The weather has turned – my joints and dodgy bits of body are telling me it is colder, even if the sun has been shining.  Last night we went to a posh do at The Oval cricket ground and there was a drinks reception on the roof terrace before the meal.  On arrival it was suggested to guests that they left their coats on the second floor before ascending to the fourth floor.  It was lovely looking over the stunning cricket green (it really was very green) as the sun went down – but it was freezing!!  There was a blustery breeze that left many of the ladies’ bare shoulders blue and goose pimpled in their strappy evening gowns.  I had kept my outer layers on – a cape that looks a bit posh due to a fur collar – but my spinal cord stimulator and chronic nerve pain were doing battle with each other as to which could out do the cold air!

Earlier this week hubby and I were out shopping and again I was caught out by the sunshine!  Something that you don’t realise when you are up, mobile, walking and running is just how cold it can get sitting in a wheelchair.  My legs and feet were freezing and the cape (not the one from last night – one that Dad calls my “old lady blanket”) I usually tuck around me was safely in the car.  It is time to change the clothes, pack the summer shoes away and accept a different set of symptoms as the POTS faints decline as the temperature drops, and the chronic pain flares.

This is the autumn term now and when I saw Lorna’s writing prompt (Autumnal food memories) on Gin & Lemonade it got me thinking to times in the past when I could go out without constant chronic pain.  I’m not moaning, looking for sympathy, just merely reminiscing!  My memories of autumnal food takes me back to the Halloween/Guy Fawkes nights of my primary school days and the bonfire celebration that we would attend as a family held by my brother’s school.  It was in the rugby field and the big treat would be toffee apples – hard, crunchy, golden toffee casing over soft red apples.  Dreadful for our teeth Mum would tell us every year!  But then as the evening temperature dropped and feet started to go numb inside wellie boots, there would be polystyrene cups of hot tomato soup – Heinz in those days of course! – and never has soup tasted so good.

Thinking back there were aches and pains in some of my joints even then, but all put down to me being bendy (correct!) or growing pains (wrong!).  But the memories of that tomato soup, sticky toffee apples and not forgetting the fireworks and bonfire, will always makes me smile.

Make your own toffee apples with this simple recipe from the BBC Good Food site