I've been away, but now:
I'm back.
And the crowd.
Goes.
Wild.
THUNDERBALL
(or: Broccoli Can Whistle)
(or: Hastily completed for Publication...ssh!)
By Matthew Craig
So. How've you been?
I'm pissing in a bottle, today. I'm undergoing tests for A Condition, and this is one of the things I have to go through. It's made me very conscious of the amount and frequency of my micturation.
The bottle is disturbingly similar to those used to sell turpentine. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to fill it. What I'm more worried about is the prospect of having to take the bottle into the hospital tomorrow, in the Daddy's New Car. We don't need a leak - if you'll pardon the pun.
The likelihood of me having A Condition is small. The reason I'm being tested at all is that I went to the Doctor the other day.
One of my New Years Resolutions, if you recall was, "Lose some Damn Chob. I'm tearjerkingly tubby. Stretchmarks and all." I decided to get some medical help.
Stretchmarks aside, I've been noticing things about my current condition that have me worried: I'm out of breath. I get a dead leg while sat on the toilet. And my back is a lot weaker.
And then there's the stretchmarks.
So I went to the doctor. She told me that it was just that I was, well, fat. And she prescribed exercise.
And I mean, she prescribed exercise. She wrote me a prescription for the bloody gym.
Say what you want about the NHS: they seem do be doing right by the Craigs.
Which brings me to the sainted Mother.
She's okay.
I started to write about the experience of putting her in the hospital just as soon as she left for the hospital. I never quite got the chance to finish this tale.
The operation was a success. Well, she didn?t die under the knife, at least.
She was in intensive care for a couple of days, and was moved around a bit here and there. To begin with, we only went in for ten minutes at a time, twice a day. This was mostly because she was a bit zonked-out, with the drugs and the oxygen and all. I remember being transfixed by the monitor screen, which showed her respiration, pulse and so on. I could have watched that for hours. It was a few days before she was moved back into the main population, and the really hard work was to begin.
She recovered a lot faster than we thought she would. Every day, she was connected up to one less drip, or one less sensor. Her forearms did look an awful lot like roast beef after the first week. They're much better now.
She had a harder time of it, after the machines and the dope were taken away. She didn't want visitors other than me and the Daddy - mostly because all we did was sit there (I brought a shitload of books with me, and I managed to get most of my Hondle roughwork done).
The hardest thing for me was having to fend off the rest of the family. I spent the first week telling people not to come to the hospital, including the brothers and sister.
As she got better and better, the sainted Mother got more and more anxious. There's not an awful lot to do in hospital, and when the people on the ward with you are the extremely old (one of the ladies died a couple of days after the Mammy came home), it doesn't help. None of the ward cameraderie of the carry On films here: Mum watched the clock for four days straight, and didn't really speak to anyone else.
The Daddy and I, on the other hand, spoke to just about anyone who would listen, from oesophageally-challenged ITU patients and their wives, to the old dears who ran the coffee shop.
The nursing staff were very business-like: they'd have to be, really. But they were very nice, too, and didn?t mind me, the Daddy and all my comics and crayons getting in the way - much.
Eventually, after only ten days (that seemed more like ten months to the mammy), we were able to come home. In the New Car.
I'm not allowed to drive the New Car. So we'll say no more about it (fume, fume).
I wasn't worried about the sainted Mother, you know. The whole time I was fielding concerned emails and nervous telephone calls from her sisters and the rest of the family, I wasn't nervous.
I slept like a fucking log, mind. Sitting on your arse all day is strangely tiring.
But I wasn't nervous. And I don't know why. You'd think I'd be frightened. After all, I've lived with the prospect of my parents dying while I was relatively young for the best part of twenty years, now. Dad was scared. Mum was scared. So why not me?
I suppose because it didn't feel like she was going to die. The operation was a serious one, but I knew what the surgical team had to do, and I knew what the recovery period was going to be like (although I never thought she would recover this fast).
Yep. It sounds odd, but I guess I never felt that concerned because I didn't feel that I had anything to worry about.
Tough oul' bird, my Ma.
So. I'm stil unemployed.
Of course I am: I've been busy looking after the sainted Mother, haven't I? I've been so busy look after her that my library books were a month late.
Two libraries. One charged me a pound for sending me letters I never received. The other charged me �5 instead of �10 because I told them about the Mammy.
It was the truth, of course, but I couldn't quite hold back a enormous cheesy grin, having saved all that cash.
But I'm still on the dole. And there is so much good tat out there, screaming for me to buy it.
I have just about enough for my comics. In fact, half my dole goes on comics. But it's not quite enough. I want to be able to go to the pictures without putting myself into a diabetic coma from all the sugary cereal I have to eat in order to get the cinema tokens. And it never occurred to me to just rip the fucking tokens off the boxes in the store.
I want to buy DVD's. And a DVD player.
But you're not here to read my Birthday Wish List (up at Amazon.co.uk from March 6th).
So, I need a job. Still.
Long time readers will remember that I have foresworn the path of the scientist. It's not what I want to do, anymore.
Just wish I knew what that was...
atthew Craig, February 26th 2002 (completed 17th March)
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