The Entertainer

His wheezing listeners clutch their aching sides and struggle to talk. 

God, that is hilarious. 

Grinning, he plucks out more anecdotes, twisting the words into humorous shapes for their delectation, and they love it. 

That’s so funny.  You’re such a scream. 

And then he goes home, warmed by their laughter.  But he goes home to the four familiar walls who know only too well there’s nothing remotely amusing about his stories; it’s just the way he tells them.

The Kindness of Strangers

She sucked in her lined cheeks, tongue jostling the smooth hard dentures around her soft, toothless gums, and drew in one long breath, before releasing it and shattering the stupid woman’s stuck-up, middle-class plans with a well-aimed blow.

Don’t you know the museum’s closed?

She might have smirked inwardly as the children exchanged sneaky, gleeful grins, as their mother slumped, defeated, but it would have taken a lie-detector to unmask and reveal her guilt.

Psssst.....

Dear Santa,

I know I've been a very bad blogger this year, but you know how hard I've worked.

Please, please, please can I have a publishing deal?  I promise I'll be good - very good indeed xxx

To Cope, Or Not Cope?

That is the question....

It’s that time of year when we asthmatic types are invited along to our doctors’ surgeries for a jab to protect us against the ravages of the annual flu outbreak, and protect them from having wheezing malingerers cluttering up their waiting rooms at a busy time of year.  Last week it was youngest son’s turn. 

I made him go, deciding the hazards of mini medical procedure outweighed the headache of having him poorly, and because the horrific memories of last December’s dental debacle (there is nothing ‘routine’ about an autistic child having a general anesthetic for a tooth extraction, believe me) had lessened in their potency, I made him go.

By our standards, it went well.  We even managed a whole two minutes in the crowded waiting room before he started yelling ‘I’m bored, when is it my turn?’  I succeeded in keeping up a jolly smile under the barrage of disapproving looks, and ignored all the tutting as his shouts grew louder.  Everyone sighed with relief when he was called in, thanks, I’m sure, to a little tweaking of the patient’s list by the receptionists, who probably remember last time’s meltdown.

It was going very well, until we met the nurse.  An older woman, neatly coiffed in her smart blue uniform, she was clearly nervous.  Not good.  She tried to initiate a conversation with youngest son, and was flummoxed when he did what he always does, and ignored her.  Her hand started to shake more visibly when she asked him to pull his sleeve up and he said ‘no’.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  I should have been more forceful with the pretty blonde nurse, since she’d obviously never dealt with anyone quite like youngest son before.  ‘You’re going to have to seize the moment’ I said, meaning, ‘just get on with it’, but she was so frightened of hurting the dear boy – ordinarily commendable – that all she managed to do was scratch his arm with the tip of the needle.  There came a point when I was about to say ‘give me the syringe and I’ll do it myself’, but with a deep breath, she found her courage, and younger son tore out of the room howling with outrage.

She stood holding onto the desk, biting her lip to hold back the tears.  “I don’t know how you cope,” she warbled, and much as I felt sorry for her, I couldn’t help but let out a mad cackle, especially when a breathless receptionist burst into the room to report younger son had just fled out of the surgery’s main door.  I caught up with him, he simmering with indignation, me still chuckling, and we walked back to the car.  ‘I don’t know how you cope’.  I don’t know how I cope either, but if I don’t, who will?

And no, I’m not taking him for a flu jab next year.  We’ll stock up on inhalers, and wish for luck.  

Sigh...

Colours

Take a colour, Esther says.  Take a colour, take lots of colours, take as many as you like, and fill the paper.  Fill the paper with colours that sum up your mood and how you’re feeling.  Fill lots of paper if you want, just draw how you feel.  Go on.  There’s no right or wrong.  No one’s going to judge what you do.  Just try it and see how it goes.  No right, no wrong.  Play with it.  See what happens.

The others, they set to it.  Fergus holds a stubby red crayon between his thick, hairy fingers and his meaty hand draws loops looping round and round, filling the page with elegant sweeps, his eyes unblinking as though this is some sort of miracle and he mustn’t miss a millisecond.  Laura draws a pink unicorn, trust her, and Billy scrapes back his chair, says this is all bollocks, and stomps off out for a smoke, Esther straggling after him going wait Billy, just give it a try okay, her voice fading out into the corridor.

I don’t wanna ‘play’ with Esther’s stupid crayons.  She thinks she knows how it is, fluttering in here in her shiny new blue car, fresh from her pretty house with its just-so décor, matching kids and soft-hearted husband, gaggles of giggling friends and a family: a family; people to notice if she ceases to be.

I stare at my page.  What colour is there to capture the flat sterility of my life, the time passing within the bubble of my four walls where nothing happens unless I move, no one speaks unless I turn on the telly or talk out aloud, aimless hours blending into one timeless monotony as I drift through the doldrums of solitude, while a busy world, the ‘normal’ world bustles on around me, without me, and there’s no one to notice I’m not there.

What colour are you thinking of, Gina?  Esther asks, hovering over my shoulder.

What colour is there to capture the fact she’s the first person who’s spoken to me in days; that I walked into Fergus on the way in here on purpose, just to feel another person’s touch; that when we’ve finished this latest session of stupid games I will wander the streets, squandering time until the inevitable happens and I return to my empty home.

Come on Gina, Esther wheedles.  Choose a colour.

I kick the table.  It lands with a crash, crayons and paper scattering across the floor.  Esther blinks, but honestly, what does she expect?  I can’t explain that I can’t explain, and someone like Esther will never understand that she’ll never understand.

Girl

I found her trembling on the kerb outside my house, puffy eyes red from crying, quivering eyelashes sodden with tears and dressed not in the countryside uniform of muddy boots and grubby waterproofs, but in white: an embroidered blouse, crisp tailored shorts and pristine white pumps, matching beads adorning sapling arms so delicate they needed no ornament.  No, she told me, wringing out a soggy handkerchief and winding it round and around her long trembling fingers, she didn’t need my help.  Her brother was coming.  Everything was all right.

A car drew up.  An unsmiling man and unamused woman, their rock-hard faces staring into some unfathomable distance as thought they’d rather be anywhere but here.  The girl got up, all long limbs and coltish legs, young enough to be my daughter.  She clambered into the backseat, crying too hard to speak.

They drove away.  I stood twisting my hands, watching as the car grew smaller and smaller, and disappeared.  And I stood there for some time, wondering who the girl was, how she’d come to be sitting outside my house, and just who exactly had collected her: brother, friend or pimp; the feeling I had just missed the opportunity to do the right thing staying with me, gnawing my conscience for months to come.

                                                Picture of white feather by Stuart Lilley www.photoforbeginners.com

Mites and The Ministry of Quick Thinking

Well, while the rest of the country has been soaring on an Olympic high this summer, down here in ‘Tales’ it’s more of the usual lurching from one domestic disaster to another. Between builders who vanish like early morning mist mid-job, to drains that collapse the day after I turn down home insurance that would have covered said drains, there’s never a smooth moment. But the latest mishap is the most unpleasant, and, worst of all, it’s all entirely my fault.


I wrote last year about our little ‘Twilight Saga’ which, funnily, is the one post that generates the most hits, presumably horrifying people looking for vampire stories rather than my musings on poultry mites. For those of you who don’t keep chickens, the birds are susceptible to nasty little red mites which hide in their hen house and crawl out after dark to feast on their blood. Oh, and the bugs would probably survive a nuclear holocaust, they seem to be virtually indestructible.

Anyway, being very lazy, I hadn’t checked the henhouse for mites for a while. Conscience troubling me, I decided to inspect it one evening last week, and was horrified to find the house crawling. Gritting my teeth, I filled buckets of hot soapy water, and by the time I’d finished sluicing, there was nothing moving. But what to do with the mite-infested straw and sawdust I’d removed? It was getting dark, and I couldn’t think. Then I had a flash of inspiration: the plastic compost bin. Genius. You know, I thought, when I have so many good ideas, it’s a wonder I’m not asked to be an advisor in a government department or something. I could head the Ministry of Quick Thinking. Without a second thought, I tipped all the bedding into the bin and went in for a well-earned glass of cold beer, patting myself on the back for being so clever.

It was a few days later when I next went to the compost bin. I lifted the lid, and dropped it with a shriek. The bin, the lid, and now my hand, was a seething mass of mites. It was like something from a horror film. That’s right: in my haste to find a solution for the infested bedding, I’d stupidly overlooked the fact the compost inside the bin is nice and warm, perfect for mite multiplication.

No idea what to do, I ran indoors to wash my hands, and fretted over what to do, plumping for the option of hoping they’d go away by themselves. But if none of this was bad enough, that night I couldn’t get to sleep for the cat messing around. He sleeps on my bed, and went on scratching and shuffling until I was ready to scream. And scream I did when turning on the light revealed both he and consequently my bed were crawling with tiny mites.

I have attacked the bin repeatedly with disinfectant inflicting a high death toll on the ghastly bugs, but there are many survivors still crawling. The cat, banned from everyone’s beds, is sporting a thick layer of mite powder and an indignant air. I’m told I need to take the straw out of the compost and burn it, but the thought of having to reach down into the infested compost bin is so abhorrent, I have yet to pluck up the courage.

This is an example of why I’m not asked for advice on any matter whatsoever. Roll on winter and lovely heavy, mite-killing frosts, that’s what I say!