Spoonful of sugar (and a whole heap of shit!)

Spoonful of sugar, originally uploaded by wit.

Richard gets in at 10.30pm. He’s been at work since 10am and so I have been alone all day with the geriatric gnome and the cat (who glides blackly around the corridors like a furry Mrs Danvers beckoning silently for anyone to follow her and fill her bowl). I’d like my bowl filled too and Daddy has only had toast. It takes about an hour for him to prepare each slice of toast and the whole house is full of the smell of burnt offering and crumbs.

Hearing me cough and splutter against the smoke, he stopped halfway through the sacrificial toasting to ask for help to reset his TV box. I have now stopped explaining what to do – he doesn’t care to listen as the TV company is obviously against him. At least he no longer rings NTL at the drop of a hat to complain. He once rang to tell them the Disney channel logo was in the way of the programme he was watching and could they remove it for him.

Now it’s late and Daddy Shortlegs doesn’t want to take his medicine. He is always confused about what he should take and when – he goes through various complicated mathematical set ups to try and decide whether or not he’s dosed himself. We gave him a medidose box into which you can sort seven days worth of medication for easy use but his need to fiddle with anything in reach, coupled with the 'what day is it?' saga meant that we were on a hiding to nothing. The box sits discarded among old TV guides and boxes of Bakewell tarts.

‘Have I finished these?’ He proffers a box at us despite the fact Richard’s head is in the fridge.
It’s not in the gas oven because we have gone electric having come home once too often to smell gas and find the hob rings alight or worse not alight but turned on. We sit in the dark with open windows wondering how long before we can turn on a light switch without blowing up the neighbourhood. One of Daddy’s aliases is “Lord of the Rings”… and in the Darkness bind them. He is a bind!

‘These, here… have I finished them?’
‘No, you’re just starting that one today’
‘This one?’
‘Yes. The box is full’
‘So I take this one tomorrow?’
‘No, today – have you taken any today?’
‘Yes… did I?’
‘I haven’t given you any. I was out early.’
‘Oh but have I taken them? No?’

This is a daily conversation and you can see why one might want to put one’s head in an oven. I’d like Richard to put a cake in the oven but we can’t all have what we want!