....Plodding up an alleyway with 'new' handbag swinging from wheelchair I told mum we'd not be staying out too long, just see the Doc, (mum) return of library books and pick-up of newspapers. She concurred. I pushed on... The snow drenched pavements in around the square were devilishly hard to get around but going at a snail's pace we eventually did our stuff.

Doc was a bundle of Spanish fun, asking all sorts of intimate questions, which I'm sure he asked just the other day, but being a well brought up person I didn't point this out to him. He looked gently at mum, his huge brown eyes sweeping over her tiny pin thin body and asked how she was feeling.
"Alright" mum said smiling
"Well that's gooood" he said looking at me.
I didn't let on that she's not really eating as well as she says, but I think he knows.
So with another prescription in my purse we said bye bye Senore promising to pop along in a couple of weeks for another blood letting.

The library had only one visitor, an elderly anorak man sitting hunched on a mauve armchair reading the Sun.

Mum as usual sped to the crime shelves pulling off half a dozen books she won't be able to read on account of her failing eyesight. But it's the act, the familiar act of doing what she's always done which comforts and feeds her. While she stared at the hardbacks I drifted around the cookery section picking up  two pudding books. Mr H. meanwhile perused technical type tomes.

We left for the co-op, the old man in the yellow anorak still engrossed in the Sun. (I once wrote to the Sun asking for a job, they told me to get qualifications. I was 16)

Co-Op.Blah. Spacious. Bright lights. Bread shelves with lots of gaps. No customers. No old ladies buying greens. No young mothers with crisps, yelling brats.
Rugged faced women manning tills. And a general feeling of what the world would feel like if/when we enter a new Ice Age.
I hated it.

Making a Shepherd's Pie for tea!






Tonight sees the return of Masterchef:)