“Shrimp scampi” and pesto pasta salad

Another early start as mum woke up with stomach pain, which turned into an anxiety attack which had mum sitting on my bed sobbing that she was “so scared people aren’t going to like [her] anymore”. 🥹 I reassured her and she went back to bed, but only in the way a jack-in-the-box goes back in its box. The fifth time, I confess I pretended to be asleep and she, thankfully, let me be.

When I woke up later, she was feeling better and apologised, over and over again until that got almost as frustrating as the original wakings. Tomorrow we are booked in for a house call from a doctor, and I really hope they can sort mum’s stomach problems as this is getting utterly exhausting.

---

I have been complaining a lot about mum recently, and I know you all know that it’s the frustration of caring but I feel I need to put out into the world some of the many good things about mum.

First, she’s highly intelligent, and brave: at a time when there were very few women in STEM careers, mum did an A-Level in chemistry and became a laboratory assistant at a major international chemical company. (I’m not saying the name, but it’s almost certain you’d know it.)

She’s independent: her parents wanted her to marry the boy next door (or at least in the next road), the son of their closest friends, but mum wasn’t interested. She went out with a few men, and eventually fell for a kind, goofy colleague who turned out to be… yep, the son of her parents’ friends. I guess some things are just meant to be.

She’s an immensely talented singer, taking part in a choir competition held in the Royal Albert Hall. I would love to tell you more about that, but I barely remember it and mum, sadly, doesn’t remember it at all. What I do remember is a fond memory my sister and I loved to recall, of the time we went on holiday to Wales and the local pub where we ate dinner was having a karaoke night. The pub regulars cajoled mum into taking a turn, and she chose “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. As mum’s gorgeous voice rang out across the room, all conversation stopped so everyone could listen, and my sister and I had never been prouder of our mum.

Limited by her anxiety, mum stopped taking part in her church singing group, but if she happens to have the television on for Songs of Praise she will sometimes sing orhum along, and her voice is as good as it ever was.

Changing the subject almost completely, this morning mum didn’t want to go out in the garden alone, and asked me to go with her. I sat on one of the garden chairs and took the photo above. Earlier this year I discovered a pot with a cluster of leaves growing in it, and gave it some water out of curiosity to see what it would grow into. The answer turns out to be this weirdly attractive plant, which Google Lens informs me is a Pineapple Lily, and I think I’m going to keep it.

Dinner was “shrimp scampi”, from an American recipe I found online. To a British person that name sounds a bit silly, if not tautological: over here, ‘shrimp’ are small prawns, and ‘scampi’ are big prawns which have been coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried, so the name would just mean “prawn prawns”.

However in the US, I have learned from watching too many American food videos on YouTube, ‘scampi’ refers to any protein cooked in garlic butter, so you can have chicken scampi as well as the prawn (shrimp) variety.

Very tasty it is too, particularly poured over salad so the garlic butter provides a dressing for the leaves. I added some ready-made pasta salad for bulk, and it was delicious. Mum said she thought she’d taken too much, but ate it all – a good thing as she’s not eating much generally atm.

And so to the end of another day. Mum has been looking forward to watching The Repair Shop all day and, now it’s on, she’s disappeared to brush her teeth, look for birds, and generally do anything except watch the programme. Oh well, I might as well watch it now it’s on.

See you tomorrow!