Our electrical goods attempt to save the economy

The government is encouraging banks to give credit and consumers to keep purchasing.  It seems that our electrical goods have taken this message to heart.  Last summer our TV broke, so we bought a new one.  My CD player developed a glitch and the cost of fixing this could have almost bought a cheap player new.   Continuing with the entertainment theme, over xmas my MP3 player stopped working and I bought an iPod to replace it.  

Now the appliances are joining in.  Last week we got a new washing machine, as our old one finally gave up the ghost.  (We were worried that all the new models seemed to be larger than the outgoing one, but we managed to find one that just fitted into the space).  Now the central heating boiler has joined the fray by starting to leak, although fortunately it is still working.  It's so old that only some of the parts are still available, so the company offered us a credit note against a new boiler in lieu of replacing any parts at all.  Even so, this single item is going to cost more than all the others combined!

It's very public spirited of our appliances and devices to stimulate the economy in this way, but our household finances are beginning to complain.

The Madwoman in the Attic

Mrs. HTC's Mum has been seriously ill for the last couple of years.  This started with acute anxiety (sufficient to require a stay in hospital) and has progressively worsened since then, becoming somewhat confused as well.  Although her moods and acuity vary,  she basically needs full-time care.  She's had all sorts of treatments; I don't want to go into details but they generally trade-off a degree of calming against levels of mental alertness.  There seems no sign of a cure.

I haven't blogged about this before because I don't want to record the details of someone else's problems.  I'm not going to record a month-by-month account of her illness.  But of course it has affected the family considerably, both in the direct emotional challenge of coming to terms with the illness, to the organisational hassles of working out what sort of care, of that which is available, would be best. 

Emotionally, I guess the situation is a bit like losing someone you love, but seeing them still half-present, a fleshly ghost of a lost personality.  As well as this, it's a loss of the stability and constancy that (for most of us) is how we view our parents as we grew up ourselves.  And of course it is a foreshadowing of our own fate.

On the organisational side, it has not been clear what sort of care is required, which homes can give that care and how much, if anything, the NHS in England can provide.  This hasn't been easy and it's still far from resolution.

In victorian times, or at least in victorian novels, such an illness would have been a family secret.  These days we're more open about the problem and we have at least some care available, but we're not much nearer a cure.