Pass the sick bucket

6 February, 2012 (10:54) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

The first faint blush of pink dawn was peeping coyly over the Eastern trees. Birds were wiping the sleep from their eyes and clearing their throats ready for a twinkling chorus. Management and I lay comfortably in the conjugal container. The dog had been booked into the kennels for the night so we could catch up on all the sleep we hadn’t had in the week.

The door burst open and into the room dashed our youngest. He sized me up with  jaundiced eye, took a deep breath and produced a virulent stream of bright orange vomit, splashing merrily great distances across the room.

So much for the lie-in, then.

Of course, for greatest comic effect, our youngest ensured that by spreading the orange muck around the rest of us were going to be infected too. Thus it was I spent Sunday night projectile vomiting into a stout bucket, groaning loudly the while.

It’s a bug that’s been doing the rounds at school, of course – I believe doctors are obliged by law to place the blame thusly these days.

You’d think humankind would have learned all about children now and evolved a solution to the problem – you know, maybe children would have evolved the capability to listen to what’s said to them without the necessity of 120 repetitions, or teenagers would have evolved the ability to communicate. Maybe Darwin was wrong after all.

As ever in times of  difficulty, the great and godlike Leonard Cohen has guidance for us: in his new album, Old Ideas, he writes: “He will speak these words of wisdom like a sage, a man of vision, though he knows he’s really nothing but the brief elaboration of a tube.”

Many thanks for last week’s essential consumer reports, Brothers Hamster, Numbers and all. Though the remark about Scotland’s pitiful rugby team was uncalled-for. I have only one thing to add: Mornington Crescent.

But to return to the vomiting: I do hope you’ll all understand that this week’s epistle will be necessarily brief, as the stout bucket is still by my side, waiting for me to try to contact the almighty with it once more.

 

Comments

Comment from Hamster
Time February 6, 2012 at 5:02 pm

This Weeks Hamster Top Tip – Don’t open the door to any 6ft tall creepy crawlies wearing knuckle dusters and carry baseball bats, word is there is a really nasty bug going around.

Comment from Hamster
Time February 8, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Hopefully Stuart, you are feeling better and have put away the stout bucket, and you will be out tonight for Euchre and a bucket of stout! ok may be just a pints worth then.

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