Still having Christmas gift trouble. According to Helpdesk Man, buying him a moderately awesome possum-shooting kit - gun, pellets, holster, fancy hat - would make me the Best Wife Ever. But buying him a much more complete and instantly-usable kit containing a gun, pellets, holster, fancy hat and a possum is crossing some sort of “line”.
He will get socks and like it.
Well, here I am, aground once more and more or less intact, save for a splitting headache that probably indicates intracranial bleeding, but is acceptable because Jamie has a similar headache, thus preventing him from being all “Typical Smokering, having an intracranial bleed” at me.
I feel I should share photos of the event, but they are a little scanty. Getting a professional photographer to take three photos and a DVD cost about a hundred and fifty dollars extra, so we declined; with the result that we have before and after photos, but not during. (At least, not of us. Helpdesk Man, the snortlepig and Miles were waiting on the ground, and the snortlepig took an arty photo of Miles’ knee at approximately the time I was plummeting through the skies. But it doesn’t quite convey the scope of the occasion.)
So, you know. Not exactly a visual treat. But there are plenty of YouTube videos of skydivers prettier than ourselves, with rock music to boot, so you can always pop over there to get the general gist.
This is us getting suited up.
This is a chap called Max checking my fixings. Max was a gung-ho, daring-older-brother type chap who introduced himself as “I’m Max, I’m your guy” and spent the entire skydive trying to get me to do the thumbs up and give him high-fives to indicate I was having a jolly old time. About ten seconds after he pulled the chute he said “So do you think you’ll do this again?”; that sort of chap. Nice, though.
The suit wasn’t exactly flattering. They should have made it white, to give a kind of Princess-Leia-in-The Empire-Strikes-Back vibe. That, or they should have gone with the dieselpunk theme suggested by the hats. Costumed skydiving; it could be the new thing.
Anyway. This is us by the plane. The snortlepig saw it and was all “Whoa, it’s HUGE!”, which, no. Helpdesk Man did try to take an arty from-behind shot of us walking to the plane like a ragtag group of astronauts, but the thing about ragtag groups of astronauts? Their suits don’t sag around the hindquarters. So we will omit that one.
Then we went up. It took a surprisingly long time. We got above some nice, puffy cumulus clouds, and I thought “Whoa, look how high we are”, and then Max tapped me chummily on the shoulder and said “We’re at 5,000 feet now - 10,000 more to go!” We ended up going up past the next lot of clouds, which were thin and blankety, and rather obscured the view. It was high. We had to breathe through oxygen masks for a while, although Max eventually stowed mine away and I began to feel a bit funny. (I assumed it was protocol, but the others, who were sitting behind me, said they got oxygen right up until they exited the plane. A thrifty chap, that Max: not a quality I was especially seeking in my skydiving partner, but no doubt it will serve him well during the recession.)
Then we jumped out; except we didn’t, really. By this time I was intimately strapped to Max and unable to walk, partly because my feet would have been a foot off the ground, and partly because the wee plane was extremely crowded. So we shuffled along the bench onto the floor, dangled our legs over the side of the plane and just sort of fell out. It wasn’t the sort of situation in which one would cry “For Gondor!”; more like “Oop, there goes my sammich”.
Free-falling wasn’t all that fun. My eyes watered like billy-oh under a pair of painfully tight goggles, it was cold, pieces of ice got stuck to my face and it was generally somewhat painful and buffety, and not improved by Max expressing frenetic exuberance with his thumbs (presumably in case I had let my mind wander to the Sunday roast and was missing the fact that yes, we had just fallen through a cloud). I mean, yes, the fact that one was hurtling through the air at 15,000 feet was kind of neat, but it was more awesome in theory than sensation; somewhat like reading War and Peace.
Then he pulled the chute, and I got to steer the parachute here and there, and we went round and round, and it was pretty oose. Max said “Woo-hoo” a lot, and I felt I should say it as well so as not to disappoint him, but I couldn’t quite muster the chuff; so we twirled round a bit and headed over the lake a bit and back again, and eventually came to land in a surprisingly precise spot back at the hangar.
Whereupon the snortlepig, who had been watching with Helpdesk Man for a very long time, came running out to meet me.
Apparently she was pleased to see me.
And then Miles was like “This is all very well, mother, but I require the milks”, and we went off to find a restaurant, but the first one was shut and the second one had a moosehead in it, so we traipsed all round town looking for another one, which we didn’t find, so we went back to the second one on the proviso that I could sit somewhere where I didn’t have to see the moosehead. And somewhere along the way Miles kicked off a sock. And all was back to normal. We spoke judiciously of the event and decided that we might do it again if there was an awesome view and/or a special on, but that next time we should try hang-gliding.
And then we went to the Huka Falls, and the pig was all “Does it got a plug in? How does it go by itself?”, and I realised I could not explain the mechanism of churning waterfalls to a three-year-old (or, indeed, anybody). Maybe I could have before the jump, but not now. And it occurs to me that this could be a handy excuse to use in later life. “Oh yeah, sorry, I fell out of a plane once at 15,000 feet and ever since then I haven’t been able to do my taxes”.
PS: The waiter at the restaurant mocked me openly. I said “Do you do iced chocolates?” and he smirked and said “No”, with a tone that implied “Duh” and also “Ew”.
Today I did a brave, noble, adult thing - something midway between draining the septic tank and getting a mammogram, and about as enjoyable (I imagine) as either. I went to see a doctor, even though I was not actively spurting blood or clutching a severed digit in a baggie. What’s more, I went expecting - nay, intending to demand - a blood test, and alive to the possibility that I would be prescribed antidepressants, a form of medication I have until now viewed with horror and suspicion.
The doctor (officially “mine”, although we had not met before) was a small, gentle Indian lady who, upon hearing me say (quite calmly) “I’m here because I’ve had depression for a while..” walked across the room with a deadpan expression and plonked a box of tissues on the desk. I liked her, although every time I said something like “Do you think we should check for thyroid issues?” and “Maybe I should get my iron checked” she would brighten and say “That’s a good idea!”, which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
Strangely, although she seemed meek and inoffensive and mostly said “mm”, when I left her office I was bearing prescriptions for the two things I’d carefully informed her I wished to avoid if at all possible - a steroid cream for a pesky skin condition, and an antidepressant known in the biz as Citalopram, which is not nearly as catchy as Prozac, but it turns out at least three and possibly four members of my immediate family have derived succour therein in the past, so at least I’m maintaining a glorious family tradition. (Really. Why do we feel perpetuating our line is a Good Thing?)
Citalopram, according to the label on the packet, is supposed to render me joyous and full of bees, apparently by turning me into a palpitating, overweight, queasy, dizzy insomniac with blurred vision and the skitters. In the past, fear of these side effects prevented me from taking antidepressants at all, especially when I was hopeful that light therapy and ionisers might do just as well (even though I had very little intention of ever purchasing a light box or ioniser, which now I look back on it was somewhat of a logical flaw.) Today, however, inspired by a vision of myself in a Betty Draper dress, dusting bluebirds and skating over a parquet floor with an Angora Lop attached to each foot, not to mention the fact that I’d paid three dollars for the blessed things and had ninety of them… I downed one.
It did not make me happy.
It did make me nauseated.
Upon which I went online, found a mental health forum with a 153-page thread about the Citalopram, and read a bunch of anecdotes mostly skewed towards the “I threw up for three days, lost all my short-term memory, started slurring my words and tried to kill the Pekinese with a novelty ice-cream scoop” end of the medical spectrum.
All of which would not matter quite so much, except that tomorrow I am going skydiving. This is a long-cherished dream of mine, and one for which I have saved up many a mystery shopping penny. I do not want the experience to be marred by me throwing up in the car all the way to Taupo - or at 10,000 feet, which is probably considered airspace bioterrorism or something. Nor do I wish to come over with palpitations, hot flashes or panic attacks on the way up in the airplane. I can just imagine the burly skydiving chaps guffawing as I rock in a corner, going “It’s always the cocky ones” and “It’s all right, love, we don’t many anyone jump if they don’t want to” while I mutter wildly “It’s not the jump, it’s my happy pills!”, which will probably lead them to conclude that I am planning to use the jump to end it all.
In short, I will not be taking a second pill tomorrow. My mental health will just have to wait, and well, it’s waited this long… In other news, I am going to go henna my hair, so that if tomorrow does end in splatter they can make an inspiring movie about me called She Died With Her Roots Done. One should endeavor to live life in a manner that provides one’s biographers with plenty of good wordplay, I always feel.
Today I spent a merry four and a half hours scrutineering NZQA exams for a boys’ high school, in return for a chunk of money that sounded generous until I was doing it. I think I strode about ten miles. I handed out innumerable tissues, prevented who knows how many acts of Dishonesty and Abetting, and earned the respect of one callow youth when I forgot my place as I was making him fill out the Toilet Roll and muttered “Sorry, I know it’s a bit fascist”.
Matters arising:
1. I’d forgotten that I quite like teenage boys; so many of them mean well. I’d been expecting a bunch of reeking, flatulent yokels - and, granted, after the first thirty minutes you could have cut the fug with a knife - but many of them looked up at me with earnest “I can’t think of the name of that author” faces, intent and free of malice, and it was sort of touching. Also, despite their no doubt numerous flaws, they were undisputably not teenage girls, and that is a virtue indeed. Which brings me to point 2:
2. I am old. Some of those young varmints were, like, ten years younger than me. A decade younger. Yet still the size of a tank. I was still a good fifteen years younger than most of the other scrutineers, some of whom had children in high school themselves; but that still left me in the oldest ten per cent of the room. I wasn’t sure if I should wear a Batman T-shirt next time to appear accessible and with-it, or just skewer a tight bun to my head with hairsticks and go with it. I do have hairsticks and don’t have a Batman T-shirt, so I might as well embrace my decreptitude. Still, though. Depressing.
3. It is a very tragic thing to watch a boy hand in his papers as soon as the first 45 minutes are up and he can legally go. A fair few of them did, either with quiet despair, or a jaded air of “I’ve put in my time, the world can ask no more of me”. I wanted to exhort them to think of the wife and chillun, and one of the scrutineers said that she always asks “Are you sure?” in meaningful tones, but I doubt it helps.
4. While stalking down the rows, I read snippets over their shoulders. It was fun. “The author creates tension by…”; “The movie “Inception” is about…”; “the key relationship in the novel”; “Finnegan’s Wake is a metaphor for…”. I wanted to stop and read on, and I suppose I could have - what could they have done? - but I refrained. Scrutineering the maths exam won’t be nearly so much fun.
5. That evening, I went to do a mystery shop at a supermarket and ran into one of the boys, who was stocking shelves and recognised me. We had a pleasant chat - he seemed sanguine about his prospects, despite only having filled in two of the four English booklets. It seemed a bit late to point out that unless he wants to stock shelves forever, he should probably attempt all four booklets. Still, he was nice.
6. Miles really ought to have a medal. He is the Best Baby Ever. I left at one and he slept until four; drank milks from a bottle like a pro, and was happily chillin’ with Helpdesk Man when I returned home at traffic-past-five, despite having suffered a slight plummet during my absence. (Helpdesk Man put him on the narrow window seat, turned to get a chair to wedge up against it, and told the snortlepig “Stay there and don’t let him fall off”. Which might have been due diligence, but the snortlepig wasn’t paying attention and drifted away, and Helpdesk Man turned back just in time to watch Miles roll over joyfully and plop to the floor. Luckily he did not land on his head but his tum, which has fewer brains.)
1. Last night Tiny Miles emitted a poop of such force and vehemence that the snortlepig sat up in bed and said “Mummy, are there fireworks?”
2. National Novel Writing Month. I am doing it. Usually I plan ahead and end up paralysing myself with the crippling horror that what I produce might not end up being the next Harry Potter. This year, fortunately, I forgot; until the first of November, when Helpdesk Man casually said (I was in the bath, just to set the scene) “It’s NaNoWriMo, are you doing it?” And I was all, “Why not”. So I am. 3361 words so far. Most of them rubbish. Will keep you apprised.
3. We’re moving to the country. A friend’s mother has an orchard with a cottage on it, and she offered it to us - cottage, not orchard - to rent for a very reasonable sum. Moving will not be an unalloyed joy - the house isn’t as pretty as our current place, and it’s less convenient, being out of town. Plus, of course, we will have to move house, and you know what that means? Cleaning the oven. But still, though; we’ll get to keep chickens, and I can have a veggie garden practically as big as I wish, or even two - one in the backyard for the frillier sorts of lettuces, and a big old rototilled patch out in the orchard for the less presentable veggies like pumpkins.
And in the front yard, I plan to plant flowers. I have never grown flowers before, but I’m suddenly very excited about the prospect. In the last week I’ve read about eight books on garden design, and it’s fascinating. The authors make all these oddly specific pronouncements, and you think “Come now, don’t be narrow-minded, I’m sure that would look nice in certain circumstances” - but then you ponder a bit, and realise their way is Right and True. For instance, one chap was scathing of garden beds in which the plants were neatly arranged from shortest at the front to tallest at the back. Apparently you have to have some skinny, longer plants at the front (like poppies or tulips, that kind of shape), dotted about to add texture and prevent the bed from looking unnaturally tiered. This was news to me. Similarly, another chap went on a rampage about home gardeners who only buy six tulip bulbs in different colours to save money. What you have to do is save up your pennies and buy a whole bunch in the same colour, planted in a drift, and interplanted with some low-lying species to set off the colour and cover the area near the ground, which will otherwise look bare and leggy. He showed pictures. He had a good point.
4. Being off sugar is boring. I do not like it at all. It’s not exactly fierce, intense suffering; it’s just dull. I see a picture of a fancy three-layer cake and think “Ooh, I should make that”, and then realise I can’t eat it. Or I think “I should make mousse tonight, it would bring joy to Helpdesk Man’s rheumy eyes”, and then I remember, and think “Oh”. And am I bursting with new life and energy? No, I am not. I complained about this to my sister-in-law, who has been nagging me to do it for months, and she said “You’re probably still eating too many grains”. I think she’s trying to drive me to suicide so she can have my cast iron pots.
5. This is the pig in a dress I made her.
6. What is the definition of a millionaire? This has been nagging at me. If you have $750,000 in the bank and a $250,000 house, are you a millionaire? What if you have a million-dollar home, but no money in the bank at all and you can’t buy cheem? Can it be shares in a business, or can you have invested it all in a posh necklace? And it gets even more confusing when people say “He made his first million by the time he was 30″. Everyone who works a $50,000-a-year job for twenty years makes a million dollars; but that’s not generally seen as worth mentioning, and it certainly doesn’t make them rich. Does the “first million” have to be a spare million, as in, he’d already made enough for the house and groceries and then made a million on top of that? That seems wrong, but then so does not accounting for expenses. I don’t get it.
7. The other day - I was in the shower. I feel a need to point that out. A lot of interesting stuff happens while I ablute. Sometimes when I wash my hair, I finish it off with a blast of cold water to lock the cuticle, and the cold water tends to trigger a panic attack because I have a phobia of whales and they live in cold water, so I have to brace myself for it and keep my eyes wide open and see how cold I can let the water get before I panic and turn it off. It’s sort of life-affirming: lends spice to the experience. Anyhoo. I was in the shower, talking to Helpdesk Man, and I said “I just read a book called 50 Buildings That Changed the World. It was interesting. But most of the buildings didn’t actually change the world, they were just kind of nifty. They should have called it 50 Nifty Buildings. That rhymes.” And Helpdesk Man said, in a supportive, vaguely patronising manner, as one would congratulate a child on its crooked W, “It does! Not, you know, well…”
My self-confidence is at a pretty low ebb these days, so I said “mm” and washed for a bit before my mind went “‘Ang on”, and I said “Fifty. Nifty. How does that not rhyme?” And Helpdesk Man said “Oh. I was thinking of “nifty” and “buildings”.”
Christmas is approaching (fools), and I have begun angsting about gifts. A while back I discovered a rather lovely rhyme - purportedly from the Victorian era, although I doubt it - designed to make the process easier. It goes thusly:
Something they want
Something they need
Something to wear
And something to read.
Gosh, I thought. That’s nifty. And I vowed to do it. But it turns out, it’s not as easy as it looks. For instance, do craft supplies for the snortlepig come under Want or Need? She doesn’t, as far as I know, actively want anything for Christmas; I don’t think she’s figured out the concept of a wish list yet. So does it count if it’s something I know she would want? Does it break the whole principle to divide, say, Something They Need into four separate gifts - say, crayons, chalk, stickers and glue? Does the poem include Christmas stocking presents, or exclude them? What if Something She Needs is also Something To Wear, and possibly Something She Wants as well?
Pottering around the internet, I discovered that mothers more cunning than I have wrestled with this selfsame problem, and overcome it. Basically, they cheat by changing the poem. So a mother who has already planned to give her child, for instance, a handmade tote bag, a toy that goes ping, a zoo membership and a bag of cocaine will simply justify the purchases by altering the poem to read:
Something handmade
Something bought
Something to do
And something to snort.
Or, if I were to retroactively justify various presents bought for Helpdesk Man over the years - a whiskey glass with a moustache etched on it, a hip flask, a wallet and some hand-embroidered manly hankies - I’d make it something like this:
Something unintentionally hipster
Something from which to swig
Something made outta the dried skin of a dead lamb
And something not very big.
No Shakespeare, but it gets the job done. And y’know, the existence of this literary form this really sheds some light on the origins of the poem “Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky”; don’t you think?
A few days ago I babysat two preschoolers, while their mother was gallivanting off to hospital with a breast abscess. It was a strikingly traumatic experience. Not that anything happened - we made coconut macaroons and Mother Please Don’t Die of a Breast Abscess cards, and ate toasted sandwiches and carrot sticks for lunch. But for the angst and turmoil it cost my scabby soul, I’d rather have washed lepers in Namibia for a year, or saved an uninteresting species of beetle through a letter-writing campaign.
Other people’s kids are scary. I have thunk on it, and here is why.
1. Watching other people’s children brings all my insecurities to light. Children are judgy little smeggers, prone to looking at you with withering xenophobia when you inform them that you do not stock avocadoes, are unfamiliar with the Wiggles’ oeuvre, or cannot provide them with a Thomas two-handled cup. You can just see them thinking “What kind of one-horse Mickey Mouse operation is this, in which I have to wipe my face on a cloth of the wrong colour?” Or “Off-brand peanut butter? Spare me.” Their mother, they clearly think, is far more capable than myself; and they’re probably right, so after about half an hour I start to think so too and find myself hoping they won’t ask to see the state of my linen closet or tax returns. And the worst part is, whereas with an adult one could conceivably salvage one’s pride by saying snootily “No, I don’t keep that in the pantry; it has nitrates in it, you know”, or “We try to stay away from licenced character toys”, basic decency prevents one from explaining to children that their Mummy probably doesn’t care about their gut flora, but I do.
Especially because I don’t, really.
2. I’m always worried they’re going to drown or commit self-immolation on my watch. It only takes a second, you know. The other day the snortlepig was sitting next to me on the couch, quietly eating scrambled eggs, when she suddenly said in resigned tones, “Mummy, the fork went in my eye”. Not dreadfully far in, apparently, because she just blinked for a bit and went back to having her eggs; but still. And should something dire occur, it is not just my negligence that will be scorned (ie. “You let little Johnny play in the Iron Maiden?”), but also my medical care (”His arm was off and didn’t give him any Rescue Remedy?”). This frightens me.
3. Bodily fluids. I’m agin them. One can be inured to one’s own child’s faecal matter, in much the same way as one can become inoculated to the grease-borne pathogens of one’s local fish and chip shop; but substitute a strange child (or deep-fried won ton) and the results are too ghastly to contemplate. My usual method is to avoid the issue until the parent comes back, and then lamely say “I think I might have smelled something before”, in the hopes that the parent will believe that the bulging, reeking nappy was filled just as they pulled into the driveway. Actually, it works quite well - at least, they don’t complain, after all I just watched their kids - but it is a cowardly move, and unworthy of me.
4. You know how some people emit a brisk, no-nonsense vibe that commands respect from the young? I do not have it. I have more of a wimpish, craven aura that broadcasts “I only realised last year that Megan was mocking me that time when we were nine”. (She could hear me after all. It was a revelation. I think it broke Helpdesk Man’s little heart when I told him. He looked at me as one might look at a marsupial that was not only crippled, but the last of its kind.) What is one to do (to take an example from the other day) when a child throws all the carrot sticks on the floor, or (to take an example from thirty seconds after that) starts up a shouting match with her brother while the baby is trying to sleep in the next room? I don’t know. I suppose I could bite off the tip of my own finger and just silently start drawing tally marks on the wall in blood, maintaining eye contact all the while; but it seems a bit subtle for the preschool crowd. Seven to eight, certainly.
The amazing thing is, I know people who are not like this. I know mothers who say things like “What’s one more?”; staunch women who say “Can I take the kids?” without their eyes begging “Please no”. It fascinates me. But then, they probably clean their guttering every six months as well. Freaks.
I just discovered an awesome webpage. It is, somewhat inexplicably, hosted by ecclesia.org; it is titled simply “Handy Hints”; and it is mostly gems of wisdom along the lines of “Prevents brooms from slipping when you prop them against a wall. Cut off the finger of an old rubber glove and slide over the handle”; sooth stuff, mostly. But then suddenly, in the “Insects and Animals” section, underneath “Prevent flying insects. Hang fresh bunch of stinging nettles to front of door”… there is this.
“Outrun Crocodile/Alligator. Run in a zig-zag pattern, and not just in one straight direction. When making left or right turns, the crocodile/alligator has to come to a crawl to move in that direction because of its short legs.”
This isn’t an isolated tip, mind you. The same section includes advice on Elephant Attack (”If one runs after you, and tries to stomp you, get out of their line of site. For example, if you are around some trees, hide behind a tree. If it comes after you, zig zag to another tree.”), Bee Attack (”If you are being stung by a swarm of bees, don’t breathe. Bees are attracted to carbon dioxide.” But repelled by the STENCH OF DEATH, presumably?) and, most handily of all, Shark Attack:
“Do not swim away, because sharks are attracted to erratic movements. When a man swims away from a shark, it looks to the shark like he is struggling, squirming, and panicking, and the shark will attack! Also, do not play dead. A shark has all the senses we have, plus more, and a shark will know that you are not dead, but will be confused why you are not acting like you should be. So, it will get curious and may start to knaw at you.”
That’s knaw with a K, folks. If I ever become a fascist dictator, I’m going to make that the official spelling. Dissidents will be forced to breathe at bees.
Okay, I have a question.
If you are dining in a restaurant and notice a severed human finger in your dish, is it illegal to eat it?
See, I don’t know whether cannibalism per se is actually against the law. Kill-your-own, yes (well, presumably); desecration of the dead, ehh, probably. But if it’s already pre-desecrated, and you’ve paid for it…?
I asked Helpdesk Man, and he did not know. He thought maybe you could be charged with obstruction of justice, because the finger could be evidence in a crime. But I think that a normal, un-cynical restaurant-goer would be justified in assuming that it was severed accidentally; I’m sure the number of criminal amputations or corpse-dismemberments is fairly low compared to your run-of-the-mill ham-slicing accident. I mean, if you come across toenails on your carpet and sweep them up, and it turns out later that a burglar broke into your house and clipped his toenails, you wouldn’t get clapped in the clink for destroying evidence; surely?
After some consideration, I can only think of two potentially litigating issues.
1. If the finger were obviously recently severed - like, it was still spurting blood - and it was nestled in a salad or better yet, a sorbet, so that its chances of reattachment were fairly good (as opposed to, say, being slow-braised alongside a lamb shank), consuming or even withholding it could be considered tantamount to kidnap. To analogise: if you came across a car accident in which someone’s foot was severed, and you grabbed it and waved it around and said “Ha ha” and ran off, I’m fairly sure you’d be arrested. But then. perhaps this is more like finding the foot in a ditch by the road, in which case actually returning it could be perceived as supererogatory… legally speaking, I mean. So perhaps if the maitre’d clapped his hands and shouted “Anyone got a finger in his moussaka?”, you’d be arrested for cramming it hastily in your mouth and saying “Nope”; but you would not be punished for failing to venture off your own bat back with it to the kitchens, where I hear there can be strong language.
2. In all seriousness, I think it’s possible the Treaty of Waitangi applies here.
Thoughts? And be honest: if you found the finger in a $200 entree at a five-star restaurant, how many of you would put on your sophisticated faces and just go with it?
This post is only for the eyes of those* who commented on the last one. The rest of you: clearly you have failed to grasp my awesome pwnage of the sonnet form. Go back and read it again… peons.
1. Miles has awesome abilities. According to the smell of his lone tuft of hair, he has mastered the art of being sick onto his own head.
2. If your lover was beheaded in front of you by a savage madman, which bit would you cradle in your arms as you wept? I think I’d go for the body, even though it seems sort of counter-intuitive, just because my sense of decorum would probably fail at the vital moment and I wouldn’t want Sven’s** last ebbing image to be of me wearing a horrified smirk.
3. I have decided to become a medical man, just so I can waggle my fingers archly at patients and say “lobes”. Try it. “Mr Smith, I’m sorry to tell you that you have a tumour in your [waggles fingers] lobes.” “Inform the Countess that she will live until the season ends, but we will have to remove her [waggles fingers] lobes.”
*Mother.
**I mean Helpdesk Man.
***Probably isn’t though, honestly.
****To the disappointment of the snortlepig, who, upon being gently told about her Grandpa’s impending operation, simply responded “Will they use scissors?”. (”Do they gots trolleys?” would probably have been her next question, but she lost interest. Curiously, upon meeting my great-grandmother today for presumably the first time in her tiny memory, the question she most wanted answered was “Do you got a red wall or a white one?”, which threw said relative a bit. She rallied, though. White, apparently.)