OUT AND ABOUT

Having been confined to the kitchen yesterday I decided to take the buggie out for a spin, I needed some sweet potatoes for tomorrow's dinner and some more gelatine. My son brought me tea this morning, he is so good to his old mum. Last night I thought he was coming down with a cold but this morning I listened to his cough and knew at once what the matter was. Last week his doctor put him on a new medication for his hypertension, I have the same problem and a couple of years ago I was also put on this drug. At first I felt as if I was starting a cold, then I began to feel that there was something like a fish bone stuck in my throat, As the weeks went by and the dosage was increased the cough became worse, I could not swallow without coughing and in the end I coughed so much that I ruptured a blood vessel in my throat and that was a bit scary.

This went on for about a year and during this time I was sent for chest x-rays E.C.G, scans and was generally poked about by numerous consultants. In the end I was in a state of such physical exhaustion that it took months for me to recover. It turned out that I was suffering an allergic reaction to the medication and when I stopped taking the tablets the cough went away in a couple of days. I was pretty damned cross as you can imagine as this was a known side effect, rare but I would have expected one of the learned physicians who saw me to have known about it. At least I shall be able to spare my son this nightmare, he is going to stop taking it for a day or two and see what happens.

Back to my trip out, after a breakfast of kippers and bread and butter I left Pa resting and shot off to Tesco, not much of a trip perhaps but to me it is wonderful to be able to go any where without needing a taxi. On the way to the shop I had a fight with a cyclist, who ran into my buggie from behind, and in the supermarket was crashed into again by a twit pushing a huge cart of bread too tall to see over while talking on his mobile, these days going shopping is like taking part in an extreme sport, still it spices up a dull day. I treated myself to a couple of tops, one cream and one khaki, they were two for eight pounds, I always was a spendthrift. The fresh air worked wonders and I even got home before the rain started again. Pa made me a coffee and then I finished off the preparation for the soup using the chicken stock I made yesterday and some fresh vegetables to which I added split peas, lentils, and barley.

Just before serving I added a carton of crème fraiche which made it deliciously creamy and gorgeous with slices of well buttered bread, perfect for a rainy evening. We had orange jelly to finish, perhaps a hot apple pie would have been more appropriate but we ate it all up just the same. The cat Twiggy is getting very tired of the rainy weather, it always takes her a few weeks to reconcile herself to the change when summer ends but it will not be long before she remembers the delights of sleeping on the bed all day or curling up on the radiator shelf. She loves comfort, who doesn't. She has a habit of turning up in some very unlikely places, such as the top shelf of the linen cupboard or in the potato basket, I once found her curled up on the lavatory seat, I can't think why? Cats are a law unto themselves, there is an old saying “Dogs have owners, cats have staff.” In the case of our cat that is perfectly true.