Mum rang last night, Dad has a nasty cold.  She says he is snoring so much she has banished him to the spare room.  If snoring was an Olympic sport Dad would win gold every time.  As children he would keep Hilary and me awake.

***

It’s the great Victorian writer Charles Dickens’s birthday this week and the nominated birthday of my own Charles Dickens.  It was a cold February 6 years ago when I picked him up from the Cats Protection League.  From the very start he settled in with me, taking up residence on any comfy chair, sofa or bed near a source of heat.  Last year in the library Beth and Malcolm dressed up as Dickens characters, Malcolm was Bill Sykes and Beth was Nancy from Oliver Twist.  They have spent the last two weeks nagging me to dress up with them this year. They have great expectations of me.

***

Mum rang again, Dad doesn’t seem to be getting better.  I told her to ring the doctor but she says Dad won’t hear of it.  I gave Hilary a ring to see if she can persuade him.

 

Spent last night attaching various bits of old net curtain and tatty lace to a white blouse I haven’t worn for years.  I’m aiming for Miss Haversham, but to be honest it is looking more like trails of grey seaweed than a disintegrating wedding dress.  I’ll need to make some sort of headdress and veil.  Beth is going as Estella, she is adapting a pale blue bridesmaid dress.  I remember her detesting having to wear it for her cousin’s wedding last year and refused to show us any photos of her in said dress.  She is delighted to be taking a pair of scissors to it.  Malcolm can’t decide between Magwitch and Jaggers.

***

Packed up my ‘Miss Haversham’ costume for tomorrow.  I can’t ride my tricycle wearing all those trails of seaweed, they’ll catch in the wheels.  Hilary WhatsApped me to say she’d spoken to Dad, but he was adamant he’s not that ill and does not need to see the doctor.

***

A tearful Mum rang me at work today.  She’d had a dreadful argument with Dad and ended up calling an ambulance.  She said she could see all the neighbours’ curtains and blinds twitching as the flashing blue lights rolled up.  Dad’s been admitted to the local hospital with pneumonia.  I popped in to see him on my way home.  He’s in a mixed ward which he will hate.  There is a lady next to him who keeps up a constant one-sided conversation.  Dad wheezily asked if I could bring in some earplugs to stem the flow of drivel.  It was distressing to see Dad sunken and as pale as the hospital bed linen.  The realisation he is no longer the strong and invincible Dad of my childhood hit me.

***

Earplugs delivered at lunch time. Dad is looking a little better, there is some colour in his cheeks.  Hilary and Mum were going in later.

***

There were six text messages from Uncle Harry, Dad’s older brother.  Each more bizarre than the previous one.

“Visit Y/N? lift maybe? bad knee, bus which? diarrhoea, which hospital?”

I have a tricycle not a rickshaw for heaven’s sake.  After fortifying myself with a mug of herbal tea I rang Uncle Harry, pointing out diarrhoea perhaps wasn’t the best thing to take into a patient in hospital.  His response was to suggest grapes, missing the point totally. I then told a little white lie to save Dad from a visit.  I told him Dad’s ward was on the second floor and the lifts were broken.  Uncle Harry is a slave to his knees, for a man who is a beanpole, never exercises and spends most of his days in a chair devising crosswords.  He abhors being described as a mere crossword setter, he describes himself as a Cruciverbalist and goes by the name ‘Old Hatter’, a play on his own name.  What have his knees to complain about?  I know it was ‘Random Acts of Kindness Day’ last week, but Uncle Harry tries my patience.

***

Mum and Hilary have taken the evening hospital visiting shift giving Charles Dickens and me a much needed quiet night in on the sofa.  People say February is a short month, not in my book it isn’t.  Roll on March.