My Mum, the Begonias, and Me.

Hello everyone. I’m afraid it will be a short blog this week. It is Saturday afternoon and I’m dodging the rain trying to paint the fence panel sheltered under the pergola. I have calculated that I only have twenty clear days between now and going to collect the girls from university to get the whole garden painted. Now, that may sound like plenty of time, but when you consider just how much work there is still to do in the garden and allow for the vagaries of the British weather, it is not much time at all.

What have I managed to achieve since we last spoke? Well, you remember my problems with the paint not covering. After eight coats, it looked okay. I am in love with the colour. It’s so classy and stylish and the plants pop with colour against it. Then we had three days of torrential rain. Worried, I went out to look. The gate and shed were okay. Well, I say okay. The paint on the outside of the gate had streaked off to show the old blue paint underneath and there were slight wear patches on the shed, but nothing I couldn’t live with. As for the bench … it looks terrible. The rain has destroyed the paint, all eight layers of it. There are great patches where the paint has been rubbed off right down to the primer. I’ve left it for now, but something will have to be done about it. Luckily, the fence posts and trellis painted with the paint seem to have weathered the storm and are still looking good.

Since then, I’ve only had time to paint the restraining wall of the raised flower bed that runs almost the whole length of the garden. I bought a tin of lavender-coloured paint. Upon opening the tin, a shocking pink shade confronted me. I stirred it well and painted on the first coat. It sank into the wall. I painted on a second coat. Better, but still very patchy. I painted a third and went indoors for the evening. It still looked pink. I was very unsure.

This morning, I looked out of the dining room window. From this window, I can see down the side of the house to the top section of the flower bed wall before it turns the corner to run down the length of the garden. A gorgeous deep lavender wall greeted me. It looks amazing next to the purple slate tiles on the ground. Very happy with that which is lucky, considering I have a whole tin of it and am planning on painting the back wall of the house the same colour.

This morning, I awoke to an overcast, chilly, and rainy day. The weather forecast was different depending on which one you checked, so I didn’t know what to do. I went out to assess. Under the pergola, it was quite dry and the fence panel under there was sheltered. I thought, sod it, I’ll get a coat on and see what happens. I could see there were spit spots of rain elsewhere, but it was dry under the pergola, and nothing was reaching the fence. I’ll go back out when I’ve finished writing this and try to get the second coat on.

I also managed to get three coats on the trellis spanning the width of the garden at the end over the past three days. I hate painting trellis. It’s so fiddly and you think you’ve done it all and then you step back and all the bits you missed pop up to say hello.

I had to work a couple of days overtime last week and of course, those days were dry and sunny, which was mega annoying. On Wednesday — my one day off between my four days at work — I popped to the supermarket to do a quick shop. Arriving home, I looked at my phone and saw I had a missed call from my brother, a voicemail telling me to call him ASAP, a text, and a WhatsApp message all saying the same thing. Call me.

Now, my brother never calls me, so this worried me. Quickly, I put the frozen food away and then the landline began to ring. I dashed for the phone, but the cat appeared from nowhere deciding she wanted in on the action and shot between my feet almost tripping me up. By the time I righted myself the phone had gone to answerphone in the other room, and I heard my brother telling me to call him immediately. I called him back.

Now, I don’t want you to panic, were his first words.

Okaaay. When, in the history of time, has that ever worked? Opening a conversation with the words — Now, I don’t want you to panic — guarantees that the other person is absolutely going to panic.

It’s Mum, he continued. She’s been taken into hospital with a bleed on the brain, possibly a stroke.

Alarmed, I questioned him but that was all the information he had so I had to be patient until he called me back later in the day. Mum had had a small stroke and was in the local hospital. Of course, this was the one week I was working overtime so couldn’t go to see her straight away. Anyway, I’m not going to go into too much detail but after conducting tests, the doctors concluded that she’d had a mild stroke. Things were complicated by her diabetes, but they were pleased with her progress.

I received a few WhatsApp messages from Mum herself, which was reassuring. Some of them didn’t make a lot of sense, but then, Mum is dyslexic so that is par for the course. Saturday morning she phoned me to say that it would be okay for me to visit that afternoon. I knew she’d been complaining about the tea in the hospital, so I took my thermal cup with me planning to stop at Waitrose on the way, pick up a few treats for Mum, and get a free cup of tea from there to take for her.

I’ve only got coffee from Waitrose before, so didn’t know what the tea situation was. When I requested tea, a member of staff had to go and retrieve a teabag from a secret stash hidden away from thieving customers. I put it in the cup and added the hot water and a dash of milk. I poked the teabag around with the little wooden stick that was supplied. I waited for the tea to darken to the right colour. I poked and poked and poked at that bag. I think the milk was full-fat which is horrible in tea as it makes it too creamy. I mean, who wants creamy tea for heaven’s sake? Eventually, it darkened up although still looked a bit insipid, so I threw away the teabag and the pokey stick, put the lid on and set off for the fifteen-minute walk to the hospital.

It was quite a hot day. I was wearing jeans, boots, a T-shirt, and a coat. I was carrying a heavy bag with a 2l bottle of water in it (apparently the water in the hospital tasted like feet), plus a ton of snacks and a pretty tin pot of roses. I had my handbag slung over my other shoulder and was trying to carry a thermal mug of tea. That walk felt a lot further than it usually does.

I reached the hospital in one piece, found the ward Mum was in and then found Mum. Now, normally my mum is bundled up like the Michelin Man in more layers of clothing than a polar explorer would need and is still complaining about the cold. I was surprised to find her lying on top of the covers wearing only a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved linen shirt. I soon found out why though.

It was so bloody hot in that ward.

Oh. Good. Lord.

I mean mega, the surface of the sun, felt like my flesh was melting off my bones hot.

I sat down and watched the veins in my hands pop with the heat. Sweat broke out on my forehead and down my back. My clothes were seriously sticking to me.

Anyway, I gave Mum the tea. She took one sip and pronounced it cold and so disgusting it was undrinkable. I drank it. I admit, it wasn’t the best cup of tea I’d ever had but it wasn’t cold. Mum has a lead-lined throat and drinks her tea practically straight from the kettle.

I showed Mum the pot of roses in the bag, and she looked horrified and told me you’re no longer allowed to take flowers to someone in hospital.

Since when?

Why not?

We hastily hid them in a carrier bag ready for Dad to take home with him when he visited that evening. I unloaded all the other goodies, and we had a nice long chat. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but she was in fine form, not slurring her speech or anything.

When I got up to go, it felt like I’d wet myself. The seat of my jeans was soaked with sweat from the ridiculous temperature. Why? I mean, why is it so bloody hot in there? Everyone was complaining. It surely promotes the growth and transmission of bugs having it so hot, and I thought the NHS was struggling financially. Turn the flipping heating down a bit, it’ll save you a fortune on the electricity bill.

I walked home, relieved to be out of that oven of a ward and that Mum seemed fine.

She was released Monday evening and so far, touch wood, she seems to be recovering nicely. I had to work on Monday and Tuesday, but I visited her on Wednesday, and she was bright and on top form.

Before I went to my parent’s house, I messaged Mum that I could pop up town if there was anything she needed and go to the shops if there was anything that had been missed off their shopping list. I knew my brother had done a Tesco shop for them the day before, but I know what it’s like when someone else shops from a list for you, there’s always something you forgot to put on it or they didn’t pick up. I had spoken to my brother earlier and he’d told me yoghurt, and Mum added a couple more things to the list and asked if I could collect her replacement contact lenses from the optician in town. Which one? I asked. Dolland & Atchinson, she replied.

Now, I’ve lived in this town all my life and pretty much know where everything is. I ran through all the opticians in my mind and where they were. The only one I was uncertain of the name of was the optician in the Buttermarket. Concluding that must be D&A as I knew what all the others were, I put up my umbrella to cope with the torrential rain and set off for the Buttermarket.

The optician was VisionExpress, not D&A. Hmm. Where the heck was D&A then? I phoned Mum.

It’s at the top of St John’s Street, next to the Cookshop, she told me.

Hmm. Was it? I knew there was an optician there, but I thought it was Boots, not D&A. I trudged through the puddles. I reached the optician. I noticed a homeless guy had put up a little green tent in the shelter of the optician’s porch. I tried to imagine sleeping in a tent on a hard pavement in the middle of a rainstorm.

I looked at the name of the optician.

It was Boots.

I phoned Mum again.

This is Boots Optician, not D&A.

Oh, well they must have just changed the name then, she huffily told me.

I went in and asked for her lenses. To satisfy my curiosity I enquired if they had ever been called Dolland & Atchinson. Oh yes, I was told, about twelve years ago.

Well, then.

Mum also asked if I could buy her some begonias. When I said I could get them from B&Q which is next door to where I live and so easy to call into on my way out of town, she said no and insisted that I go to the little local nursery she liked to buy from which is not so convenient to call at.

I went to the little nursery. The rain had been bucketing down for two days so it was a muddy bog there. I asked for begonias. They had no begonias. Someone had been in that morning and bought the lot. I went to my parent’s house begonia-less and wishing I’d gone to flipping B&Q.

Since then, plants for a hanging basket and some pots have been added to the wish list. There is a plant market taking place in town tomorrow and Monday. As I am going to my parents again on Sunday lunchtime, I will pop to the market and see if I can get the required plants. If not, I will call at B&Q on my way there. Either way, I will find those bloody begonias somewhere.

And now it’s late Saturday afternoon. The sun has come out and the rain has all dried up. If I’m quick, I should be able to get another coat of paint on the fence and maybe even a final coat on the raised flowerbed wall, so I’m afraid I will have to cut this short.

There’s not a lot more to say, other than the book sale this week is on Fixtures & Fittings, book two of the Blackwood Family Saga. Until midnight next Friday, this will be on sale at 99p for the eBook and £6.99 for the paperback — or local currency equivalent — and the universal purchase link is below.

http://getbook.at/FixturesANDFittings

I will also be at the Laxfield Community Market on Saturday the 1^st of June and at the Leiston Community Market on Sunday the 9^th of June. If you’re around for either of those two events, why not come along and say hello?

Take care.

Julia Blake