It was my day off today. Huzzah! I’m on my 6-2 week, so it was rather lovely to have a lie in. I get knackered getting up at five in the morning so was going to have a lengthy lie-in. This was not to be. My nan had taken a funny turn and was in hospital so I visited her on Tuesday. She looked all frail and done-in and confused. I felt sad for her. Then it transpired that my mam and dad were going away on holiday (yesterday) and my sister and her husband were away until this weekend. So my nan would be shipped back to her flat and not have them to attend her as they usually do.
Usually I avoid all unnecessary contact with people. I find people to be like salt; pleasant in moderation, unpalatable in excess. It’s a selfish, anti-social, and in all honesty fairly loathsome trait. Yet one that affords me a quiet life. Buddha would be quick to point out the ‘me’ in that sentence.
To cut to somewhere near the chase, I said I’d pop round yesterday to make sure she wasn’t short of anything. It turns out she lives in old codger paradise. It’s a series of flats built around an enclosed complex. Shops, hairdressers, library, internet cafe, all under one roof. All carpeted, with wheel-chair and scooter access, carers all about, wheelchair friendly lifts, and bedecked with doddering denizens.
Back in her natural environment my nan was fairly compos mentis, still not to hot on her feet mind, but not the pitiful, confused patient from the hospital. She thought she had been diddled with her bank account and was saying that when my mam came back off holiday she would get a lift to Birchwood (about five miles away) to her local branch. It being my day off today I said I’d take her, but that I had a sax lesson at two in the afternoon so it would have to be in the morning. I suggested eleven o’clock she said ten thirty, then we could go to Asda and get some lunch!
Bloody hell. No good deed goes unpunished (Oscar Wilde).
So I had to get up at half eight, get the washing out, straight to Asda to do our big shop for the week, charge back, unpack, round to my nan’s (late) where she was waiting for me in the foyer (!) back up to her flat so she could change wheelchairs and dither about, then bank, (where she tried to give me loads of money and I refused) charity shop, (where she had a moan at the woman she knows there about me not taking the money she wanted to give me) Asda and cafe. I said I didn’t want anything to eat, just a coffee. She pointed to a big roast of meat and asked what it was (turns out it was turkey) and said it looked nice, what was I having? I said just a coffee. She said I had to get something. I said just a coffee. By now there was a queue forming as it was dinner time. She said she’d have turkey butty, make it two so I could have one. I said I wasn’t hungry, didn’t want anything and was a veggie. About four times I said I was a veggie! It must have been five minutes to get her that bloody turkey butty. Five minutes of telling her I was a veggie, with an impatient queue behind us, and her getting rattier and rattier.
After that it was just a quick trip to Aldi (running late, tick tock, tick tock) then back to her flat, through the complex, up in the lift, then go and get the paintings she had in the storage area and bring them into the flat (aaarrrrrggghhh!) pick up the bag with the ice-cream she’s bought me from Asda and she’d put an envelope of cash in it! Had another quick exchange of views, and gracelessly accepted the cash. Bit pissed off about that to be honest. Kind of turns a selfless and (for me) commendable act into a mercenary deed. Again it’s turned around to how it relates to me. Perhaps it did, as the woman in the charity shop maintained, make her happy to treat her family with her cash, but we’ve got enough, and I don’t want hers. Yeah, it’s all about me.
I forgot to mention, last week when I went for my (hour long) sax lesson there were no spaces left in the hour parking bit, and after three laps of the one-way system around town realised there were no others to be had. I decided to park in a half hour space, thinking no-one would notice such a minor transgression. I got back to the car and they had put a parking ticket on my car after thirty five minutes! That will be twenty five pounds, please! Bastards!
This week, being a day off and therefore not being in a rush I was going to go on the bus, it gets you there twenty minutes early, but right outside the shop and no parking worries. No chance. Came charging out of my nan’s, rushed home, picked up sax, straight out, no parking spots again, had to go to the multi-storey across town, late again, ran through town carrying a bloody great sax case and arrived ten minutes late.
Spiffing.
Pete, my sax instructor, had my funky new mouthpiece for me though, supposed to be a hell of an improvement on the standard one, and had no pupil after me so said we could run the hour from my arrival.
He said I had a good sound. Better than some of his pupils who’d been going for a year! The internet said that this sax was a good one, fit for learning on or gigging with, that’s why I went for it. So either it’s the natural sound the sax makes, or he was bulling me up. Apparently some people start unable to blow more than one note without taking a breath. Sounds iffy to me. I don’t even know enough to know what he means by a good sound, or conversely a bad one. I’d have thought that if you hit the note it was job done. Who knows?
I have a good sound. For some reason I went to pieces when trying to read the sheet music. The stuff I’ve been doing all week went totally to crap. Possibly because you don’t like making a fool of yourself in front of someone who knows what he’s on about.
So it’s been a full day. Again I didn’t go to Taekwondo, though. Just wanted a bit of my day off when I wasn’t rushing around doing stuff. I would have loved it if I’d have gone.
I’ll have to go every available day next week (I’ve booked the week off so I can) as it’s my grading a week on Sunday.
Anywho, time for Bucky beddy-bo’s.
Later.
Buck.