My Day Goes Haywire

The fabulous views of Sidmouth from Salcombe Hill where we had a cold bright and windy walk with a dear friend and her dog on Sunday.

Followed by hot barley soup and this melt in the mouth Dutch Apple cake at her home afterwards.

At 11.30 am Robin has his coat and hat on and walks ( or rather limps, as he has done something painful to the top of his left foot) up and down outside the front gate waiting for the lady from the Walking Group to arrive.

At 11.45am I ring Devon county council who organise the group and ask if anyone is coming. I have a bad feeling about it. No one is coming. There's communication breakdown, lots of illness, short staff and no cover.

Robin is very upset. I'm furious. My day's gone haywire. I can't just leave him so I cancel my coaching session, delay the session with my P A  this afternoon. We get in the car and drive up the A38 to Buckfast Abbey - via Ashburton as Robin wants to drive past the house where he used to do his  ceramics.

Robin's foot is bad so we don't walk around the Abbey but have a mediocre lunch  in the cafe there instead and drive home. At least the hailstorm has passed and the sky is blue and white for a while.

Back home Robin sleeps and I sit with lovely P A and we wade through a pile of paperwork and sort out things like writing a letter to cancel the allotment and filling in a form to send back Robin's driving licence and ordering a new water filter and buying a digital radio and CD player from Amazon as ours keeps going scratchy and crackly. It's old - used to belong to my father so it feels OK to buy a new one.

Robin wants to go out for a drive when he wakes at 5pm but I say no - I'm already knackered. I offer to make biscuits with him instead to compensate for his disappointment. He can't help with the biscuits anymore because of his hands. He drinks a cup of tea and eats a plate of chopped up pear and banana. 

He seems depressed and everything he does is excruciatingly slow. He says he's going back to bed. I say he must stay in his clothes. I won't dress him and undress him six times a day anymore. Another yes to me.

When we were going up to Sheffield last week we stopped at the Gloucester Services and Robin had a giant cookie half dipped in chocolate which he loved and asked me to make some at home.

They aren't the same but this is my version that I baked for him tonight - a basic Anzac biscuit recipe - I added orange zest and candied peel to the coconut and oat mixture -  and then dunked them in melted dark chocolate.

 He had one after supper and gave it his stamp of approval.

But tonight as we sit on the sofa and I translate bits of the news for him I notice that even though his  arms are so heavy and floppy now, his right hand feels light and empty on my knee.