Wednesday and I wake late, about 9 o’clock with a sense of a lot to do. I get breakfast and set about downloading a couple of reports that I need to read and comment on. I get my washing on take a call from a friend who has been to a school celebration and is crossing town to deliver things to her colleague. As much as I try I cannot find the date I booked my car in for an MOT so I ring the garage and get them to look it up. Tuesday the 31st. I then ask if they can look at my grinding brake and they say “drop it down”. We chat a bit about being able to get there and back and they decide to led me a car. So I drive gingerly to the garage and equally carefully back in a diesel VW polo with 92000 on the clock. I had a moment of panic when I could not find the start button and then spotted the key port, how old fashioned. Once home I put washing in the tumble dryer and the new crockery in the dishwasher for its first clean. That went well and I was later able to junk the old crockery and install the new. It was a strange kind of satisfaction.
1st wash pre use 
The satisfaction of the new
I settled down to read reports and to start making notes on them. Once I get into them time passes quickly as I scroll through the report picking up discrepancies and cross checking issues. The garage calls whilst I am on another call. My brakes won’t be ready till tomorrow and the garage owner is not keen on me using his car and leaving it at the train station for a day. We agree that he will deliver my car and pick his up while I get a taxi into the station. This is a whole new challenge as booking a taxi locally proves to be more than tricky. Eventually I install an App and book a taxi for eight in the morning. At this point my partner appears and tells me that her mother’s carer has just packed up and left in a taxi leaving her mother on her own with no one to look after her. There is a frantic period of desperately trying to get the care agency to find a solution quickly. This all goes on as we try to be good hosts to our guest who has arrived and is staying the night. There are many calls and texts between family and agency. Eventually we cook and eat a meal and the agency finally find someone to be with my partners mother for the night. We reach a point of semi calm and I am able to get my partner and her friend into the lounge with a bottle of prosecco and time to talk. I clear the kitchen and retreat to the bedroom to write the blog.
I cannot believe that anyone would walk out and leave a 92 year old vulnerable person alone, unfed and scared, without any warning or thought for the consequences. I am sure there will be reasons and explanations but that kind of cavalier abandonment of someone whose well being has been entrusted to you is callous, cold and the act of someone who is losing, or has lost touch with humanity.
