Thursday 1 March 2012

After the Party, the Hangover...

I only have the remains of two fingers on my left hand, the rest of it (it, the hand, not them the fingers) being only heat induced scar tissue, and my right is, since yesterday, pretty bloody useless so I really can’t type the usual 3,000 word missive that John Gray only reads when he is on night shift on the IT ward armed with a cup of hot cocoa and a spare underpaid decade or two.

Marcia, having slept in what will be the bar of the restaurant while I tried to sleep in what will be the kitchen of the restaurant has gone to town to get much needed stock for the shop. Before she left Alexander had his first lessons in all those skills necessary for a successful diplomatic career with the Foreign Office. All communications between Marcia, the Government and I, the filthy aggressor were this morning directed through him with all the frostiness and ambiguity one would expect from Whitehall Mandarins principally concerned with status and deniability.

‘Ask your father if he wants a cup of tea’

‘Ask your mother if she doesn’t feel that it would be better for her to swap the battery from her phone to mine, which is fully charged because I can plan ahead, as I can recharge hers while she is in town and still maintain effective communications’

Some yoghurt knitting tree huggers would suggest that I was overloading a three year old. I just felt that his evident lack of comprehension, inability to pass on a simple message, stupidity even, stemmed from his mother and that his finer attributes, being bigger than his peers and able to impress upon them his will in two languages and a couple of fists backed up by determination were confirmation that individual sperm are seldom as inebriated as their donor. Further justification, if any were needed, that I had made an awful mistake hooking up with a girl who, instead of planting laurels on my head and bandaging my hand, a hand damaged in the defence of reason, spent more time stopping the albeit pretty impressive nose bleed of some corrupt scumbag and telling the police I was an uncontrollable thug.

I hate that kind of disloyalty and my hand still hurts like hell.

So, like all so called ‘Hard Men’, I am being petty. At least that’s what women, all of them stupidly emotional and unreasonable would call it. So now every kid that comes by gets a free sweet. If they bag a sack of litter, they get a handful. Marcia is going to come back to two hectares of litter free country side and a few empty sweet jars.

And I am still going to build my clinic.

So there.

I’m off to put my hand in the river. I tried sticking it in one of the shop freezers but it kept coming out with a cold beer attached and Marcia gets really pissed with me if I drink the profits.

12 comments:

  1. I feel I want to waddle over to Angola like your much loved bubba ( grandmother)
    bandage your hand, and slap you soundly for being a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddddd boy!

    seriously though can we send anything for your new clinic?

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  2. John, I just need to do blood and faeces to screen for malaria and the usual water borne diseases and parasites and I reckon I can get all that kit here but any advice and help you could give would be immensely appreciated.

    So, at a push I can cover the clinic but I can't do the water as well. I will need to get the restaurant and new shop open and then I can bleed some of that profit to get the water treatment plant. We are not talking millions here, a decent reverse osmosis sytem from UK with pre sand filtration and post UV treatment and re mineralisation is about ten grand sterling and will do 12 tonnes of water a day so if you can come up with a way to raise that I will inundate you with photos of happy smiling faces.

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  3. and I will spank you as long as you want or your Chris lets me...

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  4. John, my hand is absolutely killing me. The pain is unbearable. It is all relfex actions. Without thinking, you reach for a cigarette in the ashtray, a beer or, worse still, slap a mosquito. And then, I always shove my right hand under my pillow to support my head while I sleep. It is obviously this osteoporosis thing so I am going to have to make sure I have a bit of four by two to hand so that I break that across someone's skull and not my brittle bones.

    And I am allergic to all pain killers.

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  5. If you cannot take analgesics and have osteoporosis, the only alternative i can suggest is an ice pack - a frozen bag of peas will do - and keep it elevated and wait for the swelling and damage to settle down.

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  6. Man, it's cruel, but I laughed my arse off at your last few posts!

    Petty? It's not petty, it's the way the world is. I'm sure if Marcia had done something to defend your future, really put herself out to protect you and make your life improve dramatically, you too would be only communicating with her via a small child whose only understanding of love is what he sees before his very eyes.

    Drink the beer; you know it makes sense.

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  7. Tom, my bedside manner is atrocious. Unless you are dying I never seem to quite grasp what's wrong with the patient. And whatever is wrong I will promptly sit on. Making the patient groan. My intentions are good, the result backfires.

    However, and there is nothing here to read between the lines: Don't fuck with hands. Been there done that. If you have literally "busted", ie broken, bones in your hand you have to make sure NOT to do even the most necessary (like wiping your bottom or stroking Alexander Kissinger's head). Keep it still! Or bones will not join together properly during the healing process. They call it "Mal Union". Isn't that sweet? Malunion: One might cite that in a divorce petition.

    Like you I don't do pills either, not because I am allergic to them but because my body is a temple few will enter. However, when push comes to shove, Codeine is my killer of choice. It hits the spot. Though not quite as enchantingly as morphine. My god. Fifteen months ago, when they tried, manually, to reset my left arm I hit the roof. Boy oh boy. Did I hit the roof. Didn't think pain like that was possible. So they gave me Morphine. First time in my life. Bliss, sheer and unadultered bliss. One shot and I became a potential addict.

    Yes, so let your hand rest. Presumably, once the swelling is down that doctor of yours will put you in a cast? Turning all Nurse John now, minus the gloves.

    See you later. To illustrate my earlier "atrocious bed side manner": If I were with you in real time I'd now shake hands with you. Making you wince. Sorry. Sorry. I am SO SO Sorry.

    Loosening my grip,

    U

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  8. Hello Hippo. I found your blog only recently and am spellbound by your adventures and plans and can't go a day without checking in.

    Now there is this clinic in the works. There are probably a lot of 'little' readers (like m) out here that would like to contribute to that effort.

    Did you know that you can add a Google Gadget to your blog for "Support my Blog"? People from around the world can donate to your project. The gadget is free. Can't hurt if you add it, no?

    Take care of that hand - ice and elevation. Wouldn't hurt to have an x-ray if possible. Good luck to you.

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  9. Kris, thanks for that tip, well, all of them really!

    I have a problem, and it is a big one for me.

    I have a security company but other than the most oblique reference to it, I have never really mentioned it on Hippo on the Lawn. This is a platform for my ramblings and an advert free club environemt for those who wish to, can endure.

    Can you imagine what it would be like if you were invited to a dinner party and then, across the table, another guest put you right on the spot and asked you to contribute towards the necessary development of Yak farming on ping pong balls in the Himalayas?

    I would feel uncomfortable doing it and besides, it is a legal minefield and a way of raising funds wildly open to abuse.

    I will do it myself.

    Regarding the hand, sod it. It will heal and at least my regulalrs now I will not be throwing any ppunches for a while and if I resort to a Glasgow kiss (a head butt) they will all know it is coming because I will have to take my glasses off first.

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  10. I don't think you're being petty. Your hand is hurt because you were in a situation where you felt you had to defend something, and were willing to allow yourself to get hurt in the process.

    Marcia may not agree that you had to defend something. I know there've been times where i've disagreed with Himself, and have watched him make mistakes. I usually do help out where i can, after enough time has passed and i feel he learned the lesson he needed to learn. I don't do it to be mean, but i don't want to enable his behaviour. If he's really suffering though, i do what i can to ease it.

    I also live by something i read, attributed to Phyllis Diller: "Don't go to bed angry. Stay up and fight."

    I do hope you can work out your differences and that your hand can heal all right.

    megan

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  11. Nothing like a good 'domestic' Tom to help you realise you're a man (and consequently in a permanent dog-house - albeit occasionally lulled into a false sense of security LOL).

    Whiskey - the best pain-killer there is.

    Liver killer too unfortunately - talk about design fault!

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  12. I, for one, see no reason why we should have to suffer just because you got your hand broke. I'm used to reading 3,000 word missives, and getting all this entertainment for free... well, I do have to pay the bucks to the gigantic corporate oligopolists who don't bear your self-inflicted ethical burden here, but you are probably like me, anyway, and if you were paid for it you wouldn't want to do it anymore.

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Please feel free to comment, good or bad. I will allow anything that isn't truly offensive to any other commentator. Me? You can slag me without mercy but try and be witty while you are about it.