Today we filled up the petrol wagon and headed up north. North to the wild frozen hinterlands of Scotland. Of course, I have been many times before. In fact it is where I stole the good lady from. That is course is another tale.
The little boom is over three months old now and some of the good lady's family have not met him yet. Including her stern and forbidding father. A tall man, wild of beard and eye. He is getting a little older now so cannot travel as much as he once did.
I was feeling a little lacklustre it must be said. A couple too many beers last night and knowing that I would be spending time with a man who didn't quite approve of me.
Still, in these situations I utter my famous and patented positive thinking mantra...
So we drove up. On the way, as we wound through the beautiful hills, I thought,
Relax Boomster, it won't be that bad.
We arrived a couple of hours later. The stink of fish and seagull shit heavy on the air as we got out of the car. We knocked on the good lady's father's house.
He opened the door, his long beard twitching at if rats were hiding in it.
Oh, it's you lot. Good.
Was our welcome. We were ushered into the house. The not so new baby boom was passed about various family members who ooh'd and ahhh'd over him. The day was quite relaxing. I settled into my chair and drank coffee.
This isn't that bad at all.
I thought.
The phone rang.
Father in-law answered, he only muttered a few terse grunts then hung up.
He beckoned the good lady over and spoke quietly in her ear. She jerked up, her face pale and looked at me with sorrow in her eyes.
What is it?
I said, with an air of here we fucking go.
Could you help my upstairs neighbor, Stan? He has had a little accident.
Intoned the father in-law.
The good lady bared her teeth in a strange grimace.
Could you, please? He's had a little spill and he is very old.
Yeah yeah, whatever.
I trotted off like some kind of hired help. His neighbor lived upstairs from him. I knocked on the door.
It was answered almost instantly. In front of me stood a dapper little fellow with a white shirt and a yellow bow tie.
And a towel round his waist.
Ah, the son in-law. Come in, come in.
He ushered me through the door into his hall. I looked at his strange get up. Whats with the towel round the waist? I hoped I wasn't being duped into a Cocks and Socks party or anything like that.
He led me into the lounge and waved a hand airily in the direction of a solitary old armchair and the slop of wet faeces beside it.
Just all that next to the chair.
I stared, aghast. I could feel my heart pound in my chest and my vision contracting.
Is that shit?
Said I, my eyes refusing to process the image before me and instead telling my brain that what was actually there was a small brown cat.
Yes, had a bit of an accident. Sunday's you know?
I took a deep breath. I thought something in my chest was coming loose. Stan must have saw the look on my face.
Don't worry.
He reassured me.
I managed to clean myself up ok.
I made a weird puh noise and tried to close my mouth which was flapping about like a seagull with a broken wing.
There's a cloth in the kitchen. It's my hip you see, I can't get down there.
Right.
I contemplated setting fire to the house, that would clean it. Then I noticed that the old duffer looked a bit helpless and grudgingly muttered fucking fuck a hundred or so times and went for the cloth.
It's ok, I told myself as I got down on my hands and knees in amongst another man's shit.
It can't be that bad.