“Shhhhh!!!” I hiss. “Look like we love you. And she might not take you away.”

Years ago, I did ‘work experience’ in a hospital. It was, by any criteria, not a happy arrangement for experiencer, institution or patients. On my first day, the lady in charge of me took me on a tour of the facilities. After several wards, laundries, administration sections and the morgue, we stepped into a room importantly marked ‘Staff Only’.

Before the door was opened I could smell the cigarettes, but I was unprepared for the jaundiced murk within. Smoke clung to the ceiling, to the yellowing walls, drifting around the battered and fading furniture in a creeping fashion that was purely Dickensian. (n.b. Charles). Though my eyes were streaming, I could make out the figure of the fattest woman in the world, slumped in a far corner, half-smoking, half chewing on a Benson & H.

We fought our way through the smoke molecules to reach her. Peering at me through thick spectacles, she swilled low into her chair, as if she’d been poured into it from a big vat of something quivery and shapeless. Surrounding her were ten or eleven plastic cups, some of which contained unwanted remnants of what seemed to be the treacliest of treacle-coffee.

“Jonny,” said my guide, brightly. “I’d like you to meet the Health Visitor.”

That was in the 1980’s, and they are different now, and look like they ought to be a friend of your mum’s called ‘Jean’. Plus we do not constantly take out endowment mortgages whilst listening to Kajagoogoo records.

I stand in front of the poo on the curtains so she does not think I am a bad housekeeper, and she converses with the LTLP, ignoring me studiously, as I am just a man. I like it that way, as it makes the LTLP feel important, and they can have a good heart-to-heart about women’s things like feeding and indigestion and all that.

I hold Baby Servalan in the background, making the occasional ‘goo’ noise. She is very good, and we are allowed to keep her.

I receive a bequest!!!

I have never received a bequest before, my relations generally not being part of the monied classes. I closely study the solicitor’s letter in some shock. Obviously I can’t actually understand the letter, but it mentions a figure, and has a cheque attached, so I assume it must be for real.

I pace around a bit. With money comes worries, and I do not want e.g. to be ripped off in the Village Shop by the Village Shop Man dressed as a fake sheikh. My celebrity status also brings the risk of extortion, blackmail etc by those who would forge photographs of me with prostitutes. Fortunately I think of this immediately, and am able to provide an alibi by saying here first that people might forge photographs of me with prostitutes, thus proving that any subsequent photographs of me with prostitutes will be forgeries, especially ugly ones.

I worry about the starving orphans in Africa. Obviously it would be good to help them, but actually raising awareness is much more important, so I resolve to raise some awareness by writing about them in my secret internet diary.

A glimmer of doubt crosses my mind. I look again at the letter, and worry that I might have fallen victim to a practical joke and that Short Tony and Big A will appear suddenly at the window pointing and laughing at me because they have faked the letter and cheque using a D.T.P. system. Either that or my grandmother will jump out saying ‘aha!!! Fooled you, I am not actually dead!!!’

But this does not happen, and I clutch the letter not knowing what to make of things. It has been a strange, wonderful, overwhelming week and I remain at a loss for words.