Okay, okay. I realise I haven’t blogged since the summer. I’ve
suffered guilty guilt at the thought of leaving you without recreational
swearing or entertaining facts about piles for months. My excuse is that I was
writing a crime thriller and a series of books for small children AND doing a
rewrite on a kids’ novel that went exactly nowhere. The stuff that makes money
has to come first, right? Those anoraks and big knickers don’t buy themselves.
So what has been on my mind lately? I’ll tell you
what...Karma. That stupid fucking idea that if you’re a good person, good
things will happen to you, and if you’re a bastard, your bumhole will knit together,
causing you to asphyxiate slowly on your own acrid guff.
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| The optimist in me thought this might work... |
Being a naive knob-cobbler, I have always thought that if I
give to charity – hell, I worked for charities for about 20 years – nice things
will come my way. I thought my karma account was in the black and I could
expect great health, multiple book deals and thin knees to come my way. What
did I get instead? Varicose veins, literary obscurity and dysentery. Yeah, you
heard me right. Dysentery.
In October, my Father-in-Law, always the keen climber of
stairs in the dark, managed to climb the stairs in the dark...and fall headlong
back down to the bottom, because he’s a doddery old fart – more Stannah Stair
than Fred Astaire. He broke his head. Well, actually, that’s a fib. He broke 3
vertebrae in his neck and painted the walls with the inside of his head but
mercifully, the head wound was superficial and the neck will mend.
Muggins – Karma Queen, here – plus family went trekking down
to the fragrant vale of Croydon to visit Stannah Stair in hospital. He was
wearing his new traction ensemble, complete with a Tena pad on his head and support
stockings. Notwithstanding my sock-envy, I was glad to see him alive. And I was
certain I had earned 50 billion karma points for dropping everything to do a
300 mile round trip to show support (I would
have done it, even without the karma points, because I’m not a complete cow).
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| Remember, Father-in-law: Stannah Stair, not Fred Astaire! |
But no! What happened? We took my Mother-in-Law out for
lunch to a local restaurant to cheer her up.
Within a few hours, I felt like I had been poisoned with potassium or polyester
or plutonium or whatever it is that old Eastern Bloc spies spike your butties
with. Then I turned into an intestinal
jet wash.
Dysentery, to the unacquainted, is an affliction - the kind
suffered by actors in Bridge on the River Kwai and Tenko - whereby everything
on the inside apart from your bones makes a very fast getaway through your arse.
I survived on diarolyte alone for a full week. I went through my entire range
of Primark winceyette pyjamas.
This was my karmic payback for caring. And, as soon as I was
up and about again, we all came down with flu. Then my child’s drum teacher got
the hump and sacked me off for poor attendance.
So now, I’ve decided that being a nice person is seriously
overrated. I am going to hone my skills at being an obnoxious fat-kneed turd
and we’ll see if that doesn’t turn me into an overnight success. I’ll let you
know how I get on. In the meantime, I’m off to mug a student for his Children
In Need collecting tin...
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| Warning: belief in Karma can cause terminal disappointment and bad wind. |
