the sims

I've never played "The Sims" but I imagine if you had a malfunctioning version of the game it would feel like today did for me, instructing Mum remotely by phone. This weekend Mum found a cheque, lost it, had to be told to look for it, had no memory it, rang the bank instead of looking for it but couldn't recall what she was ringing about, wandered off mid-call leaving the phone on and me calling out... and so on.

Today, the Warden was back on duty and I asked him to help Mum look through the pile of papers on her table. Some time later, Mum rang me to tell me that she'd found something from the Revenue but she wasn't sure what it was. After several attempts to describe it, I was fairly certain it was the cheque, so I sent her off to the Bank to put it into her account.

I rang Mum's Bank, later, and they told me that Mum had been there quite a lot recently, as she doesn't remember her PIN correctly and has to come into the Bank to get cash instead. They're mailing out a fresh reminder to her. Interestingly, Mum's version of this was "They've stopped my account, so I'm opening a new one," which would have given me a heart attack if I hadn't known what was behind it. Meantime we've spent the rest of the day hunting for Mum's Bank debit card, which she announced was missing. At first I'd be calling every half-hour to find that Mum wasn't looking because she'd forgotten it was missing, then I'd get a slew of calls every 2 minutes with Mum announcing what was in each pocket of each coat, or telling me that she'd tried to ring the Bank about it, or angrily telling me that she NEVER puts the card anywhere but her purse (I've experienced otherwise). Finally, just now at 6pm Mum found the card on her table under the slush pile.

I've spent the whole day breaking down 2 simple tasks and making sure Mum did them. I've not left my desk, I've not eaten since breakfast. I don't think I'd enjoy "The Sims".