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 !
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