Foxy Mamma Malone
Malone discovers that sometimes, all people really want is a trip down to the local for a quick pint
My dad has been asked if he’d like to see or do anything before he dies. He said he wanted to go to his local pub! It took five people but they managed it. He had to be put in a wheelchair, hoisted into a stairlift, then hoisted back into a wheelchair, carried down some stairs outside to the wheelchair and then finally wheeled to the pub. Where presumably he had a nice relaxing roast dinner and pint of Guinness, worrying about the palaver to get back home safe in bed! Sounds more like an ordeal than an outing.
“My dad went to prison for smuggling 50lbs of marijuana in 1969. They gave him a nine month sentence”
He has a lot of tubes coming in and out of him; apparently my mum doesn’t think he’ll survive another operation to reinsert his pain pump if it comes out again. So why keep hoisting him about the place? Why can’t he have a normal dying wish like wanting to meet someone famous or something. Actually one of his friends is Billy Bragg. Billy visits prisons to sing with the inmates, some of whom wrote my dad a card. One of them said: “Thanks for the pot you stashed in 1969, it was still good.” Ha ha, good to see the inmates haven’t lost their humour! My dad went to prison for smuggling 50lbs of marijuana in 1969. They gave him a nine month sentence. My mum did three weeks inside, no wonder she likes to work outside now. In the newspaper clipping about the case, it said my dad had smuggled it in for his terrible asthma…! If he needed to aid his asthma I’m sure some fresh sea air would have been preferable to 50lbs of Moroccan finest lung clogger!
I’ve got asthma too, a family heirloom it seems. I wonder if that means my daughter will too. I hope not. I am trying to prevent it by making sure her room is ‘anti-allergy’. I have thrown all the cushions and her cuddly toys away except for one in her bedroom so nothing harbours dust mites. I felt a bit mean at first then I realised she never plays with them anyway. If the aunties come to visit I’ll have to pretend she lost them or something…
Why does everyone give us cuddly toys? I’m sure it’s only because they’re free with tea bags or toilet roll or something. They are a pain in the bum, they just sit around collecting dust mites, cluttering up the surfaces. Oh how I long for cleared surfaces. When I am rich, I am going to hire a carpenter to build me wall-to-wall, customised cupboards, where nothing can ever be seen. Not even books. I want it to look like I own nothing! I just want to hide everything behind panels of frosted glass and oak. There would still be piles of unsorted paperwork, and mounds of wires for gadgets I can’t even find, but at least I wouldn’t have to see them.
I think my dying wish would be to listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, while sitting in a garden of wet, cut grass, drinking fresh mint tea and eating coffee cake. Actually, my dad’s right – a roast down the pub would do just fine, dying or not.
