Border crossing II

I thought that I did well to capture a wonky shot of the border crossing sign through the grubby train window on my way to Newcastle last Thursday. However, today's effort, snapped on my return journey northwards, is so much better and thus worthy of a blip.

Mummy hazelh was resting in her room when I arrived at the care home this morning. I took this as an opportunity to tidy her quarters. As well as checking that her clothes were all in the right places (they weren't), I restitched a couple of loose name tapes, re-hemmed a pair of trousers, and took a red fluffy jumper to the office so that it can be reclaimed by its rightful owner. I also organised the rest of Mummy hazelh's belongings, binning anything no longer needed, such as a couple of old issues of the Hexham Courant.

Over the rest of my time in her room at the care home, together we watched a television programme about the River Spey on the iPlayer, ate our lunch, drank lots of tea/coffee, listened to Radio Suisse classic and Radio 4, discussed the birds the we could see outside the window, read poetry, and looked at old photographs. There was no time for any knitting at all! Inevitably most of our conversation looped around the usual questions of 'Where are we? Why am I here? Why can't I be at home?' I fielded them with the usual (kind) white lies. At one point Mummy hazelh warned me that there will be trouble if I or my sisters have touched anything at her house - eek! More distressing was witnessing her call my father's name in her sleep while she was dozing after lunch :-( 

I had a fun encounter on my walk back to Newcastle Central station when I stopped to talk to a man with a gorgeous cocker spaniel puppy. I mentioned that he would never get anywhere if everyone in the street wanted to pet his wee dog. I was making reference to the glamorous young woman walking away from him, having just stroked the dog herself. She heard me, turned round, and addressed me directly 'Are you Hazel?' She revealed that she recognised me from photographs that my not-so-little sister has posted on Facebook! Once she told me her name, I was able to place her: the woman who asked my sister if Mr hazelh was single... We had a lovely chat in the street, mostly about the not-so-little one.

Exercise today: walking (22,699 steps).