This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same...
I had left full-time singing teaching. It was my dream to move to Deaven. Olive’s house in Lembton was only two miles along the coast.
When I first met her, Olive had been very much, ‘Look at the women in this cafe. All failed schizophrenics. There’s Wendy Simons - so upper-lowbrow she thinks the Guggenheim is a song from Fiddler on the Roof. Oh, God, here’s Daphne. Talk about self-pity for having lost her one husband when some of us have got through a whole three.’
After I moved into her attic floor, she was far more:
'Iestyn, how about you give us all a treat and wear a different shirt for a change?'
'Iestyn, how about you visit the barber's, pronto?'
'Iestyn, how about you tread more lightly overhead? Eighteenth century joists weren't designed for twentieth century morbid obesity.'
'Iestyn, don't please leave your blasted porridge saucepan in the sink for Hazel to scrub. She works for me not you.'
In late autumn her step-daughter and son-in-law came. Marcia asked me how things were, was I claiming any dole, said thank goodness I was there - they all thought so – and moved the photographs of her children to more prominent positions.
They had Olive the worst.
‘Oh, my leg. My leg,’ she wailed. ‘Jasper!’ He worked in Hydrogen. ‘Jasper, help me to the kitchen.’
Where, ‘Next time a tot, not a drip, of vodka in my elevenses Bovril. My Hazel started us all on Bovril. So far only silly Dorothy takes it neat.’
And, ‘Wrong lettuce.’
Also, ‘Put the peppers back in the Aga. Did nobody tell you my digestive requirements?'
Later, ‘It’s my bedtime. Carry me upstairs.’
Where, ‘This is your undercooked peppers’ fault, Jasper.’ Have I told you he was in Hydrogen? ‘I don’t like having to sit this long on the commode. I haven’t got my reading glasses.’
Finally, ‘There, by my tablets...baby-wipes.’
Jasper pulled Marcia out of bed at four am. She couldn’t talk him out of leaving.
No, he was adamant. Olive’s bedroom was above theirs. And he had distinctly just heard her stamping about on blatantly healthful legs.
And with, thanks to him, a baby-pure bottom.
The day came in mid-December for Olive to fly to California, leaving me blessedly home alone for Christmas.
Dr Ball grounded her.
‘He says my leg ulcers are too near being down to the bone - and leaky - to withstand altitude.’
It was seven in the morning. Olive’s flight was at midday.
‘Dr Ball thinks my shins might kipper.’ Crikey. ‘I wish I was dead,' Olive said.
She was looking deadish already, lying in a swaddle of Laura Ashley Percale Collection Cabbages and Roses of London. Her hair was flat and creased. Beneath her curdling night cream her face was a colicky baby’s: disappointment exacerbated by her inevitable hangover and ‘the spins’ from a chemical melange that would have scuppered a Southern White Rhino. She took antibiotics, anti-depressants, uppers, downers. The tot of vodka in her elevenses Bovril. Beer at lunch. Two at least treble whiskies at six. Then she would either boast ‘of course, I don’t drink, you know’ nursing a third whiskey through dinner, or polish off almost a full bottle of wine, followed by a night cap big enough to snuff an outback fire.
‘Dead,’ she repeated.
I couldn’t bear seeing my lovely lone Christmas go south. I overruled Dr Ball, 'No, you'll be fine, flying, Olive. Doctors don't know anything. It’s just sitting still up there, isn’t it?’
And being as silly as she is, she went.
And that was how my house-sitting cherry was taken.
#dogsitter #dogsitting #memoir #funny #sundaytimes #iestynedwards #books #comedy
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