Thursday 11 January 2007

Pater Redivivus


Dauntless Captain Dad has emerged, all guns blazing, from Hypoglycaemic Attack No. 2, which ambushed him in the small hours this morning. Fortunately, Hypoglycaemic Attack No. 2 made the strategic error of striking while Cap'n Dad was in a coronary ward surrounded by medical folk. He came round to find astronauts fiddling with his arm and trying to force lemonade down his throat (typical astronauts), but they were gradually replaced by the aforementioned medical folk. Again, a crying shame that the Aged P. wasn't able to pre-empt this attack with seven courses of sticky date pudding.

He's up for a quadruple bypass on monday. That's if they can find enough spare veins. (On spare veins: the Aged P. rather anxiously observed the surgeon's lustful appraisal of his lower legs. My own feeling is that surgeons should keep their lustful appraisals to themselves, although perhaps it's best to be forewarned that one's right foot has been deemed dispensable to gangrene.) I'm doing my best to believe everyone's reassurances that the rerouting of an old fellow's circulatory system is nowt more than basic plumbing, but the siblings and Our Mum and I are feeling, all the same, a little shaken. Dad is the very model of a modern parent general, and we'd like him to push on as long as possible.

Meanwhile, I'm preaching Tennysons and Brontës to the young people, and planning a scandalously profligate one day real-estate reconnaissance mission to the wilds of Melborneo. All this seems comparatively petty. But as the Aged P. sensibly said, "It won't seem petty if you don't have anywhere to live."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andhave truer words ever been spoken? From my own experiences of both and Mater and Pater who've spent prolonged time being lustfully observed by Surgeons, Astronauts, Work-Experience Doctors, and finally, in Mater's case, Undertakers, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that hospitalisation brings out the inner sage in one's Elder-folk, and that their words are to be heeded.

Go forth safely and swiftly, and find yourself Southern Accomodations!

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Thank you, old boy. I think you're right. The Southern Accommodations are essential. I can hardly host my Saturday afternoon Pimms & sandwich events in a tram shelter.

Perhaps here's not the place, but I'm sorry to read about yr Mother.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Doctor. I had made copious posts about the matter when it happend (July 05 ff), but dear Aunt Agatha misrepresented the date by a good year in her eulogy the other day and, frankly, I haven't been the same since. Damn her eyes!

Anonymous said...

Anyway, don't Saturday afternoon Pimm's sessions contradict your previous comment about being an abstinential Doctor?

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Pimms is on my list of Hononary soft-drinks, especially when served with cucumber and orange. Ditto for cider. And those sweet and sickly things with paper umbrellas sticking out of 'em sold to young women for $16 in houses of ill repute. And port.

Anonymous said...

I see, and I quote once again those true lines of Messrs Flanders and Swann: "And it flashed through her mind what her mother had said, with her antepenultimate breath, 'Oh my child should you look on the wine when 'tis red, be prepared for a fate worse than death!'"