It is a frustrating start to the week. Trying to find another dentist as my current one appears to have closed.
It was being run by a very efficient Greek chap. Now the doors are shut. Perhaps he has gone back to Europe. Who knows?
Then there is the morning trying to make an appointment to see someone from the bank.
I am advised by my local branch to make arrangements on the phone. Which I do. Only to be passed from pillar to post by an irritating answering system.
Eventually I get to speak to a human. And the good news is, I now have a meeting fixed up.
At the end of September, that is. Only two months to wait…
Next is the business of trying to get a replacement driving license. Yes, the old one is somehow lost, which is a bore.
A good hour is spent going online and filling in a form. Only to get to the end of the procedure to have the computer tell me that the ID I am offering – i.e, my passport – is not valid.
Computer says no…
And I cannot offer the other form of identification required – my driving license – because, well, it is lost…
My passport is valid, by the way. But the computer says no. So, I take myself off to the post office to get a good old paper form.
Like the good old days. When you could actually talk to people and not have to do battle with machines.
It is called progress. Buy at least there is less stressful news on the domestic front.
Mum is out of hospital. She was taken in a week back for a chest infection and is now at home and raring to go.
Mind, she was ready to be discharged. She spent the few days she was in amusing the ward by singing loudly and reciting the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Such exuberance may have hastened her release. And as I wheel her out of the ward, she has lost none of her spirit.
‘I’m sending you home to live’
My mother smiles at the doctor and asks him if he if sending her home to die.
No, he replies, I am sending you home to live. And at the age of 92, you still have a few good years ahead…
And so, our brilliant carers step in once again. I keep saying it, but they are amazing. Let’s hear it for the carers.
And let’s not hear it for the littlest MacNaughty. At six months the Pee, Poo and Chewer, as he is now called, is at that impossible age.
The latest casualty are my red suede shoes. The ones with the pretty bow on the front. And now he has discovered loo rolls.
Not like the one in the advert who just unravels the thing down the stairs. Bennie the naughty Norfolk finds himself a quiet corner and shreds it into tiny bits.
Then he is a puppy. And that’s what they do. Pee, poo and chew…
