We are so lucky to have an international documentary festival in our city. This year for 6 days, 116 documentaries were shown. I was lucky enough to see some of them. I bought a DocLover package for 10 films. I booked to take Janet to some of them.
My first film was on Wednesday. It was touch and go if I'd make it. The temperature in Sheffield was unbelievably high for June. It was in the high twenties. On Tuesday I had hoped to take Janet out for lunch and see a film. It was hot and I was in two minds that it was a good idea but Janet was so keen it felt impossible to stop. We headed off to the bus stop with the sun beating down on us. As we boarded the bus Janet projectile vomited and a woman sitting in the priority seating took the brunt. I apologised profusely to everyone and took Janet off the bus. I cleaned her up with wet wipes, tissues and water. Then I headed home and Naila helped me change Janet's clothes. I then put a wash on. Minutes later Janet vomited again. We changed Janet's clothes again and I put a wash on. The afternoon continued until the momentum was halted with the arrival of carers.
I think I did six washes that afternoon. That night Janet wasn't sick. In the morning after the carers left Janet had Speech and Language on zoom as Community Transport had cancelled. Again Janet was sick and Naila and I had to change her. In the afternoon I had booked to see my first Docfest films, a series of short films under the banner, ‘Where we find Ourselves’. I really wanted to see these short films. I needed to leave at 2 pm and by then Janet hadn't been sick for four hours so I thought I was safe.
I stopped off at the Halifax Bank on the way. I have a credit card that I use overseas but I am having problems accessing it online. We used to have two branches in Sheffield. The High Street Branch has now shut but the Moor Branch is still open so I went there. At 2.30pm there were 5 members of staff. The first was doing meet and greet. The second was helping people use the cash machines. The third was asking people in the queue for their names. The fourth was cleaning the carpets. The fifth was on the only open till and was dealing with a man who was disputing a transaction on a gambling website. I waited in line for 10 minutes. I chatted with the two men infront of me. We all agreed that cleaning carpets was unnecessary, that we needed more tills open and that the High Street Branch should never have been shut. “This is Broken Britain” I said, “no longer GB now BB.” Then I asked the employee managing the queue how long I would have to wait. He prevaricated. I asked if it would be another 10 minutes. He said no, probably 20 minutes at least. I left. As I walked to the Showroom to see my short films. Naila texted me to say Janet had been sick again. So I rang and cancelled her massage session and then rang Naila who said that Janet was now lying in bed happily watching the tennis at Queens. So I went to the docs. My favourite was the final one, ‘A Story Left Behind’ by Asma Kabadeh. In it the book ‘Halima’ (that I used to use to teach Somali students to read) was unpacked by Sheffield Somalis as the life story of the first Somali woman in Sheffield. When I got home Janet was still watching tennis!
On Thursday I had booked for Janet and I to go and see ‘Writing Hawa’. Janet had a difficult night which was not surprising as the temperature had been 25 degrees at midnight! The Care company phoned me to say that many of their clients with PEGs like Janet, were sick. They had been advised that the heat interfered with the PEG internally and caused vomiting. Indeed one client had been hospitalised. So Janet stayed home on strict instructions to drink lots of water and a limited amount of toast! ‘Writing Hawa’ was a fabulous story of an Afghan woman's aim for her mother, Hawa, to learn to read. This all plays out as the Taliban take control of Afghanistan. In the Question & Answer session at the end of the film, the director, Hawa's daughter, Najiba Noori, urged us to visit the website, writinghawa.com where I was able to volunteer to teach Afghan girls and women online. Too often when you watch films you feel impotent, it felt good to be able to do something proactive for a change.
I saw other films too at Docfest but also missed others that I would have seen with Janet. This evening I saw my final film ‘A domain sur la lune’ a French film about a hospice using a horse, Peyo, in end of life care. Incredibly moving.