Cheese and leek fish bake, chips, sweetcorn

I’ll keep this short as it’s getting late and I’m stupidly tired, and I have to get up early tomorrow as someone is coming to have another go at fixing our perma-leaking boiler.

Today was a good day, except for a couple of hours mid-afternoon when mum suddenly lost her grip on everything: the time – ten past four – somehow became ten past Sunday, and when was she going to “that place” (church), and she’d been “out [vague waving]” (which I eventually interpreted as meaning the garden) and none of her friends were there, and had she done something to upset them as she hadn’t seen anyone in weeks, and what happened to the friend who was meant to be taking her out, she hadn’t even spoken to her in…

“You talked to her on the phone a couple of hours ago, mum.” After a while she snapped out of it, with many apologies for whatever she had said (I assured her that apologies weren’t needed – it’s not like she does it on purpose), but I remain concerned about a meeting with a solicitor that’s scheduled for Thursday and which relies on mum showing she has the mental capacity to make her own legal decisions. During her good periods there’s no question of her competence; during bad ones I wouldn’t dare leave her alone, and there’s no way of knowing which you’re going to get at any time. Send us all your good wishes, please: I think we’re going to need them.

In other news from the day, I released an iced shut freezer drawer (warm water, a blunt knife, and some equally blunt force), did a meal plan and a grocery order, ordered wild bird food, and loaded up the fridge with the contents of my latest snack delivery.

Dinner, unsurprisingly, was of the beige (or, if you’re nice like mum, yellow) ready-made variety and, equally unsurprisingly but a touch depressingly, got an enthusiastic thumbs up from mum. (I agree, though, that the fish in sauce, from Young’s Gastro range, was very nice.)

And there I finish today, with some hot Ribena, some fridge-cold chocolate, and maybe a chapter or two of my book, if I can make myself care who killed the victim. See you early tomorrow, everyone.