I’ve been getting stuck in to AI.

Who’d ever’ve thought it ?

I figured that since there was an absolute SHITLOAD of researching to be done, it might as well be done by ‘someone’ to whom research is bread-&-butter. And I was right.

I’ve been discovering all the traps for young (and old) players when utilizing AI. ALL of  ’em. The one I come across most often is the one that says “You have to be really careful of asking the right question”. Also the one that states “When formulating your question do not waffle“. There are, of course, many more such pointers; but that pair constitutes my worst failings – a fact of which I suspect you are already aware …

So. After having constructed a list through my AI’s workings (mine, btw, is Copilot – it’s Microsoft’s – who I familiarly call ‘CP’) I played around with the approach email CP had come up with and rolled up my sleeves. The ensuing email attack didn’t generate a lot of responses: if I remember correctly, I had two. The first was an almost instant rejection from a small company that told me its premises were full; and there was not a word regarding waitlists. The second was a very pleasant response in the negative from a much larger group, advising that they don’t allow pets. Then a whole big lot of silence.

What, specifically, was I asking for ? – and from whom …?

Ay, there’s the rub: I had done my best to decide whether ’tis nobler in the mind* – or more sensible in the fact – to go for Independent Living Units or Residential Aged Care, and had plumped for the former, not the latter (as previously indicated). “I shall be able to go on living as I do: cooking, doing my own washing, and so forth”, I had concluded. “It won’t be all that different from how things have been since Chic died.” Yes, becoming informed about ILUs had greatly cheered me in the context of my approaching need for safety. And then, gradually, something wormed its way into the ancient brain: a feeling of familiarity with that phrase, Independent Living Unit … ILU … why did it seem as if I actually knew it ?

*OKOKOK ! - I'll stop now.

Light dawned. It was because I had spent 18 months or so LIVING IN AN ILU down in Geelong !!!

It was an extremely pleasant little unit, one of 8, in the grounds of a large organization called MACS – Multicultural Aged Care Services – which comprised these eight ‘bottom level’ units, a two-storeyed building for those needing the next level of care when it became necessary, and by far the largest section, the actual aged care part for those limited to their beds. Shit a brick ! – how had I forgotten ?

Deliberately. I’d put MACS out of my head because I’d hated living there. It wasn’t the unit, or anything about the construction or the environment: it was that I had never felt so much like a freeloader, never been made so aware of living in a place that was only temporarily mine. Rules. Regulations. It was like being back in boarding-school. People would simply turn up: my split system had to be cleaned monthly, so the bloke who had the contract would just arrive and knock on the door at any time. Yes I could buy something nice to eat from the cafe and yes it could be that day’s hot meal that was being served to the bed-ridden; but no I was not to take it back to my unit to eat. And when I, all unknowing, did just that, one of the staff arrived at my door to tell me to take it back to the cafe. All the units’ mail was delivered to the main building, whence we went, queued and were eventually handed it; and the woman in charge was a known termagant who had to be handled with kid gloves, and it was exhausting. When the unit next to mine had a leakage problem the plumbers arrived demanding to be let into my side yard for access to its wall; and there was no advance advice, just the unexpected arrival of large grumpy men (with large noisy tools) who were not very polite. I absolutely detested that kind of living.

You won’t have any difficulty, then, in realizing why I changed my mind about my direction of travel.

So it has to be that of which I had first thought – residential aged living. The bad perms and the false teeth. And there – just there, that previous sentence ! – you see one of my two worst (very worst !) character faults: intolerance. M-R Stringer is an intolerant old woman. She was, to be honest, an intolerant young woman, as well as being an intolerant middle-aged one. If you stand back with your arms folded and consider it, turning your head this way and that, M-R has spent her entire life, all 82 years of it, being intolerant.

What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not
that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not
what they say about their cause, but what they say about their 
opponents.
                                                    — Robert Kennedy

Only somewhat relevant: I don’t have ‘opponents’ but just people who drive me bonkers by not doing or saying or thinking the same as do or say or think I (especially when it comes to grammar !).

I have reached a decision, and it is to do my absolute utmost to stop being thus. That my way is NOT the only alternative to the highway.

How successfully I’m going to be able to manage this remains to be seen.  It’ll be on my own head: either I stop with the unuttered intellectual demands or I spend the rest of my life in my room with the Boodster, crocheting and mucking about with the Dell …

That’s the problem: I could do that quite happily … AND I’d be getting all my meals !

No ! I am not going to want to be reclusive. I am not going to want everyone to be intellectually superior. I am going to be normal.

I very much hope.