Food.

For dinner I cooked myself a steak, a sirloin. I let the steak breathe for a couple of hours before cooking, and dusted it with pepper and salt. I made an incredibly simple salad: rocket, with a dressing of lemon, Dijon mustard and olive oil. I cooked an onion and two cloves of garlic in butter. Preheating the griddle pan, I painted the steak with olive oil and daubed some Dijon on as well, placing it on the pan mustard side down. While it was searing, I smeared the other side with the Dijon. I flipped the steak over several times while I cooked it, and stabbed the flesh so I could add a some of the lemon and mustard dressing into the meat, keeping it moist. 

When it was cooked - rare - I let it rest for five minutes, adding some St Agur cheese to melt over it. I like strong flavours. I like blood and cheese. What? 

It was delicious. I ate it with a glass of Beaujolais, and it was perfectly cooked. My fingers smell of butter, onions, garlic and blood. Delicious - I could eat my own hands. 

There you go. A meal, described. 

My mother is still in hospital and it's horrific, so I'll focus on a pleasure, an indulgence. A distraction. And tomorrow, hungry again, my family will go back to trying to work out what's going on with my mum, who isn't eating: hardly any food has passed her lips, hardly any water, she's refusing medicine. Three weeks ago I cooked dinner for her all week and she ate it happily. The decline has been sudden and awful. Tests are ongoing, but we just don't know. She has no appetite and no inclination to eat. Whether that's because of psychological or physical reasons we don't know. Tests are, as I say, ongoing. 

She's never been bothered about food. She famously (in the family) said "I never got the point of food. It's a faff.  I'd rather just have a pill, if I could." Now she wont even eat the pills.     

Tests are ongoing. 

We just don't know.