The sun shone a bit today, which was lovely after so much dullness and dampness. E took this old blind chap into Berwick for a trip round the shops! Nice! But very tiring. This eye of mine makes me very dizzy because it doesn't behave like the other. It'll get better in time.
Bit more writing to post today. This was an exercise for my course and length was limited to 500 words. The idea came when I was sitting in a gereatric ward where M was temporarily placed once, due to a bed shortage! Heaven save me from a fate such as this!

George

It’s the same every morning. Every time I wake up and look around the ward, I feel depressed. There’s only six beds in here and it’s a nice enough room – bright and light - but a bit niffy if you know what I mean. Well, it’s the old chap across from me. Eighty-one he is. Every night he pees the bed and sometimes more than that – well it’s bound to niff a bit, isn’t it? And there’s him in the other corner. Jimmy. Breaks wind all night and keeps shouting out and moaning on about someone called Mary. Drives me potty!
It wouldn’t be so bad if they paid a bit more attention to us – like, if the nurses poked their head in a bit more often. Geriatrics, we’re called. I saw it on the door as I was brought in ten days ago. Geriatrics? Sounds like a disease. Even feels like a disease sometimes, the way we get ignored. I mean, I know they’re busy but if they’d just clean old what’s-his-name up a bit more often, he wouldn’t smell so much, would he?
“Morning George. How are you today?”
It’s that chirpy little nurse with the curly hair and bouncy chest. Always asking how I am and then not listening when I tell her. Smiles as bright as a sparrow but never looks at you.
Never looks you in the eye. And it’s the way they talk to you - like kids – George this and George that. I mean, years ago I’d have been Mr. Wilson to her, nurse or no nurse.
“Didn’t sleep last night.” I says. “Chest really hurt and couldn’t breathe at all well.”
“Oh dear George. We’ll have to see what we can do for that.”
Squeak, squeak - shoes across the lino, chest bouncing like always, as she goes across to old Jimmy.
It’s like playing a record. Wind it up. Needle on.
“How are you Jimmy? Oh dear, we’re all wet again. You’re a bad lad aren’t you? I’ll have to come back and sort you out. Soon as I can. OK?”
And she’s gone again.
The worst bit is, you can lie here and listen to all the coming and going up the corridor – people speaking and laughing and having fun – but it doesn’t touch us in here.
Here, it’s just lonely. There isn’t anyone left to come and visit me. Or anyone that wants to bother. Sometimes, in the night, it’s so damn lonely it’s like – it’s like a noise – a great deafening noise! I have to put my hands over my ears to try and shut it out. I get to thinking that there has to be some way over this - something better.
Like, beyond this?
I know I’m a man and all that - and it sounds stupid – but some nights, in the dark, I just lie there and cry my eyes out.
And still no one comes……