Melvyn has been baking up a storm, much to his neighbour’s delight.

Hello, it’s Melvyn here.

It’s nice to be back on Dementia Diaries. It’s all right, my dog’s barking…come here, come on…he wants his paw stroked.

Right, I just wanted to ring up to say about cooking and things. I’ve been doing quite a lot of cooking lately. I used to do it when my wife was alive, I mean she used to prepare it and I used to just put it in the oven, get it out and serve it. I’ve been trying a few things and I did a Tarte Tatin it’s an upside-down pie. I made it from my next-door neighbour’s pear – conference pears – oh, it was absolutely fantastic, it turned out really well. I didn’t make the pastry but hey ho, can’t do it all. Prepared it all, done it, put it in the oven and I took it to the [inuadible] man next door, whose pear it was, with some ice cream on it. Nice big bit for him because he’s not very well, he’s got cancer and he’s 86, he lives on his own and he’s on oxygen twenty hours a day. It was absolutely beautiful and he said…comes from Pakistan…he’s really a lovely, fantastic man.

I made steak and kidney suet pudding, I made that from scratch. I got the meat and the kidneys from the butchers and then done the suet, put it in the old basin, cooked it for about 5 or 6 hours, well I pre-cooked the meat anyway. So I did a steak and kidney pie with just pastry.

Loads of stews I’ve done with the old dumplings. So I’m eating quite healthily at the moment which is nice.

So I just thought I’d ring in. Bye.