Sausage, bacon, and apple traybake with garlic butter green beans

This morning mum once again woke up feeling very unwell, so before I had even had coffee I was on the phone to the GP surgery to get an appointment for her. As I was number 21 in the queue, though, I had plenty of time to make and drink some coffee before I was required to talk to another human being¹.

After another long wait we finally got to talk to a doctor (a telephone appointment, which is easier for two people who can’t drive): mum apologised multiple times to me and the doctor that her head was confused, but she did most of the talking, and made perfect sense at that: enough for the doctor to diagnose a UTI.

Mum’s lucidity was clearly a good sign, as mum has had a few periods of near panic as her thoughts get scrambled, and I have to suppress my own worries that she might be heading for another period of delirium. Mum, unsurprisingly, doesn’t remember her previous period of delirium but it was one of the worst periods of my life: lying in hospital, in pain, with mum repeatedly calling, not really knowing who I was but wanting to hear my voice just the same.

While mum isn’t anywhere near as bad atm, but she’s not quite right, and having her repeatedly telling me she’s in pain, or how much she wants to be better so “everything comes together” – i.e. that she can go to church on Sunday – is very misery-making for me as a carer, as there’s clearly not much I can do about it.

One thing I could do was ask a friend to take mum and me to the local pharmacy to collect the prescribed antibiotics, and then suggest we all stop for coffee / tea and cake while we were out. I sat and watched the ferry sail away to the mainland, drank my oatmilk flat white (and I’m immensely grateful that the Isle of Wight has, a little belatedly, caught up with the decent coffee trend that started on the mainland 20-odd years ago), and tried to ignore the young kid on the next table repeatedly shooting me dirty looks for reasons I can only guess at.

By the time we got home my legs had a severe case of the wobbles, so dinner had to be simple, and I returned to my trusty sausage traybake: it’s simple, quick, and can be made with pretty much anything you have – this one had the last of the bag of criss-cross chips and a couple of past-their-best apples. I served it with some green beans, which I have discovered can be cooked from frozen in a hot frying pan in just a few minutes, with a bit of butter and some pre-chopped garlic from a jar added at the last minute. Mum cleared her plate, I cleared mine, and now it’s blog, coffee, and something sweet time.

Tomorrow is grocery delivery day, so it will be something interesting for dinner. I can’t tell you what as I can’t remember what I planned without opening my notes app, but I’ll find out soon and so will you. How exciting, hmm?

1. It’s not usually that long a wait, to be fair to them: they were having technical issues with the phone lines which made everything much slower than usual. ↩︎