Hiking with a twist: Because why not add another challenge?

Posted on August 22, 2025 by thepogblog

I thought that walking was what English people do and hiking is what Americans do.  But it turns out that’s not quite right.

According to Ordnance Survey (and they should know, right?):

…. A simple distinction between hiking and walking would be whether or not you need to take supplies with you because it’s longer than an hour and involves more effort. For a hike you will definitely need to carry a few essential items in a back pack.

Generally, Google seemed to be of the opinion that ‘hikes tend to be longer than walks and require proper equipment and footwear, as terrain and trails are more rugged. Hiking tends to see you move from lower to higher as you progress and are generally more undulating than a walk.’

So yes, hiking is what we have been doing.  Almost entirely by accident.

But here is where it all takes a turn.  At some point – presumably on one of the lovelier hikes where the sun was out but it was not too hot, and Percy wasn’t behaving like a crazed dog who had never been on a lead and the going was easy.  Or perhaps when we’d stopped for our now habitual cheese and pickle roll and can of cider, admiring the countryside from a perfect perch on the side of a hill…we wondered if walking the South Downs Way (100 miles) in one go be possible…

And the idea grew into a bit of a plan. The original plan was to stay in B&Bs en route, but we discovered that it’s not possible to do that with a slightly crazed cocker spaniel leading the way.  I can only assume that I must have had a few glasses of wine at the point I agreed to camp instead.  I hate camping.  I’ve written before about how I’d rather snack on my own eyeballs than do it again.

So, in a few weeks we are hiking the South Downs Way over 8 days, carrying everything we and Percy need on our backs.  Of course we are.  We have done a weekend tester.  The first night, just as we were walking to the tent to go to bed Percy jumped in a slurry pit…  I’m not sure whether to take that as a sign of things to come or assume that it can’t get much worse than that.  It wont be long before we find out though…

And while I was finding the definitions about walking vs hiking I fell down a rabbit hole and discovered this:

Trek: A trek is used to define a walk or hike which tends to be multi-day, remote, little in the form of accommodation (generally camp-based) with trails that are either partially visible or not visible at all and where altitude or other rugged terrain and crossings may be encountered. Treks require the most specialised equipment and will probably see you without a shower for days.

So it turns out that actually we are going on a *trek*. But we WILL be having showers (please see this previous post for smell and bloodhound nose references).  Although we’ve been contacted by one campsite we’ve booked to say that their shower is broken but they do still have the cubicle, containing a working hose…

What the bloody hell am I letting myself in for?! 🤦🏼‍♀️

Have you ever done a holiday that on paper sounded like an endurance expedition but turned out amazing?  Can it be done?! 🙂

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Introducing: Grandpaw Floof

Posted on August 20, 2025 by thepogblog

Last night I posted this photo of Mum and Dad, taken yesterday when I took Dad to visit Mum:

I commented that Dad had declined a kitchen scissor haircut before we left, which was slightly disappointing as I’d bought new kitchen scissors for the occasion and everything…

One friend commented that Dad has the same tuft of hair as Percy and…Lordy! How had I not noticed?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see the shared genetics right there.

Percy’s floof is often a topic of conversation on his instagram account, so we have decided that as Dads floof actually came first (by over 70 years), that must make Dad: Grandpaw Floof 😁

(Sorry Dad!)

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The Step Mum Handbook Nobody Wrote – navigating teenage boys; chapter 295

Posted on August 18, 2025 by thepogblog

I may have created a monster.  This is how:

Stepson 2 applied for summer and weekend jobs after finishing his GCSEs.

If you are of a similar midlife age to me and don’t have teenagers in your life, let me tell you:  Getting a part time job as a kid these days is not the same as it was in ours.  If you get to the stage after your application form, but before an interview (yes, it’s practically as complicated as getting on a corporate graduate scheme 30 years ago), you have to answer an online ‘what would you do in this scenario?’ set of questions, which it seems has a very, very high pass rate.  And that is to work the shop floor at Co-Op…

So with all that, plus the competition from his peers and the returning university students, combined with the fact that he is 16 and these days there are all sorts of restrictions on the hours a 16 year old can work, it is perhaps unsurprising that Stepson 2 did not secure a job.

Unfortunately, this did give him time to secure a new girlfriend, and summer holiday dates require money, so he asked if there were any opportunities for paid work here….and spent last week painting our fence.

Now, I am a bit of a clean freak.  I do not like smelling and I do not like being around others who smell.  And I have the nose of a blood hound.  In the seven months Stepson 2 lived with us, I seem to have made him my protege, insisting that anything touching pits, bits or feet MUST be put in the wash basket at the end of the day, as must anything containing sweat.  As all three of us do some sort of exercise every day that meant I had three gym kits and three sets of clothes across wash baskets – a full load each day.  Stepson 2  got used to a fast turnaround time from wash basket to folded on his bed.

Last Monday he finished painting at 3.30pm.  I asked where he’d put his painting clothes.

‘In the wash basket’ he replied.  I asked when he was coming back to paint next.

‘8.30am tomorrow morning’, he said.

He seemed genuinely surprised that I wasn’t actually planning on washing his one t shirt and one pair or trousers before then…

And I can only assume that its the worry of making his t-shirt sweaty that resulted in this:

I went down the garden, where he’d moved the paint and brushes half an hour ago to start on the next area, to find him having a rest.  Which would be totally reasonable, had he not just finished a 30 minutes break to eat lunch followed by a 45 minute ‘proper break’….

It’s just so he didn’t get too sweaty though, right? 😉

And part of me applauds that.  And I (repeatedly) applauded the work he has done, and I  provided food, snacks and drinks and I washed his t-shirt and trousers twice in the 5 days he worked.

And I’m stunned to say that once we had reminded him of the terms (flat rate fees and payment on completion), he pulled it out the bag and did a great job.  And he had a shower straight after finishing each day, before he went to the gym 🤷‍♀️.  And I think that’s pretty good going…

So I might have created a monster, but at least he’s not a stinky monster. 😁

Posted in family, muddled life, step mum | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Running Away from All The Things (very slowly)

Posted on August 14, 2025 by thepogblog

I’m not sure what I do can be classed as running away when it’s practically slow motion.  It’s more a case of escaping from All The Things for a short time…

So many people sent such lovely messages after my last post.  Thank you all for such loveliness.

Mum is still living like a queen.  Dad had a little hiccup, but the bonus there is that we now know the District Nurse phone line we’ve been given access to is fast and effective and full of lovely people.  We also know that 111 is not fast but it is eventually effective and full of lovely people (as long as someone is available to check on the patient in person, someone is available to make and take a series of phone calls over a seven hour period, and someone is available to drive all over Kent on a Sunday morning to track down the prescribed magic.  Thank goodness there are three of us).

Some people who messaged suggested that I make an effort to look after my stress levels, and – as well as a few other things to do just that –  I do make sure I still run, (plod) badly, with Percy four times a week.  First thing on those days we run (very slowly) through the nature reserve at the top of our road to the woods where Percy snoofs and I….well, to be honest, I usually forget that I am supposed to be running and instead have a lovely little walk, listening to my current audio book. (Brain Damage by Freida McFadden at the moment, recommended by Sister 1.  Lovin’ it)

I know it’s the movement, the sunlight and the space that is good for mental health and stress levels, but I think it’s also the people and dogs that make this time so lovely.

People like:

  • the man who runs in glasses and over-breathes as his two black labs pant along side him
  • the slightly odd dog walker with six spaniels
  • the old couple with one grumpy dog that has to be shielded from the sight of me as I pass (totally understandable) and three tiny yappers, intent on (and successful in) scaring Percy
  • the couple who are always in coats, even in the hottest weather
  • the couple who eat humbugs as they walk their tall, bouncy dogs that bounce along side us for a couple of miles before lolloping off back to their humbug sucking humans
  • the lady with two walking sticks who insists her dogs lay down before we pass
  • and lots more…

Some days we bump into a few special people who have become our friends.  The sort of people who started off as ‘nice weather, isn’t it?’ people, to the strangest of friends.  Strange in that they know more of my life than most, but outside of dog walking, I never see them.  I’ve never met their partners or even know where they live.  Sometimes I wonder if they are fairies or figments of the forest that live only in my imagination…but I assume other people have the same connections – friendships with otherwise perfect strangers. (Tell me you do?!)

And I think it is all these people that allow us to escape All The Things.  Because when I am outside, before the actual day has really started, protected from it all by canopies and trunks of trees, it’s like a different world where work and step parenting and family and responsibilities are on the outside and I am on the inside.  And that is one of the ways that I escape from All the Things.  By running badly. (Very slowly) 🙂

We all have different Things, but it’s good to know our escapes in whatever form they come in.  What’s your method of escape?

 

Posted in dogs, exercise, family, fitness, muddled life, running | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

New Digs

Posted on August 11, 2025 by thepogblog

It’s been just over a month since I last wrote here, but it feels more like a year.  How else can so much have happened?

the big thing though, is this:  Mum has new digs.  She now lives in a care home.

I’ve been a bit nervous about writing this post as generally I feel like there is judgement over the topic…lots of people make it very clear that they do everything they can to keep their relative at home (we did, until we couldn’t), and there are very occasional comments (ironically, mostly from ‘supporting’ charities)  like ‘try not to feel like you have failed her’ which I am sure are meant kindly, but seem to imply failure (I absolutely don’t – quite the opposite.)

So let me be clear.  Most of me is not sad that Mum has moved into a home.  It is an amazing home.  If I could move in there I would too.  So would both my sisters.  She has company, she has activities every day, she has people tending to her every need, she has three course meals and she is safe. I am relieved.

The hardest bit of it all was the speed we had to move at from being offered a bed to get financials and admin sorted out, and  – most importantly – Mums assessment to see if after all the other hoops had been jumped through, she would actually be accepted. That was not a week I’d like to relive. (And I will write about some of the details in a future post as a few people have already asked how that all worked.)

Mum has friends already. She can’t remember their names and swears that she doesn’t know them when you ask, but  she sits next to them in the lounge and eats with them in the dining room and when they chat, she knows.  One of them held her had the other day when I asked if I could take a photo of them together. 💜

She has been there three weeks now and she’s baked, done arts and crafts, had an animal encounter session (where she held a giant African snail) , attended a couple of ‘concerts’,  a garden party with Pimms, and attended a birthday party, sat in the garden, sat in the coffee shop, had her hair cut at the on site hairdressers, danced and sung. It turns out she is a regular in the photos of activities on the homes facebook page.

A big part of the relief is that we have the space to look after Dad properly now.  And he can relax, not having to be Mum’s full time carer which was more than I think any of us realised.  Dad has been to visit Mum a couple of times and has seen that this was the right thing for her too.  I have asked if we could do a ‘buy one, get one free’ on the rooms so Dad can stay too, but apparently not….

And now we have just 4.5 days left of Mums 28 day trial period.  We are crossing fingers that we get through it without incident as one thing we did discover over the last month is that you’re kind of on your own when it comes to sorting all of this out, and that was quite scary. I think the odds are though, that we won’t have to go through that again and that Mum has found a new place to call home.

(And for anyone else reading this who is not there yet but knows the time might come one day, I can tell you that:

  1. the build up is the worst part
  2. if you’re doing it, it’s the right thing to do
  3. the benefits for everyone are more than you realise at the time)

🙂

 

Posted in care home, COPD, dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, stroke | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

‘Our Place’; an alternative reality

Posted on July 4, 2025 by thepogblog

I used to think dementia was very much about people forgetting. Words, places, people and more.

We realised a good while back that for Mum it’s also about some sort of alternative reality that is based on nothing other than what is in her head.

This week she thought it would be nice for us to visit their ‘new place’.

And while this is rather a lovely alternative reality, sometimes they are not. Sometimes she will tell one of us how horrible another is to her (and all of us have been the ‘horrible one’ at some point, which is how we can be so entirely sure that it’s not true). And we have to let people know that while she is very convincing at talking about things, they often need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

There’s a lot more plate spinning to dementia than I’d thought, and this is one of the smaller plates. Practically a saucer 😬

Posted in dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, stroke, Tuesday, Tuesday TV | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Reflections

Posted on July 3, 2025 by thepogblog

It turns out that there is so much about demential that you don’t know you don’t know.

Like that moment when your Mum doesn’t seem to recognise her own reflection.

We’d been looking at videos and photos and I realised how much has changed with Mum in the last year, so I turned the camera and record some of the now, as I’d not done a video in a while. I think mum thought we were still looking at old photos.

Posted in dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, Tuesday, Tuesday TV | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corned Beef Hash pie

Posted on June 27, 2025 by thepogblog

Tuesday this week was…well, I think it’s best to pretend that it didn’t happen.

But there was one small success.  I invented the Corned Beef Hash Pie (maybe not actually invented, but I’d not heard of it and definitely not baked it before).  And unlike many of my ‘made up in my head’ attempts, it was surprisingly well received.  This was a particular achievement as I’m vegetarian, so couldn’t do any taste testing and had no clue if it was actually edible.

So, should you need to whip up an old school meal for people who utterly believe that the only vegetables required in life are chips and the cocoa in chocolate, and who therefore tend not to add anything other than the key part of a meal to their plate, here’s what you do:

  • Line a pie dish with 2/3 pack of puff pastry and pop in your baking beans, blind cook it at 200 for about 10 mins, tip the baking beans out, prick the bottom a few times with a fork to stop any puffing and pop it back in for 10 more minutes.
  • Fry up a chopped onion and carrot, throw in the corned beef and break it up.
  • Add some splashes of Worcestershire sauce, a squeeze of tomato puree and an oxo cube dissolved into a bit of boiling water.
  • Let it all bubble a bit.
  • Throw in a tin of beans.
  • (No need for salt if your beans are not the salt free ones and no need for pepper if your dad insists that ‘the flavour is too strong’.)
  • Give it a stir.
  • Spoon the filling into the pastry covered pie dish.
  • Top with the rest of the puff pastry.  (Stick the cooked bit together with the uncooked bit using a bit of milk and a sprinkling of creativity)
  • Poke a knife through the top to let out the steam (is that why we do that?)
  • Pop it back in the oven for 20-ish minutes.

No need to serve with anything as all the sides are inside 🙂

And that was that.

It was also Stepson 2’s Prom.  Mr R took him and his mates in style, dressed as a chauffeur.   And it was our third wedding anniversary.  We’d planed a Top of the World picnic after chauffeur duties were complete, but the weather had other ideas so we had our picnic in our kitchen instead.  I’ll leave you with those photos as I think they are marginally more interesting than one of a tin of corned beef…

.

Posted in Cooking, COPD, dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, Pog Life, step mum, stroke, Tuesday, wedding | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A few of the questions I have from the last few weeks *

Posted on June 20, 2025 by thepogblog

*Some I’ve found answers for, some are hypothetical and some…we’ll just never know. 🤷‍♀️

  • Why do you have to fight for a medical person to see your Dad and then three turn up at once?  (Ok, three in 8 days, but you get the idea) Buses and all that.
  • Why don’t people understand that juggling appointments can be tricky when you have two parents with complex health needs, your own family, a business to run and don’t live next door?

(I was asked ‘Do you actually want us to see your Dad?’ when I said that we couldn’t do the next two weeks due to other appointments)

  • Why does only one medical person I’ve asked the very direct question: ‘But if we call an ambulance, and he has a ReSPECT form asking not to go to hospital in any circumstances, wont we be wasting everyones time?’ to, know the actual answer?

(The actual answer is that you call 999 , ask them to refer to the patients ReSPECT form which is on the system, and request that the Home Treatment Team to come out urgently, not the paramedics in an ambulance.)

  • Why is liquid morphine dispensed in a bottle with no way to measure dosage when you are told that accurate dosage is really quite important?

(Syringes may or may not have arrived from Amazon yesterday.  Sister 1 is arriving with an old Calpol syringe today to cover all bases and be on standby to call 999 should the first dose go tits up.  Sister 1 has also been  briefed on the answer above verbally and in writing)

  • Why, when you ask if a shop has wheel chair access, so they think that ‘that door has a ramp’ is a helpful answer when there is a the small issue of a step at the top of the ramp?  Especially when it’s too big for even Sister 2 to bump the wheel chair over, and she is strong.

 

  • Why did Mum insist on calling me ‘Audrey’ last Tuesday morning?  She’s never known an Audrey as far as we know.

 

  • And why did we move so fast to me being ‘Shirley’? (At least she knows one of them, even is she is as dainty as I am sturdy…)

 

  • Why did Mum hide her boob in the desk in her room? (False one after mastectomy decades ago.  We’ve not got as far as attempting to hid the attached one. Yet.)

 

  • Why, when I buy the same number of bananas each week do we sometimes have half left on Friday morning and sometimes the whole lot has gone by mid afternoon on a Tuesday?

 

  • How are (mostly) Mr R and Stepson 2 getting through 2kg of Alpen a week?…

 

  • …And how is our toilet still intact?

 

  • Why are people who use purple poo bags more likely to leave their filled bags anywhere that isn’t a poo bin than those with other coloured bags?

 

  • Why does my brain crank up into ‘let’s think through All The Things and all the scenarios of All The Things, and all the things you need to do to address each scenario in All The Things’ as soon as I get into bed, more than ready to sleep?

 

  • Do dogs ever have busy minds?

(I suspect not):

Posted in COPD, dementia, dogs, family, looking after Mum, memory, Pog Life, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , | Leave a comment

ID bracelets

Posted on June 12, 2025 by thepogblog

This one is a practical one that might help someone else. We kicked ourselves for not thinking of it as it’s pretty bloomin’ obvious, but it took my father-in-law (thanks Pops!) to suggest it.

Pops had seen ID bracelets for people with QR codes that could be scanned so that their details could be accessed and the wearer helped appropriately.

Mum and Dad live in what I suspect might be the last village in the UK to have no internet reception outside of houses with wifi, so a QR code wouldn’t work too close to home.  But a standard ID bracelet would.

Mum stopped going for regular walks last year, but has made an escape attempt a couple of times recently.  She did remember how to get to her neighbours house, who returned her (it’s not a standard house next door situation) but there will be a time that she can’t remember which way to walk to get to the gate and up the drive. Dad can’t follow her because of his breathing.  So we needed a ‘if found please return this bear’ type of solution.

I thought it also might be easier for Dad (and Royal Mail) if he also had something similar rather than the yellow card he’s been carrying when he goes out.

So I looked up ID bracelets and found this site. There are many, many options though (although weirdly many are based in the US or Canada).

I bought this one for Mum that looked and felt like her watch (that she can’t read but likes to wear) and this one for Dad as his would be needed if he had an medical emergency and I figured it would be easy to spot.

We had big challenges resizing them although – like the initial idea – it was pretty obvious once you got the hang of it.

Mum’s was really hard to do up and undo, which was great as I wanted her to be wearing it 24 hours a day.  Obviously the one person who finds it incredibly easy to undo is…Mum 🤦🏼‍♀️. But I guess wearing it half the time is better than none of the time.

Both bracelets have their name, Dementia / COPD and mine, Sister 1 ad Sister 2’s phone numbers as ICE (In Case of Emergency) contacts.

They are both quite proud:

Posted in COPD, dementia, looking after Mum, memory, muddled life, muddled life guide, Muddled Life Tip, stroke | Tagged , | Leave a comment