Hospital food! Who doesn’t complain? Why is hospital food always awful? Where does it come from? Maybe it’s all processed in a huge food blender in a factory in China and carried on container ships to hospitals all over the globe. At its best it’s bland and tasteless, the consistency of junket. I believe in calling a curd a curd.

The food is some sort of disguised polenta. It’s somehow carbohydrate-ish, but nothing you can get your teeth into. It appears to be pre- mashed. Also pre- masticated and possibly even pre- digested (!)

My thoughts turn to home cooking. The woman has her faults, but bad cooking is not one of them. I miss the steamed chicken breast and the poached barramundi fillet in aspic, the curdled egg with two exquisite drops of sardine oil. Sigh.

Unsettling thought. Without the careful menu planning and the time spent cooking, the woman is probably at loose ends with nothing to do. Poor thing.

I must get out of here. Have refused all water.