Shaggy Blog Stories – a book for Comic Relief
If you’re a UK Blogger (or a Brit expat, or one of those peculiar foreigners but currently living in the UK) and have ever written anything funny (or, at a pinch, amusing), then here’s something for you.
We have one week to write a book together.
I lie on the floor of the toilet.
It is comfy and cosy down here, and I am nice and warm. It is best when I shut my eyes – things go all snuggly.
I can hear the LTLP. She is on the telephone.
“…had some effect on him… painkillers… took the ones that I had for my broken leg…”
It is nice that she has telephoned somebody. I would imagine that it is an expert. I pull the blanket further around me. It is lovely. They should make mattresses out of wood laminate.
“…coming over? Oh that’s brilliant.”
This is excellent – an expert is coming over. They can have a sleep with me here on the floor if they would like. I sort of doze off.
What might be 30 seconds later, I am awoken by a blurry shape looming above me. The shape seems to be expertly studying me, whilst resolving into humanoid form. It is beautiful, with fresh unblemished skin, flowing locks of red and a voice like 10,000 angels descending on gossamer wings from a golden heaven crossed with Meatloaf. It resolves some more into Short Tony.
It is not an expert after all!!! I try to protest, but although I appear to be aware of everything that’s going on, I can’t seem to do anything except lie on the floor with my eyes shut. It is very unnerving. I hear their voices discussing me in the kitchen, low and urgent. Suddenly the floor seems less comforting.
The LTLP has given me rohypnol!!! They have given me rohypnol and are planning to perform a lewd act on me!!!
“Let’s get him onto the couch,” says Short Tony, and I feel my blanket being pulled.
“No, no,” I manage to murmur, in increasing alarm.
“You can’t stay there,” orders the LTLP’s voice. “We need to get you onto the couch.”
They are planning on putting me onto the couch!!! My hands reach round the floor to grip it tightly, which doesn’t work, as it is a floor.
I feel some arms. “No!!!” I hear myself saying, although it is like hearing somebody else speaking, although it is definitely me, or at least somebody who sounds very much like me and who has the same sort of idea of what to say as I do.
“I’ll take myself,” the voice that is possibly me continues.
I try to stand up to walk to the living room. Standing up is more difficult than I remember.
“I think I’ll crawl actually,” the me-voice explains.
I crawl slowly to the living room, across the brick tiles, step by step. I can feel Short Tony and the LTLP watching me. But I do not want to be carried and lose my dignity. The next thing I know I am lying on the sofa under a blanket.
“…these sort of pills before…?” I hear more conversation from the kitchen.
It does not seem interesting, and I drift off to sleep.
I first noticed at Short Tony’s 40th birthday party.
Normally, I sing like 10,000 angels descending on gossamer wings from a golden heaven crossed with Barry Gibb. But I could not even hit the high notes in ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’. I drank my way through this, and stuck to the Tom Jones. But it preyed on my mind; my throat has not been the same since and my health deteriorated rapidly and spectacularly at the weekend.
I make an appointment.
“Hello Jonny!!!” cry the fit receptionists, clustering round me as they do whenever I visit the surgery.
“Where’s your little Baby today?” one asks.
“Left her behind today. Ill. Me ill. Me. No baby.”
Eyes narrow and lips purse; the receptionists disappear in the twinkling of an eye.
“You’ve got tonsillitis,” announces the Doctor, pulling away hastily from my mouth. “It’s pretty grim,” he adds helpfully.
Tonsillitis!!! It is a proper itis!!! I do not know whether to be pleased that I am officially properly ill, or worried about the fact that I have got one of the major itises. This tonsillitis is bad enough – God knows what it will be like if it progresses to hepatitis or tuberculitis. It is a fucking good job that I live in the developed world, is all I can say.
I lean forwards to give my shadow of a voice the best chance. “I am not really up on medicine,” I confess. “But seeing as we are all going to die anyway from super microbe bugs that have built up resistance to antibiotics due to prolonged and largely inappropriate prescribing in the past, can I have some antibiotics please?”
He scribbles out a prescription.
“I don’t know if it’s connected,” I continue. “But I have also had flu, and conjunctivitis?” Even as I speak I realise that I have had an itis all along!!! But just a local minor one that is unlikely to cause death or becoming a cabbage. I do not mention my sore toe as I do not wish to overburden the NHS with my problems.
“Not connected,” he confirms, before leaning back in his chair and eyeing me up and down. “Look. Far more likely – you’ve been running around for months after the LTLP and the Baby, looking after them all hours, and you’ve just run yourself down. You’ve been overdoing it.”
This had not occurred to me.
“Could you put that in writing please?” I ask hopefully.
“No, fuck off,” replies the Doctor. “I don’t mind telling you that between ourselves, but I’m buggered if I’m getting involved in your domestic life.”
I am disappointed with his unhelpfulness and once more consider reporting him to the GMC via anonymous letters cut from the pages of the ‘Lancet’ and ‘People’s Friend’. But he has given me pills, for which I am grateful. I drive home tenderly, to swallow these and some painkillers.
Short break.
I am fed up with being ill. The Baby has given me this conjunctivitis mullarkey, which has closed up my right eye completely. I’ve gone down with another viral thing, which is making me alternately shiver and boil, is aching all my muscles away, and has closed my throat up completely so I can speak only in a raspy, forced voice. What with the toe causing a theatrical limp, the eye and the throat, all I’m missing is a parrot on my shoulder and one of those iPatch gizmos.
Will return when typing doesn’t hurt my fingers so.
Many thanks for your patience.