Is it pineapple sponge today?

Aubergine parmigiana with cheese and onion flatbread

Let’s do a quick run-down of the past two days, shall we?

Yesterday morning I had a GP appointment. The person driving me to the health centre was meant to call me the previous day to confirm the details of the pickup. He didn’t, which is why he scared the life out of a neighbour by banging on the door of the wrong house. 🤦‍♂️

I saw the GP, who thought the bleeding was simply an internal hemorrhoid being melodramatic (not how she put it, but that was the gist of it), but I have to do a bowel cancer screening just to be sure.

Then home, and straight into a wall of “have you ordered more granola, we’re nearly out of milk, the weather’s bad, I don’t know what I’m meant to do with Lady Friday this afternoon when the weather’s this bad…” (The weather was fine: grey and a bit windy, but fine.)

My attempts to rest and restore a spoon or two were scuppered by mum’s expertise in the manipulation game. She summoned me to the garden with “there’s something in this pot, you must come and look”. (It was a plant, growing where I planted it. What a shock. /s)

Then it was the classic “oh, I’m sorry, am I annoying you?” which is simply a ploy for me to fawn over and reassure her that that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if it is a little bit true. Just a little bit.

I was very relieved when, after a couple of hours of panic and multiple changes of outfit, Lady Friday arrived and dragged mum out for a walk. Thankfully they got back just as our grocery order arrived – not including granola, as my psychic shopping list failed to realise we were running out of it – and Lady Friday was kind enough to supervise the putting away process.

At one point mum decided she was too hot, so came into my room to open the door to the garden even though she was sitting in a different room and I would be the one sitting in the resulting draft. 🤷‍♂️

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Today has been, at least in theory, a rest day. Mum is still fretting about the dentist appointment on Monday, and wasn’t impressed with me deciding to play games on my computer instead of fussing over her.

The only highlight of the day was finding the photo of my dad which mum mislaid a few days ago. It was on my bedroom windowsill, where I have presumably walked past without noticing it a dozen times or more. Oh well, at least I found it.

Dinner was aubergine parmigiana with cheese and onion flatbreads. Mum looked at this

and expressed her enthusiasm with “there’s too much food there”. 🙄 After eating, we were left with one slightly under-cooked aubergine slice and half a flatbread. So not too much at all, really.

Mum is currently fussing over whether there is enough ‘nice food’ (by which she means mass-produced sweet stuff, which I can’t pretend doesn’t hurt my feelings a little when I make such an effort to keep her fed on proper food). This could be another long evening.

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1. Ooh, and an interesting little fact: this plant is called a ‘pink’ (it’s a variety of carnation). It isn’t named that for its colour, but for the serrated – or, in Tudor English, ‘pinked’ – edges to its petals. The colour ‘pink’ was named after the flower, not the other way around. Good, huh? ↩︎