mostly david ephgrave

I haven't really achieved much today, but I guess that's to be expected, considering the circumstances. Yesterday, I cancelled the last of four proposed work-in-progress dates on the Brighton Fringe, which was another run pulled to match my two shows on the Bath Fringe in April. This was a shame as they were put in the diary to help me work towards this year's Edinburgh, but in all honesty, I haven't written anything new anyway, as most of my time had been taken up with looking after my dad. I wouldn't have wanted this to be different - this was inevitably my priority, but it does leave me feeling unfunny and unprepared. There's still time to turn this around, however, particularly as I always intended to treat this year's Edinburgh as an unofficial Best Of, with the work-in-progress dates there to give me a chance to see if the muse struck, more so for the future than for now. The only potential issue is the lack of previews booked in between now and Au...

A lot of my day has been spent responding to some of the lovely messages I've received on Twitter after posting about my Dad, who died on Sunday evening. https://twitter.com/David_Ephgrave/status/1132945034637189122 It's too early for me to get a handle on it. The past couple of months - the past few years, really - have been overshadowed with the many twists and turns that went with navigating my dad's illness, which became particularly tough once he came home from hospital for the last time. For those last few weeks, his house was a hive of activity with carers, physios and occupational therapists constantly coming and going - along with endless Amazon Prime deliveries of the bits and pieces I felt would help make him comfortable - while my dad essentially remained immovable in bed. Now, I look in via the doorbell camera - because we live in a dystopian George Orwell-like future - and it's all silent. The response to my tweet in tribute to my lovely Dad (for he ...

I pulled up my dad's pants today. Happy birthday to me. It wasn't an ideal situation, even without the nudity. When we arrived at his house in time for a physio appointment I'd arranged in the hope it would help him become more mobile again, he was lying in bed in next-to-nothing, nowhere near ready to do anything. And all this while knowing exactly when we'd be coming over. At least half an hour then followed with me coming in and out of the room to see if he'd got himself together, which culminated in the pants-pulling-up when it became necessary. I wrote the first line of this blog on the day of my birthday on Tuesday and, being honest, things have got worse since then. My dad's grown apathetic to the point where he's almost unprepared to do anything. It's impossibly hard to see and so relentless. He never agrees to get up or actively respond to any stimuli outside of basic conversation - so no reading, listening to the radio or watching the telev...

I've inevitably cancelled tomorrow's work-in-progress date in Brighton as the situation with my dad's taken over so much I haven't had time to think about it. I'm hoping that scratching the show from my diary will open up time to think about next week's one, though in reality, my dadmin seems set to overwhelm all other plans at the moment. On top of this, a load of interwoven Mostly Comedy work that had to be completed very quickly has taken up what little brain space I had left. My main motivation right now is my dad's safety, but it's proving hard to keep on top of this when he's become so lapse with the basics. Today, my aunt and uncle went over to visit to report back their concerns to my mum, who called me, asking if I could try to get hold of him on the phone as no-one else was having any luck. In the end, I pulled rank by dropping in on the Amazon Echo I bought him primarily for this reason (I always give him the option to answer first but...

A pleasing byproduct of downloading the app for the camera on my dad's doorbell so I can answer the door on his behalf is I can now speak loudly to the village at any given moment like the God of Woolmer Green. While I say this in jest, being able to keep an eye on what's happening at my dad's house will bring a lot of reassurance. From time to time, it can be hard to get hold of him, which based on previous experience can be more than a little concerning; he's been rushed to the hospital now more than once, with the only warning being the fact we couldn't raise him, so for me to be able to see when the carer's visited is great. Anything that creates a sense of contact is to be encouraged. I demonstrated the app to him again while I was there today, in the hope he might take it on board and use it more often. The problem is his illness and inaction have made him so passive that he struggles to engage with anything, so the hope he might press the right...

Today, in a fit of usefulness, I assembled a hospital table for my dad. It was pleasing to be able to put something together that would help make his life a little easier.  The past few weeks I've purchased more than my fair share of items from Amazon Prime, in the hope of improving his current situation, with this being perhaps the most useful of all. His mobility's very restricted at the moment (so much so, we've had a hospital bed put in in his front room) so anything we can do to enable him to have some level of freedom without being hemmed in is a bonus. Keeping on top of things has been a challenge. My dad isn't one for thinking ahead at the moment, so my mum and I have been putting out a lot of metaphorical fires along the way, but slowly - gradually - we're establishing control. Everything has centred around making him as safe as possible; a carer visits four times a day, which reassures us, although this has facilitated a lack of improvement to an exten...

It's a measure of how stressful the past few weeks of sorting my dad's palliative care have been that I spent an hour looking at a page of figures today when I got home, unable to make head nor tail of it; it's like someone substituted my brain with Pollyfilla. The kindness everyone involved in his care has shown - from friends to medical professionals - has been exceptional. My Dad has a small army of loyal mates, all in their seventies themselves (who my mum accurately described as being, "Like the cast of 'Last of the Summer Wine'") who have gone out of their way to help him. But inevitably the pressure is on my mum and me the most as we try to navigate the difficulties presented both by my dad and his illness; it's a neverending one-step-forward, two-steps-back process that it's hard to keep a handle on, and the fact my dad can be a difficult patient at the best of times makes the whole thing rawer. In some ways, the busyness helps as it do...

I spent most of today in a corridor of Lister Hospital A&E, waiting for my dad to be checked over after an as yet-to-be-explained fall left him on his hallway floor overnight, unable to get up. Today's the third time he's ended up in casualty in a year - all for different reasons - so the feeling of uncertainty's become too familiar. I went with him in the ambulance after receiving a call from my mum this morning, who found him at the foot of the stairs when she popped over to visit. She initially thought he had fallen down them, which thankfully wasn't the case, but his initial confusion about what had occurred spelt worry as the last time he'd been this incoherent he'd received a nearly fatal bleed to the brain. That day was truly terrible. Thankfully today wasn't as extreme, but we're still worried about him. They've kept him in overnight for tests and broadly speaking they're happy, but I hope he comes home soon and reverts to his nor...