What sort of day did you have?

My mother called me a couple of nights ago to say goodnight and have a brief chat. She does this quite often, which is nice, except when it's late and I'm asleep. Anyway, I don't quite know what came over me but our conversation took a testy turn:

“What sort of day did you have?” she asked

“Bloody marvellous,” I yawned sarcastically. “I got up, had a shower, popped into town to do a bit of shopping and then had a session in the gym, although I found the treadmill was a real bugger. Then I finished off with a swim and a sauna. Afterwards I had fish and chips for lunch before I caught the bus back to the hospital because I decided I'd done enough exercise for one day.”

“Don't be stupid!” she snapped. "You didn't really do that, did you?"

“No, of course I bloody didn’t! What sort of day do you think I had tied to a bed with a 20kg weight dangling from the end of my leg!”

“There's no need to be like that," she barked. "What sort of day did you really have?”

Perhaps it was the drugs or maybe I it was a severe case of cabin fever, but I decided to tell her exactly what sort of day I’d really had – minute by minute.

“Well, if you really want to know," I said. 'Eric the night nurse woke me up at six o'clock with my tablets and pulled back the curtains so I could see the brick wall as the dawn broke and HE took away my full pee bottle. Then I listened to the radio until around seven o'clock when the Health Care Assistant brought my breakfast tray of cereal, thin white toast. cheap sunflower spread, economy marmalade and lukewarm tea.

“After breakfast I felt at bit tired so I napped for an hour or two before being woken up by the nurse and HCA. They gave me a plastic bowl of warm water and told me to get on with washing myself. They asked if I wanted to clean my teeth with some mouthwash? 'Yes please,' I replied, but they still managed to bring me an empty plastic cup without any mouthwash in it.

“After a doing a passable impression of a cat washing itself and cleaning all the parts of my body that I could comfortably reach, I rang the buzzer for the HCA to come and finish me off and change my bedlinen.

“Ten minutes later, after some very painful acrobatic manoeuvres involving my monkey pole, they managed to change my bedsheets. I hardly had time to get comfy before a nice Slovakian girl came round with a mug of coffee which I drank while reading the newspapers on the internet. I ended up nodding off until a junior doctor popped his head round the door and woke me up to ask if I was sleeping any better.

“Lunch arrived at midday with more painkillers. I set about photographing the food so I could post it on my blog. It didn’t take me long to eat the food as it was truly inedible. After drinking a mug of tea I finished watching Loose Women on TV and then settled down for a snooze, but not before setting my alarm clock for The Alan Titchmarsh Show and Dickinson’s Real Deal.

"I'd just finished watching David Dickinson when it was time for supper. The tray arrived and I spent longer photographing the food than I did in trying to force any of it down my throat. Then the time just whizzed by until the nurse came round with the final hot drink of the day. After that it was 'lights out' so I cleaned my teeth and bedded myself down as comfortably as I could. I’d just managed to doze off when my mobile rang and it was you asking me what sort of day I’d had!"

"So... did you have a nice day?"