(aka Bike) Part 595 by Angharad |
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We finished feeding and ‘charging up’ Puddin’ and eventually left to see Stella. She was sitting in the darkened room doing nothing as far as I could tell. The nurse had said she seemed very flat at the moment. I hoped we could brighten her up.
“Stella, do you mind if we come in?” I asked from the door. She turned and looked at me, but said nothing. I took Trish’s hand and we entered. The room seemed full of an atmosphere of doom and gloom suffused with sadness.
“We’ve been up to see your baby, she’s coming along really well, isn’t she Trish?” I had sworn her not to say anything about the blue light business.
“Oh yes, Mummy, she’s doing really well. They let me help give her her bottle today, Auntie Stella.” Trish kept hold of my hand and I felt her squeezing it. This was obviously difficult for her too.
Stella looked at her and then back again at the wall in front of her. She was practically inert. When I thought about the vibrant woman I’d met that first day, and how she was so clued up about her appearance. Now in the gloom, I could make out she was wearing a sweater and jeans, neither seemed to fit terribly well and as far as I could tell, she’d lost further weight.
“Are you eating?” I asked Stella, who looked at me and then back to the wall. “Please, Stella, you have a baby to raise, if not for your sake, then for hers.” She looked at me again, but said nothing. “Is there anything you want me to bring in for you?”
“A knife,” she said and my blood ran cold remembering what she did to herself with one before.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, it was a lie and she’d know that from the moment it left my lips. “Is there anything else?” She stared at the wall again.
I felt sad and annoyed. She could mess me about as much as she liked, but to do so to Trish, made me angry. We left a short while later. We both kissed her, goodbye and her face was all wet, presumably with tears. If this was how she was going to be for the rest of her life, I almost felt like bringing in the knife.
“Why was she sitting in the dark, Mummy?”
“She’s quite poorly and I think the daylight makes her feel worse.”
“She was crying, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, darling, she was very sad.”
“Because she can’t see baby Puddin’?”
“I don’t know, darling, I think it’s more than that. She may have what is called a mental illness because of a certain combination of chemicals in her brain.”
“Can’t they just change the chemicals?”
“That’s what the treatment is doing, or trying to do. It’s very difficult without making her even more sick.”
“Oh, I see. I feel so sorry for her, Mummy. Is there anything we can do?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. She is very very sad.”
“But she has a baby, Mummy, how can she be sad?”
“Some people are, it’s called post natal depression and affects some new mothers.”
“Did you have it when Mima came?”
“Mima wasn’t my baby, Trish, you know that.”
“But she is your little girl, like me.”
“Yes, but this illness only happens when you give birth to a baby.”
“I hope I don’t get it,” mused Trish.
“I think it most unlikely, darling.”
“Is that ‘cos you didn’t get it, and you’re my Mummy?”
“Possibly.” Geez this girl is hard work; she always asks such awkward questions.
“Maybe, I’ll be a nurse when I grow up,” she said as we got back into the car.
“Or a detective,” I added quietly.
“What’s a defective, Mummy?”
“I said, detective, someone who solves crimes and catches criminals.”
“Like a policeman, Mummy?”
“Some are policemen, in fact, probably most are but they don’t wear uniforms like ordinary police.”
She seemed lost in thought as I pulled out of the hospital. “Do they not wear uniforms so the crooks won’t see them coming so easily?”
“I’ve never thought of it, but that sounds like a plausible reason, so it could be.”
“If I was a detective, would they let me wear nice clothes, like you do sometimes, Mummy?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, it might depend upon how much money you have. Nice clothes tend to cost a lot of money.”
“You have nice clothes, are you rich?”
“No, I’m not. I’m a poor working girl, although the sale of my film should bring in a very useful sum of money.”
“Maybe I should make films–like you do, Mummy?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it, sweetheart, and you don’t get to make much money or wear nice clothes, counting dormice.”
“Can we see the dormice one day, Mummy?”
“Why not, let’s go and see them now.” She smiled and I hoped the detour would shut her up for a few minutes. We arrived at the university about fifteen minutes later. Thankfully my parking permit was still valid.
I walked her into the department and Pippa looked up and did a double take. “Cathy, how wonderful,” she almost leapt over her desk to come and hug me. “How is Tom?”
“He’s doing fine, I wish he’d rest a bit more, but you know what he’s like?”
“Sure do, he sends me piles of stuff by email every day.”
“He does what? I’ll shoot him.”
“That wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do, Mummy,” commented the little body whose hand I was still holding.
“No, dear, it wouldn’t.”
“Brought your conscience then?”
“Yeah, I feel like Pinocchio.”
“Hello, Jiminy Cricket,” Pippa said to Trish.
“My name is Patricia, not Jimmy. I’m a girl, not a boy.”
“Yes, I know–most of the people who walk around in pretty dresses like that are girls,” suggested Pippa.
“Sorry, I thought you were teasing me.”
“I was, but I didn’t mean it nastily. Am I forgiven?”
“Yes, as long as you don’t call me a boy again,” said Trish with some indignation. Pippa and I looked at each other and we had to look away. “Please may we see the dormice, Mummy?”
“Okay, see you later, Pippa.”
“Yeah, we must get together sometime.” We hugged again and I led Trish down to the labs.”
“Good grief, it’s Cathy and kid,” said Neal.
“Yes, I promised to show Trish the dormice.”
“Ah,” said Neal, “that might be a bit difficult.”
Comments
Neal and Cathy
“Ah,†said Neal, “that might be a bit difficult.â€
Here we go again.......You would think someone would get a clue somewhere.
Tch...
I see you've never worked in the public sector.
Budget cuts and periodic chaos are features, not bugs.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
My words
exactly. I suspect she won't attack Tom again.
Is Cathy Gonna Hafta
Go She Hulk about the dormice? And what about Spike?
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Just Think Part 595
Angharad; Just Think Chapter 595, just 5 more for Chapter 600. Then we got a problem with Dormice again. You sure like to put Cathy thru the ringer don't you, or is it that Black Cat again??? Richard
Richard
Watering Dandelions
I thought it was the other way round - picking dandelions was always supposed to mae you wet the bed when I was a youngster. Although, on second thoughts, I suppose if the dandelions were in the bed then they'd get watered.
No dormouses - now could Cathy's legendary short fuse be about to ignite the explosives that seem to be permanently ready to go bang?
Geoff
Poor Stella
But Cathy could have tried touching her.
And what's this with the dormice? Agree with others, Again?
Through the wringer
Ah, memories...
Most of you are probably not old enough to remember washing machines with wringers:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/REA_washi...
They didn't spin dry; one took the wet clothes one by one and fed them through the wringer, two rubber rollers which squeezed the water out using high pressure, just as one might wring them by hand by twisting them, but more effective. They were often powered, and it was quite possible for one's hair, garments, or hands to become caught between them and do serious injury. It was a common household accident in the Forties and Fifties (even earlier, but I wasn't particularly cognizant of them back then), so being "caught in the wringer" or "fed through the wringer" had an immediate cultural referent now mostly lost to history.
The alternative name for a "wringer" was (mostly in the UK and Commonwealth nations) a "mangle," and we most of us know what *that* means, despite some of us being unaware of the history. Same tool, same ultimate meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine)
Cheers,
Puddin'
-------------------
Memory - all alone
in the moonlight.
I can smile at the old days,
I was beautiful then.
--- from Cats, by Andrew Lloyd Weber
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I remember washing machines with wringers.
My mother's first washing machine had a powered one with a safety bar on it for rapid opening. I also remember prior to that, just a wringer, which was muscle powered.That was back in the fifties when I was very very young!
Angharad
(Who is still very young).
Angharad
My mother's washing machine...
...didn't have a safety bar, and I well remember my terror when her hair got caught in the mangle one time. She managed to pull the plug and turn it off before it did serious damage, but my father had to come home from his workplace to extricate her. They were very scary things.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Early washing machines
The ones I remember best were gasoline-powered with a kickstart like a motorbike. On Mondays, the ladies in the neighborhood would all push their machines into one backyard and do laundry together. All of those had safety bars and a kickable killswitch to turn off the motor.
Some people had gasoline-powered refrigerator/freezers back then, too, that would sit on the back porch and idle until their thermostat-controlled clutches would put them under load and they would roar and clatter for several minutes.
Why gas-powered? No electricity or only enough current to run small electric lights and maybe a radio, sometimes on batteries that were charged by being hooked up to dynamos on old Model-Ts. This was in VERY rural areas of Missouri and California in the late forties and early fifties.
Ovens were coal or wood-fired or had ranges attached and ran off of kerosene (UK: paraffin) from a pressurized tank with a hand-operated air-pump.
In the US, as I remember it, a mangle was the device a commercial laundry used to press clothing quickly. It had two curved, heated surfaces that fit together and a big handle sticking up out of it or a foot pedal. It was heated by steam from a radiator or a pipe coming out of the wall.
A home mangle or clothespress was often just two softwood boards that could be clamped together that would press clothes over time. These were sometimes built into the doors or sides of closets. A closet was not a little room for hanging clothes, necessarily; sometimes it was a piece of furniture, what we could call an armoire today. A room that had nothing in it but a toilet or washstand was also called a closet.
Jeebus, I'm old. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Closets and cupboards...
...Are and were more or less interchangeable concepts with regional differences in scope of application.
Closet: 1. a small room, enclosed recess, or cabinet for storing clothing, food, utensils, etc.
Cupboard: 1. a closet with shelves for dishes, cups, etc. 2. Chiefly British. any small closet or cabinet, as for clothes, food, or the like.
Closets with plumbing are often specifically called water closets, but that's a euphemism, I think, to avoid saying what it really is.
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
In Scotland…
…a cupboard you can walk into which has shelves used to be called a press when I was a kid. It's aboot 20 years sin' I was “up hameâ€, so I'm no’ sure whether they are still known by that name.
Gabi
Gabi.
Press...
45. an upright case or other piece of furniture for holding clothes, books, pamphlets, etc.
Still are in some places, and share the generality of cupboards and closets.
One wonders whether this points back to mangles, as they were the original "irons" used for pressing clothes to make and keep them neat and presentable. One can see how shelves or hangers unpon which one might hang or pile clothes so neatened might merge in our minds imperceptibly with the tools used to put them in order to begin with.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I Remember a Mangle…
…that belonged to three ancient maiden aunts. It was made of cast iron, and stood as tall as I did in those days; it had a very fancy decorated turning handle and huge wooden rollers about nine inches in diameter that were very heavy. My mum had an Acme wringer in the 1950s, but refused to have a washing machine until the mid-1960s because she was sure she could hand-wash clothes cleaner than any bl**dy machine as she put it—she was exceedingly stubborn. The acme relied on spring compression to give a strong squeeze unlike my ancient aunties' mangle.
Gabi.
“Nostalgia ain't what it used to be!â€
Gabi.
My Gran ...
... had a big cast iron mangle with wooden rollers. She also had a dolly tub to do the actual washing - though she did employ a 'girl' to do most of her housework :) (not sure how old Lois was; she wasn't very bright but she had a heart of gold and worshiped Gran). At home, on the other hand, we had an electric machine with an attached mangle but we did sell things like that. That particular one must have been a pre-war model because it was in the mid 40s that I remember it. Much of town had no mains electricity - many of my school mates' homes were gas lit.
I remember the first automatic we sold was the Hoover Keymatic ("Wash day? Just forget it" was the advertising line) in around 1953. We didn't get an automatic until about 30 years ago and washing is dried on a clothes line still - tumble driers are definitely not allowed!
Gabi's right. Nostalgia's getting old hat these days ;)
Geoff
Regardless of
what's happening with the doormice know that I just love my soap opera, uh, on-line drama. OK, feel better now that I got rid of the S-O phrase?
Dormice!!
What happened to them? Is Spike still alive? Is Cathy going to continue study towards her PHd? And what about Stella? And What about Charlotte? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of East As Falling Of A Bike!
Don't let someone else talk you out of your dreams. How can we have dreams come true, if we have no dreams?
Katrina Gayle "Stormy" Storm
Stacy took the words out of
Stacy took the words out of my mouth. Neil is lucky Trish is there or he might burst into flame.
Spike better be OK, or heads will be off.
Cefin