Thanks to my Second Saturn Return I’m currently living in a garden annexe accessed through the main house. Typically, my landlord, Peter, ignored me telling him I couldn’t stop now, just come in, needed a wee, but followed me across the courtyard to tell me the bleeding obvious that he had taken my clothes off the line. He then hung about outside the grannexe, giving me enough time to have had my wee, before knocking on the door and repeating himself. This time (he knows I have no mobile coverage in the grannexe) I told him I was on the phone.
‘Oh, okay, but just to say, I’ve taken your clothes down off the line.’
‘I saw. Just on the phone.’
‘Okay, but if you need them dryer, swish them through the tumble, I would.’
‘Can’t listen to you and the person I’m…’
There was his big Aubrey face now visible through the frosted glass. ‘They’ll swish fast, I should imagine, as they were already all but dry.’ He continued on. ‘Jessica [his wife] was up early this morning doing our washing, she had a night terror again and thought she was being shot at from a passing car and had to get into the foot well. She chucked herself out of bed and cut her hand open on the bedside cabinet, so we’ve had to have the sheets through on a wash. It’s good to have the stick to hoist the line that far up, though come the real summer I won’t need to do my old nan’s trick of turning the washing on the line to get as much sun as possible as it’s April. Jessica would never do anything like that, she says, she has better things to do with her time.’ Take a leaf, why don’t you? ‘She doesn’t dust skirting boards, neither. She’s done similar before with these night terrors. At the caravan she thought she was a circus clown and the big top was about to come off its pegs down on top of them all. One of her sisters out of the three, Sally, has the same condition. With Sally, most recently it was she had to suck an alien out of her partner’s mouth. It’s why I’m trying more and more to get going with being online. I never used to be curious. But I am getting a bit. I won’t just sit watching a soap any more but will look up on Google how old someone is in it. “Oh, so that’s so-and-so actor and he’s fifty-nine”. And when Jessica retires, which I’m hoping won’t be too far off, I need her to sit me down and teach me some more. Because if she goes the way her mum has gone, which is hereditary anyway, I might well end up as her carer. Her mum has well and truly given up. Last time she was happy was on her eightieth birthday with all her grandchildren around her, but come eighty-two she was rushed into hospital with a severe bowel blockage. Now she faces the wall a lot. She won’t go out in case she shits herself and refuses to have a pad. She will say she’s been to the post box, but it turns out she won’t have gone the four doors down to the actual post box, she’ll just have posted whatever it is through her own letter box. She has three nighties the same. When we point out she has shit all up the back of one, and how long has she just left it left there, she will tell us the nightie was new on that morning so it’s new shit.’
Which gives me an opportunity, and I’m very much taking it, thanks, to say, ‘Same shit, different day.'
Comments
Post a Comment