The natural history of the elderly in Britian

First of all, I would say this is not a research paper. Moreover, I won't guarantee it is 100% true facts covering all social classes in Britain. But I write this blog post based on my knowledge and work experience.

We do enjoy the life by studying and working , going holidays and being off sick, arguing and agreeing, marrying and divorcing, attending weddings and funerals, and so on. When we reach 65 and above, we will be in the group of old age in the countries like UK and USA. The alternative nomenclature of the elderly is senior or senior citizen. The definition of old age varies from society to society, from department to department.

At work, I mean, at hospital where I work , we consider those with 75 and above (some hospital 78, some 79) as the elderly people. They are put in the list of the elderly care consultant, who will lead the team for his patient's medical and social issues to be sorted out. Once patient is medically fit or nearly fit, we start the discharge plan. That means we decide to where patient is going. To his own home? to rehab hospital, to residential home or nursing home.

The majority of elderly people lives alone or with their spouse if they are still alive. It is common that their children live nearby, helping with shopping and cleaning. Some elderly people have no own children, but they have been looking after well by step-daughter or son as next of kin. I still remember one old man was admitted to hospital for some reason. His son had been in Australia for many years. Almost everyday, the anxious son rang us, asking about his father's updates, saying "thank you" during most of the calls. He also had threatened to make complaint against us for a couple of times. Yes, that is our life. Anyway, that old man got better and he went home after sometime.

Basically we cannot discharge our patients without making sure that they will be safe at home. During the discharge plan, the phyisotherapist does mobility assessment, providing walking assistance if required while the occupational therapist's function is to assess if patient can do his or her daily activities safely, such as kitchen, stairs and bathroom. Some needs stair lift to go to upstairs bathroom. Other need wheel chair for shopping.

Some people require rehabilitation before going home. So they go to a local community hospital to build up their mobility.

While they are in acute hospital or rehab hospital, we consider if patient will need care package at home. For example, some people needs once a day carer in the morning for cleaning, dressing and making breakfast, etc. Some need twice a day. At this point, social worker plays a role to organize carer package, including funding issue. Maximum home carer is 4 times a day in my area. Generally "more help" means "less independent and more frail".

What will happen if someone needs more than 4 times a day? Commonly, such people are with advancing dementia or with multiple health problems and no longer able to cope at home alone. Answer is residential home. Next question is who will pay. Patient himself or local authority?

What would be the next step after Residential home (RH)? From RH, they might come back to hospital with water infection, chest infection or fall and collapse. Some died at hospital due to current illness or new problems. Other died of natural cause at RH.

A small percentage of people need 24 hours nursing care due to some conditions, such as dense stroke, advanced Parkinson's disease. They are transferred to nursing home as RH usually has no nursing support. (Apparently, 24 hour care at own home is around £2400 a month)

I am thinking myself what would be my final place before death if I have a chance to live long.

My shopping basket

Someone's shopping basket may show his or her eating style while reflecting the social status, belief and place of origin to some extent. In many occasions, we can also learn the hobby and interest of a particular person .




If you check the items I bought from Tesco today, you can see easily I am an average person who keeps cat at home. Lentils and beans mean I am something related to Indian sub-continent or Mexico. You may notice eggs at about centre. Of course, I normally buy free-range eggs as I do not support the way caged eggs are produced.








On the other hand, free range egg production is really nice in my eyes. This is the picture from North Creek Farm.

Clay, Pool, Hardy and A Harbour

This morning, I was doing a minute research about clay as an attempt to find out the history of the Blue Pool encouraged me to do so.

Ball clays are kaolinitic sedimentary clays, that commonly consist of 20-80% kaolinite, 10-25% mica, 6-65% quartz. They are fine-grained and plastic in nature. They are mined in Devon and Dorset in England. They are commonly used in the construction of many ceramic articles.

The ceramic use of ball clays in Britain dates back to at least the Roman era. More recent trade began when clay was needed to construct tobacco pipes in the 16th and 17th century.

The name "ball clay" is believed to derive from the time when the clay was mined by hand. It was cut into 15 to 17-kilogram cubes and during transport the corners of the cubes became rounded off leaving "balls".

It can be said that the Blue Pool is one of the historic places of past time clay business.
The Blue Pool is a lake in the Furzebrook Estate, a 25 acres (100,000 m2) park of heath woodland and gorse near Furzebrook in Dorset, England.

The pool is a flooded, disused clay pit where Purbeck Ball Clay was dug from the 1600s to the early 1900s to make smoking pipes and tea pots.

I must say the place was amazing. Well maintained. At the same time, it looked natural. Tall pine trees were growing well, beautifully guarding the blue lake. Birds were singing. It is claimed that there are wild animals inhabited , such as rabbits, badgers, squirrels, deer and sand lizards. It was drizzling. So I did not have a full range of chance to explore the area.

A request for the wood ant. British people are kind enough to save ants and their work.

An ant nest (British wood ants there)

The color of water ,which is varying from green to blue, is due to clay particles.

Pine trees

You can see the Blue Pool photos I took yesterday.

Well, I went to Hardy's home before going to Blue Pool. To be honest, I did not know Thomas Hardy until a friend of mine from Bath mentioned about his name and novels last month.

Thomas Hardy(2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

This is what he was described in wikipedia.

According to the Thomas Hardy society founded in 1968, he was born at Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester. During his lifetime he composed nearly a thousand published poems and wrote fourteen publised novels including ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ and ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’. He died in Dorchester on 11 January 1928. Much of Thomas Hardy's work is based on Wessex, the South and West of England.

Unfortunately, when I got to Hardy's cottage, where he was born and raised, now under the management of the National Trust, it was found out that the small museum was not open for the public. For some reason, opening days are from Monday to Thursdays and Sunday only, what I leaned later. Why not on Saturday? Still misery. Anyway, I had a chance to walk around nice and quiet surrounding woodland area. I saw some families with their dogs enjoying the place like me.

Hardy's cottage

cute tiny wild fruits, close-up view (ရႊန္းမီအတြက္လက္ေဆာင္)

Here are some more photos of Thomas Hardy's birthplace.

After visiting above two places, I headed to Poole harbour to take boat photos. As it has been 6 PM, all deep sea boat services had already finished.

Full set of boat photos here

Reference:

http://www.bluepooltearooms.co.uk/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy

http://www.hardysociety.org/

Evening walk

Walking under the sun with temperature well over 35C was the hell. When I was teens, my parents managed me to walk to school on foot for many reasons. I did not have a choice. It was a pain. It may be a funny thing. But it is true that one of the reasons I moved to England was that I really hated tropical sunshine. I have been traumatised by sun in Burma, not by military government.

In England, I do not need to walk in that way. Really nice. I am still not keen to walk. I may run. I may swim. I may ride a bike. But I did not go out for walking at all.

This evening is different. I did take 30 minute walk around my house, exploring surrounding area. Here are some photos.


Wild rose


Roadside flower


Name?


White flower ( I dont know its name)


A cottage


a farm


a stream passing under the mill


phone booth "Coin not accepted"


a pub


church entrance


Only church in this village. It is constructed from flint and stone and has a Norman chancel arch with a 16th century nave.





an old organ for Sunday service


Graveyard with recent funeral service. It looks congested. Maybe not enough fund. Personally I would like to lie in a decent space of land.


An old graveyard


church lane

Carpeting and Sunbathing

Since last spring, I had decided not to go abroad this summer after I was fed up with flight schedules, hotel deals and unexpected expenses that I experienced in my last trip. During my this short break, I just stayed at home. I did enjoyed lots of barbecue and wines. It was really nice until yesterday.

When I got up at 8, I was shocked to find out that the whole downstairs was flooded. The whole kitchen, the whole living room. The carpets and rugs had been underwater. I had to try to calm down myself first. The leak was from the connection point at washing machine. After securing it, I had to start very tiring carpet replacement. I removed all wet carpets. And I rushed to nearby Allied carpet. Fortunately, the one I like was on 30% off although it was still not so cheap for me as £7.45 per square meter. I finished carpeting this morning, gaining a new experience, but leaving me with some ache and pain as I had to moved all furnitures.

My house has already been equipped with smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector. After this incident, I was thinking to get anti-flood alarm if available at market :)


new carpet in kitchen


kitchen


Living room carpet.


view from rear garden while sunbathing.


a pigeon watching at me


under the blue sky I was doing sunbathing (I miss you darling)


Wild fruits


Next door neighbours trying to make friendship with me

Nearby beach

Summer time means more people going out. Beaches, holiday camps and caravan sites have been busy places. At the same time, there is a noise pollution with rescue helicopters flying over my area.

For me, I don't have too much chance to enjoy sunshine due to my work and education commitments. My organizer shows that most weekends have got full of appointments, on-call duties and "to do tasks". But last weekend, I was able to manage to go to nearby beach, where I spend one hour time. Here are some photos sharing.


Jurassic coast


A sea gull


I deliberately avoided people in my photos .




Dogs also enjoyed summer


ရႊန္းမိ ေမးဘူးလို႕ လမ္းေဘးကပန္းပံုတင္လိုက္တယ္။ Englandက ဒီအခ်ိန္ဆိုေနရာတိုင္း မွာပန္းေတြေတြ႕ႏိုင္တယ္။ ေပါက္ တို႕ ေမျမိဳ႕လိုေပါ့



feeding myself in that evening


fed a bird as well

Never Had A Dream Come True

The old songs always remind me of my past.

It was in nearly 10 years ago. We were in London. We enjoyed this song while sitting down in the living room at one late evening. And, we talked about our plans. We discussed about our future. Fortnight later, She moved out to midland. I moved to East of England. We are still friends. We see once a year. But we do not talk on the phone.


Lyrics

Ooh...

Everybody's got something they had to leave behind
One regret from yesterday that just seems to grow with time
There's no use looking back or wondering (or wondering)
How it could be now or neither been (or neither been)
All this I know but still I can't find ways to let you go

Chorus

I never had a dream come true
Till that day that I found you
Even though I pretend that I've moved on
You'll always be my baby
I never found the words to say
You're the one I think about each day
And I know no matter where love takes me to
A part of me will always be with you

Somewhere in my memory I lost all sense of time
Amd tomorrow can never be
'Cause yesterday is all that fills my mind
There's no use looking back or wondering
How it should be now or neither been (or neither been)
Oh this I know but still I can't find ways to let you go

Chorus

You'll always be the dream that fills my head
(Yes you will, say you will, you know you will, baby)
You'll always be the one I know (I'll never forget)
There's no use looking back or wondering (or wondering)
Because love is a strange and funny thing
No matter how I try and try
I just can't say goodbye
No no no no

Chorus

A part of me will always be with you...

Pay day

It is not uncommon that Burmese fellows working abroad grumble about how much they have to pay tax to both Myanmar government and the country where they live. Someone from Singapore claimed that he had to queue at Myanmar embassy for tax purpose since mid night. Weird!

It is true that Myanmar passport holders in Britain do not need to pay tax to Myanmar embassy in order to renew their passport. But every month, the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) tax taken from salary is too much for me. It is a sort of pain with the appearance of news about members of parliament (လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ ) are using our tax payers' money for their luxury items and mortgage payments.

This is the income tax rate for 2009. If you earn more, you have to pay more.

Income Tax rates and taxable bands

	2008-09	2009-10
Starting rate for savings: 10%*	£0-£2,320	£0-£2,440
Basic rate: 20%	£0-£34,800	£0-£37,400
Higher rate: 40%	Over £34,800	Over £37,400

After tax, another deduction is NI ( national insurance ) contribution. I think it is about 11% of salary. According to the law, you can claim benefit if you are not capable of working or if you become jobless after an enough NI contribution. But I saw many people who are entitled to claim such benefits without working properly before. Fine, this is the democratic country with full of human rights.

Anyway, for this month, the total deduction from my salary is over £2000. I still don't know how much Burmese double tax payers across the world are paying tax. For me, this single tax makes me suffer enough. I have loads of bills to pay every month. So I have to work extra hours when I have a plan to go holiday nearby country. That is one of the reasons I can not visit Burma for many years. I still believe that some people, such as KOM , are still lucky wherever they work at burger shop or warehouse. They can go back home regularly, spending packs of currency notes. Really nice life style.

Saturday Random Photos @ Town

British summer is what we were looking forward to. Now it has already arrived. Blue sky and sunshine. Flowers everywhere. People look happy and enjoy walking outside. Yesterday, I went down to town centre where I looked around and took the random photos with my mobile for blogging.

This is a small town in south England. Town centre is not really crowded. People smile easily. They look relaxed. But it is not a cosmopolitan place. I rarely see Asians and Afro-Caribbeans at work and on the street. Almost all are white.

On the other hand, life in London is hectic and most people look grumpy. In East London, many people do not speak English at all. When I went home during the weekends, it was disappointing. Some people had no nice manner . They did not seem to care the environment where they lived. The most annoying thing to me was speaking unknown language loudly on the bus and tube.

Some shoppers

A street entertainer

Entertaining with music

Fishing rods. We dont kill fish. It is just a sort of sport.

Fishing accessories

Photo frames

A British father

Nuts

A young lady waiting for something

with a best friend

A mother

Enjoying dog walk at town

No idea why these teenagers lying down on the street.

Street show

Street show

Street show

A young girl participating

Locals

A group of friends