Mini savoury muffins, roasted Mediterranean veg, and salad

I woke up very reluctantly this morning, prompted awake only by a quiet but insistent “meow?” from my bedside.

I got up to find mum was feeling a little better, and was up and about herself. I took the opportunity to check my emails, and found:

• One from the Memory Service telling me our appointment next week has been cancelled as the responsible person has had to go on emergency leave;
• One from the respite care agency telling me that my request to move mum’s Tuesday session 45 minutes earlier, to make it easier for me to get out of the house, isn’t possible.

With those two lifelines unceremoniously snipped, I reluctantly ploughed on with the new week. Thankfully, mum was indeed better today, and left me in peace to get in a solid few hours of work on my latest game of The Sims.

OK, it’s not exactly work, but it was nice to do something just for me, without constant interruptions, for the first time in some time.

This afternoon, our lovely cleaner Lil came round. As usual, she was cheerful and chatty, although obviously wilting in the heat. She finished all the usual areas with 45 minutes of her shift left, so I told her to just go and enjoy the rest of her afternoon.

After she left, I went into the bathroom and discovered the sink was less than sparkling. Then I went into the kitchen to start on dinner, only to discover that the floor was still dirty, the hob untouched, and a dirty baking tray still sitting where I had left it.

Worst of all, when I opened the cutlery drawer I discovered one of my new chef’s knives, without its protective case, blade upwards, in the drawer. I’m just grateful I spotted it before mum put her hand into the drawer and we ended up spending the evening in A&E.

Next time Lil comes, I’ll have to have a gentle but firm word with her about upping her cleaning standards and not being bloody stupid with sharp knives. I may revise my wording on the second part of my feedback, however.

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On a day where every source of help seems to have caused more problems than it solved, dinner thankfully went unusually well.

I cooked mum’s favourite Mediterranean veg, and added some ‘dinky cheese and onion muffins’ from Tesco. Much to my surprise, mum greeted the little savoury cakes with “ooh, they look interesting” and, even better, concluded her meal with a clean plate and “that was really good, thank you”.

To me, the flavour of the muffins immediately took me back to my earliest days of employment, when I would regularly meet up with my sister during my lunch break at a café which specialised in both savoury and sweet muffins. Their cheese and onion muffins were my favourite, and these little bites tasted exactly like the ones in my memory.

And now it’s tv – sadly no more tennis, but a new series of Mastermind (hosted by Clive Myrie, or “ooh, yum”, as mum calls him 🤣) might prove sufficiently distracting.

As always, I’ll see you tomorrow.