Forget It Jake ...

I’ve no strong feelings either way about my Lovely But Stupid Colleague, and am certainly above mentioning the time she shit herself at the office Christmas party, because that would be hugely ungentlemanly.

I just would really rather she didn’t speak to me. Ever.

And I've things on my mind. My Grandfather is unwell and apparently I'm not doing too well either.

I walk back into my building after both smoking a cigarette and conducting an odd exchange with a dancer, of which more another time.

Lovely But Stupid: Tired! I’ve just been to Chinatown!

(By the way, who really thinks a reliance on laxatives as a weight-loss solution, and then drinks two bottles of wine in the staff toilets before they even get to the party is going to have their evening end in anything other than total humiliation?)

Me: Ok.


LBS: It was really, I don’t know…. Sort of …..

Like most large cities, there is a significant quarter of ours which is entirely of the Orient.

Me: Chinese?

LBS: YES! Everyone was….erm….

Me: Chinese?

LBS: YES! It was like being in… er…well…

Me: China?

LBS: EXACTLY! It was all just really….er…

Me: Chinese?

You shit yourself at the Christmas party, I think to myself. However, I do not say anything, as I am a gentleman.

LBS: YES! GOD! It was amazing!

Me: Fucking hell.

I don’t mention the stone cold fact that she shit herself at the Christmas party. Because that would just be out of order, and gentlemen do not mention such things.

We had to call her boyfriend to take her home and everything. He looked rather resigned when he turned up.

The Great Escape.

“It’d be very easy to just walk out.” Says my grandfather. “I’ve walked all over, I know where the exits are now. It really wouldn’t be difficult.”

I rub the back of my head for a while.

“I know Granddad, but you haven’t actually been incarcerated as such….”

“Yes well, whilst you’re here Mark would you mind opening the window for me?”

My name is not Mark.

“I’m thinking we’ll keep the window closed. I’ve just looked and it leads straight to a flat roof. I don’t want you getting any ideas.”

He doesn’t see the funny side, busy as he is trying to ‘open’ a full-length mirror that is screwed to the wall in the belief that it is in fact a doorway to a non-existent kitchen so he can make us a cup of tea.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing here. It was just a little fall – my ankle you know – out riding. This is all nonsense. These bloody doctors. Trying to make a name for themselves.”

My Grandfather is 94. He has not been horse-riding in at least fifty years.

“Mmmmmm.”

For the first time he looks at me directly. For an instant – the most difficult thing – he is back.

“You live alone. Do you get lonely?”

“Well. Sometimes. I’m at work all day, it’s demanding stuff so I’m usually too tired to feel anything much when I get home. The weekends are tough I suppose.”

“Hm. Exactly.”

I’ve no idea what he means by this.

“Would you like a cup of tea? I can make you one.”

“No, it’s ok Granddad.”

You bastard, I think to myself. This had better be serious because you’ve took all the attention away from me and my ‘little’ scare. You’d better be dying at least.

I occasionally write for a dreadful 'satirical celebrity news' website, but am so often busy doing 'real' things that I miss deadlines for breaking news.

Even so. Not a single website or tabloid newspaper in the land yesterday actually had the thought of publishing the headline-

George Micheal Goes Down.

Not one? Seriously.

I would have, but was doing my real job and didn't have time (easy to think of these things 24 hours later I know but I really did) - what is wrong with this country? Because that was a GIFT to any half-decent sub-editor or contributor to snarky websites.

Pull your socks up people.

"Disorientated and Aggressive"

That is the paramedics’ comments from my hospital notes.

“Do you know where you are?” A question asked of me many times in the space of a couple of hours.

“In an ambulance” and “In a hospital” have been the answers.

This seemed to satisfy all concerned.

I’m also asked what year it is and the identity of our Prime Minister. For medical men I would expect them to be better informed.

After 48 hours I have eaten some truly dreadful food which has had the paradoxically reassuring effect of a school dinner, undergone a head CT, a load of neurological tests, some extensive monitoring of my heart and some blood work.

A boy in his early-twenties is admitted late at night and put in the bed next to me. His clothes are ripped and his face smashed. His mouth is so badly battered it looks as though he’s had some unsuccessful collagen and then had lip-stick applied by a clown. A ‘fight with his step-father’ he proudly informs staff with as much swagger as one can manage from a hospital bed.

I read from cover to cover the autobiography of the nasty guy who was in ‘Callan’ with Edward Woodward in the early eighties. My father used to let me stay up late to watch it. (This isn’t strictly true – he was just so drunk he’d forgotten I was there.) I come to the conclusion that said actor is ‘a cunt’ but there is nothing else to read.

I try and sleep. At three in the morning I hear the boy in the bed next to me quietly sobbing to himself.

The next morning, after further prodding, I am told I can go home, with instructions to return for an ECG. And to shower instead of bathe. And to avoid cooking with hot fat.

A friend of the boy – much the same age as him – comes to pick him up when they discharge him. His bravura was back in place and he thanked me for the cigarette I gave him that morning. God knows where he’s sleeping now.

I go to work the next day and almost instantly realise I shouldn’t have.

I can barely move. They don’t call it a ‘seizure’ for nothing. Everything hurts. My short-term memory is shot to shit and everything smells weird.

“It took four people to hold you down when it was happening. And you gave the paramedics hell. It was one of – well… No. THE most frightening thing I’ve ever seen” Informs a colleague who, unbeknownst to me, was on the same bus.

I have no memory of any of this, although am advised to get hold of the CCTV as it could prove to be a youTube sensation if I can also get hold of the audio of my comedy growling as it was happening.

On the up-side I always get a seat to myself on my bus home now. People seem wary of me for some reason.

It’s all been rather exciting to be honest, I think to myself as I get home late from work this evening after a night of pretending to be more important than I am in order to be wined and dined for free. The majority of the bumps, scrapes, cuts and bruises on my fists, knees and shins have all but healed and I’m feeling almost back to normal.

There is a letter from the Neurophysiology Department on the mat. No mention of results from the head CT, but they want me to go back in for an EEG.

Bugger.

At this rate, they may actually discover that I have a brain.