27 August 2013

ADVICE

Sitting chatting most amiably the other day with an old friend of the family - one I thought I knew his manners - when he launched into a discussion of my blog. 

  • Jolly interesting and all that.
  • Don't get him wrong, super, most informative, très amusant and all that ~ but ...
Proceeded with full gall to lecture me on some of the 'content'.

See that face over there? Don't mess. 

I gave him the lecture:

  • In a country where I dont speak the lingo
  • No-one to go home to and bore with the crap of the day.
  • Five years eight months dutiful (and unpaid) caregivery in the face of being taken for high-handed granted.
  • Thieved from: property, time, confidence and self-respect.
  • On-tap under-gardener, chauffeur, secretary, labourer, health monitor, butler and having to attend the meal and sit with the guests atop that.
  • All hours punch-bag for blah blah flahr blucking dementia repeatia dronings on - you guessed it -  effing gardenry. 
* I used to ask around what if any research anyone knew of the long-term effects of this sort of battering. Now I'm living, morale-crippled evidence, but I write on so my girls will know and so their eventual husbands will have a first-hand account of why and how my girls inherited not one memory of their dad.

I'm told not to look back but I'm a writer, I live to interpret 'back'.

Reduced to pen and paper, I had a chance to read my early notes and diaries. So close. 
Fifteen more seconds and I'd've closed the door and left for the bus station and been gloriously obliviously incommunicado.

Not a flipping hope in hell would I have submitted to the solo grind of a care-giver: find a local to do the job.

Theftee ~ After the theft, I drafted in mind tempting want-ads to lure some unsuspecting carer to replace me as I made my getaway. In each, I insisted on including a  caveat about the danger of being thieved from.

As Anna and I drove around we'd joke about the beefy-armed bruisers we'd see, picturing their  thwack round the chops in swift retaliation for any filcheroo tried on  them. Good times.
  • There's a story there, perhaps I'm telling it.


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