A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Thursday 13th May

Being an unplanned, adoptive parent has given me plenty to think about over the last week and I do feel, looking in the mirror, I’ve aged. I watched Matt from Number 20 with his baby Marcus Rashford, to try and get some tips but I wasn’t sure dressing him in a football shirt and disappearing down to the pub, returning after he was in bed, was necessarily good parenting. I also observed Brian and Wendy from number 27 but all they seemed to do was argue endlessly with teenage daughter Jodie, about everything from her boyfriend Seb, to the state of her bedroom. It wasn’t selling fatherhood to me, to be honest and Brian just looked as though he was about to explode all the time which didn’t conjure up a very nice image. Marjorie told me I didn’t need to make a meal of it; all I needed to do was go and chat to him every so often and show I cared. It seemed good advice, as I couldn’t really do much more since he wasn’t allowed out. I couldn’t exactly teach him hunting or fishing, which is just as well really as I’m not that good at either! 

Andrew from Number 30 has been digging up his mother Elsie’s entire garden to become a ‘sort of’ Survivalist. He told Gary from Number 11 that he needed more underground storage for his ammunition. People, he said, tapping the side of his nose and with a wild look in his eyes, would try to break into his bunker when disaster struck and he would be ready to defend it. Ideally he said, he’d like to live completely ‘off grid’ and given the speed of his internet, on most days, it feels like he already is. On Thursday he had a delivery of fifteen crates of baked beans to put in his cellar. Gary said it shouldn’t be an explosion from outside he should be worrying about. 

On Tuesday, a group of residents from the Last Gasp care home were taken by mini bus, to the local garden centre, for their first allowed visit out for over a year. When the accompanying nurse went for a comfort break, the group absconded to the pub next door and staged a ‘sit in’ in the pub garden while ordering several rounds of gin. What’s the point of taking us to a garden centre, they said, when ‘we’ve no gardens anymore’? Fair point, I thought. After about two hours, the seven of them were very jolly and it took nearly forty minutes to get them back safely onto the mini bus with the nurse repeatedly muttering “The Last Gasp isn’t insured for this kind of anarchy and due to your uncontrollable behaviour you’ve all missed afternoon tea and a Fondant Fancy!” They didn’t look like they cared too much and in any case, he was drowned out by the singing and distracted by someone throwing Werther’s Originals at the back of his head, while he was trying to reverse. 

Thank you so much for following my stories. From today, I’m going to take a little break from writing my diary as I need to think of some more adventures and songs but I plan to be back very soon!