With the best of intentions

The morning after Tim had died (at home) I had to go down to our local GPs surgery and get a death certificate. As I sat in the waiting room befuddled with lack of sleep and shock, one of our elderly neighbours who was also waiting to see the doctor came up to me. ” I am so sorry to hear of your loss” she said “and I know exactly what you are going through because we lost our old Alsatian at Christmas”. This was extremely heartfelt and she really meant it in the kindest and most genuine way, and this  would have made Tim roar with laughter.  Indeed it made  me chuckle  on the way home on a day when there was actually very little to laugh about. 

I was once teaching a man to juggle. He kept making a funny expression as he tried to catch each bean bag one after the other. I commented on this and he said ” I’m actually blind in one eye”. Another time I went to our local dump ( or recycling centre to give its correct title). I had some wood from an old shed in the back that was pretty filthy and when the man came over to help my empty my boot I offered  him my spare pair of gloves. Then I looked down and realised that instead of hands he had iron hooks. What can you do? 

There was a story on the radio the other day about people who suffer from locked in syndrome. This really does seem like a living hell and I cannot imagine what it must be like to go through this, both as the patient and and also for the family. In this programme they  had managed to communicate with a number of people in this state who replied to a selection of questions by blinking. The most tragic was the family who asked if  the father was happy in his daughters choice of fiancée and he blinked no. Nine times. Where could they possibly go after that? Not to the altar I imagine.

Years ago we were in a bar ( just for a change ) in Japan, up in the mountains somewhere. Positioned on top of the bar (which was run by an ancient old crone) was a sculpture of what we assumed was ET. M remarked on it. ” Yes, that is my grandmother” said the owner. Talking of bars,  one day we set off to pay our rent  to our landlord who ran the local mah jong parlour down the road. Previously that week we had bought some pet terrapins from the pet shop in the shopping mall. While Bishop Watanabe seemed to be thriving,  Mole did not and had died. Outraged at the poor quality of our purchase we popped her in the freezer overnight and then set off with him/her in a paper cup to the pet shop, stopping off at the mahjong parlour on the way. Our landlord was very fat and very jolly  and always plied us with a drink or two whenever he saw us. An hour or so later we left. Halfway home we remembered we had left the paper cup with the dead terrapin in it sitting on the counter. Neither of us had the nerve to go back and try and explain why we had left a corpse on his bar. He probably assumed it was just what strange foreigners do. 

But I think the best of these put your foot in it story awards goes to TD. One day he  bumped into a man he used to work with but hadnt seen for ages. Now TD has a terrible memory at the best of times. But that day he surpassed himself. He vaguely remembered who this man was,  and started off with a long list of people he imagined that they must have known  from various jobs over the years. It was going well and then he mentioned  a PA  who had been around at the same time and who was by all accounts a bit of a one,  and was famous for having slept with pretty much the whole production team. In a flash of clarity he even remembered her name. “Yes” said the man” She is my wife”.