London one-way!

I’ve had several shifts so far and they’ve mostly run smoothly, although yesterday seemed a bit too much! …

I didn’t print a map out the other day because I was told the “London A-Z” was THE bible of streets, so when I got off at Highgate and realised I didn’t know which direction to catch the bus in, I was stumped to find the street name was not in the directory. And why was that? Because Highgate is the northern edge of central London and the map doesn’t go further, even though it’s only zone 3. So already I was calling work saying “Hi, I’m a new carer, the bible has failed me, please help!” Luckily I was only ten minutes late.

One thing to remember with the tube is that it is nowhere near to scale and the further out of London you go, the longer the distance between stations.

Well my 94-year-old client is sprightly and active despite being deaf as a doornail. But she is lovely. I got to make myself a cup of tea, and when I was making another for her later, ‘make one for yourself too dear’, so I’m a bit tea’d out tonight!

When I went back in the evening we had a bit of a scare. I couldn’t get into the apartment block for about 20 minutes and there was no house manager on duty, so when I was finally able to get in the door and down to her flat, I found she had fallen while trying to get up.

She had crawled to the door but couldn’t get up and I still couldn’t get in so I made my first ever emergency call, to get the ambulance and police over, but after talking through the mail box I calmed her down enough that she was able to click the lock open by jamming her walking stick into the lock.

Of course the police arrived just as I was calling back to cancel them, but they were lovely about it, and the ambos weren’t far behind either. Although she was adamant that she was feeling “perfect”, I told her she had to get checked over just in case, to ‘humour’ me.

I had plenty of time to go home for lunch, which is of course the cheaper option, so I stopped off at Argos and got a decent knife set for the kitchen for only 3 pounds, and a reading lamp for my room. I wondered why the lady at the counter asked me how old I am – 22 I replied, ‘why – do I look younger?’ Yes, she said. When I got the box home it actually says ‘Not to be sold to anyone under the age of 18’ – she was nearly not going to sell them to me! Haha Only when I plugged the lamp in, the damn thing didn’t work, so I had to take it back. So annoying!

My current late night shift was the only smooth part of today, and I found a quicker way of getting home, saving up to 15 minutes off travel time. So I’m plumb tuckered, mind and body.

Jasmine announced last week we are now starting half an hour earlier and finishing half an hour earlier, which I was the one person pleased about it. I’m used to the packed tube but I can still usually get a seat by Tottenham Court Rd at the latest. It’s nice to be home at a similar time to Lija, we actually got to cook dinner together on Monday night. I found this neat cookbook at Borders especially for students on a budget, not only with topics like ‘cheap eats’, ‘fast food’ and ‘meals for mates’ but a sweets sections, juices, cocktails, and hangover cures!

We did a great tuna bake, enough for two nights, because I was working till late tonight, and we’re making chilli con carne for tomorrow and the next – I’ll be working 13 hours on Thursday. I have a one hour shift every evening up in St John’s Wood, 9.30 – 5.30 Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Jasmine’s and twelve hour shifts on the other days.

We did a great shop on Monday night at Tescos. Last week we spent lots but didn’t get much out of it because it’s spices and flavours. This week we’ve got enough to get us through till mid-next week and only spent ten pounds each! Yep, we found the reduced trolley. Four tins of Tuna, 80p cheaper because the tin had a small dint; a large tub of washing detergent at the price of a small one because the plastic box had split; broccoli, tomatoes and leek past their shelf dates but in perfect shape; and in the evening bread goes down to 80p from 1.30. Hehe, we were going to do baked bean toasties next week, but I texted Lija today saying, oops, we forgot we don’t have a toastie maker here!

I’ve been having a few daft moments lately, like yesterday when I said to Lija, because we both had to wash our sheets, ‘if you put them on when you get up in the morning they should be ready for me to hang out by the time I’m ready to leave’, and Lija turned around and said, ‘yeah, but how do I get your sheets if you’re still sleeping on them?!’ Dah!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.