Lip-smackin' good!

A night in A&E led to a diagnosis of shingles. MRSA and C-diff will surely follow. He has been asleep ever since so the brother-in-law ‘Sonny Longpockets’ (whom one could kindly call shrewd – or realistically call tight-fisted) has not been too disturbed by his dad’s visit. No loud TV, no repeated question as to what day, what time, what channel is this… No lengthy rambles about who died in which war. Mind you the talking is made worse by the pauses, the head shaking with frustration as he tries for the right word.

An ex’s mother had the same problem. She once had us worried when she insisted she had lost her smack! We weren't worried that she had lost it – but that she might have it, the little tearaway! She was arse up under the sofa cushions at the time, scrabbling. ‘Where’s my smack’ she asked ‘Have you seen my smack?’ We looked on aghast and couldn’t answer trying to guess what on earth she was searching for. The image is not enhanced by the fact she bears no resemblance to Kate Moss - she looks like Ronnie Corbett in drag. No way could a Soroptomist and devotee of the pinafore dress be harbouring pretensions towards being a smackhead. The nearest she got to drug dealing was handing out sweet sherry at dry family funerals. Smack, it transpired, was her way of describing the lip-smacking motion she made after applying lipstick.

She never found it so had to pay a trip to Boots the Pusher for a refill and spent the entire day in slingbacks searching Haverfordwest and Milford Haven for a reel of cotton on my behalf. Later that day she apologetically explained she had found a reel of Sage but not the Cool Sage I had wanted. On closer inspection she found I had written col: sage - so her carbon footprint had unnecessary bunions that day. She also couldn’t find the right shade of lipsmack so took to mixing her own from the dregs of lipsticks past, melting them in the microwave and applying it from a small tin with a brush when cold. What next – along with homemade Martini and bread-dough Christmas decorations was there anything she couldn’t replicate in the kitchen. Next week, Betty cooks up some gene therapy with a Knorr stock cube and sachet of bouquet-garni!

Jack & Jill

He hadn't been away more than a day before the problems began. Daddy Shortlegs has also forgotten his medication. Not all of it; he has about 4 days worth of some of the pharmacopoeia he drags about with him but he's away for two weeks. His solution is to shout down the phone and exclaim his need for Richard to come and get him. Richard doesn't want to as he has a full weekend of work. His second option is to take a train into Cheltenham and have Richard meet him there - neither are used to Cheltenham and you can only imagine the disaster as both turn up late, at the wrong place and then Daddy forgets where he is and why, gets confused, panicky, shouty.

Only last week on his way to the barbers (on the only day of the week when they are closed) he was accosted by a woman who thought he seemed destined to fall. She dragged him home and on the doorstep announced she was 'Jill'. So Jill had brought Jack home - no-one had fallen and there wasn't the least hint of vinegar. Or brown paper.

Our solution is for him to visit a GP or A&E and have a new prescription filled (of course he is in England where prescriptions still cost money but as a pensioner there are no costs attached). We don't want him back until the kitchen is in place. That's our story and we're sticking to it!

Driving Miss Lackadaisy

I’m off to London for the day and Rich is getting ready for the tedious drive to drop him off at the funeral just outside Birmingham. It’s amazing how far old people will travel for a sniff of cooked ham.

Daddy Shortlegs will sleep all the way. Although this doesn’t provide any company for Rich, it is less irritating than his company which usually consists of harrumphing along to the Telegraph.

Of course, he isn’t ready – the family work on a different timescale to others. A ten o’clock start usually means leaving the house just before any hope of lunch. Rich goes to his bedroom to get the suitcase but he hasn’t packed. He’ll be away for about a fortnight while the new kitchen is installed but he has only a towel or two and his funeral suit (which he is now wearing in its entirety rather than the half-and-half arrangement of shirt & tie, socks & shoes and forgetfulness & neglect we were exposed to yesterday). Rich helps by bundling in clothes piled around the room – the suitcase has been in the middle of the room for a week, so we have no idea why there is so little in it. The irony is that Daddy also has little idea as to why it is empty – perhaps his clothes have gone the way of his marbles – away with the fairies (don’t start making up your own jokes at this point).

It is getting late by the time we find his lost bank cards (on the mantelpiece) and Rich checks all the electrical gadgets are turned off. A fan heater has been on continuously since October despite it being the hottest April on record. As he finally gets into the car, struggling with the wriggling python of technology that is a seatbelt, he begins muttering but Rich puts his foot down and drives off ignoring the mumbling by turning his iPod up a notch. Oblivious to all, Rich leaves the house unattended and doesn’t hear the question… ‘Did I pull the front door shut?’

Style matters... well mutters anyhow!

The kitchen has landed – woo hoo!! I arrive home from work at 6pm and see the boxes of urban crème (pronounced to sound like an inner city funeral centre). The dining room is chockfull of boxes – electrical goods, cabinets and worktops piled high jamming the door open and going back as far as I can see. I wander to the kitchen and yet more boxes assault me but that is nothing to the next wave of attack…

Out of the bathroom wanders Daddy Shortlegs. He is wearing a pyjama top, slippers and socks - nothing else. It’s not a sight for sore eyes. Unless you want sore eyes, that is. The dangly collection of unmentionables clanks off towards his room and I instinctively wash my hands like Lady Macbeth only I wonder if my mind will ever be clean of that image. He’s unhappy because in a zealous rush to put everything breakable out of the kitchen before the old cupboards were removed, Rich has put the plates in the dining room which is now inaccessible. Having no plates to Jack is a catastrophe – how will he eat? To me, having no plates is an opportunity for sneaky takeaways. I wonder why he is mithering as he has taken to buying readymade sandwiches and microwaveable meals, eating from the plastic or heating up soup and eating it from the saucepan – it’s a classy life chez nous.

The washing up still takes an hour-and-a-half. He washes the plastic containers. He washes the plastic film you remove before heating. He washes tins that contained tuna which he adds to whatever salad-in-a-bowl he has purchased. He only buys Tesco’s finest range so there goes any inheritance the boys were expecting.

I sit at my computer for a while – Tetris might get my mind off the vision, but no, a collection of oddly shaped items bobbing slowly down the screen does not have that effect and I am relieved when at eight o’clock a colleague calls. Despite my protestations that the doorbell is for me, he has pushed his way slowly and inexorably like a muttering mass of lava towards the front door. He now has on some sort of support tights (pop socks) as well as a shirt and white shorts. We consider he may need a bag and a big hat to finish off the outfit.

At ten o’clock I hear him coming up the stairs towards the study, rocking sideways on each step as usual. He is dressed now in a towelling dressing gown but over the tied belt is a leather one. He has dark socks over his stockings and a pair of sharp black shoes finish the ensemble – he is trying them on for tomorrow’s funeral I expect. It’s another fashion disaster; his belted gown makes him look like some medieval librarian or a refugee from Hogwarts’ retirement village.

‘Rich up?’ he asks

‘Up? No, he’s not in yet from work.’

‘But we’re going to this funeral. It’s quarter past ten.’

‘At night.’ I say emphasising each word - it’s dark out and we are next to a big window but he is convinced it is morning.

‘Everyone’s been up in the night’, he says ‘your friend came’.

‘That was two hours ago, eight pm. It was still light.’

He wanders off and I am not sure he knows what time it is but I will try to enjoy myself as it is definitely later than he thinks!

Tapped

Daddy Shortlegs usually only relinquishes the remote control to take up his position as rear gunner on the taps. He has become fixated by washing up or simply being at the sink, so much so that the builders have asked if we should put a tap in his room – no water – just a tap like one of those fake steering wheels one gives a kid. ‘He loves that tap’ the builder says.

I am dreading the kitchen being refitted tomorrow as he will undoubtedly get in the way. He can make a bowl of washing up last an hour and a half - how he will feel about the dishwasher is unknown. He gets through lakes of Milton, scrubbing cups with a toothbrush to remove any trace of stain - or glaze! We have ordered a stainless steel Belfast sink - perhaps he can have a bath if he is never reconciled with the shower controls. He isn't very big after all.

The hand that flicks the channel

Another womble up to my room by Runty the Dwarf. He is in the pose we would choose if he were to be stuffed and mounted... TV & Satellite weekly glued to his left hand, the TV remote in his right. 'This book...' the TV guide is brandished (well shaken with as much dramatic flourish as a pre-Parkinson’s case can muster). There is no hope of me seeing what is written as it flits before my eyes a couple of times.

We discover, by being now fluent in grunt, that he wants to watch Highlander (no idea why) and cannot access the FX channel. I begin to explain how to change channels but he is more interested in muttering about how it never bloody works! I use my remote and turn on my TV to the fx channel (a one and only time). It is perfect. Well if watching highlander on FX is perfect.

Richard tells him to stop muttering and listen to me and as I begin to explain about pressing the TV button. With his customary lack of patience, up jumps Richard and rushes off to do it for The old mutterer which of course only distracts him even more. Within seconds Rich is back saying ‘there, I’ve done it’ so Jack can watch TV ... only now he wants to know where the remote is... you remember, the one that moves all by itself. Would somebody call Yvette Fielding.

Old Father Time

He’s having a panic – he can’t find his watch. We have only changed the time on it an hour ago and left it on the bedside table but now he claims it is lost. Of course, he hasn’t moved it. He hasn't lost it. It has moved. It is lost.

I stand idly while my partner immediately goes into hunt mode, picking up things and looking under his dad’s little mountains of discarded trouser and shirts. I listen to him running about for five minutes and then suggest they think about where he has been in the house. The bathroom is searched, the kitchen. No joy.

'What does the watch look like?' I ask. Metal. Silver. 'So what’s that...' I point to Jack’s wrist where the watch has been all along! It's Gaslight all over again.

Of course his bedside clock/radio is also on the blink. He can’t reset the time... no scratch that.... The clock won’t work—it’s gone wonky – it won’t keep time. Every time the electrician turns the power on and of it has to be reset. He wants a new clock. NOW!! Richard says he will get one when he is out.

'I want to do it now! Take me round to the shop!'

'But it’s next door to Tesco. You go there every day; it’s literally next door to it.'

'I can’t walk that far. I want you to take me.'

'Okay we'll go later'

'Later, later! It's always later with you. I want it now!'

Father and son go their separate ways both angry looking. Daddy is muttering loudly while I chip in with inane comments in my cheerful fairy voice asking if a radio is necessary or just a clock – and he shows me the buttons on the clock to demonstrate it doesn’t work. He doesn’t actually do anything with the buttons just brandishes the clock with loud mutterings but I get the gist.

Within minutes a new clock has been fetched from the nearby shop (it is quicker for one of us to go without him). It has blue illuminated figures about 3 inches high and we await the grumbling about how the brightness of the display is keeping him awake.

Gaslight Moments

It's late when my partner arrives home. As usual our first conversation is about Daddy Shortlegs - is the house safe, flooded, burned? We've already had the repeat of yesterday's shower conversation along with 'he who shall not be calmed' popping in and out of his room whenever the TV went off this afternoon. Talking calmly through his rant we explain that 'We have an electrician working on the kitchen, you’ve been bumping into him all day. Perhaps you could listen to some music instead'. We proffer the personal CD player bought as a present by his old friends - he's never used it! But no, he's missing JAG or Stargate SGI or some other such crap to which he has become addicted in second childhood - what else can explain watching the FX channel?

Ten minutes later and 'Why has my TV has gone off...' As we reset the cable box for the third time we face a new saga of the missing remote control (it apparently hides from him - I may join it). It is within reach on his bed but when we say 'here it is' we are countered with furious disbelief. 'Well how did it get there? I didn’t put it there.' No one else was in the room so he obviously did put it there.

In the search he moves his bed away from the wall and we discover the hiding place of the kitchen towels, missing in action for the past fortnight since he decided to wash them. We have looked in the washing machine, drier, fridge? food cupboards, dining room and shower but of course tucked down the side of his bed was not on the list. As we start folding the towels he looks on in disbelief and says 'I didn’t put them there.'

I almost feel guilty - he makes me feel like the murderous Anton Walbrook in Gaslight but there is no way he looks like Diana Wynyard not even in the dim light of his bedroom with its ever-drawn curtains. The nearest he could manage is a passable Danny DeVito doing Miss Haversham. I'd watch that if someone offered me popcorn.

Brain Drain

I arrive home with a colleague and show him around the improvements - the new study and kitchen are not enhanced by the sight of a naked 83-year-old wrapping towels around himself in the open doorway of the bathroom.

It seems we are faced with a new problem - 'he who shall not be shamed' has decided he cannot use the new shower. The fact that we have not had a new shower installed and he has made use of it for a good four years is neither here nor there.

'I've tried twice,' he exclaims, 'but it's either stone cold or scalding!' I calmly tried to explain the controls ('It's a knob' I say pointedly) but that just fuels a lot of harrumphing and shaking of head, fists and unfortunately towels which is singularly off-putting. 'When the plumber comes I'll get him to sort it' he fumes. Unfortunately, there's nothing to sort unless the plumber can do something about an ageing memory: unblock the brain drain perhaps.

Premature burial

Early Saturday morning and Daddy Shortlegs has his suit on: his funeral suit. He lumbers up the stairs from his ground floor bedroom, placing both feet on each step, transcending by a sideways rock from one stair to another. I sit in the study typing away oblivious to everything but the blare of my iPod.

He looms over me (difficult for him unless one is sitting) and his mouth forms the words ‘Where’s Rich?’

‘Out. Working. Why?’ I remove the ear plugs.

‘I thought we were going to the funeral.’

‘That’s on Thursday.’

‘Oh God! I thought we were going today.’ Annoyed grunts and muttering accompany the constantly shaking head. ‘What day is it, then?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Today?’

‘Yes, today it’s Saturday … and the funeral is on Thursday’

He wombles off muttering but it’s not long before he is back again with a piece of card in his wobbly hand. ‘See, Thursday 26^th April.’

‘Yes and today is Saturday’

‘What date?’

‘The 21^st today’

He shuffles away muttering again just to prove the point that I am personally responsible somehow for today being Saturday. I’m not sure what is upsetting him most – getting all dressed up with nowhere to go or missing out on a ham buffet.