Tuesday 23rd July

 It's been an exacting day.

Best Beloved has already got about 9,000 steps without trying. Walking into town first thing this morning to pick up my prescriptions (they weren't ready) and a box of detergent capsules for my father (he already had a boxful, we discovered layer) accounted for most of them.

A good deal of the rest of the morning was spent sorting out the logistics for the afternoon. My father had an eye screening appointment at the local hospital straight after his lunch. 

Wheelchair or rollator? We opted for the wheelchair as we weren't sure how much walking would be needed. Good call, as it turned out.

Which entrance to the hospital? I caused a lot of confusion for a while by looking up the site map for the wrong hospital... actually I needn't have put us through this brief maelstrom as my original understanding of the directions was correct. That's what I'd call an unexpected consequence of triple checking.

We discussed the actual process of unloading my father and me and wheelchair and my oxygen cylinder from the car, and waiting for BB to find a space and what we would do if he couldn't find one... 

In the event there were several spaces close by the enrance so BB was back from parking the car in no time and everything from thereon in went swimmingly. 

But it always seems that if one doesn't think things through, and leaves things to chance, then there's every chance that things will go wrong. Unless, of course, they don't. 

I spent some of the time in the waiting room working out the order in which the wires were fixed to the table

I came to 5he conclusion the order was yellow and green, then the blue ones, followed by the purple ones and finally the red. The arrangement is a lot simpler than it looks. One has to do something other than just scroll on the phone for all that time, and I'd read all the posters and looked at all the pictures. 

The waiting area felt curiously weird; half a dozen people sat around the edges waiting for their turns for any of (or maybe several of?) baby immunisations, diabetic eye screenings, an endoscopy, and maybe even to see the dietician. There was no receptionist, so each new arrival came in, wandered around, wondered what to do, and was helped by a fellow patient.  Every so often a memer of staff would appear and call a name, or ask if 'baby so and so' had arrived, or ask 'anyone for an endoscopy'? 

The system seemed to work but it didn't feel comfortable somehow without a friendly face behind the counter.

After we got home I made a Norfolk vinegar cake!

I followed the instructions (for once) apart from halving the ingredients and using a smaller square tin. And reducing the baking time. But apart from that....!

It's still too hot to eat. So that gives me a blog post for tomorrow then!