Monday 20th July

Another peaceful night, i think the boys are settling down a bit and they decided not to start howling until about nine this morning. I phoned David after the coffee and fags and said i would be there in about half an hour, he told me which hospital Mark was in and gave me the phone number for him. I phoned the hospital but got no response so i phoned Janine to ask about hospital visiting hours and directions to the hospital, after which i tried the hospital again, it was Marks direct room phone so i chatted to him for a little, asking him what he needed. We had a hunt about for magazines and books that might interest him and put together a little bag. We set off into town and picked David up on the way, the people at the supermarket were very helpful, they asked how Mark was getting on and retrieved his shopping for us. Then we did our shopping, David spent more on food for his eight cats than i spent for a whole week of food for ant and me, i am not sure if that's a good thing or bad.

After we had dropped David off we came back and had some lunch, i spent a little time doing the farm and read the second installment of mums life story, again i was a little teary but i am looking forward to the next part. We headed off to the hospital at 1.30, it's about half an hours drive towards the coast, neither of us had been in a french hospital so we were not sure what to expect. From the outside the building looks quite depressing, like a young offenders unit, but inside it was very light and clean and the staff were very helpful. We found our way to Mark's room and he was out of bed walking about so not quite as bad as we might have suspected. He seemed cheery enough, a little bored as he had nothing to read and couldn't watch telly as it was french, should have spent the last seven years learning the language then this might not have been such an issue! The room was nice, just two beds, they don't have wards here very often and the privacy must be nice, the nurses were very friendly but could not tell us how long he was likely to be in.

We chatted for a while, he had a look at what we had brought him and seemed to cheer up a little since he now had crosswords to do and a pair of reading glasses. After a while he wanted to go for a smoke so we went downstairs and joined him, after this we said our goodbyes and headed home. I decided to take the scenic route home, after asking ant what he wanted to do and getting a wishy washy response. We stopped at Montreuil to get the few items i had forgotten to buy the first time round the shop, then came home. Ant headed off upstairs for an afternoon nap and i sat down to write up two days of blogs. Tonight should be a quiet affair, a bit of dinner, a bit of telly then an alcohol free nights sleep so we are fresh for the challenges of tomorrow

bye for now