This is going to be a decidedly quick and sketchy entry. The details are personal, really, and only of interest to people who knew, know, my parents-in-law. It’s interesting isn’t it, how people embrace their different perspectives about people? None is wrong, so contradicting is ungracious and incorrect.

I’ve spent the last ten days almost constantly on the phone to official people and friends, far-flung relatives, service providers. For someone who generally hates using the phone – yes, really – I think I’ve done quite well. To clarify, I’m usually fine at task-related phone-calls, but when it comes to phoning people and friends it feels like I’m intruding on their private time and imposing where I’m not wanted so I don’t do it. Ask my friends: I NEVER phone for a chat. Part of this comes, I’m sure, from being dragged to the phone to talk to relatives whom I didn’t know at all in India as a child. Another part comes from when I worked for a small business and chat was expensive and coming out of the pocket of one person. Anyway, in the current sort of situation, you never stop to overthink.

Much of my time these last ten days has been spent on hold to the hospital and trying to chase down someone with authority and knowledge who would speak to me over and after the Bank Holiday weekend. When I eventually managed to speak to my mother-in-law’s doctor treating her for one hospitalisation, I was assured that she would not be discharged without consulting the doctors treating her for her long term condition. She was sent home the following day without consultation, and unsurprisingly went back into hospital a couple of days later. I know that the long-underfunded NHS is facing renewed catastrophe, really I do, but discharging someone who was not fit to go home has only resulted in another lot of wasted resources.

A week later we’re in a similar situation but I’m now in Edinburgh so can’t hop in an Uber to go round and talk to her Rehabilitation Assessors about her actual needs as opposed to the ones that immediately present themselves. It’s… difficult.

We have tracked down far-flung relatives and concerned people and I set up a WhatApp group to avoid constant repetition of the same phrases. Of course people want to know about her welfare, of course they do, but I, connected only tenuously, just don’t have the time to repeat the same hour-long conversation. 

In any case, the funeral is more or less in hand; my mother-in-law’s situation is possibly a little less up in the air and I’m here in Edinburgh for the next few days, potentially fire-fighting another family crisis which I’d rather not talk about here.

One day I’ll look back on this and laugh. In the meantime my Blood Pressure is any cliche you might care to imagine.

Happily I DID manage to reconnect with a couple of friends last week, one the son of my parents’ friend, whom I hadn’t seen for 23 years. It’s funny how even though so much has changed in your life and therefore changed you, you can pick up almost where you left off. I feel this too about my friend Alison from when I worked at Gulliver’s in the late 1980s, who moved to Hong Kong. She’s the friend I most regretted losing touch with and I’m so glad she hunted me down and accosts me with her presence every couple of weeks. She’s currently in hospital having had her pelvis broken by a careless truck. I know she reads this blog so *waves* keep doing the physio, mate and I’ll see you before too long. Mwah!

As I look back on last week, I realise that I have been able to see many of the people I most wanted to see, in spite of it all. Susan came round with pizza for a chat. And then there was the steadfast Sarah and David and dogs. I know you’re reading this so my little visit to yours was a place of calm sanctuary in a turbulent maelstrom of merde. I’m posting my picture of my second favourite flatpack here as it brought me so much joy.