Postcards From Across the Pond

Hi. This isn’t Mike. It’s his wife. Mike is a bit under the weather.

He started feeling like he was getting a cold on the penultimate day of the holiday. On the final day, we were supposed to go on a tour of Vancouver Island and Butchart Gardens—something I really wanted to see—but he didn’t feel up to a full day of touring, so we stayed at the hotel. The next day, when we were leaving, he felt worse, but he still thought it was a cold. We got on the plane at six in the afternoon for a ten-hour fight, and by the time we got home he was feeling quite rough. He got into bed and he’s still there, with fever, chills, aches (believe me, he’s told me all about them; he even offered to make a list of all his maladies for me).

We each took a test, just so he could prove he didn’t have COVID. He has COVID.

And so, I moved into the sitting room.

We have been—as Mike puts it—dodging that bullet for the past two years, so how did he get hit with the COVID stick and not me? I think it was the hotels. Everywhere we stayed, the rooms had two big double beds, so we made use of them. We were always in large rooms or outside and I didn’t even sit next to him on the plane. In fact, over the past 17 days of holiday, I really haven’t been that close to him. I’m more at risk here than anywhere we’ve been for the past fortnight.

(I’m typing this in the sitting room with the balcony door open and yet another load of laundry humming away.)

It’s bad enough that he got sick, but the timing makes it worse. We just got home, every garment we own (not really, but Mike says I need to exaggerate for comic effect) needs to be washed, there are a million chores to do (there I go again), and then there’s Mike. He’s moaning that his schedule is now up the spout. He had blog posts to write, some grand plan involving his archives, he needs to practice his guitar if he’s going to play at the nursing home on Monday (personally, I don’t think he needs to worry about that), he’s got two choirs coming up, and of course there’s the novel, because there’s always a fucking novel. (Don’t get me started.)

I spent the holiday repeating, over and over, our “cute-meet” story, about how he was this inept American who couldn’t figure out how to get a cup of coffee, so I took pity on him so he wouldn’t starve, and I’ve been taking care of him ever since. Ha ha, funny. Well, twenty years later, I’m still taking care of him. He says he doesn’t need me to, but on the first day of holiday I had to stop him from eating a set of earplugs that he thought were Haribos. Really, you have no idea what I put up with.

Like this. He’s so intent on keeping to his schedule that he’s making me write his blog post for him. I wasn’t going to but then one of my contacts in Age UK WhatsApped me about a young lady who was thinking of a career in care and who might benefit from some work experience, and I thought this would be an ideal opportunity. Her name is Crystal, she’s 17 and I just sent her into the kitchen to put on another load of laundry. She was looking at the washer and dryer like they had just landed on earth from outer space, and now she’s gone awfully quiet, so I’d better go see what she’s up to.

Hey! Wow! This is Crystal, and I’m taking over the blog post. A blog post! Can you believe it? How last century. This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing when they offered some work experience, but the wife said I’d be better at this because I’m, you know, young, and more au fait with technology. That’s like me telling her that she could drive a covered wagon across the American prairie because she’s so old. I have a TikTok and SnapChat account, what do I know of blogs? The husband tells me—from a distance—that he started his blog in 1998. I wasn’t even born! So he must be, like, nearly 100. He was moaning to me about some archive project, and saying he wanted his longevity award. I think he must be getting senile. And complain! “I’m hot! My throat hurts! My head aches! I need a drink!” It’s all about him.

In my opinion, the two of them deserve each other. He’s a bundle of narcissistic neurosis and she’s a proper control-freak. I was just doing the laundry, like she asked, but then she comes into the kitchen all eye-rolling and arms-folding because I wasn’t doing it her way. Soap is soap, so what’s the big deal that I mistook dish washing liquid for laundry soap? And, apparently, pouring it into the drum isn’t the done thing. There’s some little drawer where I have to put laundry soap, fabric softener and something called Detol. Then she gets on my case because I was loading the dirty clothes—as she put it—into the dryer instead of the washing machine, which is just the sort of picky detail a control-freak would zero in on.

Ahhhhgggg! The husband is moaning again. Something about burning up with fever. I threw a pack of Nurofen and a bottle of water into his lair. Then he tells me he wants me to post this. FFS! I can’t figure out this ancient technology. He might as well ask me to churn butter. He’ll have to do it himself, when he can finally drag himself out of bed. What a total narcissist.

Hey! I couldn’t figure out how to upload, but I found a way to make a really
neat slide show of some of my SnapChat photos. How cool is that?

Mike here. No, I didn’t drag myself out of bed to post this; I dragged my laptop into the bedroom with me. I’m feeling a little better: yesterday I felt like ten miles of bad road, today, just five. And I can certainly muster the energy to post this. Both my wife and Crystal did marvellous jobs filling in for me. At least I think they did. I haven’t actually read them, but (cough * cough * COUGH * COUGH * COUGH…slow breath, sip of coffee) I’m sure they rose to the occasion. Especially Crystal. What a godsend! She’s such a help, as well as a breath of fresh air, so bright and chatty, and so caring. Really, I don’t know what we’d have done without her. Meeting young people like her gives me hope for the future.