A difficult day!!!

Today turned out to be a difficult day what with one thing and another.  John had arranged to see Rob this morning for a coffee and to wish him happy birthday which he did and then we were spending the day down in Paphos running errands and then calling in to have tea and stickies with Mum and then back home for a quiet evening but it didn't quite go to plan.   John went down to the village to have his weekly catch up with Rob and took with him the rose which we had bought along with the card I had made for his birthday.  We christened the rose Lady Vera in memory of Rob's mum.  Lady Vera is a beautiful pink rose and this was the closest we could find.  We hope that it will grace Rob and Di's garden and act as a fitting memorial to a lovely lady.  We know that her passing will have been hard for Rob - he and Di will be returning to the UK for her funeral shortly and we send them love and hugs at this difficult time.    John returned home, I had been doing some tidying and trying to get my head round how we are going to manage with all our visitors coming at the same time so that we get to see them all and do not leave my mum out of the equation.  It's not easy!  We packed up and got our To-Do list in Paphos and set off down to the Big City - taking Kenny to check out whether the recent work Andreas had done had been successful.  I think we have concluded that Ken is about as good as she/he can be and we will be happy to let Stan drive her/him whilst here on holiday.

The main arterial road system in Paphos is constantly changing.  The new roundabout by Lidl is complete and open (at the moment) and the road has been tarmac'd as far as Sklavenites but after that you take your life into your hands trying to get to the bank which remains open but is a complete nightmare to access.  God help you if you are in the least disabled or unsteady on your feet.  Once inside there was just one man on the counter and shortly after we arrived the queue began to get longer and longer - not helped by the old man in front of us wanting 10 grand in small notes!  We must have waited in there at least a half an hour before the manager came out to see if he could pull anyone out of the queue that was not waiting for cash.  I had got Mums from machine but we wanted more than we can take out on a single day so had to go inside.  We then made the fatal mistake of not thinking about how the roadworks might affect our trip to the Mall.  We ended up on a detour that took forever to work out where we would emerge but eventually we did get to our destination only to find that it was packed to the gunnels with millions of parents milling around the 'Back to School' section of Jumbos with kids running amok in and out of the toys.  Deep Joy.

John had quite a successful day of shopping picking up several bits and pieces for himself, a couple of t-shirts and some flipflops to replace a pair which had a recent blow-out and some carabiners and bunjees in Jumbo which haven't been there for ages - me I got a pack of four small food containers because I plan to make some mango dipping sauce.  Anyway we managed to make our way around the Mall before setting off for Mum.  We had bought some cakes to take with us to have with our cup of tea and hoped that she would enjoy them.  On our arrival it was clear that something was up and it transpired she had fallen in the sun lounge earlier and she had fallen on Monday but not told me.  This was worrying so I persuaded her to call to get an appointment with the doctor and I would go with her.  She was in a right state and couldn't concentrate on a phonecall or anything much really so I called the doctor and she agreed to see mum at end of afternoon surgery which was in half an hour and so we checked her blood and took her blood pressure and took the results with us.  Dr Mala was actually very nice and explained that she wanted mum to go for some immediate blood tests and she would have the results back in the morning.  She was checking mums kidney function, minerals and sodium levels.  I took mum to get her in an ultra modern lab down in Chlorakas.  We will wait to see what the results are.

Needless to say I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got home - it had been exceptionally hot and sticky down in Paphos and mum's fall was stressful.  I know that this is what we are going to have to deal with but it always seems to happen when we have a million things going on - not that she can help that.