SALLY...Part 237. I DON'T KNOW WHOSE TOOTHBRUSH SHIRLEY PACKED ME OFF TO HOSPITAL WITH !

 No doctor has quite worked out what is actually wrong with me in the last many years but stuff like raised blood pressure, gallstones, a hiatus hernia and quite serious life threatening heart conditions have all been investigated and chemicals prescribed which allow me to carry on writing this garbage and make thousands of more purses and more importantly survive to annoy !

Three hours after a particularly large serving of Shirley's beef caserole, roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips which I was too full to finish a suspected stomach ulcer which is YET to be proven saw me in distress with very dreadful breathing problems and a blood pressure reading of 217/117 which was so high that it  required immediate A&E treatment !

So Shirley thrust a toothbrush and a virtually empty tube of toothpaste into my already stuffed coat and didn't cry or appear in any way moved as I was driven off !

Gemma must have thought her father a complete idiot when he asked the receptionist if he could use the toilet before sitting down and I think I must have been pretty much out of it because I can only vaguely remember asking !

Masked up in casualty and with a triage nurse confirming my home monitor reading I was sat in a spacious area that I think might have been especially peopled with nutters to keep me entertained for the three and a half hours I was there amongst and one of them !

No-one spoke, except some of those nutters, jabbering to themselves as I read and re-read a TV screen headline, 'Firm confirms it's sold more vehicles but with less profit this year' as it slid continuously across the bottom of a large screen that also recommended 'STAY IN AND WORK OUT' and permanently showed 'WAITING TIME TWO HOURS' !'

Very little happened; almost no activity took place...a body here and a body there were called and disappeared but no-one new came in once I'd arrived at 10pm !

An overweight elderly man in shorts with a cut knee irritated everyone for two hours until he disappeared by working his way very slowly backwards in the wheelchair he'd been sat in by removing one slipper and sock and using the big toe of his uninjured leg to thrust himself one inch at a time out of the building and then back in again ! I refused to catch his eye as I didn't want another friend for life like so many others I've managed to pick up along the way !

Some sat jiggling up and down and others burst out laughing at nothing whilst black clothed 'SECURITY' officers wandered in and out to go to the toilet or collect a paper cup of coffee from a vending machine off limits to the public !

And so I waited for my arm to be emptied of blood for tests and was sent out to wait again with a canula left inserted in case I collapsed, my mobile phone totally beyond my comprehension lying idle in my lap after I had REALLY tried and failed to connect it to the NHS network so I could keep my unworried sleeping wife up to speed !

I mean, I REALLY tried but I never carry a phone and had NO idea of what my password is, what the maiden name of my mother's favourite aunt's mother-in-law was or which of a hundred 'data sliders' to operate but I now see that it cost me TWO QUID to fail to use the pay as you go monster that I'm forced to carry in case I die and need to phone for help !

I now wish I'd thought about what to wear that would have eased me smoothly through my visit and the tests but I didn't so here's what NOT to wear....A thick coat with stuffed pockets on top of what looks like a road mender's 'gilet', on top of TWO woollen jumpers, on top of a long sleeved Rohan shirt, on top of a T shirt !

Each time I was summed for another test I had to remove everything and the staff must have thought I lived on the streets, especially when stuff started falling out of my pockets and onto the floor.....like the toothbrush I didn't recognise !

"OH GOD !" I thought, "please don't let her have sent me with the one that sits at the far end of the shelf that I use to bleach the taps and clean the plug holes !" and which I didn't need because I got sent home !

And I do believe I heard quite a disappointed sounding hissed, "Oh Bugger !" coming from beneath an upstairs bedroom as I walked back in at 2:06am but I didn't mention it !

SALLY....PART 236. I CAN'T WAIT FOR TOMORROW !

 

The photo has NOTHING to do with what follows !

I was just rinsing my eight plates, four forks, three knives, a couple of spoons, a pair of spatulii and a mug after washing them up following my cooked breakfast of three rashers of bacon, four plum tomatoes, an egg, half a slice of delicious fried bread crust and a mug of coffee which all in had taken only slightly less than two hours to cook and eat when Shirley appeared tutting at my shoulder !

"What on earth is all the noise why eight plates and all the cutlery I've only been on the phone for three hours and note that you would have hardly heard MY voice and the racket has been diabolical oh my god the smell is awful how much washing up liquid did you use because you only need a drop and you don't need an entire kettle of boiling water so I'm going to show you how to wash up properly tomorrow" (You don't need punctuation when someone doesn't stop to take a breath !)

I think I'll set my alarm for early though I doubt whether I'll need to as I'm already feeling quite excited and probably won't sleep tonight !

SALLY....PART235. TURN YOUR HEATER BACK ON AND SOD OFF BACK TO YOUR ROOM !

 Once I had a forty foot long shipping container filled it's entire length with leather offcuts that a couple of furniture factories were desperate to get rid of and which I eventually gave away to schools and colleges once I realised that paying rent for storage was getting too expensive.

The container went.

Then over the years the factories shut and I was left with just one supplier and since the first lockdown I've not been allowed in to collect anything and so I have continued working until I'd used up every last scrap until I ended up with a massive pile of work waiting for the zips to arrive from the far east before I can finish it !

I then spent a few weeks painting watercolours which I mount onto gift cards and have been selling for years but after painting 200 I ran out of paint and so really my workshop, built as an extension to my house became obsolete and a week ago I was persuaded to turn off the heating and set up my keyboards in the main house in the alcove addition to the kitchen but I seem to have become an irritant and this morning heard the words in the title !

What had I done ? What had I said ? How can a man sitting quietly watching 80 episodes (and counting) of Spiral and occasionally writing on facebook annoy anyone ?

It's not as if I don't cheerfully do the washing up and sacrifice myself to a daily drubbing at Scrabble is it ?

SALLY....PART 234. HAS IT COME TO THIS ?

NO WORD WAS SPOKEN BUT THE ATMOSPHERE CRACKLED !

 Having meekly accepted my new LOCKDOWN role of washer up I was summoned to the sink's plughole last night where an errant sweetcorn kernel was pointed at wordlessly by a wife with a disappointed look !

SALLY...PART 233. "SHIRLEY ! HURRY, I'M STUCK !"

 

Oh for the days when my limbs did what I wanted them to without pain !

Yesterday I got warned that a plastic golf ball which had mysteriously appeared was about to block the downpipe in the inset gutter on my flat roof extension and as I don't have a ladder to climb UP to the roof I have to climb out of an upstairs bedroom window every few months to clear the thing of the build up of sludge that comes from nowhere !

So, I would open the window and using the child toilet step that Shirley still uses and which has doubled as a vomit catcher for when various children have been drunk or grandchildren poorly I'd nip up onto the windowsill with my right foot, bringing my left foot up to it and passed it and out of the window whilst dropping down to sit on the sill at the same time throwing my right foot and leg out into space !

Sounds complicated but it wasn't and relied on suppleness in the joints !

Yesterday, I couldn't even get my right foot up let alone my left !

"Get a chair and put another one out on the roof !" I was advised but I'm a man and knew better !

Somehow having rejected or failed at sensible solutions I ended up with my left leg over my head lying immovably on the windowsill with the rest of me on the roof some distance below !

I was STUCK and hadn't the strength to pull it out or push it back !

"SHIRLEY !" I bellowed as my ball and socket joint started to dislocate, "Can you come up and help me.....NOW !"

She arrived slowly having not been disturbed cooking my dinner or washing up because lockdown has led to her having contempt for the ordinary conventions of marriage and collapsed laughing at my predicament !

"What do you want me to do ?" she asked.

Many black and other inappropriate thoughts went through my mind before I answered, "Lift my foot and push it towards me !"

Well she has bad shoulders and aching arms these days, not that you'd believe it by the sounds coming out from the kitchen every morning as she chops a mountain of red onions and cheddar cheese into fragments with the speed and strength of a demented woodpecker drilling into a tree after grubs before piling it onto her toast and sticking it under the lowest possible heat of the grill for about an hour until I hear, "OH SHIT !" because she forgot all about it whilst answering her daughter's and her sister's 'Facebook Notifications' and it is all reduced to a very thin blackened biscuit....which she STILL won't give me !

Anyway, she doesn't really like any physical contact with my feet and her first attempts were pathetic !

Nothing moved accept my ball joint slightly, on its way out and so I urged her to put a bit more muscle into it !

"For God's sake PUSH AND LIFT, I'm DYING !" which she finally did, resentfully, and my heel fell out and landed with a thud as a round of applause and cheering reached us from the throng of neighbours who had collected by their back doors when they'd first heard my shouts and who you'd think had never seen two seventy year olds yelling at each other and arguing about a stuck leg after a lifetime of the wife's embittered disappointment with her husband !

I MUST buy a ladder !