Chicken nuggets, chips, veg
Not so much a coherent post as a selection of anecdotes from my weekend away.
Friday morning I got up, all ready to go. Mum refused to get up, citing a headache, a stomachache, toothache, pain in her chest, and anything else she could think of that might stop me from leaving the house. My refrain became “I’m sorry it hurts, mum, but I’m still going”.
Once over on the mainland, I headed to a burger restaurant for lunch. I asked to use their loo before eating, but was told their bathrooms were all upstairs. “You can try the pub next door, see if they’ll let you use theirs?”
I did, and they did, but it was still up a step and too small inside for crutches to be easy to use. At least it had the excuse of being an old building: the burger restaurant was new, so really should have accessible toilets. Someone has clearly never considered that a disabled person might want to visit the restaurant.
I checked into my hotel using the automated check-in screen, then had to grab the key card and hold it up to the scanner for programming while pressing a button on the screen. Which really takes two hands, plus one to hold onto my crutches to stay upright… hang on, that’s not going to work.
Thankfully a member of staff saw my problem and stepped in to help, but again it indicated that no-one had considered how the automated point would be used by someone who couldn’t use both hands.
At midnight I finally decided that the noisy air vent in the ceiling of the hotel bedroom, which sounded like a helicopter hovering, wasn’t going to stop making the noise and let me sleep.
What the room didn’t include was a number to call in case of problems, and I wasn’t about to head down 5 floors in my nightwear to speak to someone in person. Luckily, the hotel had called me a few days earlier to check the details of my accessibility needs, so I had that number on my phone.
A member of staff offered to move me to a different room, noting that it wasn’t the first complaint they had had about the noisy vent, and “we should probably close the room at some point and get an engineer out to look at it”.
In my head I heard my late sister, who worked in hospitality her whole life, say “ya think?” 🙄
They refunded me the cost of the next day’s breakfast as an apology, at least.
On Saturday afternoon I headed off to my friend’s 60th birthday party. He is a keen cook and catered the whole event himself: multiple savoury dishes, ten or so salads, homemade bread, a dozen different cakes… 17 hours of cooking, resulting in so much food they had to borrow a neighbour’s fridge to store it all!
Amongst the guests was my friend’s granddaughter, who’s not quite 5. At one point I walked into the house and found said kid lying on the sofa, head behind her mother so all that was visible were two small legs.
I jokingly asked where the rest of the child had gone, at which point her head popped up and declared “I’m here!” with peals of giggles. I’m not usually a fan of kids, but it was really quite cute.
In the evening I went to the city centre and had a pizza, topped with olives, anchovies, and capers, with a rocket salad. So many things mum would “urgh” at, without any complaining or sneering, and at that point I decided I was moving out, no matter what.
And there I will leave our intrepid adventurer, so this post doesn’t become unwieldy in length.
For dinner tonight I simply did chicken nuggets with chips and microwave veg. Mum ate it without complaint, which is about all I was hoping for.
Now, as usual, it’s tv until bedtime, which I’m hoping will once again feature a super snuggly Suki, who seems to be quite pleased to see me home.
See you tomorrow, y’all.
Is it pineapple sponge today? 