A Round-Up Of Unrelated Bits And Pieces

[poliphilo]

I'm not sleeping through the night. In fact I haven't done so for a long long time. What's new is me acknowledging that getting a "good night's sleep" is no longer a realistic aspiration. I think it's a recognised scientific fact that old people need less sleep than young people- unless of course they're exceedingly old- like my mother- who barely spends any time awake.

Having said that, she called me in three times in the course of the night to ask where her clothes were because she wanted to get up. She doesn't have her hearing aids in so I have to shout. I wish I could shout sweetly, but I'm not sure that's humanly possible. I'm not as cross as I sound, but I am a little bit cross- though I don't call her "a stupid old bat", merely think it.

This is Kit's Coty House. It sits on the north Downs, scowling down at Maidstone- as well it might because Maidstone is horrid. I went and took a look yesterday. It's not well signposted and I had it all to myself.



Kit's Coty is all that remains of a Neolithic long barrow, the rest having been ploughed out over the course of the thousands of years it's stood there. It's the most impressive megalithic monument in our corner of England. As you can see, they keep it in a cage to stop it from eating people.

There's something about the thrust of it- when seen from this angle- that makes me think of the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Why did our distant ancestors insist on using huge, unwieldy stones in their buildings when they didn't have
machinery? Did they really accomplish Kit's Coty- and Avebury and Stonehenge- using nothing but wood and rope and muscle? Or might they have possessed technologies of the mind that allowed them to manipulate energy in ways that we've forgotten- and now think impossible? I'll leave that one floating...

(As perhaps the stones did.)

I watched Takashi Miike's Hara-Kiri yesterday afternoon because I'm a sucker for Samurai. It has a wonderfully intense beginning and ending but sags in the middle. I hadn't seen any of his work before. He loves his ultra-violence but gets bored when he has to deal with people being nice to one another.

We cancelled a not very important medical engagement this morning because the support structure we'd arranged for my mother while we buggered off elsewhere fell through at the last moment. I won't say I'm not relieved. It would have involved an hour or two of sitting in a waiting room with a mask on.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I do wish they hadn't put that fence around it!

I grew up playing on it!

[poliphilo]

That must have been fun.

You can't even touch it through the fence. Believe me, I tried- and my arms just ain't long enough.

[strange_complex]

I don't know if this would help with the issue of your mother calling you in the middle of the night because she thinks it's time to get up. It will depend on her cognitive state and also her eyesight, which only you can know. But while my own mother was living with cognitive impairment caused by her brain tumour, we got a clock like this for her. If the person is able to take in what the clock is saying and relate it to what's normal for that hour, it can help to reduce their confusion and disorientation, while also saving you from interrupted sleep! The one I've linked is just an example - you'll get loads more if you Google 'dementia clock' or 'Alzheimer's clock'.

[poliphilo]

Thanks, That's a nice idea. But I don't think it would work with my mother. She's almost blind. She sits in a chair with a clear view of a longcase clock- and tells anyone who asks that she's watching television.

[strange_complex]

Ah, probably not then. It certainly won't help if she can't see it. Never mind, it was worth a mention, anyway.