It is a wet night on the taxi rank.
That is not quite as happy a starting point as ‘another day in Paradise’ but I don’t suppose there is that much difference really. Lots of people have come here instead of Benidorm, and they seem resigned, so perhaps it is better than it feels.
I have been milling about the house tidying things up, since disappointingly, the Tidy Fairy has failed to make an appearance, and Mark has been building a cupboard. Indeed, as far as I am aware, at the moment of writing he is still building a cupboard.
I am eyeing up the cupboard because I want to paint pictures on the door, although I will have to wait until he has finished, and there are quite a few shelves to go yet.
It has been a day of no notable achievement whatsoever. This is what happens when you know that you have got to be at work halfway through the afternoon, and everything that you want to do involves making a huge mess. I am feeling very impatient because I do not want to be here very badly indeed. I wanted to stay at home and do some creative things.
I used Mark’s grinder to sharpen the kitchen knives. This was not exactly creative but will make it easier to slice the tomatoes.
Also Mark had a long telephone doctor’s appointment. This was not with a real doctor, the sort who sighs tiredly and tells you to go home and take paracetamol and come back in six months if you are not better. It was with an investigative doctor.
I am sure that I have told you that Mark gets patches of psoriasis. These are just irritating on his legs and feet, but when they happen on the palms of his hands they are a complete and total nuisance. They itch and split and get terribly sore whenever he tries to do anything, and he has got to wear gloves to go to work. These are suddenly very expensive now that they are fashionable.
This week some Investigative Doctors telephoned. They have invented a brand new medicine and would like him to try it out for them.
They want to know if it will make him better or kill him.
He had his first telephone consultation with them today. It is very exciting. The medicine fiddles about with your immune system, which then stops making scaly red patches on your skin, and you get better.
They are trying it out on lots of people. Some get the real drug which might make them better, and some will get a placebo, which won’t, unless you are a really positive thinker.
We are hoping very hard that he does not get a placebo.
He has got to go to Blackpool once or maybe twice a month until the springtime. They will even pay for the fuel so that you can afford it no matter how broke you are.
We like this idea. We can go in the camper van. When he has finished showing them his skin we can go and paddle.
Also when he has finished, even if it has not worked, they will give him some money for being brave and helpful. That is very kind of them and must be very expensive.
I am glad that I am not a drug company. Fancy having to pay for people to have free days at the beach just so that you can get the Government to agree to buy your drugs. The chap in the staff house across the road doesn’t have to pay anybody anything to get people to buy his drugs. They just turn up and look furtive in the back alley.
Mark does not have to go until the end of September. We often go to Blackpool in September anyway, because of meeting my father there on his annual holidays. He is not going this year because of the stupid tiresome bat flu, so we had given up on the idea, and are very excited at the idea of an unexpected bonus paddle.
It will be brilliant. He has only got to be at the hospital for a couple of hours, so after that our day will be our own.
We can take the dogs and eat fish and chips and doughnuts.
There isn’t even a travel corridor or a fortnight in prison afterwards.
Hurrah for Blackpool.
