THREE weeks after my return from Dubai I am drinking a cup of black coffee because the milk in the fridge has gone sour.
My trip, a much-needed month-long convalescence, was also a useful buffer between my old life as a wife, and my new one as a not-quite-singleton.
But learning to shop and cook for one is still something of a work in progress, and in Geoffrey Palmer’s famous catchphrase from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, there has been something of a cockup on the catering front...
I had overestimated how much milk one short woman can use in a week and in consequence it has gone off...
And it is not just an over-abundance of milk which is the problem.
I find myself amazed at just how little food one person gets through: and how carefully I now need to plan meals if I don’t want to be eating the same thing for days on end.
I have never lived on my own before.
Fifty-three years ago I left my father’s home for my husband’s and never did the student flat-share thing in between, so this is all new territory.
A friend once suggested that if we found ourselves widowed we should “wear leopard skin tights and go to Paris a lot” - which was a plan of sorts I suppose...
I merely joked that I would eschew cooking altogether and live off smoked salmon salad...
But three weeks in, I can state categorically this has already started to pall...
Ditto chicken salad, egg salad, cheese salad, ham salad and tuna salad...
Likewise the pack of mince which yields spag bol on day one, chilli on day two, shepherd’s pie on day three and dear-God-please-not-mince-again on day four.
I have equipped myself with containers to batch cook and freeze ahead, but a standard pack of meat will make three more meals than the one I actually eat, and the freezer is already starting to groan under the sad weight of meals-in-waiting-for-one...
While half cans of baked beans, and opened-but-unfinished packs of bacon and sandwich meats reproach me every time I open the fridge...
So I have realised that every few days I must ask myself, in the spirit of Ready, Steady, Cook!, not what I want for dinner - but what I have to use up to make dinner from...
Which at least has made for some interesting and novel repasts…
But if I am having to rethink the habits of a lifetime, poor James - incarcerated at the end of the road - is having troubles of his own.
In the past four weeks his catheter - which should only need routinely changing every three months - has been blocked and replaced three times, despite a visit to hospital a week ago to have his bladder washed out.
He has had Covid, a fall in front of his bedroom door - which he had blocked with an armchair before keeling over so no-one could get in to rescue him - and a u.t.i. which is not responding to antibiotics and has left him both dangerously wobbly and uncharacteristically aggressive...
So when I look at him now I see only a sad and confused old Everyman who bears no resemblance to my lovely James...
Yesterday he refused to talk to me at all and sent me packing.
Today he just peers quizzically at me, holding his hands either side of his head, a living embodiment of The Scream, as he tries to remember who I am.
So I just sit with him, pat his shoulder gently and lie that everything is going to be fine, before I head home.
Alone…
I actually enjoy cooking - I find it relaxing and creative - and I’m rather good at it. But the effort requires an appreciative audience to make it worth the washing up! Like everything else it is going to require a period of adjustment…
After being a widow for 16 years it took me a long time to adjust to cooking and shopping for one after living in a household of 6 for nearly 40 years. In fact one of my daughters still maintains that she never leaves my home empty handed as I pass on meals and ingredients that are surplus to my requirements. However, in time you may come to appreciate the fact that you no longer have to slave over a hot stove every day and can just open the freezer to find something that takes your fancy and which can be ready in minutes. It gives you so much more time to fill exactly as you wish. However, I know it could take you longer to adjust, since you are still in a heartbreaking halfway house, which fortunately wasn’t my lot in life. My husband’s death was sudden …. One day he was there and the next day he wasn’t, so the adjustment was probably easier, albeit a shock! However, seeing your strength of character over the last few difficult years, I’m certain that you will find the light at the end of the tunnel and the positive side of each and every challenge. Take care. X