One of the quirks of recently embarking on my full-time carers role is the mischievous providential sorcery which comes with the job. Fate taking it upon itself to spontaneously issue the carer with additional tasks at the most inopportune of moments.

Since I’ve commenced the ’employ’ supporting my mother, almost every occasion a meal is dished out, the lavatory visited, or I’m transporting a large laundry load from washer to dryer, a separate event requiring my attention plays out.

These interruptions generally manifesting in the shape of the phone ringing (my mobile, or landline), a knock at the front door, my mum requiring assistance of some sort, or arrival of an email/text requiring immediate attention.

These episodes not dissimilar to the episode of 1970’s comedy Fawlty Towers where the irascible Basil Fawlty attempts to mount a stuffed moose’s head on the hotel reception wall. A task constantly being interrupted by his wife Sybil, who from her hospital bed kept ringing to check he’s completed the job she’d delegated. The irate husband eventually snapping at his missus for stopping him undertaking the chore with these incessant telephone calls.

It has to be said, in recent days I’ve shared Basil’s disenchantment at constant distractions when I’ve a job in hand. Unlike the long-suffering Fawlty, though, the target of my discontent has been well meaning individuals and delivery drivers merely undertaking their job; not an impatient harridan spouse….. Blimey, does that make me even grumpier than Torquay’s most curmudgeonly hotelier?!

For the uninitiated, unaware of how GJ Strachan ended up following this new ‘career’ path, I’ve stepped into the breach following mater’s return home after spending six weeks in hospital, post-stroke.

Yours truly the only one of Maggie’s three offspring with opportunity to undertake an assignment of onsite support. That being said, my siblings have carried out various tasks online, easing my workload significantly….. As Michael Jackson sang to his pet rat Ben, in my more self-absorbed days, “I used to say “I” and “me.”…… Now it’s “us”, now it’s “we.”

I’ve just bitten off the head off a sheep. To clarify, that’s a chocolate sheep received as an Easter gift. I possess neither the jaw radius or sadistic nature to undertake such a gruesome task for real. This Lindt chocolate ovine a mid-morning snack providing me with a much needed sugar infusion.

Yesterday, the plot line of soap opera Chez Strachan was lukewarm to say the least. Apart from cooking a roast beef dinner and some aimless surfing of the internet, Easter Sunday’s storyline played out as the thinnest of entertainment gruel.

A day when GJ Strachan’s motivation was so insipid I couldn’t even be bothered to write a blog, or draw a caricature – My ‘go to’ escape strategies from the turgid existence upon Planet Covid; well for a couple of hours a day, anyhow.

That apathy towards unleashing creative though and deed also hanging millstone-like today. Possibly something that’s apparent to you the reader while trawling this indifferent prose. Today’s phlegmatic conditions for writing hampered further by aching shoulders and a headache. The latter something I very rarely laid low with.

Consequently, in a bit to mitigate my bonce feeling as though it’s trapped in a vice, I’ve just downed two paracetamols. The consumption of these painkillers evoking memories of one of my favourite anecdotes, heard in my early 20’s.

The home dressing room of Gateshead Fell cricket club the location of this whizz-bang yarn, surrounding a member of the rugby side bearing the same club moniker. Apparently, in the bar after a rugby match the joke “Why are there no aspirins in the jungle?…… Cos the parrots eat ’em all.” was relayed to a group of the players.

A tepid joke which mostly received groans from the bar room group. However, the story evolving into something infinitely funnier when the only person who laughed at the gag was later heard relaying to another group of players as “Why are there no aspirins in the jungle?…… Cos the parrots eat all the f***ers!”