"I am a bit of a chocoholic, actually," I joked.
"Like to munch on the cocoa solids in your vehicle, do you, Sir?" said Number One. I was slightly baffled, but answered, "Yes, I usually buy some chocolate when I fill up with petrol."
My mother had been listening to our conversation with ill-concealed irritation. "It's not against the law to eat in your own car, is it?" she snapped.
Policeman Number One slowly walked around to the front passenger window. My mother wound it down. "It is against the law to drive without due care and attention, Madam," he said. "And that jumbo Mars Bar was being passed between you and the driver of the car like a parcel at a kiddies' tea party."
"The policemen in The Bill are always driving and stuffing their faces," she said.
I saw a nerve twitch just above his temple, and he ordered my mother out of the car while he and his colleague examined the interior. (Looking for what: Twix, Smarties, Aeros?)
We were late getting to the hospital. My father's catheter had become detached. While we waited for two sheets to be found from somewhere in the hospital, I watched Beryl, the privatised cleaner, push a filthy, ragged mop around the ward floor. I shuddered to think of the viruses swarming on the end of that mop. I hoped that they hadn't encamped into my father's bed sores.
Wednesday, May 3
What has happened to The Archers? It was once possible to listen to it in the company of the young and impressionable. Now, I have to switch off if Glenn or William are in the kitchen.
The love scenes between Sid Perks and Jolene are audible pornography. It is like overhearing two warthogs mating. Will somebody please put Cathy Perks in the picture. And will the person in charge of accents at the BBC teach that sexual-harassment bloke, Simon, how to speak Canadian?
Judging by the present storyline, I predict that a socially-concerned villager will soon suggest that Ambridge needs a youth club. Suggested script:
Jill Archer (with warm concern): Have you seen the graffiti on uncle Tom's gravestone, "Sid Perks is tooling Jolene"?
Socially-Concerned Villager (with liberal concern): Yes, and I deplore the damage done to the statue of Walter Gabriel on the village green.
Jill Archer: Yes, it was cruel to stuff an organic turnip up his. .
Socially-Concerned Villager (interrupting): It's the set-aside generation, Jill. They've nowhere to go and nothing to do. What they need is a youth club.
Jill Archer: Do you think so? Do you really think so?
Dum De Dum De Dum De Dum Dum De Dum De Dum Dum, etc.
Friday, May 5
Pandora is busy absolving herself from any blame for Mr Dobson's abysmal result in the mayoral election. "I begged him to shave off that bloody beard, lose weight, buy a new suit, dye his hair, get his teeth straightened and whitened. He's only got himself to blame."
Saddington Fair
Saturday, May 6, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire
My mother rang me this morning and asked if I would give her driving lessons. I laughed for quite a long time. Eventually, she said, "Yes or no?" I said, "It would be disastrous, you can't even tell left from right." I asked her if she had requested that her new husband teach her. She said, "Ivan reckons that there are enough cars on the road already." I advised her to use public transport. She said that there was no public transport to the crėme de la crėme of boot-fairs at Saddington in the middle of the Leicestershire countryside.
"Why won't Ivan take you to Saddington?" I asked.
"Ivan gets nervous seeing so many cash transactions taking place between untrained amateurs," she said.
Ivan used to be the chief accountant at a dairy until the cold winds of change knocked the milk bottles off the steps of time and replaced them with the cardboard carton in the supermarket chill cabinet.
My mother was still blathering on: "The last time we went to a boot-fair, Ivan completely ruined my pleasure by moaning about the lack of regulations. He said that both the buyers and the sellers were anarchists, and should be made to pay tax and VAT. He has even asked Pandora to bring in an act of parliament: The Boot Fair Regulation Act.
When she mentioned that there were Abba LPs and memorabilia for sale, I offered to take her one Sunday.
Monday, May 8
My father continues to deteriorate in hospital. He has now contracted a virus (the one caused by privatised cleaning) and is in an isolation ward. His new wife, Tania, is in almost permanent attendance. She is taking advantage of his weakened state to read Great Literature at him. She is currently halfway through Moby Dick. When she went out to go to the toilet, I asked my father how he was enjoying Melville's extraordinary allegorical seafaring tales. "I am not enjoying it," he whined " I don't like fishing."
I noticed that Tania had placed a copy of Silas Marner: The Weaver Of Raveloe on the bedside trolley. It was obviously to be the next literary read-aloud treat. I wondered if I should mention to her that my father has a violent antipathy to books, films and TV dramas about children. (Something had once happened to him in a cinema during the showing of a Shirley Temple film — I don't know what but a gabardine mac was involved).
Tania would be on firmer ground if she stuck to Raymond Chandler or the earlier Dick Francis.
Friday, May 12
Pamela Pigg called round to say that she's found me a small town house overlooking a canal basin in Leicester. The present occupant, a Mrs Wormington, is an OAP. She is in hospital, but is nil by mouth, so Pamela reckons I can probably move in in a couple of weeks. I said, "Is she nil by mouth so as to free up the country's housing stock?"
Pamela said, "She is occupying a three-bedroom house and she is 97-years-old."
I said, "Pamela, I don't want Mrs Wormington killed so that I can enjoy watching the narrow boats pass by my living-room window." I asked which hospital Mrs Wormington was in. She told me that it was the same one as my father, Pankhurst Ward — which was sort of appropriate. Though Mrs Pankhurst chose to be nil by mouth.
Sunday, May 14
Mrs Wormington is nil by mouth because she has had a stroke and can't swallow properly. She has no family or friends: "They've all died off, lad," she told me. I used a cotton bud dipped in water to moisten her mouth. "I don't like to bother the nurses," she croaked.
Are pensioners to be my albatross? I can already feel her liver-spotted hand around my neck.
Hard to swallow
Wednesday, May 17, 2000, Ashby-de-la-Zouch