#flattenthecurve Episode 46

Friday Morning

There was panic in the Victory household Friday morning as a medical emergency unfolded: I was blinded by flashing white lights in the back garden. It was horrendous, and the accompanying dizziness made the spectre of the sky falling in seem distinctly possible.

The wife was worried it would be permanent or life threatening so she checked the life assurance was up to date then asked if she should call a Doctor. "No" I replied firmly, confident the problem would pass.

And pass it did. As I said to the wife, with work to do and a full programme of odd jobs to look forward to for the weekend ahead, there really was no time to die and thankfully the loss of vision was short lived.

As my eyesight began to recover, the images that had been temporarily burnt onto my retinas began to resolve themselves and the cause of the flashing light phenomenon became apparent. It turned out that the wife was wearing shorts and her first lower limb outing of the year was working in tandem with the beautiful May sunshine to dazzle onlookers. And she has the cheek to say I have milk bottle legs.


Later

Though the eyesight problems earlier in the day substantially resolved themselves quite quickly, I was left with a strange yellowy hue to my vision for the rest of the day. Ophthalmologists refer to this, apparently, as Golden Eye: an annoying but otherwise harmless ocular imbalance.

I was also left emotionally and mentally fatigued, so come the evening I was in need of some liquid refreshment to quell the nerves and steady the soul.

The wife fancied a casino royale so I turned bar tender, and although we were all out of the key ingredients for that classic, I did successfully mix up an espresso martini. Succesful only if you count covering the kitchen and the wife in a sticky combination of XO cafe tequila, black coffee, vodka and sugar when the lid came off the shaker as I was shaking it as successful that is. Ah well, live and let die. Or words to that effect.

I was left both shaken and stirred by the cocktail misadventures so stuck with a couple of cans instead, leaving the wife to quaff the remains of my poorly executed late 80s era Tom Cruise impression. She said it was delicious though, which offered me a quantum of solace.


Saturday

Saturday thankfully saw an end to the ridiculous and pointless charade of trying to squeeze as many Bond references into as few words as possible. Will it return? Who knows, nothing surprises me these days: you can never say never again.

Oops.

For the sake of taste and decency I have opted not to publish the section referencing the late Honor Blackman's character.


Monday Morning

And so the weekend was over in a flash. A blink of an eye. A blur of dismantling, moving and rebuilding old kids bedroom furniture, building new bedroom furniture and utility room cabinets.

The highlights of the weekend?

Eva couldn't for the life of her understand why being helpful didn't include talking incessantly while her Dad tried to work out how support bar 4 on Henry's new bed attached to pole B using weird looking bolt 104435 and tool 104001, although bar 3 and pole A used screw 103345 and a cross head screwdriver despite the instructional pictures looking identical.

The cats slunk around scowling at everybody, because that's just what cats do, and when things are noisy they like to do it even more. I'm sure it's just for dramatic effect.

I was told off for not being enthusiastic enough about the new gate and fence we had installed. The gate opens and shuts, the fence doesn't look like it will fall down, we paid what we felt was a reasonable price: I'm really not sure my "yeah, that looks fine, thank you" reaction warranted such abuse.

And finally. We seem to have a Magpie nesting near us, it spends quite a lot of its time squawking and cawing on in the back garden using those horrendous squawky cawy voices Magpies have. I think it could be my new pet hate. I've just realised, it's supposed to be bad luck to see just one Magpie. Great: squawky, cawy and bad luck, just what I need.