Milo calls to me from the bathroom;
'Daddy - I think we're going to need some more shampoo because I've just washed my bottom.' Curiosity compels me to check. It appears to have taken entire large bottle of Johnson and Johnson No More Tears Formula baby shampoo to get his arse clean and the bath is luminous yellow with the stuff, maybe he self administered an enema with it - I don't bloody know, I'm beyond incredulous. When I eventually get him out of the bath - he's slicker than fricking otter shit due to the 50/50 concentration of shampoo to bathwater, the only way I can think of to get him cleaned up is to slide him into the shower cubicle and keep him there until he stops foaming. The other apartments must have thought I was trying to cram him into the microwave for all the bloody racket he made - anyway now to face the rest of the day with the shiny arsed little critter.
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| Time to get out now Milo |
About time I wrote a bit about MDS, recovery etc etc which is supposed to be the point of the blog in the first place. I am (thanks to the big fella) currently enjoying an extended hassle free spell of relatively rude health. Mouth GVHD is at manageable levels and does not impact on my eating, the eye GVHD if not significantly better, is still no worse and I can spend a part of each day out of sunglasses even in full sunlight. That said, my eyesight is not good and it looks like all the effects of the Lasik I had in 2006 have now been negated by meds and even though I hate wearing them, I may have to be Mr Speccy Twat again in the near future.
However whilst I'm enjoying this spurt of good health, I'd like to give a mention and pass on my best wishes to two of my Facebook buddies who are currently having less than glorious times at the hands of MDS - Tammy in Canada and Sam in the UK. I hope that you can both look at what Jeannette and I have done in the teeth of my illness and cast forward to a time when there is much soppy fun to be had and many stupid arsed things to do - post transplant. My thoughts are with you both.
I'm not due back at the Hospital until 18th November and no blood tests due until 14th or so, meantime I just have to sit tight and steer clear of antipodean lurgies. Good name for a band.
In an effort to demonstrate that I wish to educate and inform and not just sit here brain farting, I'm going to lay some of my newly acquired local knowledge on you. For example, bedding such as sheets, pillow cases etc over here is known by the generic name of Manchester. This apparently is because that in them there olden days all of it was imported from the UK in crates marked up with the the place of manufacture hence "Where do you want me to stack this shitload of Manchester" caused the word to enter common parlance - shops and supermarkets actually have "Manchester" signed above the relevant aisles Apparently the same is true for crockery becoming "China" and now I'm just off to relax with a nice bit of Colombian (no - the coffee).
Next, a RORT is Australian for a con, scam or rip off. I was most disappointed to learn that hardly anybody says "Bonza" anymore it has slipped out of the idiom over here in the same way that "Jolly good show" has in the UK. Another thing is that for sheer uncaring, unresponsive, arrogant and just plain shitey unprofessionalism Australian Estate Agents leave the UK guys in the starting blocks. Demand in the housing market here is such that the lazy buggers just have to turn up at the the house they are showing, unlock the door and then just sit back and wait to be hosed down with cash. Absolute shiny faced money grabbing fuckers to last so far in my experience.
In the interests of keeping Milo occupied and unmurdered, I took him for a couple of rounds of what I used to call Crazy Golf at a place called Ermington Putt Putt about 30 minutes drive from our apartment. It was nudging 30 deg when we got there at 11am and the course was pretty much deserted apart from - well I'll get to that bit in due course. There is a choice of three different courses Water, Jungle and Crazy and we elected for two rounds starting with the Water course. Now saying that Milo is hard-headed, stubborn and opinionated is like saying the sun is hot and big and difficult to lift. They just both are.
Generally any given social scenario involving trying something new with my son plays out like this. I start off all good intentions and 'let me show you the wonders of my world mini-me' he digs his heels in and tells me in his sweet 4 y/o way to go poke it. I get stroppy - he gets stroppy, one of us storms off muttering 'Fuck this' and the other one starts crying - I'll leave you to you work out who's who. So to try and ensure that our day at the golf lasted longer than 3 minutes, I soon gave up on showing him how to hold a club or take a shot and kept my neck resolutely wound in whilst he held the club one handed, arse backwards and merrily divoted his way round the astro-greens - after all he was enjoying himself scoring about par 12 per hole.
As we were playing I was vaguely aware of a guy a few holes ahead of us who was setting up various bits of video and photographic equipment on tripods and taking loads of what I assumed were publicity shots. Milo and I carried on playing and eventually bickered our way round to the hole where this guy (let's call him Trevor) was set up. He stepped to one side as I teed up my first shot on the famed Bart Simpson - the13th hole back nine at the Ermington Putt Putt Water Course. Just as I shaped to putt he piped up sagely;
'You want a tip for this green mate?'
I looked up at him unbelievingly, my face a mixture of confusion and dumb amazement - this is a 20ft long crazy golf astro green after all.
'Got a top tip for this - guarantee you a hole in one'
A cold creeping realisation went through me - this is the type of man who considers himself to be the Crazy Golf Course Resident Professional. This is the absolute definition of 'too much time on your hands'. Writ large. In granite. Mount Rushmore style. And floodlit.
Well lets get this over with then.
'Er - OK'
To save you non-pros from all the technical jargon, I had to cannon off the kerb to the left of the Bart and Lisa Simpson house sat in the middle of the green (I base this assumption on the fact that they were both small and rendered in yellow paint - they may as well have been dialysis munchkins as far as resemblance went. Oh and there's also a kind of melty Garfield who looks like the bastard offspring of Buddha and Tigger). The rest of the shot was then blind, but Trevor assured me that if I pitched it just right and cannoned at the point he'd indicated - well it'd be a no brainer.
And bollocks - he was right. To further improve the situation Milo decided that he also wanted to do a hole in one as well and went through the whole bloody course of instruction again before totally disregarding everything he'd just been shown and then getting a bloody hole in one via some kind of St. Vitus dance/hockey shot.
This was sufficient to convince said resident pro that we needed his advice on the lay and technical aspects of the next few holes. During this time I learnt that he is Captain of the Ermington Putt Putt Golf Team (pro tip - never call it crazy golf, it's like calling archery 'bow and arrowing shooty') and was in the process of making a video of himself scoring three consecutive 'holes in one' at each green on the Water course, shot in real time unedited to show there was no trickery to this feat. This done he was then going to replicate the whole process on the Jungle course. Stupidly, sucked in by the scope of his ambition, I said ' - and then the same on the Crazy course?'. I received a look 'Serious Team members don't play that one'.
Over the next few greens although there were no further holes in one, I learnt that Trev had filmed more than 200 videos of himself playing at Ermington which are uploaded to his Youtube channel puttputtdownunder. Monies raised from the channel and team activities all go to charity - so who am I to mock this man's magnificent obsession.
Our time together ended on a poignant note as I was telling him about where we live in the UK, which is in East Sussex not far from Hastings.
'Jeez mate! That's where they just played the World Championships - have you been?'
'Well not to the World Championships, but I have played Crazy Golf on the seafront'
'Putt Putt'
'Er - yeah'
He's gone a bit misty eyed and is looking at me as though I'm Neil Armstrong or Sir Edmund Hilary - for I have set foot upon the hallowed ground about which he can only dream from afar.
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