England

Right - I need to start catching up on everything!

As I may or may not have said before, we were planning to go to the UK for the July school holidays and we were planning to take my mum to the james herriot MUseum etc. However, after my previous trip to find a nursing home, Mum just kind of gave up on life. She didn't want to eat and just wouldn't (she had always had an extremely small appetite anyhow) - as a result this threw her diabetes into disorder to nothing was going well and her physical condition was going from bad to worse. On Tuesday 10th June the hospital phoned me to say that she was deteriorating fast. Now I had previously tried to bring my trip a bit forward but the travel agent in the UK assured me that there was no way to change my ticket. So I phoned Flight Connections and asked them to check it out for me. Of course there was no such restriction - I would just have to pay an adjustment fee - they had phoned the agent in the UK who refused to deal with them. So... I phoned her and she told me that she knew more about the conditions of my ticket than I did and it could not be changed. Well, I blew a fuse and all of a sudden, after consulting her manager and the carrier, it could miraculously be changed! However, all the faffing around took time so I had only a couple of hours to rush home, get the kids sorted and pack for myself - no tiem to take Sam to a friend that would be able to take her to school - so she got a couple of days off! Then off I went, dropped my car at Lee's and then off to the airport. Shades of 2005 when dad died and I took the night flight the same day. It is very distressing.

I wandered around Dubai and sat in my favourite spot in the hotel and had a massage and then off to Manchester. Panic when I got there - my credit card payment for the car would not go through! Sorted it out eventually and then off to Leighton Hospital and arrived there at 9 in the evening. Mun looked dreadful, the last time I had seen her she was skinny, but now shes was skeletal and she could not speak legibly but at least she recognised that I was there and tried to communicate with me. Very unsettling was the fact that she could not blink. I sat there until after midnight and then went home to sleep.

The next morning I waited for Bruce to come around as he wanted to speak to me and then off to Leighton again. (will carry on later)