Salad days

I was right about the heat yesterday. It got up to 36ºC! We’re not used this sort of heat in the north of England.

We went to the dentist for our six monthly check-up yesterday. The dental nurse came to invite us in. She looked about ready to flop into a puddle on the floor. Our teeth, though, are fine & should see us through another 6 months – just a scale & polish.

I debated whether it was worth doing a big shop, with the heat & the Fox being so off his food. Eventually I decided the only things on my list that couldn’t be frozen & may go off quickly were salad items. They wouldn’t come amiss. A few tomatoes, a couple of little gem lettuces & half a cucumber may come in useful for salads. I can always rebuy them for their original purpose if we’ve eaten them already.

There seems no end to the heat. Today is another hot day. I’ve decided on salad again today. We have half a tin of fish leftover from the other day so we’ll use that up. I’ve just cooked some broccoli & boiled some eggs as a basis for today’s salad.

In some ways salads suit me fine at the moment. They can take minimum effort to prepare. With the Fox so off his food it doesn’t seem worth going to too much effort if at the end of the day I’m just feeding myself while the Fox has a just a couple of mouthfuls. What is more, in this heat, it’s nice to leave eating until a bit later, & a bit cooler. I can just about manage to put some cold items on a plate by then, whilst I wouldn’t fancy starting to cook. I’d be past it by then.

Yesterday the Fox had just half a prawn mayo sandwich after seeing the dentist, then half a tin of baked beans on toast with a slice of corned beef for dinner. That was it for the day’s food. It hardly seems enough to keep a grown man going. If he keeps on like this I can see we will be making another trip to see the GP.

What really gets to me is the fact I suspect the cause of the loss of appetite is stress due to the decision of our “friends” to join us on the cruise to Norway. That wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d stuck to their original statement of not being in each other’s hair all the time, possibly not even seeing us every day. The amount of fuss just over the trip to Newcastle suggests to us we’ll be lucky to get away from them the whole holiday.

By way of contrast another couple of people we know at the golf club went to Lake Garda recently. We’d told them we were going to the same town later in the year. They came back with a folder of leaflets, ferry timetables, maps etc. for us. While they were they took note on wheelchair access for us. These “acquaintances” are being far better friends than our “friends”.