Yesterday saw a drive to a Leeds Teaching Hospital for my wife to receive her four weekly oncology treatment, followed by an afternoon escorting mater food shopping at the White Rose Centre in Leeds.
Today, there’s gardening for the aforementioned Mrs Strachan senior, before a brief sojourn to the suburbs of York for some minor decorating tasks with my son.
It’s been a hectic few days. Two of which so busy that I couldn’t find time to pen a literary offering for my website writesaidfred.org. The prose I’ve managed to publish written during the last week courtesy of a snatched twenty minutes here and there.
Mischievously, I moot to family members these tasks are partaken on their behalf under the banner of a fictional company named Ass Wipers Anonymous (AWA). My jack of all trades (master of none) capabilities utilised not for financial gain, but a spiritual lift manifesting from helping my family, who I love unconditionally.
My unwritten contract with them demands not monetary recompense for my labour. My only condition is they maintain my supplies of Tena Men incontinence pads and press a Facebook ‘like’ on all 1200+ blogs published on my website.
Thus far, as I’ve had to change my underpants three time a day for the last week, and the FB ‘likes’ are still conspicuous by their absence, I appear to be the only one adhering to the contract. They say you can’t buy love, but I’m giving emotional extortion a bloody good try!
As mentioned earlier, I run AWA as a none financial enterprise. A system of bartering my graft for the brood’s kudos at my physical benevolence. I find hearing a clan member proffer “Isn’t our Gary great!” a greater fillip than a brown envelope full of fivers….. If it somehow materialised that AWA got the compliment and the money I’d be delighted. However there’s little chance of that scene playing out with the tight gets I’m related to!!
To be fair to my mum, I always get a good feed at tea time in return for my assistance. I’d be even more appreciative if it was her cooking the bloody thing, instead of yours truly.
That being said, during the upcoming winter months my workload will diminish considerably. I don’t anticipate my boy will require much DIY assistance at that point, my mum’s garden during the cold season is very low maintenance, meaning a less hectic spell for AWA.
How will I use this extra ‘white space’ over winter?
My initial plans are to spend the spare hours writing in a less rushed manner, along with whinging about the long dark winter nights. Additionally utilising some of this free time complaining like chuff how cold it is (even though temperatures rarely plunge below freezing point).
If there happens to be any unoccupied diary space after those three key winter tasks, I’ll probably spend it making up ‘old wives’ adages. Claptrap from the cauldron that for generations has baffled it’s recipients. Advocacies whose only real purpose is to meaninglessly eat up time by a person possessing a paucity of interesting anecdotes.
The examples below are fictional sayings I’ve just made up; platitudes with little sense similar to those spouted by misguided harridans over many generations. Meaningless adages such as “Never a feast before a storm.”, “Never look at crow’s nests until May is out.” and the classic (although somewhat vague) “A farmer is never wrong.”
Anyhow, I need to bring this narrative to a conclusion as Ass Wipers Anonymous are contractually obliged to cut my mum’s lawn by midday.
