Back to basics

The old git’s chipped a bone on his spine. Knackered his back.
The daughter has trapped a nerve, knackered her back.
The mother has scarred her lung, knackered her back.
Back to back problems which had me feeling desolate.
I stood one-legged on my wobble cushion this morning, its meant to strengthen the ankle, gazing at the’oosbind who was still asleep. He’s spent the last four nights on the armchair in the sitting room his back too bad for him to lie down in the bed.
I stared at him and thought how were we going to holiday in France with him being so broken.

I took the 170 to VIctoria and took a slow walk through St. James Park. With Buck House behind me I sauntered through pigeons, squirrels, ducks and more Italian tourists than in ‘Bar Italia’ during the world Cup.
A lone goose, all torpe coloured and fractious, herded her one frilly gosling towards the lake. She was skriking for the gander. She was shouting ‘Where the ‘ell are you’ in Geek.
The fluffy gosling tip-toed round her legs. The whole scene made me cry – inevitably – given what’s going on with my bloomin’ family.
So I called up the old git and said no holiday was taking place until he said so. What was the point of going away if he was going to be in agony and uncomfortable. I didn’t feel virtuous, I felt mad actually – my one summer holiday ruined by a slippery pair of Shakespearean shoes in Norwich Cathedral. There was a pause on the end of the line and his little Northern voice said
‘Are you sure?’
In that moment I knew I had done the right thing, he would have trekked to Madagascar if I’d have asked him to.
So I spent the rest of my walk re-arranging my thoughts. Trying to deal with the fact that I would be in the cottage for two weeks.
No French baguettes – which I’m not eating anyway.
No wine – which I’m not drinking anyway.
No frogs legs – get outta here.
No coffee…..
By the time I got to LBC Towers I had resigned myself to being Florence Nightingale on her Staycation.
The show was slow but ok. I think everybody has actually gone away on their vacation. I left and bought a few nuts in Charing Cross Station and took the Clapham Junction train. Read the review in the ‘Evening Standard’ of ‘The Young Vics’ production I should have seen last night and had to deal with the fact that it got five stars whilst I was at home rubbing my husbands coccyx.
Jim met me in Battersea High Street and we walked very slowly back to the flat. Met Millie the cross-breed collie in the park and dodged the traffic as the old man crossed the road.
When we reached the flat I had dealt with my theatrical disappointment and my summer in ‘Stopathome.’
Look loads of people are staying in the UK this year and who knows if his back gets better we may still be able to ferry across the Channel and have a couple of nights dans France.
I love my Nike Free 3 trainers but they don’t ‘alf make your feet smell so I’ve scrubbed them with peppermint jelly gunk from the ‘Body Shop’, washed them with very expensive soap and rubbed a deeply satisfying cream over my soles.
I am about to cook supper and watch the rain from the balcony.
The actor is off to Suffolk tomorrow to give his broke-back mounted version of ‘Touchstone.’ The daughter is back from Barcelona on Saturday, and then my holiday begins in the garden of my own home in Sussex with a trowel and trug and clean sheets on my own bed in the cottage. The old geezer will hobble through the apple trees, shout at my weeding and direct my pruning. I shall tell him to fork off out of it and leave me fiddling with my convulvulus, after all its my holiday too.