Wednesday

Took the car in to get it serviced this morning. Instead of getting the train home and then going back later to pick it up I decided to sit and wait in the dealership showroom. It was only a minor service – an oil change and an inspection – so they reckoned on it only being a couple of hours. I had my phone and my Kindle. As the sun was out I had the option of a canal-side footpath too. The result? A realisation of how much I missed a spell of peace and quiet and being able to read what I wanted without interruption.

I did make a couple of phone-calls though. At long last I finally got to speak to a doctor on the general medical ward that Mum was admitted to just over a year ago about Mum’s US cardio scan. They could find no future appointment for Mum and Dr B had moved on ages ago. They suggested I speak to Cardiology, I said I’d already done that and that they had said I should speak to them.

“How about I cancel the appointment at your hospital and give the letter to Mum’s GP. If they think the scan is still necessary then they can do a more local referral?”

“That sounds like a good plan”

“Thank you very much doctor”

Now that the car was no longer pinging at me to demand a service I headed off to The Home. Eleanor was in the hall when I was signing in and was chatting happily with a couple of members of staff.

“Hello You!” she said cheerily.

“Hello Eleanor! How are you? Have you been in the garden today? It’s absolutely glorious out there”

“No, I haven’t. I’m worried about him”

She pointed at the small stuffed toy in the basket of her walking frame.

“He hasn’t had anything to eat today” she sobbed, “And he’s only a baby!”

She sobbed all the way to her room. I could tell when she’d got there because I heard

“Oh no! Who’s been in here? WHO’S BEEN IN HERE!!??”

Mum was, unsurprisingly, very sleepy. I managed to get some sort of response from her at the third attempt but I hadn’t even sat down before she was snoring and unresponsive. This Sleepy phase is a lot deeper than the last one. My guess is that it’ll be longer too so I wasn’t expecting much tomorrow

And tomorrow was looking like a long day. A meeting with the management team at Mum’s new home in the morning and then back over at Lesley’s dad’s in the afternoon for an appointment to have his ears cleaned followed by a late visit to Mum.

As I was leaving I heard another kerfuffle in the lounge. The “QuietCallumWatch: Days since he’s asked for the police to be called because someone is making him stand up” counter was going back to zero.

Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely