Wednesday, 11 December 2024

Car catastrophe!

There was no lazing about this morning, and Keith and I were up, showered and out by 9:30 am. I treated my husband to a cooked breakfast at Frankie and Benny's at Riverside, and it was a lovely start to the day. We were on the hunt for something, but I can't say what as Sophie reads this blog!

In the end, we had to admit defeat and we drove over to Kettering. I had an appointment for Mum in the afternoon at a small hospital in Kettering and wanted to check out the parking. Bad memories of trying to get parked at Northampton General Hospital once have made me wary! As I expected, there weren't many spaces, so I asked Keith to drive us.

Back home, we barely had time to pootle about and try and do some jobs before we had to leave again! I'd asked Mum to meet me in reception, but she was still in her room when I arrived, so I was glad Keith could just drop us off. We drove the short distance to St Mary's Hospital, and would you believe I drove straight into a space! Typical! 

We followed directions to the part of the building where she was having "Hand Therapy". I'd had no leaflets or letters about the therapy and neither of us knew what to expect... it's probably my mind but I thought it sounded vaguely smutty! Mum had been referred by the Parkinson's nurse as she struggles to hold her cutlery. We saw a lovely young occupational therapist who went through her medical history and gave her some exercises to carry out. She told us you can buy foam pads on Amazon to fit over pens and knives and forks to make them easier to grip. I never knew! Mum would also benefit from trying to pick up coins or paper clips to improve her dexterity, so I can sort that out before her next appointment in January.

As it was getting late, and I still had loads to do, we dropped Mum back and returned home. I did all the usual Wednesday chores, and Sophie arrived home slightly later than usual as she'd had to go via Brixworth again.

She went back outside to charge up Olive but the flap covering the charging point on her car wouldn't open. I went out and tried to help, but it wouldn't budge. She had 10% battery left so she had to get the flap open to charge it. There was no way she could have driven it to the gym and work tomorrow with it so low.

All efforts to open the flap failed so we started Googling solutions. One piece of advice was to repeatedly open the car while pushing the flap at the same time. That didn't work. We took Olive around the estate in the hope that when she turned off the engine, it would magically re-open. That didn't work. 

Then, Keith and I watched a YouTube video about prising open the flap with a credit card (they used a hotel card in the video) but that didn't work either. We couldn't contact anyone at VW in Northampton (I called Bristol Street Motors by mistake and earned a glare from my daughter), so we had no choice but to leave it. We did find a panel in the boot where you can release the charging cable but that wasn't much help in this situation!

We sat at the island in the kitchen, a family of glums. Sophie had had another stressful day at work, and this seemed to be the last straw. She will have to go in with us tomorrow and be at work from 8am, poor thing.

After dinner (I left a lot as it was a tasteless chicken escalope) I opened two more whiskies for us to share while we watched Never Mind The Buzzcocks. The two were:

December 10th: Black Bottle Captain's Cask Alchemy Series Blended Scotch Whisky at 46.3%. I found it a bit fiery and harsh at first but it softened with a drop of water. Sweetish, and honeyed, reminded me of Biscoff biscuits. 4/5

December 11th: Monkey Shoulder Blended Malt Scotch Whisky at 40.0%. This reminded both Sophie and me of cherries, almonds, marzipan and Bakewell Tart. Delicious! 5/5

Before going to bed, we watched the end of the Simple Minds concert. Earlier, I'd watched one of their old videos from the 1980s and I couldn't believe how young Jim Kerr looked then! Well, it was forty years ago! We all looked a lot younger!

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