Cataract Day

3rd August 2011 Wednesday

Now the sky is bruised with aubergine purple clouds and a hot wind is blowing through the house. I hope the rain is coming. It has been sweltering all day.

This morning my sister and I wheel my father through the doors of Axminster hospital and into the theatre where we leave him to be prepped for his cataract operation. He says he feels like a parcel being delivered. We have three hours before we can collect him - an unexpected treat. I feel the sun burning the back of my neck as we walk the short distance into the town.

The heat reminds us of our holiday coming up in South Africa next January and we sift through the rails of sale clothes in a department store searching for flimsy cotton tops - imagining it will be even hotter then than it is today. Nothing fits. So we cross the road to Hugh’s River Cottage Canteen and order char grilled pepper and courgette bruschettas for lunch and chat to a family of South Africans sitting at the next table. We ask them the best place to eat in Knysna where we’ll be going and they say we won’t recognise it if we haven’t been there for nearly fifty years.

My father is cheerful but tired when we take him home - his left eye covered with a clear plastic shield - to distinguish him from a pirate. He mustn’t remove it for four hours. I want to stay and help him - drip the tricky eye drops in, but he won’t let us. We leave him with a tray of cream cheese sandwiches, tomato slices and avocado pear dribbled with Lea and Perrin’s sauce. And instructions to keep his head up and to press his buzzer in the night if he’s worried.

I lie on the bed with my throbbing leg up against the wall and think about what’s in the fridge for supper. My husband comes back from the allotment with two pots of purple basil, a young stripey courgette, some yellow cherry tomatoes and perfumed bunch of frilly sweet peas. So I decide to make my own version of bruschettas with half a toasted ciabatta loaf smothered in buttery, garlicky, lemony, prawns and all the allotment bounty chopped up and tumbled in olive oil.

We eat them on our laps with the scent of sweet peas mingling with the smell of sauted prawns and the pussy cat leaps up on the sofa beside me, shaking rain drops from his fur like a wet dog. I wish my father was here beside me too and not alone in his room with a sore eye, awake in bed listening to the rain dripping from the window sills.