Blog 131. Did I Mention My Cut Finger?

Can there be a more depressing place to be than a funeral? I know that these occasions are meant to be a celebration of the dead person’s life but, let’s face it, they never are.  Even if the late departed is only slightly known to you, you still get upset – especially as you get closer to such an event yourself.  My brother’s wife, Marion, has died after her cancer returned despite the removal of her eye about a year ago, and my brother Colin took it very badly (they had no children).  Marion was 92 and I dare say it could be said that she had had a good innings, but that is no comfort to the bereaved.  After a long journey north to Tyneside we found my brother still in his pyjamas at 1500 with a look of total despair and desolation on his face. I had hoped that the twelve months or so of Marion being in and out of hospital, then finally bedridden under palliative care in their dining room, would have prepared Colin for the inevitable but, alas, that was not the case.  What to say? I wish they ran a course on phrases for consoling the bereaved, for none of mine seemed to help.  In the end, I let Colin reminisce at his own pace and I think he was, at least, glad of the familiar company.  The funeral proved to be a useful watershed and he gradually improved mentally thereafter, but I wished I could have done more.  Life – and death – can be so frustrating.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the challenge of driving long distances in an electric vehicle (EV) (Blog 100, Blog 127), but this time the 300-odd mile trip was not too bad, partly because of the increased availability of Rapid Chargers for EVs and partly because of the kindness of friends.  Halfway up the country on the way north we stayed overnight with our old boating chums, Raymond and Carole, who live near Melton Mowbray, and they kindly let us top up our car overnight.  An extension cable was passed through their letterbox and our car sat there overnight, slurping up the Joules like an old labrador sleeping contentedly by the fireside after a heavy meal.  In the meantime, the humans tucked in to a delicious dinner, lubricated by fine wine.  Life is good.  While we were in the area, our friends took us to visit Southwell (pronounced locally as Suth’ll, rhymes with cuddle): a small market town dominated by the beautiful and impressive Southwell Minster.  Gosh, what a lovely town!  I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of it, but it proved to be a delightful place to visit: modest in size, lovely architecture, mixed shops and welcoming people.  The highlight was a visit to the Minster, a fine edifice dating from 1040.  A minster (I didn’t know this) is a large mother church for a collection of smaller parish churches in part of a diocese, often (but not in this case) part of a monastery. Basically, the building looked like a cathedral and since 1884 it has been official just that: the cathedral for the diocese of the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham.  The old title, ‘Minster’ has been retained, however.  Perhaps the lasting memory I have of visiting the Southwell Minster was just how welcoming the guides were.  We were immediately greeted warmly and given a potted history of the building, with advice on what to look for.  Unlike many cathedrals in England now, it was not commercialised and there was no entrance fee – any contribution to the upkeep of the building was left to the visitor’s discretion, £10 being a suggested amount.  I was very happy to donate it for each of us, for the building was fascinating and had a warm welcoming feeling to it, conducive to both silent prayer and exploration.  The architecture and masonry were fascinating, particularly the circular Chapter House, complete with integrated stone seats around the circumference, each one labelled in ancient faded writing for the canons of the district.  There was so much to see and take in that we could easily have spent an entire day in the Minster, but daylight was fading, and tea and home-made cake in the Old Theatre Deli beckoned (they were delicious).  So: Southwell and its Minster; never knew they there, but will definitely return.

I have quite strict criteria when it comes to hotels.  The bottom line is that I expect them to be at least as comfortable and stress-free as my own home, which doesn’t seem to me to be an unreasonable benchmark.  Fundamentally, I demand a quiet night and a good sleep without the noise of a bar, wedding disco, or drunken guests waking me up;  without marauding children running up the corridors or leaping around the lounge; without tripping over wet dogs or suffering them sniffing at my dinner or them being fed at the table; and without grizzling babies or dribbling toddlers in the restaurant.  A nice view, with good local walks are bonuses, as are a Michelin star restaurant and a varied, imaginative, breakfast taken in silence.  Naturally, these criteria eliminate almost every hotel in Britain.  However, I live in hope and – very occasionally – my aspirations have been realised.  Of course, these stringent criteria make me a candidate for the award of The Definitive Grumpy Old Man, but you are too late for putting my name forward for that honour: I was awarded it about forty years ago. 
While up north for the funeral, we did not stay with Colin as he only has one bathroom and we did not want to add visitors to his burden.  We stayed at the Premier Inn in Washington – Washington, County Durham that is, not Washington DC.  We are great fans of the Premier Inn hotel chain because they offer that most important thing for us, a good, quiet, night’s sleep at a very competitive price –  though I note that, since Covid, they have taken to not routinely cleaning your room unless you specifically ask them to do so each day.  Stuff that for a game of soldiers – if I stay in a hotel I expect proper housekeeping service, and we made sure we received it.  The hotels are of a standard construction and interior which, I daresay, some might find boring, but which we find reassuring.  Usually they are out of town, perhaps on an industrial estate; they have plenty of free parking; there is double glazing to keep out the noise; the staff are invariably bright, cheerful and welcoming; the rooms are spotless; and the bed has a dependably comfortable mattress.  There is no bar, but a chain restaurant is normally attached to provide breakfast and evening meals, which is fine if mass-produced food like burgers, chips or fried chicken, eaten in an environment where feral children from the local housing estate run riot, is to your taste.  We usually eat elsewhere.  We paid £305 for five nights without breakfast in Washington, which was excellent value.  We slept well throughout, the staff were lovely, but – alas – it was not up to the usual Premier Inn standard, which was a disappointment.  Clearly, the price we paid reflected that fact.  The building and rooms, while fairly modern and clean, were in need of some refurbishment.  For example, contrary to normal practice, there was no locked access to the accommodation from Reception; the bathroom floor was starting to disintegrate; the shower screen leaked, causing mould;  the washbasin tap was loose; a bedside light needed securing and occasionally malfunctioned; there was no electric shaver point; the lighting was dim; and there were no cushions to prop you up in bed.  (Otherwise all right).  We could live with most of these shortcomings but, in any case, when I reported the defective lamp I was told that no maintenance man was available to fix it.  We were offered another room but, by that time, we were well settled in and we declined.  Overall, the hotel was comfortable and good value, but we would not chose that particular one again and Jane has even suggested that we try a more up-market hotel next time.

On the first night, after a long journey, we were disinclined to scour Tyneside for a decent restaurant so we considered what there was locally.  The Washington Premier Inn did not have an attached restaurant, but across the carpark there was a Toby Carvery.  For the benefit of any non-British readers, Toby Carvery self-service restaurants provide roast meals of pork, turkey, gammon or beef (lamb on Sundays) served with a wide range of fresh vegetables.  The meat is carved for you by the chef according to your wishes and you help yourself to the vegetables.  The food is tasty, well-cooked and good value, but the process does involve you queuing for your food like in a factory canteen and the environment can be a little rumbustious.  Jane and I would not normally choose a Toby Carvery for a meal, but we were tired, this place was on the doorstep, and Toby Carvery offered a discount for members of the Armed Forces so it seemed a reasonable solution.  Gingerly, we negotiated the potholes in the carpark and entered the eatery at 2030, which we thought would be a quiet time, especially as it was a Wednesday.  Oh dear.  The place was packed with families: children (some in pyjamas or stockinged feet) ran around around playing tag, babies grizzled, and the noise was prodigious. Yep, it was the Shacklepin definition of culinary hell. The schools were on half term on Tyneside, you see, hence the children up late when they should have been in bed. Oh, thank you Fate! There was some tooth-sucking by the waitress when I asked for a table, not having booked, and an amused raised eyebrow when I asked for a table far from any children, but we were able to sit down eventually in a good spot and were served immediately.  Off we went to the servery for our main course, joining a long line that seemingly stretched half way around the restaurant.  At the business end of the queue, a single harassed-looking chef did his best to satisfy the demand, hacking away at roast joints in the heat of the servery lamps, but supply could not match demand.  We waited in the queue for sixteen minutes (yes, I timed it) before we reached the front to make our selection; we passed the time watching the people in front of us making absolute beasts of themselves as they piled their plates with every type of meat, crowned by mounds of vegetables and rivers of gravy, each plate like Mount Vesuvius in full eruption.  The food was good, the service was cheerful, but the environment was ghastly. I couldn’t wait to leave.  The final insult came when the restaurant refused to accept my Armed Forces Discount Card, despite me showing the waiter what it said on the internet website.  Methinks we won’t be going to a Toby Carvery again.

The rest of the stay after the funeral was spent taking my brother out to different places to try to ease his depression.  Surprisingly, bearing in mind that we were in South Shields, we found two very good restaurants: Colman’s Seafood Temple in a converted bandstand, which we had visited before (Blog 100), and Wyvestow’s at Westoe Village.  The former was a treat, but expensive and with bad acoustics, as before; the latter was excellent and a complete revelation, with a varied and imaginative menu, professional staff and nice clientele (definitely PLU).  At the weekend we drove over to Durham so that Jane could buy her favourite tipple, Durham Gin, but the city was absolutely packed with people – so many that we could hardly make progress on foot – and we left after finding the only bottle of Durham Gin apparently left in the city (note to self: never again visit Durham at a weekend). On another day we took the ferry across the Tyne to North Shields and walked to the Fish Quay, an area that we thoroughly enjoyed because of its up-market riverside flats, varied bars, cafés and restaurants.  Even Colin conceded that that ‘the people across the water’ had done a very good job of converting the old industrial area, while retaining a working fish quay.  I think we exhausted my brother, but I also think we left him in a better mental state than when we arrived.  Mind you, we were physically and mentally exhausted.

As on the journey up, we broke our journey south by visiting friends and taking advantage of their good nature by tapping into their electricity ring main.  This time we called on Sam and Laura in Altrincham and availed ourselves of electricity, a roaring fire, sumptuous cuisine and a large quantity of alcohol.  Topping up an EV at friends is a new topic of conversation in social etiquette circles and, it seems, some guests take their hosts for granted in this regard, which is neither fair nor popular.  We always ask and – crucially – offer to pay for the energy, for 40kWh of domestic electricity (a full battery charge for my car) does not come cheap.  The offers are always refused, but we compensate our hosts with a bottle of top-quality wine with an ornate foreign-looking label, obtained from the premium section on the bottom shelf of an ASDA supermarket.  Generous to a fault.  The journey south from Greater Manchester took just over eight hours, calling at Shrewsbury, Leominster and Evesham to charge the car: a not unpleasant trip, but a long one.  Funerals: here’s hoping we don’t have many more of them.

Nee-naw, nee-naw, nee-naw. The ambulance siren blasted away as we lurched through the heavy traffic in the Big City and bounced into every pothole.  Have you ever ridden in an ambulance at full chat?  It is like charging through the Portland Race at 20 knots in a Fast Patrol Boat, and is singularly uncomfortable.  We were even offered a pill or injection to combat motion sickness, but it was unnecessary and we made it to the Big Hospital without disgracing ourselves.  The reason we were engaged in this activity was that Jane had had a very bad cardiac episode – her heart racing at 180 beats per minute, tightness in the chest, and feeling distinctly poorly.  We had invited friends over for a country walk followed by lunch, and had duly driven to the start point, then set off into the bundu.  Gregory and I walked ahead, like good scouts crossing the prairies, and the girls trailed behind while catching up on the recent gossip.  It subsequently transpired that Jane had the tightness in her chest within 50 metres of leaving the car, but carried on regardless…for four miles.  As we neared the end of the trek she was flagging significantly and in a near state of collapse, like a clockwork toy running down; indeed, she did have to sit down to recover at one point.  The walk, I should emphasise, was an easy one taken mostly on the level and mostly on hard tracks or roads; we weren’t doing Mount Snowdon.  Anyway, we drove home and Jane even served the first course of lunch before going upstairs to lie down.  Soon after, she felt bound to call an ambulance, which came very quickly.  A rapid diagnosis by the paramedics concluded that Jane was a hospital case, and away we went.  Triage was swift and Jane was allocated a bed in a ‘High Care’ booth in Accident & Emergency (A&E), wired up like a Cyberman, and given a boost of beta blocker to bring down her heart beat.  She was told that if the beta blocker did not work then she would effectively be re-booted, ie stop her heart and restart it again. Time passed, with the monitor still beating rapidly when suddenly, after maybe ten hours since it all started, Jane felt nauseous and was nearly sick; simultaneously her heart beat dropped suddenly from 180 per minute to 60 per minute (hence the nausea).  She was back to normal.  The emergency team arranged an X ray to make sure there was no heart disease, and took two blood tests to make sure her heart was back to normal. It was looking good and we expected to be released later that night but, at about 2300, the blood test results came back and they indicated that her heart had been damaged by the episode (something to do with enzymes).  The staff decided she must stay in overnight and see a cardiologist the next morning.  It was a bit of a shock as well as a disappointment, but there it was.  I left, very kindly collected by Gregory and Lynne (our lunch guests) who had insisted that they did so.  They deposited me at home just before midnight.  Poor Jane endured a sleepless night in A&E, with screaming dementia patients and beeping monitors.  At 0300 she was asked by a doctor if she wished to be resuscitated if she had a heart attack, which cheered her up no end.  Finally, at 1000 the next day, she was seen by a senior doctor, who she did not think was a cardiologist, who simply discharged her with no change in her existing medication.  It was the first time that this problem (called fast atrial fibrillation) had recurred in Jane for two years, so a change in pills was not merited, apparently.  Ho hum.  I collected Jane from the Big Hospital and, on return home, Jane had a long shower and went to bed, sinking to Deep Diving System Test Pressure and to all intents and purposes, figuratively dead to the world for six hours.  I sighed with relief: I had not been able to find the tin opener, had cut my finger on a mandolin and had misplaced the Elastoplast.  So that was Thursday and Friday.  Jane is fine now, still a bit tired and now frightened of going for a walk ever again.  It was an interesting lunch, and our guests even did the washing up and stowed the gear afterwards –  not to mention the 2300 taxi service in the freezing cold.  That’s good friends for you, and we are blessed by many.

Now tell me, what can you do with a loved one who carries on with a four mile hike after she has developed the symptoms of a heart attack? Sign her up for the SAS?  By the way,  did I mention my cut finger?

12 March 2024