it seemed like it lasted forever. my ears hurt by the time i left. that whole family must’ve been partially deaf. i can’t figure any other explanation for an ordinary conversation to be carried out just short of screaming. for five hours. non-stop. jabbering. they had to weigh me to re-fill the hospital prescription. i’ve lost another 2kg. i’m down 12 this year. it’s pretty normal for me to lose 2-3kg when i get sick but i normally gain it back afterwards. i don’t know what’s going on there. i’m eating well. i don’t really feel any different. i think i’m losing muscle now.
it’s been a fairly quiet week, otherwise. i went and mounded over some potatoes on wednesday. when i pulled into the driveway the old bugger was in his van. “oh, thank fuck, i was just about to call you but i didn’t want to because i’ve been on the phone shouting at people all fucking morning and it’s not your fucking fault but i can’t help it this stupid fucking technology shit gets me so fucking angry, i can’t get the fucking channel to fucking change on the fucking tellie in the fucking van, what the fucking hell is this doing? just! fucking! change! fucking! channel!” these last five words are each punctuated by the old bugger slamming the remote onto a pillow in the van. woah, there. easy, boy.
after fiddling around with the remote for a bit i read the instructions on how to change the channel for the van’s satellite receiver. to change the channel you have to bring up a menu. then select your channel. then exit the menu. you can’t just punch a number in. so i showed him how to do this. “oh,” he says, quietly. and in that one little utterance he goes from furious to zen calm. that’s good. now he can change the channel, the channel it was on is for old biddies and he’s not an old biddy. i bit my tongue.
my bush beans haven’t recovered from the hail. they sprouted again but i think a bird’s eaten the sprouts. i sowed more corn seeds than i needed so i shifted some of them around to replace the plants that had been blasted right out of the soil. the broad beans are recovering better than i thought they would.
the boys stayed the night on saturday, my brother had an end of year work function. on sunday me, bryce and peter went to finish mounding the last of the spuds. one of the sheets of iron on the roof of the hay shed had come loose so the old bugger had the farm manager over to fix it. he’s brazilian. he has his brother over to work on the farm. his brother doesn’t speak any english. he’s had the old bugger try to teach him a few basic farming things but it didn’t work out. i think this is hilarious. i can only imagine the old bugger shouting at him and this guy not understanding what he’s shouting about and this making the old bugger even angrier and shout even more. i don’t know how you can get to 90 years old without learning you can’t solve all your problems by shouting at them.
bryce broke one of the garden tools. i think i’ve mentioned that for bryce everything is a hammer. i’d already told him to stop smacking the tools into things, they’ll break. i’d have told the old bugger that bryce had broken one of his tools but bryce was hiding in the car when we left. one of my potato plants had been freshly mangled. bryce. i didn’t say anything, i wanted to dig one up and see if they were ready anyway. they weren’t. i gave bryce a hard time about breaking the tool. someone had to. as long as no one mentions the rake i broke, twice.
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