Notes to my Mother-in-Law. Phyllida Law

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СКАЧАТЬ piano tuner is coming tomorrow at 3 p.m. so when you are dusting don’t bother to put back the photos as such. He usually moves everything himself but I’m not sure if he can see terribly well. He seems never to look me straight in the eye and there is something odd about his glasses. It would be awful if he dropped Churchill. Let’s give him the last of the rock-cakes. I’ll be home so there is no need to stay downstairs for the bell.

      Dusters aren’t all that expensive. Perhaps we could use that stockingette stuff the butcher sells? Don’t sacrifice your bloomers in this rash manner. Heaven knows where we’ll get interlocking cotton now Pontings is closed. I might try that haberdasher’s next to Woolworths in Hampstead. She still keeps those skeins of plaited darning wool. Last time I was in she told me she was one of the first sales ladies in John Lewis. Apparently they lived over the shop in those days in some sort of hostel, which was very strictly run. She got something like 17/6 per week, I think. You probably got that for a year.

      Listen, we must practise. That Mr Parnes said we must. Ten minutes every day in a carpeted room, he said. Preferably with curtains. So I will come upstairs with your tea tomorrow and we will have ten minutes’ practice in your room. The kitchen is far too noisy.

      I have to sit directly opposite you and speak slowly. As soon as you get used to my voice I’ll send someone else up with tea and we’ll do a few minutes longer each day. It is essential that we go about this sensibly.

      You may have to hold it in your ear for the moment and I’ll ring Mr Parnes about other fitting arrangements. He agrees that the main disadvantage is the tiny switch. The tips of one’s fingers do go dead after a certain age and how one is supposed to adjust the beastly thing when there is no feeling in one’s fingers I can’t think.

      I’ll mark the little wheel thing with a biro when you feel it’s about right and we can adjust it before you put it in. That’s settled. Practice will commence at 5 p.m. precisely tomorrow, Wednesday 9th inst., 1978.

      Thank you very much, Gran. I will go round to Kingston’s tomorrow as they close Thursday afternoon. Is it collar you want? Or is it slipper? Green or smoked? Middle gammon is something like 84p per lb. It’ll be a great help to have something to cut cold on Saturday.

      I found your splint in the hall drawer.

      I tell you what I suggest. Just give up knitting for a while and see if that doesn’t help. The physiother-apist I went to for my shoulders thought knitting was really bad for you. Especially with aluminium needles. Aluminium gets a very bad press these days. Mother has changed to enamel because she thinks Uncle Arthur is going potty. She says if you put cold water in a hot aluminium pan it pits the metal and you are swallowing chemicals with every mouthful. She says Aunt Avril used to put bicarbonate in with rhubarb and cabbage and an evil green slime used to rise to the top, which was poisonous. And that’s what’s the matter with Uncle Arthur. I could suggest a few other things.

      I didn’t know Aunt Min was deaf. I thought she just had diabetes. You must ask her how she gets on with the NHS box model. Maybe the knobs are bigger. Let me put a new battery in for you. They are such wretched fiddly little things and apparently it’s only too easy to leave them switched on when not in use. Mr Parnes says one should last you six weeks, but you could have left it on overnight, and that would explain the difficulty. I had a deaf landlady when I was a student and she was forever leaving her apparatus on, when it would give piercing shrieks and she couldn’t hear and we would all have to look for the box. It was nearly as big as a wireless.

      If there was a thunderstorm she used to unplug herself, cover all the mirrors with dishcloths and shut herself in the larder under the stairs. Nice woman.

      Now, don’t forget to make a list of worries for Mr Parnes and we will sort them all out on Friday morning. I’m afraid your routine will be very much disturbed. Let’s do the floors on Saturday and the brass before we go on Friday. Variety is the slice of life, as Aunt Avril used to say.

      We used the wooden knitting needles for propping up the house-plants. Remember?

      Nothing much of note to report. This weather will kill us all. Take an extra pill. Be a devil. Called on Mrs Wilson as I passed to check on her wrist. She broke it on Tuesday, did I tell you? She tripped on one of those proud paving stones opposite number 48, and in order to stop herself from falling she put out her hand to steady herself against one of the lime trees.

      ‘It just snapped like a twig,’ she said.

      Being Mrs Wilson, she clattered on up the road and did the shopping before stumbling back home with a wrist like a whoopee cushion. The doctor showed her the X-ray. She says it looked like a crushed digestive biscuit.

      ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mrs Wilson,’ he said, ‘that you will never have a normal wrist again.’

      ‘My dear,’ said Mrs Wilson, clutching my arm, ‘I’m deformed.’

      Boot has been sick under the hall table.

      All set for tomorrow, then? We should leave by 10.30 a.m. so we’ll have to forget the brass this week. It seems very early to leave for a twelve o’clock appointment but I’m worried about the parking. Gloucester Place is one way and tremendously long as streets go, which means we’ll have to go right down Baker Street to turn into it and cruise along trying to find the right number. Let’s hope it’s not raining but the forecast is frightful. I think the brolly is in the car.

      I’ll try to park as close to the house as possible, of course, but what we will have to do is to stop the car by the door and see you inside. Then, while you sit in the waiting room for a bit, I’ll park the car comfortably and come back to go in with you. We should have hankies in handbags and some wine gums. Also a biro for the Daily Mail crossword in case we are kept waiting. Most importantly, do not forget the box with deaf-aid, batteries old and new, and the grotty earpiece. Any change you have in your purse will likely come in handy. I think we’ll need two-bob bits for the meter. Lots of them.

      I plan to make a slight detour on the way home to pick up fish and chips.

      Apparently if I fill in the bit on the back with all the extenuating circumstances I may not have to pay so hang on to your pension for now, darling.

      The wee warden was very stricken. He would never have given us one if we’d got there in time but he was writing it out when I arrived, and once they’ve started they can’t stop. They have to complete the beastly thing, you see, because it’s numbered and in triplicate or whatever and he can’t destroy it, or the Authorities would run him over or something. He’s written our story on the back of this piece and I’m to do the same with mine and they will review the situation. He says we might get away with it and we are to apply for one of those orange disabled badges. This means a visit to the doctor and the town hall where apparently they look at you in case you’re a fraud. We’ll do it. Then we’ll park on yellow lines and block bus lanes.

      Our Mr Parnes is ex-RAF, did you know?

      Could you hear him or were you just pretending? You said, ‘Yes,’ a lot.

      I suspect him of speaking quietly to test your apparatus.

      He says you mustn’t wash it, darling. No harm done apparently but the battery had to be replaced again. Do you remember when I washed the coffee-grinder and wrecked the engine?

      We’ll start the Waxol treatment tonight. He says we should use it for a week each month and I will check the earpiece with cotton-wool and a toothpick.

      Mr P put a СКАЧАТЬ