Monday morning. I come downstairs to find the orchid that my ex-husband gave me for mothers' day (there are so many things wrong with that sentence that I'm not even going to begin to explain it) has shed its limp exhausted blooms across the kitchen floor as though for some forgotten bride. Kinda apt then. And if you've read this blog before I don't need to fill you in on the Easter Island montage of dirty (ie used once for water) glasses and assorted washing up. Take it as read.
In the sitting room, the younger son is asleep on the sofa recovering from his holiday in Bulgaria at a resort poignantly called 'Sunny Beach' where it rained every day.
'It was full of people horrible English lager louts,' he complained, adding that he spoke to more Bulgarian people on the bus coming back from the airport than he had in the whole time he was there - ie one.
'So what did you do all week?'
'Drank...' he said, but he would be quick to add, as you roll your eyes in synch with mine, that he's not 'English'. So there's the distinction. In every one of his Facebook photographs he is to be seen with his arms round his friends in the open mouthed 'waaaay' expression that denotes youths having 'fun' in a club. Those poor Bulgarians - forty odd years of Communism and what does the brave new world of freedom bring them? Drunks.
'Do you like my t-shirt?' He asked when he arrived back. It had a picture of a footballer on the front (what do you mean, which one - do I look like someone who can differentiate between men with shaved heads dressed identically? Come to think of it, those pictures of my son with his friends, not actually that sure which one he is... ) He then rotated. 'It has an exclamation mark on the back. It's a team shirt - when we're together they spell out "lads" but I thought it was naff and said I wasn't having a letter. That's why I got punctuation.' So there you have it. That's how you can tell them apart. At least from the back. I'm wondering what they look like in the club when they are all affectionately inebriated: sLa!d? D!aLs. ad!Ls? What wonderful ambassadors for our country...
The Builder rings the bell at 7am to collect his tools which have been living in my brand new unhinged cupboard under the stairs in which I haven't been able to store anything because he's been using it a tool room. Instead, the old contents of the cupboard plus all the coats have been piled in the sitting room, now joined by son's suitcase and laundry. It's a relief to put my coat on for the first time since May (Wales was an exception) and leave the house before I become unhinged myself. Instead I make lists all the way to work money I need to find, work I need to do, phone calls I need to make, food I need to buy, jobs I need to finish and arrive in Russell Square feeling as limp as exhausted as my dead orchid blooms.
Then a man walks up to me on Queen's Square. There's a worried woman beside him who has obviously been crying. She looks haunted and distracted as he waves a brown envelope under my eyes and asks me if I know where the address is. I confess I cannot see it without my glasses and so he reads it aloud while I fumble in my bag for my specs.
'The Royal Neurological Hospital,' he says in a northern accent, just as the words swim into view along with the admission time of 8:30 that someone has written in blue biro. I see the woman is carrying a small holdall.
I point them in the right direction, immensely grateful that I'm not going that way myself and stop counting my chores and immediately start on my blessings instead.
