let me off!

So I haven’t been enjoying this last week or two.

Maria has stolen my illness thunder by breaking her foot. I am convinced she did it deliberately. She has grown weary of my malingering and resolved to go for a more dramatic and noticeable ailment that also licenses, or rather requires her to have her lower leg in a cast for four to six weeks and to remain pretty much immobile. She clearly threw herself down the bottom stop at Nonnas hoping to snap that bone just where it matters, right across the knuckle in two places, a half centimetre higher and she would be in a stiff shoe and not a Henry Moore maquette.

So I have to say I am not taking this opportunity to look after her, her mother, three pissing pooing cats, my students, my career and my health philosophically. I am not enjoying the renewed intimacy brought on by adversity and compassion, to inject Maria in the belly with blood thinners because someone once died from a blood clot brought on by a broken foot – huh?? (actually I do quite like doing that bit- I feel like a proper doctor and slightly heroic at being able to stomach it (see what I did there) or to cook her mum a cordon blue pasta at 11:30 in the morning or measure her morphine into her syringe (the temptation to pour the contents of the bottle  down mine, or her, gob being barely resistible). I want my life back. I am not a caring sharing person. I want to write poems, listen to opera or tinker with stuff not maintain my loved ones health and welfare – it’s boring, arduous, stressful and a times potentially yucky.

Amidst all this joy the engine management light came on in the car signalling it had had enough of going and wanted a wee rest. It was like a message from God. “Gotcha you blaspheming atheist smug fat bellied bastard? I give thee cancer, thrice (well twice, thrice maybe still waiting to pass through the machine that sounds like a 1000 rusty cement mixers) and 6 weeks of hard labour. I give thee having to make dinner, breakfast, lunch, hot milk with two hermasetas and bickies, pastina with fresh parsley, basil, some fried tomatoes with garlic and a egg whisked in (I GIVE THEE COOKING thy most hated activity) – I charge thee to empty the back breaking cat boxes ripe with fresh poo, clear up the extra carpet poos triggered by an aggressive encounter, fill the coal buckets, light the fires, clean, vacuum, replenish toilet rolls, gather laundry, put the dustbins out in the right order –  CARE ENOUGH TO GIVE A SHIT if the green one is out on the blue day  !!!

HANG ON A MINUTE DOES HOP ALNG DO ALL THIS ON HER OWN?

No time for reflection or empathy I don’t like this at all, please get it to stop, please let me off. GOD I DIDN’T MEAN IT!

Actually our lovely ones have all offered to rush up and help. We declined.

‘WHAT THE F*** did we do that for.’

1 Response

  1. Paul Alan Barker November 25, 2021 / 8:36 am

    O Lordy! That is a big one. Love and hugs to you both. My Maria fell and broke her arm back in April so I have some experience, here, but a leg is worse, I suspect. I can tell you are concerned, dear Chris, but I cannot imagine how alarmed her magical garden will feel…..Wish there was something we could do. Food parcels? Xxxxxxxxxxxx

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