Photographs and memories

Hello there. It’s Sylvie.

I expect you’re all wondering how things are going with Percy. Well, they’re not. He’s got sewn-up pockets, I can tell you that for nowt.

He took me to El Rancho at weekend and filled his face (he weren’t bothered that I can’t eat chillies, not with my insides) and he didn’t leave a tip for the young lad in a sombrero. I were that embarrassed, I pretended I needed to spend a penny and went back in and gave him a few quid.

Besides, we’re like chalk and cheese. Percy never goes abroad, he says he can’t see point. He has his old motor home which he drives up to to Lake District for a week each summer. He probably sits in there and counts his blooming matchboxes.

I enjoy my fortnight in Feungirola with my Clint, though Mandy’s tagged along for past couple of years. She covers herself in pink lotion and wears kaftans and big hats, she looks like a bag lady. I asked her why she bothers coming and she said she doesn’t trust Clint with all those half-naked girls around. She said it’s his animal magnetism that attracts them. She’s as daft as a brush, that one.

I try to bond with her but its hard work. I think she’s even jealous of me at times. Me and Clint watched Fatal Attraction t’ other night and I warned him to think on if he’s so much as looks at anyone else with Mandy watching his every move. He slept with his light on that night.

What else can I tell you? I went to see my Auntie Lil at the home yesterday. Well, she were Eric’s Auntie but we became very close when she moved in with us after she became immobile. She were good company while Eric worked away. I’d put Clint to bed and then we’d crack open the pink gin and sing along to Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra on record player.

I’d end up going to bed half-cut but we had a right laugh and it took her mind off her paralysis.

But it was hard work having both her and a toddler to cope with. I’d spoon-feed Clint at one end of table and Lil at t’ other. I had a perm for 3 years.

It got easier when Clint started nursery school but it were a struggle in mornings when he’d cling onto Lil’s wheelchair and scream his little head off.

We’d go and collect him at home-time and while other kids ran around playground, he’d be inside Wendy house cooking a pretend fry-up. We knew he was special, even back then.

He still thinks that if he wakes up fast enough, he’ll catch himself sleeping. He’s deep like that.

Lil had to go into a home after Clint accidently let go of her wheelchair down a ramp and she toppled into a skip. Luckily, Eric had sorted out an insurance policy which mostly takes care of her expenses but it’s a dear do. I sometimes chip in where I can and Joyce does a bit of fund-raising, bless her.

Lil’s in her nineties now. Two strokes, diabetic coma and tinnitus but she’s still in there with the best of them. Sometimes she thinks she’s Mrs Bridges from ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and calls out for Mr Hudson. We just go along with it, she’s not harming folk.

Clint entertains at the home’s parties. He usually strums guitar or plays Stylophone. Mandy sometimes plays spoons but she’s not very good, they usually go flying off in opposite directions. One hit Alfie Cartwright on the head last year and he had to have a lie-down in medical room.

Clint and Argos Alan took their DJ equipment down there last Christmas but the strobe lighting caused a couple of epileptic fits, though everyone else had a good time and they taught the residents how to Moonwalk, Clint said it were like ‘Cocoon’.

Just as we were leaving yesterday, Lil took out an envelope from her sponge bag and gave it to Mandy and said it were a little summit for their wedding. They opened it up when we got back to van and it were full of Monopoly money but they laughed once penny had dropped.

I went to see Ivy who’s still laid up with scabby hands, but at least the mittens are off. I were telling her about that tight wad Percy when she started to go all red in t’ face and I realised she were choking on a pear drop.

I’ve just done a First Aid course, so I gave her the Heimlich manoeuvre and the sweet shot out of Ivy’s gob and landed on Doctor Singh’s turban. I laughed my head off but Ivy were mortified!

Ivy was telling me that her sister Betty has just been sacked from Lilley & Skinner. Betty used to work at medical centre for donkey’s years as receptionist but she started to diagnose folk from her old medical book.

She frightened half the patients into thinking they had polio and she told Nobby Clarke he needed an iron lung! I saw his Irene, she were in bits.

She only got found out after Doctor Fairley bumped into Elsie Warburton buying a crate of oranges for her scurvy.

Betty got a job in shoe shop but she diagnosed two veruccas and a club foot in her first week, so she got her cards. It’s a shame when folk have to work to top up their pension, she’s clearly addled.

I see that Joyce has been banging on about Annabel Pemberton at drama group. Annabel is as much use as a chocolate teapot. She can’t even manage her lip liner let alone a bunch of hospital shops. She said we’re getting a techno till and a uniform. Me and Joyce said we’ll wear top hat and tails if we have to, but we’re still wearing us slippers.

Annabel wants to get all her staff together for a team building trip, but if she thinks I’m walking across Pennines with a compass and back-pack, she’s very much mistaken. She’s told me to contact all her branches and ask when staff are free for weekend away. Paddle your own canoe, I thought.

Did I mention it were just my wedding anniversary? It was a bit upsetting but I went over to Joyce’s house and Sidney made us a nice tea. I didn’t really want to go over there but they insisted. Then I had to put up with them singing at piano.

Crackpot Joyce tried to hit top note at end of ‘Evergreen’. Barbra Streisand’s got nowt to worry about.

I left at 9.30pm before they sang the whole back catalogue of Rogers and Hammerstein, and I went to bed and looked through my wedding album.

Oh, we were so young, so full of love and hope. Eric always pushed himself to be the best at everything, he’d say ‘Stick with me and I’ll have you farting through silk’.

Percy’s idea of romance was opening a can of beer away from my face.

I wished Eric had been at home more but I knew he was working hard to give me and Clint a better life. The separations were hard but he always phoned when he was on t’ road and sent postcards and flowers. He were thoughtful like that and treated me like a queen.

I’d get butterflies just waiting for him to put key in door. The flat came alive whenever he were there, it became a home.

We’d sometimes talk about what the other would do when one of us passed away. I once asked if he’d prefer a funeral or cremation and he winked and said ‘Surprise me!’. He could always make me laugh, even about his death.

I decided to go with a burial for him, you don’t know who you’re getting with urns. I often visit his grave and talk to him. I said to him t’ other day, it’s my turn to buy the flowers now.

I went up there on our anniversary and left a card for him and a miniature whiskey, he liked his tipple. Clint said a wino will probably take that. ‘Good luck to them’, I said, ‘they can have a drink on Eric’. He always stood a round, not like Percy.

Clint was never that close to his dad, if truth be told. Sometimes he feels Eric’s presence in the flat. He says he’s more aware of him now that he’s dead, funny that.

I never thought Eric would look twice at me. Who’d have thought a Parker pen would have changed my life? He had the pick of lasses but he chose me, I felt so proud on his arm.

I recently watched ‘When Harry met Sally’, and there was a line about going for the person you want to be with before someone else grabs them and then you’ll spend the rest of your life knowing that another woman is married to your husband.

I’d have hated to think of another woman living out my dreams with Eric. A love like that only comes along once in a lifetime, and you never stop feeling that way, even after they’ve gone. I’ve had my share of fellas but when I met my Eric, it all fell into place and I knew that he was the one.

Listen to me, I sound like one of Joyce’s Mills & Boon books!

Anyway, I’ve been keeping up with Strictly Ballroom Dancing. That Bruce Forsyth needs to call it a day, if you’re asking me. He doesn’t look all there half the time. Folk in Lil’s home have more about them.

My two homosexual neighbours are big fans of the show. What were it they said? ‘It’s as camp as a diamanté cake stand’. One of them wears a kimono, you have to laugh.

They said that ‘Supermarket Sweep’ is coming back. My Clint said he’ll apply to that. I told Mandy to just dangle a kebab in front of him and he’ll be round those aisles like a whippet on heat.

He’s debating whether to get a tattoo. He drew one on himself with a magic marker and it won’t come off. Daft bugger copied it from the take out menu from Jade Garden, so he’s now got a side-order for deep-fried prawns up his arm.

Well, Lester is waiting to show me how to post my chosen video onto blog. And as I’ve been talking about Eric, I’ve chosen a song by Peggy Lee which I always sang to him at karaoke, I still do.

He used to say I sounded like her but that was when I smoked twenty Park Drive a day. Joyce badgered me into giving up last year. She’d whip out her Airwick whenever I came back after a fag break.

Anyway, last time I sang this song, it was at Gold Rush club but it didn’t feel the same without Eric there. Sidney was waving his feather boa about after a few port and lemons. The daft apath.

Cheerio for now, Love from Sylvie xx