The Third Hand

 

“When we got up to leave, I saw him look at my bum,” says my sister chomping at her Ploughman’s.

“He did not!  He’s an OB/GYN.  They don’t look at women that way,” I reply horrified.

She snorts in a meaningful way.

We are having lunch in a pub in Hertfordshire, England waiting to go and spring Madre from hospital.   A routine “plumbing” operation requiring only an overnight stay, did not go to plan and so I have spent the past week in the UK trying to make sense of the NHS staff nurses who although very pleasant and kind, appear to have all taken an oath of silence.

It has taken seven days to get a meeting with the bum-oggling consultant.  He was all cheerful bluff and managed to avoid answering any questions and guaranteed nothing.  He attempted to bring up Madre’s scan on his computer but after many flamboyant clicks hoping to impress, failed to get past his wallpaper.  Mid-conversation, somewhere between urethra and prolapse, he produced a pair of secateurs from his pocket, looked at them in a startled manner then placed them gingerly on his desk.  The Monty Python theme tune started playing in my head. 

“Well that gives us faith in the system,” I said laughing so dryly  my tongue instantly velcroed itself to the roof of my mouth.

“It’s to prune the plant behind you,” he said indicating a very sorry looking specimen. “ It was on the balcony along with a table and some chairs but they were stolen.”

Yes quite.  Back to Madre’s condition.  Let it be said that Madre and the other half of her double act A.J., (Aunty Joan) who was a stellar performer all of last week, are not the type of women, ever and I mean EVER, to go to see the Vagina Monologues and rejoice in a fellow member of the female sex shouting a rude word about their privates from the stage.  Hence anything technical pertaining to Madre’s condition had, as always in my family, to be referred to in confusing euphemisms.  I had so much material I could write a whole comedy sketch entitled Down There. 

As part of the deal for springing Madre she had to master a rather complex medical procedure (which I had a hunch would be obsolete once we got her in the comfort of her own home using her own porcelain). 

Back in the pub we call Madre to see how she is getting on.

“Hey Mum, how’s it going?”

“Yes, it’s alright.  I’ve almost got it but I’ll just need a third hand…when we get home.”

We sit perplexed thinking about whose will be the third hand.

“You’re the eldest,” I say thinking there is no better argument.

“Ah but you actually knew about the procedure, ” she retorted.

“Only because I looked it up on the internet.” I wail.

“AND you got the anatomy right.”

“Of course I got the bloody anatomy right!”

We order two glasses of wine before settling on Uncle Dennis purely on the basis of his golf handicap.

 As it happens no hands at all were needed and once home Madre was as right as…rain.