Blog archive February 2025
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17.02.25 / 01 / looking better
Saw Mum today. Her hands and face looked much healthier than for months. She was bright and cheerful (no anger or worry), and conversational, although much of what she said didn’t make a lot of sense. We sat down for tea and she wanted to go to the shops to get the others food! But at least it was about food. It’s been coming for a while that what she says is only obliquely related to the situation or the question.
I signed a contract for the ‘short break’ stay. The end date wasn’t stated, they said it could be up to 6 months! This seems to take the urgency off searching for another care home, although we should continue for the time being. Here there is still the issue of access after the motorway bridge is removed.
However, she seems to be content and doing well at Woodlands Manor so I feel happy to leave her there a while longer.
09.02.25 / 02 / countach
While we're on the subject, this recreation of the Lamborghini Countach is marvellous. Lamborghini should be ashamed. Their own 50th anniversary version misses the mark by comparison - fussy and cluttered where the original was spare and angular. It's hard to improve on one of the best-looking cars ever designed.
09.02.25 / 01 / history of the motor car
History of the Motor Car (Brooke Bond, 1968) is a peculiar collection. 50 cards running up to 1968 but the first 30 are before 1930. Only five American cars and none after 1930. 22 are racing cars.
The card captions don’t mention styling at all and the appearance of cars very little. They go into detail about the machinery. One has the impression that it was all put together by a vintage car enthusiast into tinkering with engines! This is an emphasis that I notice in other (British) car books of the period - the kind of people who were writing them at that time probably did spend their pre-war youth tinkering with sports car engines.
The key development of the 1930s was that the shell of a car (and therefore its appearance) became separated from the machinery underneath - for reasons of aerodynamics, but then the idea of styling - that the appearance of a car could be changed year on year to stimulate sales regardless of the engineering.
I would have cards for the Chrysler Airflow of 1934 to talk about this, give the Citroen Traction Avant its own card not just an illustration, and maybe add a Tatra as a radical and influential development.
For postwar cars I would add a 57 Chrysler or a 59 Cadillac for the fins and to discuss the business of yearly styling updates. Maybe the Corvair, for its design influence and safety issues. From a British angle I would add the Ford Cortina - the future of the mass market. Perhaps a bubble car! All of the above to be achieved by omitting some of the obscure vintage cars.
In a way the 60s were a competition between the Issigonis idea of the car and the Ford idea. Issigonis was an essentialist - cars should be what they are, should have the most advanced engineering possible, should have the most room in the smallest space, should not be styled for passing fashions. Ford preferred conventional engineering, periodically refreshed styling to give a sense of newness, options packages for personalisation. Ultimately the Ford approach won, because it understood the car to be a social and aspirational object.
This was a subset of a wider battle between Modernism, seeking the essential, functional and unchanging form, and consumerism, seeking social positioning and personal fulfilment. This is something that nags away at me at the moment, because the turn to consumerism has been so damaging ecologically, in a way that a Modernist world of just-enough would not have been.
02.02.25 / 01 / watching to see if she is dying
The difference between illness and dying is that illness can get better or at least be stabilised. Dying is unstoppable.
I find myself watching hard trying to discern if she is only ill at this point - in which case we can pick her up with food and drink and care - or dying, in which case we can do little to hold it back. Once a person has begun to die you can only affect the rate at which it happens. You can’t arrest the movement.
I'm noticing the decline since I last saw her in hospital - the lack of spirit - the fire going out. I’m worried less about the physical decline, which we can do little about, but how she is inside - is she despairing? Hopeless? Giving up? What would brighten her mood or make her feel loved? I’m worried that she is in a strange place with strangers. We have to go through the assessment process but we have to find a way to make her be or feel at home again.
It’s not even four weeks since she went into hospital. It feels so long.
I had envisaged making her a new home in a care home, if that’s where she had to be - taking in some of her furniture, her ornaments and photos, etc. But there may not be time or chance.
