It has been quite a tough couple of days to be honest. Well, actually that might be overegging the pudding slightly. Basically my personal assistant Dom has been stuck in Poland all week. On Monday and Tuesday he was able to get his friend Abdul to come to help me with breakfast and dinner. That was fine as Abdul has helped me out before. Yesterday, though, he had other commitments, so I was on my own.

When you’re used to someone coming to help you twice a day, it’s uncanny how quickly your flat can start to seem eerily empty and quiet. Even after such a short time, I began to notice the lack of human contact, down to those merry “Good mornings” which begin every day. The old observation starts to ring disconcertingly true, that even in a metropolis of eight million people you can still feel lonely.

To call the situation difficult would probably be being melodramatic, but even so things like meals begin to feel far more problematic. It was simply a matter of going to Starbucks for breakfast, then buying something which I could feed myself for lunch and dinner. I can manage to do the basics like putting my powerchair on charge. It wasn’t ideal, my living room table is rather messy and my laundry is building up; but nonetheless I have pulled through. I feel like I have demonstrated to myself that I can cope and fend for myself if I have to. Of course I’m very grateful to the staff at Starbucks in Kidbrooke for their help. It also goes without saying that I now can’t wait to see John or dom again. Even so, at such times it’s just a matter of keeping my chin up and carrying on.