You wait ages for a story and then three come along at once

In this instalment: Repairs to the shower; I visit my Mum in hospital and meet up with some old friends on the way home.

Busy day yesterday. First off the plumber man, Andy, came to investigate the leak in the shower and why it only runs cold. This has been going on some time, but since we opted for a tiled floor in the bathroom we knew the only way to investigate the leak was from below, which means taking down some of the kitchen ceiling.

The leak was never life-threatening so we decided to leave it until we were ready to start work on the kitchen and would be fixing up the ceiling anyway. We'd been a bit worried that it might have been a badly-fitted drain pipe, because it always seemed to leak worse when the shower trap was beginning to get blocked with hair. The other alternative was a badly sealed shower tray, and this is what it turned out to be (the hair blockage simply caused the water to rise above the lip of the tray, and then pour through the broken seal). But the news was, unfortunately, not as simple as that.

Andy (a man of some experience and also someone who likes doing things the right way) was worried about how the shower tray had been fitted. Cast resin trays that he's installed in the past have always had to be bedded down in sand and concrete so they don't flex. Ours has been mounted directly on the flooring joists. There's not even any floorboard to support the full width of the tray. I remember the original fitter saying he needed to take the boards out, and even shave an inch or so off the joists, so he could fit the tray flush with the floor. I never questioned it at the time, but we've ended up with a tray that is not supported in the inter-joist gaps which is not, apparently, a good thing, and one possible cause of the breakdown in the seal.

Another culprit is the tiling. The fitters tiled directly onto plasterboard. I remember an old plumber friend of mine telling me this was a bad idea ten years ago, but these guys assured me it was fine, so what can you do? For all I knew the intervening years had seen an improvement in materials, both board and tile adhesive, that rendered the old advice irrelevant. My mistake. Tiles mounted on plasterboard will always move, says Andy, which cracks the grout in the corners and allows leaks.

The solution is simple - bucketloads of silicon sealer - but it does mean we're probably now committed to replacing the seal regularly every time it breaks down. And the only indication we get when this has happened is a wet kitchen ceiling :(

Sadly the solution for the cold running shower was not so simple. After checking for blockages and testing that the valves were working OK, Andy concluded the coil is faulty. "Luckily" the shower is still under warranty, but it means more hassle digging out the paperwork and jumping through whatever hoops the manufacturer requires to organise a replacement.

To complete all the plumbing work had taken until after 1.30 which meant I was not going to make the afternoon visiting session at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, where my Mum underwent hip replacement surgery on Thursday. She'd been really suffering with it for some time, but it wasn't until a new GP arrived at her local surgery that she'd been offered a replacement. Can you believe her original GP (of almost 20 years) told her she couldn't have the operation because of her condition? The new guy put the lie to that as soon as he arrived and booked her in as an emergency appointment because she was in such a lot of pain.

I arrived in Nottingham in time for the evening visiting (6-8pm). Although I've visited people at QMC in the past I had no recollection of the parking arrangements and drove around the campus one-way system twice in the dark having missed the turn for the multi-storey car park the first time. I then discovered the car park is on the opposite side of the campus from Mum's ward. QMC is a huge place and it took me almost ten minutes to walk across to West block and find the right ward. Fortunately as with all hospitals everything is well sign-posted so I always knew where I was going.

Mum was feeling very sorry for herself. Propped up in bed with a foam block between her knees to keep her leg in the right position, she was unable to move around at all, although she wasn't in any pain. Just the discomfort of sitting "on the same cheek" for several hours at a time. The nurses to try to "turn" immobile patients regularly, but they are very busy so it's never quite regular enough. I was impressed by the security though. The last time I visited a sick relative - about ten years ago - there was free access to all wards, which simply opened on to public corridors. Some high-profile attack cases have forced improved security, and the most vulnerable wards are now protected with card-swipe entry systems. These are active both ways, so they protect against confused patients wandering off as well as against unauthorised ingress.

They're taking the MRSA/hygiene problem seriously too, with wall-mounted antiseptic gel canisters beside the doors and notices requesting visitors to clean their hands before entering, and upon leaving. I thought this a very positive move and duly cleaned my hands, but my cousin later informed me that their visiting experiences showed that most people ignored the notice.

I spent almost the full two hours with Mum but towards the end she was dropping off to sleep mid-sentence and becoming increasingly confused. She didn't want me to go, but I pointed out they'd be kicking me out anyway in 15 minutes and the nurses were coming round to sort out her position and needed access to both sides, so I said my goodbyes and left. Some of her confusion is probably a result of the meds, but I think a lot of it is simply that she's been knocked out of her routine and can't really cope. She hadn't realised she had a motorised control to change the angles of her bed, or that she had a personal TV, or that she'd been given an exercise sheet, and was confused by the difference between the drugs the hospital were giving her and the ones she takes regularly for chronic emphysema and other conditions. "What's this?" she kept asking, "I don't take this." Quite upsetting really, to see her so frail and vulnerable, but everyone I've spoken to says what a difference hip operations make, and I know she'll recover rapidly once she can get out of hospital.

Leaving Nottingham at that time meant I wasn't going to be home until 10pm so I'd decided to stop on the way home for a bite to eat, and the prospect of returning to the Dog & Partridge seemed very attractive. I had no idea what time they stopped serving food, but their meals were so delicious last time we stopped there I thought it was a risk worth taking and drove past motorway services and other sources of accessible commestibles, arriving at the Dog at 8.55pm. They weren't very pleased with me - meals finish at 9pm - but they took my order with good humour.

Walking in from the car park I'd passed a woman complaining to anyone who would listen about the back door being locked on a night like this (very blustery and rainy). I thought I'd recognised her but it wasn't until I stood next to her at the bar and she was joined by her husband that I realised who it was: Mark and Janet (he used to do all my plumbing when I lived in the village). I hadn't seen them for seven years and we spent a very pleasant hour catching up while we were waiting for our food to be served. I'd expected to have to eat alone, so the prospect of friendly company was a real fillip. We shared news over fish, burger, and lamb respectively. Mark's business is thriving. I remember him asking me, almost exactly ten years ago, whether I thought it was a good idea to branch out on his own or whether he should stay in the comfort and safety of being a paid employee. Well he DID set up his own business back then, and now has 14 people working for him and looks after the plumbing and heating requirements of small businesses across the whole UK. Nice one Mark! Not only that, but he'll be chairman of the Plumbing Foundation this year. A real success story, and an opportunity for me to name-drop!