'I vood luff a glass of cold milk'.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 @ 10:25 PM
The biggest problem for Dad was the fact that he'd been 'nill by mouth' since the stroke. The physiotherapist was supposed to have come and assessed him on the Friday, to see if he could swallow liquids.
'I vood luff a glass of cold milk,' Dad kept saying (he never drank milk).
But the physiotherapist was too busy to see him on Friday and didn't work weekends. They said he had to wait until Monday morning. In fact she didn't turn up until Tuesday and tried him with a thimble-full of milk. It stayed a few seconds in his mouth before he swallowed it.
'It took rather a long time to go down,' she said. 'You may not be ready.'
'I am ready,' Dad protested. 'It took a vile, becoss I voss savourring it. I haffn't had a drrink for a veek!'
But she wouldn't authorise liquids and later that day he took a turn for the worse, having missed a chance for what would have been his last drink or drinks in this world.
We'd been planning for my mother to come and see him (the love of his life whom he hadn't seen for 30 years since she ran off with a man so inferior to my father in every respect). She'd agreed she'd come as long as we didn't say a word to her husband. And Dad had said he would see her, probably sensing that he might not come out of hospital. But he changed his mind when the pain kicked in again. It would be humiliating for her see him when he was in that state.
A week had gone by and Andrea, Christopher and I were taking it in turns to spend the nights at the hospital. Adrian had by now flown back to Spain to check on the work on the casa.
'We're paying them on a daily rate,' he said 'I want to make sure they're not twiddling their thumbs.'
In fact, he was pleasantly surprised at the progress they'd made. Benjamin was very concerned about my father and seemed to feel it was his duty to make sure we had no other worries. Being back gave Adrian the opportunity to give our friend Simon a poder over our bank account to enable him to draw out cash and pay the men every Friday night. He also gave further instructions and ordered supplies for the next month, as we didn't know how long Dad would be in hospital.
Simon was extremely helpful. Over the next few weeks, while we remained in the UK in addition to drawing cash out to pay the workers he even took it upon himself to do spot checks on the workers.
We trusted Simon and Charlotte so implicitly that at the end of our first year in Adreimal, we had even given them the keys to our flat (when we wouldn't let any of the Adreimal lot near it - I suspected that the reason Vicky had tried to wangle the keys out of us was so that her waster of a sister could sneakily move in while we were back in Wales for the summer, but I refused). They also had keys to our cortijo (it was only later that I realised they never entrusted us with keys to their property...)
Simon and Charlotte then had stayed in our Adreimal flat while the village fiesta took place, as they found the constant noise of fireworks and then brass bands below their window at 8am after a relentlessly noisy night that ended at 6am, unbearable.
The idea that I should have had such confidence in them and should have given them access to all of our private belongings (including my explosive diaries!) later filled me with horror…
To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636
And also another of our completed projects:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271