Sometimes life throws a curve ball

Am heading home after the work Christmas lunch.  We closed the office at 12 noon and headed to a Lebanese restaurant.  Circa 4.30pm we headed to a pub.  My train from King’s Cross was booked at 8:03pm.  First class.  I have learnt from experience that this works well on such occasions.  Main line station concourses are not the best places to be just before Christmas after a few drinks when everyone else has had a few drinks also. The first class lounge, safety and rehydration is where it’s at.  It’s also where I am writing this from.  

Lunch was excellent, a good time seems to have been and was still being had by all still standing when I left.  Unfortunately on board the train to Kings Cross the message came through that S was at A&E with his mother having been sent there by the GP surgery.  On the plus side he had taken her to A&E in Peterborough so, if need be, I can get a taxi to the hospital from the station (getting one to home is a little unrealistic).  S was supposed to have been picking me up.  Clearly that is not going to happen.  The current expectation is that he/she/we will be at A&E all night.  

This is not a first, it will not be the last but it is a prime example of what worries me going forward.  Maybe that’s selfish but how many more sleep deprived nights will we have in A&E for relatives or, for that matter, either of us, how many more holidays where we are trying to work out whether to go on with the holiday or try and get back earlier, how many more late night calls/texts from others with concerns about our relatives?  How are we going to continue to cope with such events when we work full time?  How can we cope with work when we have to deal with these events?  Is there any chance of us having a social life or being able to travel when we retire or for that matter before?  

None of this is new, we have lived with it, with some periods of respite, for well over a decade and we are tired.  What was an inconvenience in our 40s is exhausting as we approach our 60s.  This is not why I want to retire, I want to retire for us to have the opportunity to enjoy our lives but if that is not going to be possible it would be preferable not to be driven to an early grave dealing with a series of others’ crises  whilst trying to keep our own working lives afloat.  How on earth do others keep all the balls in the air, we surely cannot be the only ones with these issues?

I find myself checking my last minute grocery list as to what I absolutely must get for Christmas Dinner and what I can manage without.  The MiL had ordered the beef and turkey; I have no idea if it has been delivered.  We are also supposed to be picking up a log splitter tomorrow morning (long story).  No doubt everything will work out but right now I am probably a bottle of wine down over the course of the day and that is seldom the best starting point.