Sick and Ill.
My whole family and I have caught a common pestilence. Our throats are sore and our heads are leaking; I have lost my voice and one daughter wakes up every few hours screaming and terrified because her eyes are glued shut with dried eye-snot. So there will only be short ill posts this week. If I told you I sneezed as I typed this you wouldn’t believe me would you? You’d think the sneeze was for Dramatic effect or to give the post some Narrative Moment. But I did. I did.
I did.
Okay then. Today’s short, ill post:
It’s a One Act play continuing the sheep theme of the previous post.
The Silence Of The Lambs.
Scene 1
The Lambs: ” _________________________ .”
Scene 2
The Lambs: (aside) “__________________________ ?”
Scene 3
The Lambs: “__________________________ !”
Scene 4
The Lambs: (From offstage) “__________________________.”
THE END.
Overwriting is death in drama.
*
Kind well-wishers may send fruit-baskets, electrolyte drinks and general-interest magazines to Weardybeardysville California. Any moneys you care to send will be greedily snottily gratefully received too.
Unkind ill-wishers may point out in the comments what a big softie I’ve become since I left Scotland, birthplace of the common cold and the land whose motto should be Wheree’er ye be, let your nose run free, or at least Nemo me achoo-ne accessit. I’d like to remind The Unkind though that the angels see your heart.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Bravo, excellent sheepage, I keep my heart in a lead lined box not even Superman could see through it, Angels pah!
April 24th, 2007 at 9:24 am
“_____________________________________________”
but then
“___________________ __________ _____________________!!”
April 24th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Knuds, when a sheep has the cold the field term for its seeping “snot” is sheepage. It’s pronounced in the same way Americans say “garage.”
The angels hear your pah! but are not intimidated by your disbelief – they build their golden feathers on pah!s and their haloes are of purest no-way-man!s.
birchsprite, no way! Really? Cool! Then how did the prime minister explain the cowboy hat and chaps??
April 24th, 2007 at 11:21 am
One lemon, two tablespoons honey (and don’t be mean with it), two pints boiling spring water; cool to room temp; then drink. It works wonders and sweet enough for the kids. Natural lucozade.
Anyhoos, get well soonest, to you and yours.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I bumped into your blog, through Joanne’s Michael and Callum’s blog. I must admit I really do find your writings interesting. Hope you are now free of germs and have stopped sneezing whilst typing.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
The key to interpreting drama is to remember always that the butler did it.
As for your illness, get better, dear. BTW, I second Vince except add two shots of bourbon.
Cheers.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Poor old thing, how utterly wretched it is to be sick, but to have everyone sick and relying on you to unglue eyes and wipe stuff while being sick yourself is so minging it’s monk. Monk I tell you. I hope you all feel better soon. Oh, Orange Splits, the ice pops, are very good for sore throats, sticky enough for a good coating and the coldness soothes. We Fatcats swear by them
FMC
April 24th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Oh, I loved the drama in scene 3. Some might consider it overacting, but .
April 24th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I have to disagree. I thought scene 3 was irrelevant to the main plot line. If it was more along the lines of ___________ _____ __ ________!! then I think it would have worked better.
Now as to your cold, Sam (if that’s you real name), I happen to know that Oddtown , California has outlawed colds because it lowers the self esteem of children and has been linked to global warming and is considered to be then main profit center for the logging industry because of all the tissues sold. I’m not sure but I’d bet Weardybeardysville has a similar ordenance.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
What’s wrong with sneezing?
April 24th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Vince, thank you, kind pal. I’d try that out just as you suggest but I’m trying to conserve honey at the moment on account of the bees and their mysterious disappearances. Some say it’s cell phones that are causing it, some say it’s bee disease. Personally, I think they’re following some mass cult or another. I bet if we were to go looking in the forests of Guyana, we’d find the world’s missing bees, chanting and brainwashed with their antennas all skee-wiff. I shouldn’t think it takes much to brainwash a bee, especially the bumble sort.
Hi Nadine, welcome in, but be sure to wear a face mask and carry an alcoholic hand-sanitizer. It’s like 1665 in London around here at the moment. Jo’s my cousin, making the bold move back to Lewis from Vancouver with her family. Mad? Some might say so, but they both have a pretty good idea of what life’s like there – Jo went to school in Lewis for a year – and wee Calum will fit right in with all his cousins and ready made extended family. They’re lovely people – they’ll make it work and I reckon they’ll love it too.
Rand, why is it always bourbon or brandy or whisky that cures things? I hate those. Doesn’t gin cure anything? Where can I catch a disease for which gin is the only known cure?
fmc, monk? God, I’m so uncool. I have no idea what monks are. Forget orange splits, I was counting on a nice tube-clearing rum recipe from you. So far all I’ve got is: warm some rum in pan; drink. But there must be more to it than that. Maybe adding a wee drop Kahlua? Or melted Locket? All I really want are cherry Tunes but apparently the FDA have them on their banned-lozenge list.
JoeinVegas, I tell you, that was a bitch of a scene to write. And lambs are such divas when it comes to performing. They all want to interpret their silence in different ways – noir, slapstick, bodice-ripper, Kafkaesque to name just a few. Some even wanted to incorporate chainsaws into the silence to highlight the worst excesses of the logging industry. We did have Tarantino directing, at one time, but he said it was all getting too political and he’d really only wanted to shoot lambs at slaughter. Well, you can imagine what the union thought of that. I wish I’d called it The Silence of the Lemurs instead, but then Old knudsen would have thrown eggs and innuendo at the premiere. You can’t win, you just can’t.
Brianf, I’ve already broken a number of not-being-positive-in-public by-laws for telling the girls off at the florists about bickering without trying to understand their differing points of view on the issue of who goes for bath first on Thursdays. If I as much as sneeze I’ll be up in front of the town council fighting for my family’s right to move about the area without tracking devices on our ankles a la Martha Stewart. Plus we’re not supposed to kill germs as all life is sacred, so all our immune systems are in deep doodoo too, if they’re caught. Custodial sentences for them, since January 1st, 2007. We can’t be too careful.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
You don’t often speak Scotch, Sam. You should do it more often, it suits you. It you take vitamin C the cold will last for a week. If you don’t, it will last for 7 days.
April 24th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Sneezy, it’s not the primal sneeze that alarms, hun’, I wouldn’t dream of casting aspersions (although I think it was somebody casting their pestilent aspersions that infected us all in the first place.) No, it’s the ordinal, cardinal and exponential sneezes that follow. And every cold has a snotty lining.
April 24th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Nanas, all I really want at this stage is some hot toast slathered in golden melted butter, a new head, and the love of a good gorilla. I wasn’t speaking Scotch! I was speaking Gin, Ginese.
April 24th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Ohmigod, it’s like a mad lib. I could play with this for HOURS.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Oooh, hope the typing-sneeze didn’t cover your monitor and/or keyboard in snot. That would suck.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Well dahling, naturally the rum helps the adults, but I was thinking of the poor wee childers. Actually if you mix rum with coke and freeze it, you could avail of both worlds.*
* not for childers.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:55 am
And every cold has a snotty lining. – Brilliant! Don’t know when I’ve laughed as many!
April 25th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Kara, a mad lib in the Dennis Kucinich sense or in the -those-fridge-magnet-things sense? I’m not diggin’ Hilary so much these days but it’s getting increasingly difficult to tell whether I admire Barack Obama for his thoughtful, temperate judgement and statesmanlike mien or ‘cos he’s so freaking hawt.
Jill, hi! It’s a brand, spanking new pyooter too, for my birthday/Christmas/Mother’s Day present. I’m afeared to peer too closely between the keys lest a snot gremlin reaches out, seizes me by the throat and tries to drag me into its sickly little underkey world. For this is a cold that just refuses to die. It goes on and bloody on. Any germs I’ve achooed into any tiny crevice on my laptop will thrive opportunistically on malice and the odd toast-crumb, I know it. Waiting, waiting for the right moment to come back bigger and germier and reinfect!! – this time it’s personal. It’s a superbug and its special powers are snot and malaise.
fmc, I was being fed whiskey toddies at that age when I had colds. I think it might have had more to do with knocking my oozy little self out for a bit though, than for any real provably curative effect. Rum’n'coke-o-pops, eh? I might give that a whirl tomorrow. I wonder if it’ll freeze. I made a vodka jelly at uni once that wouldn’t set on account of the vodka:lime jelly ratio being too ludicrous. Much experimentation has brought me now to the place where I can produce fabulous multi-beverage jellies for parties and other fun times.
Sneezy, man, what are you doing up at this hour in Ireland? Unless I’ve gone bonkers it’s just a tiny wee hour there right now. The birds must still be asleep where you are. (THOUGHT.) Go and wake ‘em up! Yeah! Give them a taste of their own dawn medicine! Small and petty revenges are always the best sort – although I realise I can only speak for myself in this. Bloody birds have had it too good, too early, for too long. Time they danced to someone else’s tune for a while.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I forget that you’re foreign. It’s ok.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs
April 25th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Ahh. Gorrit.
I’m not foreign. I’m Scottish. In fact I’m not Scottish (bunch of foreigners) I’m Hebrideanonian. I’m It’s all of you (points wildly around) who’re foreign with your funny foreign ways and your venti coffees.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I turn my back for one sodding night…
April 29th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I’m a Californian (from Riverside) living in Scotland (D & G, not the Hebrides, sadly). And here’s another coincidence: I have a cold right now and my eldest kid, who is old enough not to do this, went and threw up on the carpet last night…
Fortunately, I still do have my voice. Useful, what with the kids and all…
April 29th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Minimalism alive and well…I LIKE it! Hope you and fam are well by now or at least less sick.
Joel
April 30th, 2007 at 4:28 am
Pat, hun, I know you were having more fun. The hotel looked gorgeous.
Mary, hi! Thanks for stopping by and commenting. How did you end up in Scotland? There have been things in my children’s vomit on occasion, that I am positive I never fed them/ I think there’s a dealer at pre-school selling them blue and green sweeties. And sometimes they come home all glassy eyed. Or that could just be being 4.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Joel, thanks lovey. I’m afraid we got worse for a bit. Problem Child #1 got an ear infection in both ears, an eye-infection, and a lung infection. Her temperature rocketed and she started vomiting. Problem Child #2’s chest cold deepened and she was snottier than an Etonian prefect. A miserable Saturday morning at the doctor’s and a few huddled days under a blanket on the sofa, and both girls are nearly back to their old selves. This, of course, means there’s more mischief for me to put a stop too again. I wonder if it would be very wrong of me to keep them semi-ill at all times…
April 30th, 2007 at 10:29 am
My husband and I met in Tokyo; he’s English, but our first daughter was born in Wales. Our second daughter was born in Tokyo, and I of course, was born in California. So Scotland just seemed the logical choice when we decided to come back to the U.K. It is a very long, tiresome story, but that’s it in a nutshell.