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!