I was allowed to leave the hospital two days later, and not a minute to soon, I must say, as the old women drove me nuts! However I had to go to a carer until I was pronounced fit enough to go back to the hotel. Also I was told that I could not go back to work too soon, so I told Tony that It would be best if they looked for another chef that could work until the end of the season, which they did.
The carer I was sent to was an absolute angel, and pampered me like a baby. I just did not feel hungry, and she was forever making nice things for me, and tried to get me to eat.
But slowly my apetite started to come back, and I could at first eat a bowl of oats in the mornings, but nothing else. I laughed one morning, as the oats porridge had way to much salt in, and I just could not eat it. Now this woman was an angel, but I soon found out that she, like all of us had her peculiarities, like the thing with the porridge. She tried to feed me, and as a rule I would have eaten and kept the fact that it was too salt to myself, but being still not really ravenously hungry, I told her that there was a bitty too much salt in the porridge!
As she had not yet had a taste herself, she now poured herself some milk in the bowl, and quite a few spoons of sugar, and started eating with great gusto. I could see that she did not really enjoy her food, but would never admit to it being too salty, and knew that I was getting better when I felt a gurgle of laughter escaping from my throat when she pushed back the empty bowl, and pronounced gaily: 'Now that was a lively bowl of porridge!'
But she was in all aspects just a super carer. I had to take some medicine at six in the morning, but this made me feel sick, so she made a beautiful, crustless little sandwich every night and put it on my bed table so I could have it before the medicine, as she usually slept till seven after I started feeling better.
I knew that I could not work again that year, so I changed my plane ticket to an earlier date, but first Lizzie and self were going on holiday as usual, if I was up to it.
We had decided to go to Seil island that year, as it was not so far for me, and if I felt ill again, we could easily come back.
As is always the case, to get on the road, car all loaded, and the two of us seated, with the dogs in the back, and me trying to hold my head so that the fumes from Benny's killer breathe did not half kill me, took some doing, but one sunny morning in September, we were off! That is of course after we struggled to get the raw ginger into poor Benny, as he got terribly car sick, and the ginger did help a bit!