Dear Marmite
This week has definitely been a curate's egg of a week. I went to Milton Keynes University hospital very late in the eveing last Tuesday as I had something wrong with my right eye. Many might think it is because I have been looking at naughty things. This was not the case. When my eye first started hurting, I thought I had got some paint in it. I washed it out, put drops in it, held it open, looked at google with my good eye to see if it could explain my agony...
As the evening rolled on, the pain in my eye grew worse until I couldn't see my phone to look up advice on 111. 111 is the NHS website that helps people like me with minor problems. I phoned the help line and was told to get to hospital. Very kindly at 10:30pm Nasser took me down to the hospital which is situated the other side of MK from where I live.
My experience there was not a pleasant one and I probably shouldn't compare it to Gleneagles on Napier Road. The floor was filthy, notices hung limply off walls, glass and chairs! The whole place had the appearance of abject neglect. Even with one eye I had plenty of time to take the scene in. Nasser said it was worse than Syrian hospitals used to be.
The doctor was caring though, and spent time irrigating my eye and checking it out. This brought to mind the time when Sammi had conjunctivitis - picked up from the Mumbai slums. In NUH, the doctor used a camera to look at his eye and the image came up on a screen as large as any TV in a living room. I am not squeemish but seeing a sore eye on a massive scale wasn't nice. I just wonder what mine looked like that night.
Suffice to say, I am now over it. I can see now and I have been swimming a couple of times too. I hope that Nasser has recovered as he spent almost the whole night sleeping in my car, waiting for me and it must have been cold and uncomfortable. What increased my guilt was that it was his birthday and he had to get up early for work - poor man. On so many fronts, visiting A&E was an eye-opener!
Danielle won't let me forget about the anti-climactic birthday cake I gave to Richard last summer. It was a joke from me and I actually described it as such before giving him a fancy, shop-bought one. So when I made a carrot cake with cream cheese topping for Nasser's birthday, Danielle reminded me and then Nasser's family that that cake too was anti-climactic. Probably all cakes from now on will be named as such. This doesn't bode well for me ever wanting to be a Bake-Off contestant, does it?
While I am on the subject of things going badly, I have to tell you that someone knocked my front wall down last Saturday. This isn't exactly accurate. It was their car that ended up in my front garden without human intervention. Such that village life is, news got to me almost immediately, and, I wasn't at home. I was at another house in the village having fun watching the rugby. With a little help, the owner of the car was tracked down. She has promised to fix mine and my neighbour's wall so hopefully the rubble will be a temporary feature of the front of my home.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in the UK. I expect that Deepavali has seemlessly morphed into Christmas lights in Singapore too. I love Christmas as you know, Marms. I go all out to make it special but there are things that I really don't understand anymore. Number one - why are there mince pies and a myriad of other Christmas goodies on the shelf that don't have a shelf life that even gets to mid December? Number two - all the decorations that I have noticed so far look cheap, tacky and Chinese. Where is our commitment to not having single use plastics? Number three - How come the UK has adopted Black Friday? I thought January sales were the British way to dump unwanted things on the British public - obviously Black Friday is yet another opportunity to exercise our ability to consume the world.
Bah humbug!!! Just get the spoons out... Christmas WILL be fun whatever. I just wish you were here to share it with me, Marms
Love you
XXX
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