13 October 2008

The Leggy Legacy of Mushroom Packing

“Is that a varicose vein in your leg?”, my mother enquired, squinting at Accountant’s lily white leg poking out of the end of his shorts.
“Yes it is” replied Accountant proudly, perking up at her interest in the long term condition that had never caused him a day’s discomfort.
“How’ve you got that then?” she continued, not as savvy as I at avoiding any interest in Accountant’s bodily functions.
“I don’t know really” he replied seriously, rubbing the offending vein as if to ease the pain he’d shouldered silently for so many years.
“Has anyone in your family got them?” I rolled my eyes at Dad, who I assumed was finding the pointlessness of her enquiries as tedious as I.
“No, I don’t think so” said Accountant, his brow furrowed with the concentration of a man working his way back five generations for any history of knotted legs. “I did work in a mushroom factory once though.”
“Really?” replied my mother who I knew was working up to the disclosure of her very own varicose veins, waiting for the optimum moment to reveal her own hideous suffering as she stood for years, without breaks, hairdressing for a shilling a week.
“Yes. There were men and women who had worked there for thirty years and I always remember their legs were all gnarled up from standing for so long” said Accountant, his words tinged with concern as to the toll his time at the factory may have taken.
"How long did you work there?” I enquired, momentarily interested.
Accountant took time to calculate, delivering his answer with the utmost gravity, “About four weeks”.
Laughing at Accountant continued for about an hour. It stopped for X-Factor, and then recommenced in earnest.

As soon as the front door shut behind mum and dad, Accountant turned. Apparently I never took any of his medical conditions seriously. No one else, apart from his mother, would either but I vowed to pretend to in the future.

Somewhat conveniently, the next day he awoke with stomach pains and conjunctivitis. “I’ll need some water, a cup of peppermint tea, five cracker breads with butter and cream cheese, complete bed rest and a cold compress” he whimpered, searching my face for any sign that I wasn’t fully invested in his recovery, through his one good eye.

For the rest of the day, I sourced DVD’s, turned the pages of magazines, double checked with NHS Direct that his ‘localised’ stomach pains (as he liked to call them) weren’t appendicitis and applied eye drops every three hours.

And then, on my way to plump up his highly infectious pillows, I overheard him organising a trip to the pub the next day.

That’s when I soaked a towel in icy water and, just as he drifted into his 19th hour of sleep, laid it lovingly over his poor little tummy.

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