Wednesday 25th February, 2015       1520

This time next week I will hopefully be inching my way down the stairs of the teaching block having finished for the day.

My upper leg is not healing anywhere near as fast as I had hoped (I know you take longer as you age and I did think the doctor’s four days was overly optimistic) and I am now getting concerned whether it will be fit enough for start of play. Still, I have another week left and only a couple of days ago I was in the slough of despond and yet yesterday I got clean and today my face is clean shaven. How people can wear beards is beyond me.

It’s a miserable day today with light rain on and off and from the forecast it is set to stay that way until term starts. It’s also pretty cold but that hasn’t stopped John from running around the flat in just his underpants. I’ve got the heating in here!

The internet is deathly slow and my laptop has been on for three days solid downloading programmes. You would expect that with nobody here it would actually be a respectable speed but it doesn’t work that way.

Thursday 26th              1430

Little change in the leg and as time passes the more I am starting to fret over whether I can work on Wednesday.

John didn’t want to go to town yesterday so, having half a baguette left, I decided as he is completely incapable of cooking anything remotely western he would certainly be able to follow instructions for cheese on toast. I even cut and placed the cheese on the bread and drew a diagram of the oven to show what to do with it and what position the dials should be.

With a beaming smile he brought my “dinner” in. The baguette was still soft and the cheese had barely started to melt. Having ascertained that he had the temperature on 150 and not 250 I asked him to make adjustments and put it under the grill again. I fully expected it to return cremated but thankfully the second attempt was ok.

He’s going to town in a while and I have a list for him, including a new mouseless cord. The current one mysteriously failed to work this morning and a new battery made no difference. That must be the eighth I have had - they seem to last ten minutes. He will also bring some chicken quarters from KFC which we can heat up and have with bread. As I am not getting much in the way of vitamins I have also ordered some fruit for myself.

Mulan was supposed to come back today but she isn’t now. Uncle wants her to teach the baby brother. I mustn’t complain but of course John is a boy and like me, not very good at or willing to do housework. I can’t criticise, after all I pay Lucy to do mine. However, the place is getting grubbier by the day and in Mulan’s favour she is a bloody good cleaner.

And of course let me not forget that but for them being so kind as to look after me I would have had no option but to get a hospital bed where I would have had absolutely nothing - no food, smokes, drinks, TV, internet - anything. I turn pale at the very thought of it!

1740

Mind you, it’s looking grimmer here now. He sent me a text to say that the supermarket had run out of baguettes (or long bread as he puts it). The idea being to have bread and butter with the chicken and Chinese bread being more akin to cake, the only alternative I could think to tell him to buy was a packet of burger buns.

He just got back. No burger buns and no chicken quarters, instead he had bought three chicken burgers from KFC instead of the quarters. Stone cold of course but they can be microwaved. Except the burgers from KFC in China are revolting - they are smothered in coriander which I hate plus all sorts of other things. All I now have to eat between last night and tomorrow night is a bunch of grapes. Can it get any worse I wonder?