Or, Mission Not Complete

Leeks and ham in cheese sauce with bread and butter

NB: I started writing this last night, at the usual time, until WordPress played up and I gave up in frustration. Please adjust the verb tenses accordingly in your head!

TIFU, to use an old bit of internet shorthand.

Mum’s second medical appointment in a week was scheduled for this afternoon, and it seemed to be going unexpectedly smoothly: mum wasn’t nearly as panicky as on Monday, the driver turned up dead on time and turned out to originally be from the same county as me so we did some trading of “did you know [county-specific person or place]?”, and we arrived at the GP practice with perfect timing.

We went to check in, and the nice person on reception said “I’m sorry, but the appointment was an hour ago”. Somehow I had got the wrong time into my head, and missed the appointment completely.

By a strange fluke of timing, the lady we were supposed to be seeing (who mum recognised, to my great surprise (and embarrassment, as I didn’t recognise her at all)) walked past at exactly the right moment for me to apologise profusely in person. She kindly found another slot in her diary for mum (two weeks away, sadly, although by NHS standards that’s pretty prompt), I went to note it down on my phone, only to find said phone wasn’t in my bag.

Mum panicked, while I indulged in some serious internal berating, mostly (and I’m being completely honest here!) because I couldn’t use it to take a photo of an unusually ornate toilet that was inexplicably sitting in the entrance to the surgery.

(Later research shows that it’s the work of the Island’s own mysterious artist, dubbed “Boggsy” by the media, who deposits (an unfortunate word choice in this context) artfully decorated loos at various Island locations. The one we saw is the second photo in this article.)

As you can tell by the fact I’m writing this, I found my phone – on the floor of the taxi, where my fumbling fingers had dropped it. Mum spent most of the afternoon feeling very cheerful, pottering around in the garden, while I put together another grocery order, the second for this week, as I forgot mum’s fruit teabags in the last one.

Then I went to make dinner: it’s my version of an old favourite my dad used to make, although in his case the leeks were home-grown. It’s simply sliced and washed leeks (if you slice them lengthways first, then across, it’s much easier to get any dirt out: thanks to my chef BIL for that tip), with cheese sauce and chopped / shredded ham stirred through, then topped with breadcrumbs and more cheese and baked until golden and bubbling.

I freely admit that it’s not a looker, particularly once it’s been dished up, and mum showed negative enthusiasm for it: she wandered into the kitchen, looked, wandered away again, back to look again, off to get another drink (her favourite apple juice, which she drinks by the carton), back for another look, off to the loo…

Eventually she served herself some, took a couple of cautious mouthfuls, as even after all that wandering around it was still hot enough to rival fresh lava, and finally commented in tones of surprise, “this is actually quite good”. Success!

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Back to today me: today I have finally managed to persuade the GP surgery that mum most likely doesn’t have a UTI and giving her repeated courses of antibiotics isn’t helping her symptoms, and got her referred to the Urology department. Mum is already worrying about having to go to the hospital, but I’m just pleased we’re finally getting somewhere and am going to celebrate with leftover leeks in cheese sauce for lunch.

Catch you later, at the usual time.