Tag Archives: fall down

Presence of Mind

Good photographers have presence of mind. I’d like more of that stuff.

Last night I leaned back in my office chair – director’s or boss’ chair deluxe, high-back, padded armrests – luxuriously and started to put my feet up on my imbuia wood desk. The smooth motion didn’t stop there, I kept going backwards, the high-back cushioned my head as I crashed, the wheels of the chair caught under the desk, sending a full glass of red wine and a plate of fine cordon curried mutton pie and tomato sauce crashing to the tiled floor, along with the PC monitor and my drone remote control.

Fokop. Chair horizontal, desk at 45 degrees, dramatic grape blood and tomato blood on the floor, legs in the air, same air blue with profanity.

A photographer would have taken a great picture, especially as the ‘blood’ oozed towards my collection of eleven Okavango Delta books I’d gathered together as I’m getting rid of my library.

I very boringly tidied the broken glass and ceramic, mopped the red wine, re-assembled the scattered shrapnel and then thought: Damn! A picture would have been good.

I sort of re-staged it this morning to show how the chair’s wheeled legs tipped up the old desk on the right.

Mother Mary under Lockdown

She’s reading Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. ‘I can’t follow the plot but I’m enjoying the descriptions of the Thames, the muddy banks, the river traffic . . ‘

Apparently there’s a Miss Haversham in the book – she was let down by her to-be on the day of her wedding – she stayed in her room – kept her wedding dress on – ate the wedding food. Mom says Annie called someone in Harrismith ‘Miss Haversham,’ but can’t remember who. She had wild hair. I suggested Mrs Fitzgerald, an eccentric Methodist, but she couldn’t remember her.

She had a fall on her walk with her friend Barbara yesterday, but ‘went down gracefully and haven’t got a single bruise. I just lay down gently on the tarmac and waited till two ladies on the staff came out to help me to my feet.’ She hadn’t thought of the obvious, so I had to point it out: ‘Mom, they’ll all think you’d been drinking!’ That amused her.

After the fall the 91yr-old dear skipped her piano session, but today she got back to her usual schedule, and played before all three meals. She has found a few new songs to play, she says.

She told her friends the joke I had told her about the Las Vegas strip club that had a sign out for the lockdown period: ‘Clothed till 30th April.’ Says they enjoyed the joke.

Then Mom asked if I had been to that strip club when I went to Vegas! I said ‘Ma-a! I went to see Petula Clark sing.’

She couldn’t remember who Petula Clark was! Wow! Those cells must have been blitzed in one of her TIA’s. It’ll come back to her. I’ll sing ‘Don’t Sleep In The Subway Darling’ and she’ll be wow’d. She’ll also remember Petula always kept her clothes on.

As she does every time, she asked, ‘How are Jessie and Tommy? Send them my love’ (two of her four grandchildren, 22 and 18 – my kids). The TIAs didn’t get those cells thank goodness

~~oo0oo~~

I’ve since read Great Expectations, bowing to incessant pressure from my canoeing friend and British Empire fan Geoffrey Caruth. He insisted. I’m glad he did.