Cushions are not the only changes Mitzi has wrought on my life. Some of my more entrenched possessions are gradually noticeable by their absence. Mother’s antimacassars have gone, leaving odd colour staining on the backs and sides of the G-Plan furniture. When questioned about my heirlooms Mitzi just shrugs in her Euro-indifferent way and says they are too old and dirty. Her look makes me think she might be talking about more than the furniture covers so I let it pass.
I can’t tell if my missing oddments are disposed of or filed. Cupboards have been rearranged and unfamiliar objects have surfaced. I am not sure who they belong too. Some may have been in the back of the cupboard from mother’s time as chief occupant of the premises, but other gewgaws are probably Mitzi in origin. I can’t believe a silver phallus with ‘Employee of the Month – Congratulations you’ve done it more than anyone else in June’ comes from mater’s list of recognized triumphs.
And there is a strange smell in the air that is not Mitzi’s perfume. It turns out to be furniture polish and clean linen. The old familiar atmosphere of dried gin and fag smoke seems a distant memory of childhood now. I am definitely being invaded but I have no idea what to do about it. Pleas for a temporary halt to the process of Mitzification are dismissed with a ‘we’ll see’ and a shrug and given my invalided state I am in no position to fight back.
I know now how the Czechs felt when the Russian tanks rolled into Wenceslas Square in ’68. I remember being at prep school at the time and when told the Czech’s were being wiped out I panicked because I thought my tuck money wasn’t coming through from father that term. I’ve always been a self-centered bastard in that respect. 10 million people were being crushed under the Russian boot and I was worried about getting 3 months supply of Spangles!
But this is all insignificant compared to the invasion going on in the old folks homes across the Country as the blight seeks out the old, infirm and their helpers. Mother holed up in one a year or so hence as she rightly concluded I didn’t have the wherewithal to attend to her increasingly geriatric needs. The upside is no more midnight trips to stand guard outside the privy or having to liquidize all her hardtack at mealtimes, the downside is that what’s left of my inheritance is going to the ‘bide-a-wee home for retired all-in wrestlers’.
I was reasonably sanguine about the trade-off until the bat-flu started stalking the corridors. My mother maybe the living embodiment of all my life’s humiliations but she is still my Old Girl and I would hate for anything untoward to happen to her, at least until I’ve checked she hasn’t left the family silver – or what’s left of it – to the grapplers widows and mites fund.
I spoke to the house manager who seemed decidely nervous about the whole thing – which didn’t lift my spirits one bit. It seems the ruling prefects have largely cast the geriatric vote to the wind by diverting all the phrophylatics they do have to the carers getting most media attention. As far as the authorities are concerned God’s waiting rooms are on their own – which I think is a bloody nerve given it’s mostly the inmates who put Brexit through the pipe and returned Bojo to the summit in his hour of need. Talk about thanks for your vote – now eff off…
So mother is at the mercy of chance and whatever precautions the carers can manage. And it’s not as if I can wander down there and have a last pink Gin with her before the final curse decends under the current confinement.
But maybe that’s just as well. She might ask me where the antimacassars have gone. And like our current ruling class, I don’t have the first clue…
Bulk and The Devil 