A disgusting old witch? Well, maybe I am… =)

The other day I blogged about how different people have different views or memories about the same thing / person. I wrote something about how my neighbours and my colleagues probably have quite different perceptions of what it is like to live/work with me. Yesterday, I got a whole new picture of myself as a very angry woman wanted to spit on me and beat me up, but chickened out and resorted to calling me a disgusting old witch instead. To her utter dismay, I found her outburst pretty amusing and laughed heartily at the whole thing. But seriously, the situation was far from entertaining.

My oldest daughter seems to be sick all the time, which is a major concern for me who, also, seems to be sick all the time. Three weeks ago she got a nasty inflammation of the lower back and was on sick leave for two weeks, with a prescription of rest and anti-inflammatories. On Tuesday, she went back to work even though the inflammation was still there. Thursday they called me from American Express (her job) and said they’d had to call an ambulance as she seemed to be paralyzed from the waist down and had muscle spasms. So Mom had to haste down to Brighton to take care of the little girl. Well, haste and haste…

First they wouldn’t let me catch the tube from Ealing Broadway to Victoria. There’s some sort of Health & Safety regulations about wheelchairs and carers, but a mother whose daughter is in an ambulance going to A&E is not to be messed with, so I growled a bit and decided they’d have to physically stop me from getting on that tube. Luckily, they didn’t, so I made it to Victoria in the end. Although a signalling failure on the line made the trip more than twice as long.

At Victoria, I missed two trains in a row because, again, I had to battle the forces that be. This time, however, the problem was that I needed to get through the barriers which they wouldn’t open. Bastards! Excuse the language, but I was angry. In the midst of the quarrel, two men appeared off a newly arrived train and they made themselves busy asking why the barrier bulls were treating their cousin with such apparent disrespect.

Cousins? Said the barrier bulls looking nonplussed.

Yeah, cousins! Said the strangers, looking like they’ve just stepped off the screen of some Guy Ritchie film.

So you’re travelling together? Asked the barrier bulls looking even more bewildered.

Yes, exactly! Said the cousins who by now had closed in looking very intimidating.

And where are you off to then? The barrier bulls asked with the air of someone who’s got the whiff of some nasty business.

I’ve already told you, we’re going to Brighton! I piped up and the cousins confirmed that this was indeed the case. We were all going down there to make sure the poor girl was being properly looked after.

And so it was that I finally sat on a train heading down to the coast, while my new cousins most likely stuck two fingers up to the barrier bulls as they made their way back to wherever they’d been going when they ran into me.

In Brighton, I found my baby and found out that no one seems to know quite what is wrong with her. Many different theories figured in the discussions, including the possibility that she is auto-immune like her mother. Two more weeks of sick leave and a whole battery of new tests await, and hopefully we will get some answers. Yesterday, we saw the doctor again, sorted out her paperwork with the employer and went to her pad to pack her bag to bring her back home. And that’s when the shit hit the fan.

Four weeks of sick leave is no joke, and my baby had to give notice that she’d be leaving her pad by the end of the month. Without a written contract, she had no proper arrangement for this, but her landlady had her own take on the importance of rental agreements. She felt that the period of notice on her part could be just about a minute whereas my daughter would have to give at least one month’s notice. Now she had two weeks and went totally mad in the process. All of a sudden she wanted us to up and leave instantly or she’d call the police. I offered her my phone, but that didn’t make her any happier. Instead, she grabbed her own phone and began to call in reinforcements. I shut the door and we commenced Operation Pack Up.

Luckily, the girl had a furnished room and her belongings were soon packed into three suitcases, two bin bags and three grocery bags. But how to get it all down from the third floor of a building with no lift when one us is wobbling around on crutches drugged up on muscle relaxants and pain killers and the other is in a wheelchair? I sent some texts to her friends and colleagues, and soon we had strong arms to help and a place to keep the stuff in until we’ve figured things out.

When her room was empty, I went to hand the key back to the angry lady, but that just made her angrier. She flew at me and wanted to both spit at me and clock me one or two, but she was for some reason not quite as brave as her filthy mouth suggested. Maybe she thought I was a bit too big and scary. Maybe she lost her cool because I kept mine. Who knows. I left the place laughing at her parting words that I was a disgusting old witch. She is welcome to her opinion.  Maybe it makes her feel better. Who knows.

After a very long and very tiring day, an old friend treated us to dinner before heading back to London. A very wobbly Hoppalong Cassidy is apparently a suitable companion for a wheelchair bound woman lugging a suitcase, so we had no problems getting back. Apart from the time factor. Trying to propel a wheelchair with one hand whilst pulling a suitcase with the other and keeping an eye on Miss Wobblylegs is quite a time consuming project. We finally got to London Bridge and took the tube to Stratford. But by then it was close to midnight and I had had more than enough and we took a taxi home to Ilford. It was well worth the £30 it cost!

Back home, my bestest friend Tina and her daughter were waiting for us together with two very worried brothers who’d been feeling rather useless throughout this whole ordeal. In hindsight, I should probably have sent them down instead of going myself. But then Brighton would probably be one crazy landlady shorter now and that would be a shame. For my sons.