terms of a Husband – that’s the sort of insulting behaviour he commonly employed with us and other family members. So, at this time when we’re asking ourselves whether we could have done more, I think we have to be honest and accept that whatever we’d done it would not have been either welcomed or acted upon. That doesn’t make it any easier for my Wife, her Sister and the eldest Brother, and therefore not for me either.

The medical authorities have decided to keep him in for further monitoring…

And me… I keep myself on something like a level playing field by, well playing… Sometimes I welcome dealing with the machinations of the AI in Truck simulator – Driving in ETS2 and ATS can take me away from the pain of the present. I also found my Trucking and Football Twitter (X) community a great support – a short tweet mentioning that I had a family problem resulted with a big response of supportive tweets for which I thank my community😎

Here’s a couple of shots from ETS2…

…and ATS…

…captured earlier today.

Thank you for taking the time to read about our family issues. I hope to be writing about more pleasant things in my next post…🙏