London
Today was a rather strange out-of-body experience, as I woke up to hear Mum and Dad muttering quietly in the room next door, and realised I was in my own house, not theirs. Then I had Mum bounding around my kitchen (something I'm still a bit territorial and edgy about) trying to make breakfast as I rushed off to an early meeting at work. Then they got incredibly excited seeing me dressed up in my new suit (well, they're only human - it's Italian pinstriped wool and I DO look great in it), so we had a quick photo session (see below), which was fun, although it did slow things up.
I left them at home, and went to work, and had the strangest day in which I think I came as close as I'll probably ever get to thinking like a parent - wondering what they were doing, calling throughout the day to check that they were ok, and worrying that they'd go out without their keys or a map, get squashed under a double-decker bus, or - still worse - go shopping at Tescos instead of Sainsburys or Waitrose.
Despite drawing them a map of how to take the tube to go to the Tate Gallery, today the Old People stayed at home, hung out, tried watching DVDs on my then-untuned TV and eventually ventured out to do some shopping. How pleasant, but how strange it was to go home and have dinner cooked, and hear about Mum's adventures with the washer-dryer or Dad's fourteenth nap of the day. I was also amused to notice that my bathroom had a new acquisition - a toilet brush. When I asked how this curiosity appeared in my house, the conversation went something like this:
ME: Where did this come from?
MUM: It's a toilet brush.
ME: Yes, so it is. And here I was thinking it was an Oriental disembowelling cutlass. Why is it in my house?
MUM: You didn't have one.
ME: Yes I know. They're unhygienic and they end up smelling of poo.
MUM: You needed one.
ME: So my bathroom could smell of poo?
MUM: No, ha ha (laughs nervously).
ME: So why do I need one?
MUM: It's hard to explain. You just do.
DAD: You have a lot of new people in the house.
ME: What, you mean you two?
DAD: Yes.
(Pause).
MUM: You use it to.... scrub the.... bowl.
(Pause).
ME: OK, great! [Makes mental note to dispose of it quietly once they leave].
Then my friend and neighbour Dr Chris came over after dinner. Chris is married to Rachel, who I flatted with in my final year of university. They started going out at the start of that year, and Chris famously blames me for almost thwarting them getting together by failing to give Rachel a phone message that Chris had phoned. (This was in the pre-mobile phone era, obviously). They got married five years ago, just before I moved to London, and moved to London a few years ago so Chris could work with a big fancy oncology unit at a London hospital. They moved to Balham, which is how I got to know the area, and part of what lead me to even consider moving here. I was their first visitor on the day that their daughter Orla was born, and they've fed me every Wednesday night for the last six months. They're moving back to Dunedin in two weeks, and I'm going to miss them terribly. Here we are, with Zac, their little boy.
Chris chatted to Mum and Dad about Healthcare Otago and - hallelujah! - tuned my TV. Now I have a disturbing 66 channels, which should keep Dad amused for hours.
All in all a good day for the Old People, though a quiet one - I'll be interested to see if they venture out past the neighbourhood tomorrow. And one more day of work for me, before three weeks of leave - woo hoo! Of course I'm slaving like a peasant trying to get a million things done before the Death Star will let me go, and frantically batting away new jobs like blowflies. One day to go...
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