‘Tis with a heavy heart that I sit down to write on this
misty morning, for I must arise and go soon and go to the land of the Angles
and the Saxons once more. Not that I have anything against my native land, but
to get there involves travel – on which I am not keen – and this visit also
involves babysitting my parents to give my beleaguered sister a break.
My father, soon (hopefully) to achieve the grand old age
of 86, goes in to hospital in the middle of week for the operation that has been
waiting for several years to happen. The surgeon will be operating to remove,
or whatever it is they do these days, an aneurysm at the back of his neck. If
you ask me what an aneurysm is, I’d simply have to quote the dictionary
definition: the morbid dilation of an artery. Since that artery feeds
his brain, they’ve been keeping a close watch on it and have decided that it’s
now or never.
He has supposed to be getting himself in training for the
op. This doesn’t mean visits to the local gym to lift weights and jog on a
treadmill. No, the prescription simply means to put one foot in front of
another for a period of, say, 20 minutes in order to convey himself, without
electrical or mechanical assistance, around the block. Despite our nagging, he
has managed to find various excuses for not doing as the medical experts
suggest.
You see, by night my father is like any other rather
noisy slumbering octogenarian, but by day he slips into his corduroy trousers
and buttons up his shirt to become… The World’s Laziest Man! Somehow he has
survived this long on earth without motivation, drive, desire, curiosity,
hobbies or interests. To be fair, he likes music, but he doesn’t like anything
that he hasn’t already liked for about the last 70 years. He is very good at
sitting in chairs and he consumes copious amounts of Coronation Street.
Give the man his due; he has taught himself to use a laptop, so he can order
the weekly shop from Asda without having to get in the car, so he can check on
the fortunes of Arsenal, and so he can chat to me on Skype. He can also create
something not entirely unpalatable in the kitchen. His hand was forced,
probably quite soon after he wed, on discovering that he had married… The
World’s Worst Cook!
 | |
| In less fragile times just a few short years ago |
Every afternoon for the last 25 years or so, come rain or
come shine, my father has retreated to his bed, where he stays for around three
hours at a stretch. I am not accustomed to visiting him in his bed, because he
is not to be disturbed. But this time, I shall have to get used to it. If, as
is the trend, the NHS kicks him out of his hospital bed the day after his
operation, I shall be there to bring him regular horribly stained cups of tea
and sympathy.
My heart is particularly heavy because I shall be staying
at my parents’ house rather than my sister’s for the first time in aeons. My
mother is now in the first stages of Alzheimer’s and she gets seriously panicky
if my father goes anywhere for even an hour. It’s a very rare occurrence, of
course, but this time he’ll be gone for at least a couple of days. So I shall
be there to quieten her.
My mother’s madness is a self-fulfilling prophecy. She
has been in training for most of her life. If you children don’t behave,
your mother will end up in Purdysburn was a regular refrain when my three
siblings and I were growing up in Belfast. Purdysburn was the local ‘loony
bin’: a big Victorian building set back behind a perimeter wall that kept out
curious children. During holidays in Bath at our maternal grandparents’ house,
our mother would throw periodic wobblies and threaten to throw herself into the
Kennet and Avon canal. We took it with a pinch of salt, but our grandmother
would be very disconcerted and spend days ruminating about what it was she must
have said.
The thing is, though, we were remarkably well-behaved
children – with the possible exception of my younger brother. He was our
mother’s shoo-shoo, probably because he was and is so like our father, and he
could get away with murder. Our mother’s withering looks or savage assaults
with a rolled-up House & Garden magazine meant nothing to him. While
my father went out to simulate work at Tilley Lamps, the family firm, my mother
would shut herself in her bedroom to hide from her children and paint pictures
of Belfast street scenes or hammer out novels on a portable typewriter. She
would read portions of them to her disinterested offspring, but would never
send them off to a publisher. She lacked all necessary self-belief.
Once as a bolshy teenager, when my mother complained of
how weary she was, I had the temerity to suggest that she didn’t actually do
anything that she didn’t like doing. If there were jobs to be done, they were
generally done by her children (with the possibly exception of my brother, due
to his ability to get away with homicide). This was not a diplomatic move on my
part. The maternal looks and barbs grew ever more withering for at least a
week.
 | |
| Looking less beleaguered |
We lived, therefore, in a kind of tree-lined genteel
squalor. But it’s nothing to the squalor that my parents live in now. My sister
has been in on two occasions with a cleaner-friend of hers. With a packet of
disposable gloves and probably the kind of double-nosed gas marks that Walt and
Jessie wear when they’re cooking up crystal meth in Breaking Bad,
they’ve blitzed the place – partly for my benefit. There’s still a way to go,
apparently, but at least it’s no longer like one of these freakish places you
see on Channel 4 reality programmes. Britain’s Most Unsanitary
Octogenarians!
So thanks to their efforts, I’m not dreading the visit in
terms of my physical comfort or personal hygiene. It’s more the prospect of
what I’ll find when I get there. My mother has become alarmingly frail, it
would seem. Withering in another sense of the word. At least, madness has made
her as gentle as a lamb. All she needs is some food that won’t trouble her
intolerance to gluten and plenty of cuddles. It’ll be like cuddling a sparrow,
but otherwise shouldn’t be too difficult.
My sister has asked me if I could bring something with me
to aid our father’s recovery. Since he doesn’t read and doesn’t listen to music
that he doesn’t know, I think sleep will be the best bet. He’s very good
at that. If I get any time off for good behaviour, I’ll hunt down CDs in the charity shops of Romsey and script a few e-learning
screens on the laptop that I’ll have to take with me in the one bag I'm allowed by
the generous people at Ryan Air. In any case, I’ll let you know how it goes.
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