Stuffed aubergine, tomatoes, garlic bread

A day of quiet productivity for me.

I ordered a birthday present for the friend whose birthday party I’m going to next weekend: a little ‘cake’ made of sweets, as he has an insanely sweet tooth. (One morning he came into work looking notably off-colour, and admitted that he had eaten an entire 1kg tub of Haribo at his voluntary job the previous evening. 😯)

I cleared the memory and settings on my old phone, and boxed it up to send back to the network that provided it.

I opened two recently arrived parcels, one containing my new backpack ready to take away next weekend, and one containing the new solar lights I bought to mark the turn of the path outside mum’s house so I don’t fall down it in the dark anymore. It also contained these, for which I have no use but liked too much not to buy:

Then I looked up taxi companies in the city I’m going to, and found one that specialises in transport for people with disabilities. I’ve saved their number.

I booked a seat for Sunday lunch at a restaurant before I come back next weekend.

I found mum’s nail clippers, and some nail varnish, and various other things she ‘needed’ the moment I got involved in anything else. There are few things more unnerving than emerging from the bathroom to find mum staring at the door, desperate to tell me she was looking for something “but I can’t remember what it was now”.

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For dinner I made a simplified version of this recipe. It contains tomatoes, which mum vociferously dislikes, but mum didn’t know they were there so ate it without complaint.

Then I shared a slab of carrot cake with mum, and am now regretting it as it had orange peel in it and my tongue now feels like it’s been dipped in acid. Stupid allergies.

And so to another evening, much like every other evening. This time next week I will, hopefully, be sitting outside a bar, somewhere in a city (not very) far, far away, with no TV blaring, no mum looping on her various sources of pain, and no walking on eggshells to stop the tentative peace turning into something less peaceful.

Sounds like heaven.