forgot for weeks. Dinky little stone shoes they were.
No, I won’t tell you how much. Put your pension to better use.
No, darling, I don’t think there is any question of your having a cataract. I think that some of those library books have very small print, and the doctor feels the mistiness is to do with your general health, but we’ll check at the op-thingummy.
You can see a cataract. My granny’s was very noticeable.
I don’t know why Aunt Min can’t get hers done. Perhaps it’s because of her diabetes? It’s as simple nowadays as a tonsillectomy but I remember Granny’s was a grand affair when you lay bandaged in a darkened room for ages. Of course, Granny refused. She got up immediately and wandered about the ward in her flannel nightie removing everyone’s bandages as well as her own. In the end they sent her home for bad behaviour. Mother always says she got into an old gentleman’s bed, but I don’t think the old gentleman was there at the time.
We had to ban Granny as a subject of conversation because she was so appalling everyone wanted to know about her latest iniquity and other concerns were elbowed.
Do you know, she used to turn the electricity off at the mains if she felt people had overstayed their welcome. And when we had a visitor I would be sent upstairs to light the gas fire in their bedroom (the house was always freezing). When I’d done it I’d slide under the bed until I saw Granny’s little black shoes tip-tapping to the fire to switch it off. Satisfied and breathing heavily, she would trot away to her room and I would emerge to relight the fire. She must have been ninety. My brother said she would live for ever because she ate all the mould off the top of the jam pots. My other job was to hide behind the curtains in the dining room to collect the dirty plates she carefully put away. She called it ‘clean dirt’ as she wiped them with a licked finger.
She put great faith in spit. I was about six when I fell heavily on a cinder path and a little cinder embedded itself in my forehead. Granny cleaned it up and spat on the wound. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘That’ll heal over nicely.’ And it did. I had to go to the doctor’s to have the cinder dug out. You can see the dent in my forehead to this day.
Around this time Gran had the first of her many falls. I found her on the loo floor with one little foot in its size-three shoe wedged around the lavatory pedestal. I couldn’t pick her up because she was laughing so much. Eventually I managed to pull her into a sitting position and give her a cup of sweet tea.
‘Oh, thank heaven I’ve been,’ she said, hiccuping.
When I finally had her upright I walked her to her bedroom by placing her feet on my size fives, like you do with kids, and we swayed shrieking across the landing, counting loudly at each uncertain step.
This was when I learnt that severe bruising is more painful than a break, or so the doctor said. Bed rest was prescribed. We rigged up a commode on a dining chair with a Wedgewood tureen shaped like a cabbage beneath it. It sold at auction for quite a lot some time later.
Mother sends acres of healing love. She says she fell down the manse stairs with her portable wireless in one hand and her tea in the other so she knows how you feel.
Uncle Arthur is pretty well, considering. Ma got up the other morning very early and feeling chilly, only to find him kneeling at his open window and just wearing his pyjama jacket. She thought he was dead or praying but he was taking aim at a rabbit. He keeps a shotgun under his wardrobe. Mill’s pet rabbit used to eat the sitting-room carpet. It had to have a hysterectomy and, appalled by its pain, she fed it port and Veganin. Killed it. She couldn’t understand it because her monkey was an alcoholic. They all are, I’m told. When she took him to the pub, folk would ask what her little friend fancied. Port-and-brandy was his favourite.
The girls will serve tea in your boudoir at 4 p.m. or thereabouts. You are getting better, I can tell.
Matron
I got the Baby Bio. It’s underneath the sink. Treated myself to a can of Leaf Shine (very expensive). The flipping tobacco plant I got from Molly gets me down. Can I rip off that yellow leaf now?
I’ve washed the fanlight at the front door and emptied the bluebottles out of the lampshade. What’s more, I’ve given the door itself a coat of linseed oil because I found half a bottle in the hall cupboard. Used the paintbrush Dad ruined creosoting the deckchairs. Very successful. The linseed oil has softened the bristles. Also, which is good news, the holes in the panelling are not woodworm but marks from the drawing pins we used to put up the wreath at Christmas. Ha!
Mrs Wilson sends love. Her arthritis is being kept at bay with some injection or other. Do you fancy a go?
Mr Wilson fell down the tube-station stairs at Trafalgar Square last week and ‘came to’ in the Middlesex. He has a lump on his head the size of a cricket ball and the bruise is slipping down his face. Mrs W says he may have to have it lanced.
Dr P says you might think about getting up and sitting in your chair tomorrow afternoon.
The girls will re-open lessons with ‘the Box’.
Normal service should resume on Monday.
Coming down the hill from the cleaners I saw Larry T on his front steps with a dustpan and brush, wearing yellow rubber Marigold gloves. He was about to clear up the corpse of a rat that had walked up the stairs, looked at him piteously and died on his doormat.
I had a friend who was having a bath when a rat came out of the loo, collected a bar of soap and went back down. She keeps the complete works of Shakespeare and a huge family Bible on the loo lid in between times. The rat apparently lived in the flat below where it ate a cardboard carton full of tampons, and built a brilliantly comfortable nest with the contents. They are clever creatures. Mr Richardson used to keep pet rats. They used to sit on his chest and nibble sugar off his moustache.
Shall I leave Boot in your room tonight?
Darling, do try not to worry about it. I’m sure that’s part of the problem. Any sort of tension or trauma seems to seize one up. I can never go when I’m visiting. Think of Dad. He comes home from New Zealand to go to the loo. Release of tension, you see. Some people don’t go for days together and it’s quite normal. Queen Victoria was always writing to her children about constipation and fresh air. Then Albert died from bad drains. Ironic.
They did a lot of research on it during the war because of lifeboats. I mean people didn’t go for three weeks or more. When you come to think of it, just a bucket on a boat. Maybe not even a bucket.
I think the Navy is an authority on constipation. It was a naval doctor who wrote that book on bran. Let’s have another try. If I put it in soup it wouldn’t make you cough. Or if I squidged it up with All-Bran, cream and sugar?
I don’t want you to
