Sussex by the sea

I tend to be very preoccupied these days with caring for my almost 92-year-old mum.  I rarely getting a lot of time for myself.  As each days goes by, my mother seems to be like one of those wobbly toys that fill babies with so much fascination. You know the kind - with a round base that won't stay still and wobble from side to side and back and forth. My poor old mum has scoliosis and arthritis, so her spine is severely curved to one side and affects her balance. Add to that two arthritic knees (one broken as well last autumn), it is not difficult to see why she is so wobbly.

As my mother gets more and more wobbly, she cannot cross a room without holding on to furniture and when we are out she clings to me for grim death. She uses a walking stick and I am trying to convince her to buy one of those rollator things, as she manages to get around quite well on her own with a trolley at the supermarket. However she depends on me more and more, so I find I am over at her flat quite a lot, either helping with housework or taking her out to appointments or a big food shop. 

On the rare days in between, I try to catch up with things in my house or escape from London. Yesterday was one such rare day when I could escape. I had earmarked a day-trip to Brighton to visit a very dear friend. I'd been looking forward to it for weeks. We had planned to meet at the mainline station, walk along the seafront and eat at one of the lovely fish 'n chip restaurants on the promenade (tablecloths and wine of course, not the greasy spoon type of place). So what happened? It tipped it down with rain the whole day, the wind was gale-force, a tree blew down in south London delaying or cancelling a lot of the trains going in my direction and when I arrived in Brighton, we could barely stand upright, let alone brave the seafront. We hunkered down in my friend's kitchen and chatted the hours away, managing to dash to the nearest pub for some sustenance at lunchtime.  Good job we had a lot to catch up on and could ignore the raging gale outside.  Of course today I am back caring for my mother and the weather.....?....... is sunny.  Just typical.