A very strange weekend last weekend. We walked past the old hospital on the way back from dinner, muttering about it being turned into "Flats for Twats (TM)", and the time we got lost in the corridors underneath it trying to find a cashpoint to pay the nuns. Neither of us could remember the last time we'd been in hospital (me: wisdom teeth, 1991; him: thumb operation, 2003 or 4).
Two minutes later, JM twists his ankle in a pothole, falls over and swears a lot while clutching his leg and not crying. It isn't broken, but it is fucked. He drags it up the stairs home, is iced and raised and strapped and drugged, and goes to bed miserable.
The next morning, I go to the shop to buy him a comic, a bun and a bandage. Two minutes later, I am on my face, having twisted my ankle in a pothole. Someone asks me if I am OK. I am, except there is blood coming out of my trousers and I feel a bit hot.
I get back. JM is now in the armchair looking at his laptop. He has had an allergic reaction to his drugs, and his eye is swollen up. He cannot take any more painkillers. His leg is wrapped in ice in a leaky sandwich bag. The cat sits on his laptop. It is pitiful.
Then I start puking. I go very cold, then very hot, and it all shoots out. It is quite exciting because I am genuinely incapacitated and can't stand up. I drift in and out of sleep all day having a weird dream about Channing Tatum.
Channing Tatum (wrapping his arms around me from behind): I'm putting my arms around you because I love you so much.
Me: But Channing Tatum, you can't, I'm so old and so fat and I've got a thing that needs cutting off. I am not showing you that. Or that come to think of it. And definitely not that.
Channing Tatum: I do not care. I know you don't believe me. But I am going to show you with my slow steady love that I love you. And your thing that needs cutting off. I would like to squidge it.
Me (really wishing Channing Tatum would give over): Channing Tatum stop it.
When I am not dreaming about Channing Tatum, I watch 2 episodes of Pappano's Classical Voices* and weep at story of Fritz Wunderlich falling off the stairs at a hunting lodge and dying. I drink water and throw it up, drink water and sleep. JM limps about. We are still in our pyjamas, and stay in them until we go to work on Monday morning.
We are OK now, apart from my scabs, my lack of 7lbs, and JM's bruises. In fact, we are so incredibly well that we spent the weekend shoving things in cupboards and making the house look like normal people live in it, because THE PHOTOGRAPHER IS COMING and it is going on the market. (If anyone wants it, let me know. It will be perfect for you if you are looking for a house 45 minutes outside Montreal with a replica 16th French bread oven and a cellar big enough for 2 kayaks.)
Yes. We really are moving - and to a place without potholes, too! I am so excited I am going to throw up.
(If anyone has any 'how to move from Canada to the UK or France' tips, do send them in. I did UK to Canada, and JM did US to Canada (twice), but we haven't been the other way yet. If the tips are things like "drink some gin" and "relax it'll be fine", I'm in.)
Pip pip!
NWM
Pip pip!
NWM
* I really love this programme. I don't know anything about opera or singing and now I know enough to go and find out more. I'm going to write to Sir Antonio Pappano tomorrow to thank him and I'm pretty sure - judging by my relationship with C Tatum - that he'll write back.