It’s Thursday 17th August at 12:20 pm, as I look out at the back garden the sun’s glare makes a welcome tarriance after the deluge of overnight precipitation. Such powerful rainfall my garden borders appear to have been jet blasted as I’d slept.
Consequently, the thinner stemmed flora and fauna looked very sorry for themselves, staring groundward as though bowing subserviently in the presence of royalty. To clarify, there isn’t any regal presence dans mon jardin, unless you count the King Edward potatoes submerged in top soil at the far corner of our ‘outdoor room’.
It’s now 1:39, on Thursday 18th June. Incidentally, those first two paragraphs didn’t take me one hour and nineteen minutes to write; my procrastination is the consequence of a writing break while I drove my mum (Maggie) to the hairdressers.
Maggie’s locks are a bit of a family legend, the girth of the individual hair strands akin to the down pipe from my roof guttering. When they grows it tends to be in a vertically upward trajectory, compared to the gravity acquiescing method of most individuals hair growth.
As it’s acquired more grey colouring, my sister Helen likens mater’s locks to a Brillo scouring pad. Hopefully that explains why she regularly has her head in the gas oven on my arrival at chez Strachan senior. I was becoming a tad paranoid my visits were making her suicidal.
After dropping my mum at the hairdressers, I headed to my parent’s local butcher to purchase our lunchtime comestibles. I know I could have just written ‘to buy sandwiches’ above, but I’m attempting to improve my vocabulary you stridulous buffoon….. Actually, I should also probably address my confrontational manner while I’m at it!
The sandwiches at Binks’ butchers are transcendent; remember, I’m trying to improve my vocabulary. In fact, I chose a transcendent and red onion sarnie on rye. My mum and dad both requested meritorious with pickle on brown roll.
I returned to pick my mater up at 1pm. I could tell it was that time as the big hand on my watch was pointing to 12 and the little hand pointing to 1. If it had been 3pm, the big hand would have been pointing to 12, with the little hand pointing to 3; but it wasn’t…… If you had of been in Europe at that time, though, it would have been. If, however, you’d have been in NYC it would have been 8am……. Alright, alright I’ll stop with the chronology nonsense!
As I waited for my mother, a white van for a local guttering company pulled up and entered the hairdressers. Prior to my mum exiting the shop, two guys wearing ‘What The Hell is a Stridulous Buffoon?” t-shirt departed to load their van with what looked like guttering from the shop floor.
At 1pm on the dot, my maternal forebear made her appearance outside. She looked full of beans as she approached my car, which irked me after I’d gone to the trouble of buying her a sandwich for lunch.
Seriously, though, it was good to see Maggie looking so upbeat after the tough few months she’s had caring for my dad through his illness, surgery and enduring recuperation.
As she sat down next to me in the car, I asked mater her thoughts on her newly shorn locks. She smiled at me and responded chirpily “I’m really pleased with it!….. What do you think Gaz?”
After a few seconds of reflection, and with tongue very firmly in cheek, I replied “To be honest, I think you look a right chuffing tithead!”
