Bergertat

Husband has a well deserved week off work. So we celebrated by holding a three day Bergerac Ironing Marathon. It was most enjoyable, I found myself one step ahead of Jim. The Green Goddess hiding diamonds in the sea - I cracked that before him. And the paedophile stalking young girls, cracked that a whole 47 minutes before Jim started asking to look at the photos. The second series is more dark, yet Jersey is still irrestible.

We saw Mamma Mia on Saturday and it was excellent. Silly but a definite feel good film.

Still can't read more than 2 pages at a time of Nelson Mandela's autobiography. I just find it so harrowing, disturbing and appalling. I'm reading the bit about prison food at the moment.

I'm also trying to get a 'well paid' job as we call it. It's not that I don't enjoy care work, it's very rewarding in fact. But, it's too physical. Unless I start putting two hours in at the gym a day to build up my muscle strength, I just can't do it longer than one morning a week. I think if it was men's work in the eyes of society it would be £45 an hour. You hear horror stories about people doing their back in. And already someone has fallen on me. It took two of us to get her back up again. Then there's the outrageous bean counting. We don't get paid travel time for example. And we're supposed to get people ready in the morning in less time than I allow myself. I give myself an hour and a half to get up, get washed, get dressed have a nice breakfast. People with multiple disabilities, can't walk unaided and long term health conditions, not to mention full commodes - they get 20 minutes.
And every one of them wants their care at 8am. But we have six people to get up. Someone will have to get up at 6.30 and someone at 10.30 - in fact it's on our rotas. But in the care plan it says 8am for everyone.
There isn't really a mystery to crack on this one. The culprit is the capitalist system.


But the rewards for the subliminal criminal are that you're really helping people, directly. Without the carers - paid and unpaid - of the world, humanity would collapse. It's just tough luck it's not financially rewarding too. As soon as men start to do the work, we'll see carers getting their just dessert.