Yesterday, we awoke at 6.00am to another cold day and wonder what the day has in store for us. The day before had not been a good day for Meg, care-wise, as I had needed to act as a 2nd helper on three our of the last four occasions but this is all being logged from now on. As well as the normal clutch of reasons, some of them are weather related as one car worker had had a minor collision in the ice and snow and had to wait for the RAC to rescue him and another worker refused to answer her phone so wholesale changes to the schedules had to be put into effect first thing in the morning, Like the rest of the world, I suspect, I make myself a cup of tea and then have my routines on my laptop. But without looking for it, I came across this tweet which was quite an amusing start to the day. 'I used a 'gentle parenting' voice to ask my 4yr old daughter to rephrase her whining demand into a question that communicates she needs help and she said 'Fine. But stop using that nice tone with me'' There is the expression, of course, 'out of the mouths of babes and innocents' which is appropriate here. I looked up the original phrase which in the King James bible is 'Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings' but the exact phrase depends upon the version of the bible deployed. It always surprising how many of the expressions that we might use in everyday discourse emanates either from the Bible or from Shakespeare (although I suspect the use of phrases from these sources is lessening).
After I had breakfasted Meg, the weather looked as though it was set fair and Meg was half awake, so I decided (although it was a 50:50 call) to make a trip down the hill, pick up a newspaper and see our friends in our new venue of Wetherspoons. The weather was generally benign and with clear signs on the way down and whilst in Waitrose I bumped into our regulars who was doing a bit of shopping. Then we repaired to try out Wetherspoons as a little group and we were pleasantly surprised. There is a trite expression of 'when one door closes, another opens' and so it was today. Every establishment has its own way of doing things but the Wetherspoonss a fried egg, bacon, a Lincolnshire sausage, baked beans, and a hash brown. For an extra £1.56, you can add a Lavazza coffee or Twinings tea with free refills. So the cost of a a small breakfast (admittedly on a special discount in January) was less the cost of a cup of coffee at Waitrose so we each perused the menu to see what we might order for ourselves when next we meet on Saturday. One offer that I might find a little tempting is that one can order 4 pancakes for a fiver so it might be that we can order this to share between us at a minimal cost. Meg will only have a nibble or so. The automated coffee machines have improved tremendously over the past few years and Meg and I can remember how good was the coffee and hot chocolate from the machines installed in 'The Crown' hotel in Harrogate, the last time we stayed there. Also there is a system of perpetual refills once you have paid for 'your cup' as it were but I doubt that many would wish to avail themselves of a quantity in excess of two. So after our jolly little assembly, we all started to make our way homewards or where have you but just as we left 'The Golden Cross' hotel. the venue for Wetherspoons in Bromsgrove, it started to spit with rain. As walked up the hill, the weather got more and more unpleasant with an increasing precipitation of a form of icy sleet and we were both pretty wet by the time we got home. Meg bore all of this with a degree of fortitude I am pleased to say but when I am pushing the wheelchair I could not say whether she was awake, half awake or asleep. The minute we got back, the weather changed again and we had a burst of glorious sunshine but the clouds did close in again in the mid afternoon. Meg's 'sit' carer was there for her Tuesday session so between us we got Meg inside, divested of her wet coats and blanket and then made comfortable with a cup of soup and a heavy blanket. All in all despite the bad weather on the way home I think Meg benefited from her little trip out because her body was always warmly wrapped up. I remind myself that before the development of modern drugs, TB used to be treated in 'isolation' hospitals, normally on a high ground outside a town where the air was judged to be cooler but fresher. If one could afford it, then there was always a stay in a Swiss sanatorium and in the 1920's and 1930's TB sufferers flocked to mountaintop clinics in Swiss resorts such as Davos for the pure mountain air.
For lunch, I poached some mackerel fillets in milk and then a sort of fish kedgeree with the cooked dish added to some mushroom rice and petit pois. I got some of this into Meg but she was so sleepy I was a little worried that she might choke on the food so had to abandon the lunch half way through. This afternoon, I am going to carry on watching the series on life in Britain as the series evolve but I fear that I will be watching it to all intents and purposes practically alone as Meg is completely asleep.
© Mike Hart [2024]