Monday, March 12, 2007

Tedious reading


I’m reading ‘Imperium’ by Robert Harris at the moment. It’s a very good read, just like his novel ‘Pompeii’. Both highly recommended. Anyway, a line that caught my attention goes like this, "Because, my friend, those were happy years and few subjects make more tedious reading than happiness." On the morning that I read this line, this happened. Read on.

I freely admit that I can be a bit impatient and I'd forgotten how an extended period with my mother can push that to the limit. Mum's a lovely, kind person but, understandably, given that she's 82, a little forgetful. This morning I called to her room to pick her up on the way to breakfast, for her to tell me that she had lost all her medication. I’m not talking about a packet of Aspirins here, but a huge sack of every medicine known to man and some they’re still thinking about. Ok, these things happen so I searched her room top to bottom and then, over breakfast, with Jan, went through all her movements yesterday. The last sight of her pills, that we could all remember, was at breakfast yesterday, after which she had hopped into a taxi, gone to Mass in the next town and then met a friend who lives nearby and spent the day with her. Logic said that the pills were either in the hotel, cruising in a taxi around Puerto de Santiago, in the church or at her friend’s house. I got everyone on the case. First the management at the hotel, then the taxi company, who paged all their drivers who were working on Sunday, the pope to give the church the once over and her friend in the next town to check her house. Everyone got involved. And the result, nothing, a big fat nothing? Ok, so at the final resort we can visit a doctor and get him to write out a prescription, but I held back on this last one basically because I was thoroughly pissed off and had had enough and a visit to the doctor was going to take up the other half of the day.
Having settled the girls down under their umbrellas near the pool, I headed back to the room to pick up the laptop, in order to release some frustration on you, my beloved reader. Then a strange thing happened. I wasn’t looking for the medicine, but I found it, stowed in our wardrobe, just in front of the safe. My opinion of this hotel just got better. They had found the pills and returned them to me for safe keeping. I trotted off downstairs and I returned them to mother, who was still sitting by the pool with Jan. When Jan asked where I had found them, the penny dropped. She suddenly remembered that she had taken them from my mother the day before at breakfast and put them in the wardrobe for safe keeping. Is it any wonder that I get a little impatient at times? (I’m with you on this one bro – Ed).
The sun shone brightly for the rest of the day and we were able to relax, but that’s boring reading isn’t it?

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