Wednesday and I am up early downing muesli and a coffee before I set off to London by 6:30am. I know the way to my sisters house in London by heart and slip into automatic as I zip down the M1. I make really good time and I am at my sisters front door by just after nine o’clock. I wait for her to get ready and at 10 o’clock the taxi arrives to take us to the medical centre where she is booked into have a scan. Its a relatively short journey but I am glad I am not driving. I grew up in this area and although the street names are the same they look very different. So much has changed adn so much gone. The George and Dragon where I used to go to see the John Williams Big Band play at the jazz club has gone. The place is filed with people oblivious to their own safety as they lunge across the road in front of the taxi. There are racks of electric scooters and the frenetic pace at which everyone is dashing about or shuffling about is horrific. I loathe London and I am reaffirmed in my youthful decision to leave it as soon as possible.

We arrive at the medical centre and book in. We are early so we wait quietly in the waiting area watching a young mum teach her two girls simple maths. A clinician appears and calls my sister in. I help her to the scan room adn leave her with the technician to do the scan. An hour later she reappears and calls me in to collect my sister, and we leave sit sit in the waiting area while I summon a taxi. It is the same driver who brought us who arrives to take us back. The return journey is more direct and although I know the places we pass so many of them have changed and with that much of the richness of my memories. It is as if the reality of now cannot support the memories I hold. It is to be expected this erosion of synchronicity between person and place. We arrive back at my sisters house and she rests on the sofa while I pop out and do a bit of food shopping for her. I make her a simple lunch and we chat. Because of her breathlessness it is difficult to keep things tidy and we talk about the possibility of getting some help for a while. At three o’clock I take my leave so that I can miss the traffic out of London. I leave my sister resting on her sofa and drive home. Its a difficult drive due to an accident on the motorway so the journey home takes me almost double the time of the morning journey. I get home, my partner is out with a friend so my daughter and I eat Indian takeaway and I watch football. I am tired from the day and soon go to bed when my partner and friend return from their meal. I find London tiring and difficult. I try to ring my sister once I am home but there is no answer, I assume she is asleep as she has had a long and tiring day.

Thursday I wake up with a start as I realise I have a meeting in two minutes, so its a very quick coffee and I am in front of my laptop. The meeting is a regular team meeting and it is full of routine updates and discussions about services, assessments and some logistics of service delivery. At the end I stay on line and chat to a colleague who is going to be driving up to watch his team Rangers play for a place in a semi final of a European football competition. I to am looking forward to watching Leicester on TV trying to achieve a similar feat. At lunchtime my partner and I walk around the village and I discuss with her my experience of going to London and ideas about how my sister might get help given her situation. We return to lunch and I decide to contact social services to see if they will do an assessment of need for my sister on the off chance that they might be able to provide some temporary assistance to her. I fill in a form and submit it and I email my sister to let her know what I have done. I spend a little time in the Shed. The football is an early kick off so I feed the hedgehog and settle down to watch the two matches I am interested in. It is an exciting night, my friends team wins as do Leicester. It is a good night. I find myself feeling vert tired, I’ve messaged and talked to a several people today about my London visit and have received kind advice from them all. I go to bed still full of thoughts about London, my childhood and the house where I was born and grew up.

Friday, I am woken up by a cheery partner eager to get off on our weekend break to see our youngest daughter and her partner. I am made toast in bed as a treat before I get up, shower, pack and prepare to travel. I of course make sure the hedgehog is fed. We set off, fill up with petrol and find our way to the motorway. It goes well till we hit junction 5 on the M5, its a slow drag through the road works, I am slightly worried that my wine gum stock will not last. It does and we arrive later than expected at our daughters in time for a late lunch sandwich and coffee. We sit in the sunshine of their back garden and we watch our daughters partner work hard to drain a pond as a starting point of reclaiming the garden. We sit and chat till late afternoon when we leave to go and check into our hotel. The Speech House is set in the middle of the forest and is still the place where the wards of the forest meet. Our room is excellent, we unpack and then take a nap. We return to our daughters and eat a delicious tea of pie and pudding. We sit and chat and catch up. Eventually we return to the hotel where I come to bed and catch up with the blog. I finally feel that I can rest for a while.