Jacket potato with cheese and salad
Right,where did I leave things yesterday? Ah yes: pizza.
Sunday night was spent dozing then waking, dozing then waking, over and over again. Unsurprisingly, then, I was very tired and not in much mood for doing anything. I sat and read in my room until it was time to check out, then headed down to Westquay.
I had a delicious Sunday lunch at Tap & Tandoor, which they insist has to be pre-booked so I expected the restaurant to be busy. The whole area was strangely empty, though, and I didn’t even have to give my name as I was apparently the only person booked in for lunch.
Just as my plate hit the table, the volume on the big screen TV inside went up as the whistle blew for the Southampton football match. Well, that explained where everyone was, anyway!
Then back to the Red Jet terminal, where a kind pair of ladies let me share their table as there was nowhere else to sit. As I sat down, my backpack rolled away, out of my immediate reach. Another lady passing the table gave a disdainful sniff and stepped over my bag, leaving me to struggle to reach it.
To get on the boat, I needed help from staff to lend me a wheelchair and push it down to the boat. On the way to the mainland, it worked fine. On the way home, the wheelchair was apparently “not safe” to go up the entry ramp so, with everyone else queued impatiently behind me, I had to drag myself out of the chair and up the ramp. Very embarrassing!
On arrival at Cowes, I sat as everyone else disembarked, and waited, and waited, until I realised no-one was coming to help me. Coming down the ramp on crutches was, frankly, terrifying, and quickly turned humiliating when a young member of staff had to physically brace me to get me safely onto dry land.
All the Red Jet staff were lovely, and couldn’t have been keener to help, but the infrastructure left a lot to be desired. I will be sending the company some feedback, when I have the energy.
I got home, walked in through the front door, and mum full-on sobbed “I’m so pleased to see you, I was so worried, I didn’t know where you were, I couldn’t get out of the house…”
(I should add here that I had left mum a note on the whiteboard explaining where I was, and a piece of paper with the same information. She had carers visiting twice a day, Lady Friday visiting on Friday, Charolais and Walker visiting on Saturday, church on Sunday, and our neighbours next door in case of an emergency. She really hadn’t been abandoned!)
Later on, when she had calmed down, mum apologised for her reaction. The carer who came in to do mum’s meds for the final time that evening was able to assure me that mum had been fine and nowhere near as distressed as she had seemed to be.
That night, once mum had fallen asleep, exhausted from throwing every complaint she could think of at me, Suki leapt onto my bed and spent the night as a tabby-furred little spoon. It was totally worth the resulting face-full of fur I woke up to.
Yesterday morning featured mum punishing me for my absence with her usual routine of being ‘too ill’ to get up, suffering with various severe pains that she refused remedies for, and non-stop complaining. That I refused to play along with the drama just made her act up more. 🙄
Today she was OK, except for the conversational loop that went:
“When am I seeing Lady Friday?”
“This afternoon.”
“Oh no, I didn’t know it was today! We can go out for a drive, maybe? When is that?”
“This afternoon.”
“Oh no, I didn’t know it was today!”
Repeated about half a dozen times, until I was barely managing to hold up my end of the loop through my clenched teeth.
Lady Friday took mum to Tesco, where she bought a variety of sweet treats that suit her tastes and not at all mine. Which would be fine, except she then complained there was no ice cream she liked, holding up my sole ice cream Snickers bar as evidence.
I showed her the freezer drawer packed with her frozen treats, the additional box in the drawer underneath, and the drawer in the outdoor freezer also full of her ice cream. Instead she spotted my bar of chocolate in the fridge and wanted that, and sulked when I told her it was mine.
Then I served up dinner, let mum go first and take everything she wanted, only for her to sulk again when she ate all her cheese and found there was none left for her to have more. She threw the rest of her potato away, then filled up on sweet things – none of the ones she bought today, but also not my chocolate so I’ll take that as a win.
Tomorrow we have mum’s long-awaited consultant appointment at the hospital. If it stops mum complaining about her teeth hurting every two minutes then I’m all for it.
As always, I will let you know tomorrow how it goes. See you then!
Is it pineapple sponge today? 