Monday will be a public holiday, so mum and dad have been delivered some frozen Meals on Wheels to tide them over the long weekend. Which reminds me of this fact: Meals on Wheels is the greatest bulwark we have against mum and dad's further decline.

I cannot remember when we started using Meals on Wheels, but it was over a year ago.

We discovered that mum and dad's diet had degenerated to something near bread and water levels. We probably should have seen the warning signs earlier, but in those days we still assumed that what we didn't know was fine. Both mum and dad were getting thinner (though few see this as a problem these days), paler, less energetic, and less cheerful. It was only when we saw the evidence of their diet that we put the whole picture together and realised that they were already some way into serious malnourishment.

During the day they were eating biscuits [note: given that over 90% of this weblog's readership is American I now wonder whether I ought to be saying 'cookies'], crisps (potato chips) and chocolate. Dinner was literally bread and butter. The only commendable part of their diet was that dad still occasionally brought home a few apples and oranges.

Our (Regan's) first step was to order frozen Meals on Wheels, which were delivered in weekly batches. This almost immediately proved to be a bad idea. Not only were mum and dad not able to shop properly, we now discovered that they could no longer prepare their food either. The frozen meals simply accumulated in the freezer, the fridge, and even in cupboards. Every time there was a delivery, dad would call one of us in a panic.

'You won't believe this, but someone has just come round here and left a huge, a really huge, stack of food for us. We're never going to be able to eat all this food. Where's it coming from, anyway? We didn't order this. We haven't got the money to pay for this. Mike, you've got to speak to these people and tell them,' here he switched to the pedantic lecturing mode that we all know so well, '"We do NOT, I repeat, NOT want any more of this food". It's ridiculous, what they're bringing here.'

We thought things might settle down pretty quickly but they didn't.  I wished aloud it was like it used to be in the old days, when Meals on Wheels delivered hot dinners to the oldies, hunched over in their terraced houses, watching 'Crossroads' on TV. I mentioned this to Regan, who told me that if that was what we wanted, Meals on Wheels were quite able to comply. The frozen service was an 'as well as', not an 'instead of'.

Mum and dad soon adapted to the hot deliveries. They'd be sitting either side of the table, knives and forks held vertically, watching the minutes tick away and, presumably, salivating like Pavlov's dogs. There were a few adjustments to be made before we got the size of the meals right. Dessert is in, soup is out. Fruit juice is in. Mum rarely finishes her main course without encouragement (which she does not get from dad) or help (which she does get from Tippi). The desserts are often put into the fridge and eaten later, but otherwise things are just right now. I'd go much further: I'd say that Meals on Wheels is the one social service that has turned out an unmitigated success. Without it, mum and dad would surely have to be in a home by now.

The meal deliveries are just the basics. It is the embellishments of the service that are most impressive. All the volunteers I've met have been exceptionally nice to mum and dad. They often bring little sachets of cat food for the cats too, and of the four birthday cards dad got this year, one of them was from the Meals on Wheels people, covered in signatures. All for $6 a day. I rang them and thanked them for it.