Cherries and Changing

Clematis at the RHS Rosemoor Gardens on Saturday. Many photos of roses will appear in the coming weeks.

Today I bought cherries in Lidl - £6.99 a kilo - the first cherries I've seen. Of course I can't resist them.  

They are disappointing though. I think of my niece in Sardinia who once wrote on her blog about  cherries in a bowl of ice..... and I wonder if that would improve them - ice.

The other problem is if you have eaten cherries picked straight from the tree in an orchard in Armenia nothing can compare to that. Their perfume and sweet flavour and biteable moreishness  are indelibly printed in my memory.

Any food on the table now has to compete with Robin's cough assist machine.  A new constant presence in our life.

This afternoon I waited for the phone call from the DWP. At least I sat at the table and worked on the computer  and remembered every now and then that they might call....without much hope.  Later, after she brought Robin home from a visit to Castle Drogo, my lovely P A helped me complete a draft of the marathon PIP forms - even if I don't have to send them in. But filling them out means I now have a record of the story of Robin's conditions and how they affect him. And me.

And how quickly he is changing. Last time we went to Lidl a few weeks ago Robin could extract the pound coin out of the slot in the trolley handle with his left hand. Not this time. And he couldn''t steer the trolley at all with his right hand - at least he couldn't keep it comfortably on the handle.

He did eat the cherries that I fed him though..... without coughing at all.