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Cost pressures mean that none of the staff are native english speakers, and staff have pretty strong accents when in English speech.

It all works relatively smoothly,  but the default is to overide or ignore the patient's requests.  This is unsurprising.  But it has made it a bit difficult for me sometimes, to get through to them.  Their usual patient will have forgotten everything by next morning.

Sometimes one comes across a really competent person, who will no doubt supporting all the units.  But it can be difficult to get the required time  from them, which is very frustrating.  For instance it took at least two weeks to fix a tv in my bedroom, despite numerous attempts and promises by other staff, who turned out to be incompetent.

For myself,  I feel my brain has taken quite a time to relax, and to cope with a potential for bombarding me with images and sounds.  Once I cottoned on to its amazing power and stamina, I have become much more able to comprehend how it is trying to fill into the present all the things it thinks are important, wherever they came from. 

Imaginary ( ie repeats ) people get out of cars in the car park and walk to the entrance.  This quite a bit of visual editting!  I am rarely sure about pigeons, squirrels, in the trees.

I now reckon that all this is a totally normal function of the brain, and it is only the scale that is rather higher than normal.  Also my enviroment that I am in is rather limited compared to a normal person, and so it tends to be much more repetative.  I feel it is much better after lunch, and particularly after supper.

The food is surprising healthy and well prepared.  Much better than one might imagine, being fresh and healthy.   But it is somehow too clean and fresh, easy to handle and transport.  Oh for sardines on toast, hotpots, home made bread.

And one knows that every week is exactly the same.  However i am making progress in trying to stop them always adding two teaspoons of sugar to the cornflakes, and coffee not tea.

I think most depressing is the lack of visitors for many of them.  I cannot imagine them improving without more substantial stimuli and incentives.  I also would like to see them achieving simple things like feeding birds and fish, growing plants, etc.  Ie things from kindergarden. I am feeding the birds.

All for now

Martin