Pecorino, tomato, and red pesto quiche, salad, tomato and garlic flatbread

The theme of today, like yesterday, has been ‘teeth’. Last night mum developed an amazing ability to liken absolutely anything to her teeth: a table, the weather, even the 15th century rebellion against English rule of Owain Glyndŵr. (The last was prompted by the archaeology programme Digging for Britain, BTW. And the logic of it escaped me, too.)

Today it was mostly just complaining, over and over and over again, that “my teeth hurt, no-one wants to help, it’s just that my teeth hurt so much, you don’t care, do you?” The background creaking noise was me gritting my own teeth to prevent myself snarling at her to shut up about your damn teeth!

Mid-afternoon she decided that she wanted some food, but “there’s nothing to eat”. I had to go and point to the entire fridge full of food, and the many boxes and pieces of fruit on the counter, of which she selected a crunchy cereal bar. The obvious choice when your teeth hurt, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Between downpours (rain, at last!) I agreed to go out in the garden with mum, largely in the desperate hope of distracting her from the aggravating loop of tooth-related complaining. I found that the brambles clambering over the old greenhouse had blackberries on, and the birds hadn’t eaten them all before I got there. Picking blackberries while using crutches isn’t easy, but I managed to get a decent number which I will shortly be consuming with some ice cream.

While dinner was heating in the oven, there was a knock at the door and one of our neighbours came to hand over the disintegrating cardboard box of meds that had been left outside their house by Royal Mail. The tablets inside seem to be OK, but I put the soggy box in the sink to dry out before putting it in the recycling bin.

From the kitchen came mum’s query querulous (or just passive-aggressive) tones: “I was going to ask you to help with my juice, but as you’re clearly too busy…”

The dinner that was heating through was a Tesco Finest quiche – with a filling that resembled a savoury custard more than a quiche, but in a good way – and a tomato and garlic flatbread. I had somehow forgotten that mum isn’t keen on tomatoes, but she’s just going to fill up on sweet stuff after all anyway, so I don’t see that it matters much once in a while.

My portion of the salad had frozen from being pushed right to the back of the fridge shelf, but I quickly decided that icy iceberg lettuce is actually quite nice – oddly refreshing.

And on that crunchy note, I must go and eat my blackberries before mum decides she wants those too.