Bewildered Befuddled and Me.

 

I had a day off yesterday. This is unusual on a weekday, and I spent the entire week anticipating it with glee. Maybe a little shopping, some cake eating whilst blog browsing, some feet up, some settee based snooze.

But no.

Instead, I get a frantic call from my daughter to say that my father, has sat on a stanley knife and gone to hospital. In an ambulance.

SAT on it? I say.

Yes! She says. It won't stop bleeding, and I can't get hold of Gran, so I called an ambulance.

I have visions of a suddenly castration fixated elderly mother, surreptiously placing a stanley knife between two sofa cushions before skipping off into the distance, spotted hanky on a stick over her shoulder.

Seems that daughter has been taking notice of my laminated sheets of the heart and its functions, which I have pinned to the wall over the kettle in an attempt to assist my revision study. (I don't revise. I don't even revise my opinions, never mind the functions of the heart.)

I think it has penetrated his femoral artery! she says, confidently.

I marvel at this for a second, then call my sister to get her to drive to the hospital and see what has happened. I am panicking a little of course.

My sister phones ten minutes later to inform that she has seen our father, clutching his arse and standing folornly in A&E reception. "They've GLUED the bugger!" he shouts. Admirably, my sister doesn't walk briskly past as though she doesn't know him, she packages him into the car and drives home.

Mother calls later, and laughs about father. Oh the duffer! she says. He left a stanley blade on his car seat and then sat on it! I was out buying one of those new mobile phones with a big screen, she says.
She can't see the other one properly. A big screen phone. This makes my heart sink a little, as I know big screen phones will have too many functions. My mother is the type that should only hold a phone which has giant black handset and a twirly cord attached to it.

Even later she calls again, to tell me that the phone is far too quiet, and although she can SEE the numbers and letters, she can't hear it ring. So, she takes it off to Phones4u, and demands her money back. Its a dysfunctional phone, she says.

Imagine this, and I swear it is true.

The young man in Phones4u unwinds the cling film that my mother has wound around the upper part of the handset (which is where the speaker is) "to protect the screen" and hands it back to her. Try this madam, he says.

Dysfunctional phone? Dysfunctional family.

I was so looking forward to my day off. Now I am consumed with questions.

Which one of them do I disown first?