On Saturday I woke up facing the happy prospect of a first
weekend to myself for a while after the four consecutive previous ones had been
partially devoured by matters of a hospital visiting nature.
Sadly, this delightful prospect was not to be granted me,
but then I suppose I ought to have learnt by now that things are simply never
going to be allowed to go my way, no matter how much I need them to.
I should have known something was up as I staggered to the
keyboard. Firstly, the stuff I was writing was coming from a dark, spiteful and
wholly illogical place, and my ability to hit the right keys in anything
approaching the correct order seemed to be something of a struggle. Then the
blind spot in my direct vision started to form and slowly transformed into the
full-blown impairment of vision associated with the onset of my familiar old
adversary, the dreaded weekend migraine.
However, the vision managed to clear after about thirty
minutes of intense concentration, and I was able to stagger downstairs to go
through the tricky process of brewing up a mug of tea when you can’t quite work
out how to place the kettle and the lead into a position of mutual
satisfaction.
Then the phone rang and it became pretty apparent that my time
spent suffering in the attic meant that I had missed the several messages left
by my mother who was then in the process of having herself readmitted to
hospital after an entire five whole days at home, and my crest well and truly
fell at the prospect of this sad and irritating saga continuing into yet
another weekend and beyond, just after I thought I had put it behind me again.
There are only fifty or so weekends in the average year, and
already five of them have been devoured by this debacle.
An added complication is that a shortage of beds meant that
she had been placed in an establishment which is fully double the amount of
miles from my home as the usual one is, which will compound the massive
irritation and reduce still further the time remaining for me to recuperate,
eat, and generally keep the wretched nothingness of my own life together.
Meanwhile, the brewing migraine meant that, instead of
leaping into “dutiful son” mode (an option which never comes all that easily
to me) I instead went back to bed for the
rest of the day, a personal choice because I was unfit to drive, given that I
couldn’t really see all that clearly, but already I can sense that I am going
to pay a large emotional price for that act of selfishness…
One of the advantages of migraines, however, is the dreams
that it gives you, and overnight, the perfect new play finally formed in my
mind, only for me to wake up having realised that it was derivative sci-fi
nonsense and more than a little bit awful, too.
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