A couple of weeks ago, my GP managed to wangle me into hospital via A&E. With the result that I spent a day in SDEC (same day emergency care), a day in AMU (acute medical unit) and just about a week in CCU (cardiac care unit). And that I am in much better shape now than I was when I went in. Not least because I have shed a lot of watery weight.
I have also been reminded of how handy it is for an older person to have a full-on hospital more or less on one's doorstep. A great convenience, one which is never going to be practical for those living out in the sticks proper. But the purpose of this post is to record my impressions of the catering, which I thought, all things considered, was pretty good.
A diet which contained plenty of calories, while being a little light on fibre. With this last also being practical in a place containing a lot of older people, a lot of whom were not very well. Three meals a day - breakfast, lunch and supper - interspersed with regular offers of drinks and biscuits. Drinks which came with three varieties of milk: cow, soya and oats. I was reminded that I quite like ginger nuts, a type of biscuit which did figure in my childhood, but has not been in our larder for many years - not that we eat a lot of biscuits in the ordinary way of things anyway.
My breakfast always consisted of a mug of tea and four slices of brown toast, taken with butter, which did fine - although the caterers did allow two pats of butter to the slice, compared with my consumption of two slices to the pat.
One used the menu for lunch and supper, with most of it being snapped above. There were always veggie and fish options for lunch. There was always a choice of soup - usually quite decent - for supper. I quite often had a ham sandwich on white, with the ham being described as Wiltshire, although it appeared to have been reconstituted from native meat into a fat sausage for ease of serving. Tasted fine, if not quite the same as ham off the bone.
My first hot meal came from Wiltshire Farm Foods, people from whom I think we were buying food for FIL at one point. Convenient for older people living alone and very reasonably priced. Very much the same sort of thing as you might get on an aeroplane.
My second did not look like much, but actually it was fine. The brown quantity was meaty, but I forget how it was described. I think the white quantity may have been mashed turnip.
While by my third, I had got the hang of the menu. The meal came under a flat dome, the sort of thing sometimes used in restaurants, flat for ease of stacking. While if you were in the private ward next door you got a shiny round dome, not suitable for common stacking at all. I dare say they had a slightly longer menu too.
The bricks of white fish came in at least two formats, one poached (as above) and one fried. I found the poached the better of the two.
Supper. Lentil soup and ham sandwich.
Another supper. One of the better soups left and leek & potato bake right. Again, tasting rather better than it might look here. Flat dome behind.
And if all that was not enough, there was a Costa and a W H Smith's downstairs for a change or a supplement. With the Smith's being much stronger on convenience food than newspapers.
PS 1: I was amused at how quickly I became institutionalised, with the days being framed by the visits of the refreshment trolley. And I was most put out when my Sunday roast beef morphed into macaroni cheese!
PS 2: also that Exxon chose to support the medical equipment fund by helping with the diversionary pictures of hot air balloons attached to the ceilings of some of the scanner rooms. I forget which sort of scanner - there seem to be so many varieties these days. I had thought that they had offices in Epsom, but it looks from reference 2 as if they are in next door Leatherhead now.
PS 3: a reminder that there was a world outside. Just to stop me getting too settled in.
References
Reference 1: https://www.epsom-sthelier.nhs.uk/.
Reference 2: https://www.exxonmobil.co.uk/community-engagement/key-locations.
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