Frutti di mare with garlic bread; chocolate melt-in-the-middle pudding with cookie dough ice cream

It’s been a busy and exhausting day today. In the morning I found a taxi company that could take me, my crutches, and my mum’s very unwell little cat to a vet all the way over in Newport¹. The little cat then took a turn for the worse, I called the vet to arrange an earlier appointment, went back to the taxi company and they couldn’t fit us in on the new date.

So I then spent most of the rest of the morning calling what felt like every taxi company on this side of the Isle of Wight, with every one who couldn’t help recommending someone else who might be able to take us. I did eventually find a company who can do it and which, thankfully, has very good reviews online.

By then it was time for lunch, which mum’s carer kindly made, although a misunderstanding resulted in a mountain of sandwiches when she misunderstood “two slices of bread for mum and three for me” to mean two and three rounds of sandwiches respectively (four and six slices of bread). I ate most of mine, but mum was so anxious about her medical appointment this afternoon that I barely managed to coax her to eat half a sandwich before she gave up.

The appointment was very easy, and mum has commented numerous times since how nice the person we saw was. I was mostly concentrating on not falling over my crutches and, once I was sitting down, not hitting myself or anyone else with them. Unsuccessfully in the second case, when mum leant over to give me a hug and I tried to reciprocate and smacked myself in the side of the head with the crutches I had forgotten were in my other hand. Rather embarrassing, although it gave the medical practitioner a giggle.

After all that, I’m grateful that I arranged an easy dinner: the frutti di mare sounds fancy but comes frozen in a block with its sauce and just needs defrosting in a pan to produce an deliciously-scented pan of shellfish and tomatoey broth. My first mussel made me exclaim “wow, that’s salty!”, but that one seemed to be an outlier as the rest were very tasty, and the broth was even better.

The accompanying garlic bread was appropriately crunchy and garlicky, and the Mediterranean vegetables (frozen, from Iceland, hidden under the broth in the photo) were fine: more regularly sized than the Tesco equivalent so there wasn’t the problem of some bits burning while others were still raw.

After a day like today I thought I deserved something sweet so microwaved a chocolate pudding (Aunty’s brand, bought from Tesco, good flavour but not as melty in the middle as promised or desired) with the last of the cookie dough ice cream (very good, would (and definitely will) eat again).

Which means I have now reached what I always find the hardest part of any piece of writing: the conclusion. It’s meant to sum up the content of the piece and provide a satisfying… well, conclusion. I can’t really come up with anything better than a dozy-brained and -legged hope that Star will be OK tomorrow, and gratitude that I have planned another easy meal for tomorrow as mum is worrying about it already, probably because it’s easier than worrying out loud about the cat when she has already discovered that topic makes me cry. I guess I’m back to the old “I’ll let you know what happens”.

1. It’s only about 15 miles away, a distance I regularly drove several times a week to and from work while on the mainland, but once on the Island distances start to take on a different significance and everyone agrees that Newport is A Long Way Away. ↩︎