Thirsty Thursday: A trip to Gibbston, the chicken soup, and a throne of pillows
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law.
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law
THIRSTY THURSDAY 37
It’s the final countdown - to the end of the school holidays and also democracy. I still have to get stationery, school uniform bits and bobs and also shoes, as well as water, canned food, a go bag with my passport in it and a transistor radio - although how I’ll get Spotify on that I have no idea.
Mr mr is sick. At first, I had hoped that it was heatstroke from Gibbston at the weekend - he drove and so the gods that look after drunks and little children were far too busy to keep an eye on him and keep the sun off his bonce.
Instead of wearing a wide-brimmed hat he wore a cap with the scraggiest face flannel from the linen cupboard tucked in the back which he would intermittently dampen. I enjoyed laughing at him even when I tipped backwards off my chair and even more so after shouting “GRIM” over and over again at a leery old man who was being overly friendly with the Pink Ladies who sat in front of us.
And lucky for me the only unpleasant hangover has been a constant refrain from either an Everclear or Cold Chisel song instead of the Icehouse and Bic Runga sets I vastly preferred.
It was too hot to eat, and red wine, as I had always known but never fully understood on a cellular level, is disgusting when it is hot, and you are hot and the earth is hot and the mountains are hot and friendly clouds are being vaporised before they get anywhere near the angry, angry sun. But the bands were great and we had great company and I think I finally, finally broke in my two-year-old bloody buggery Doc Marten sandals, which will now instantly go out of fashion.
So now he is sick in bed and spends all of his time (and mine) talking about how mad he is that he is poorly as he sits up in our lovely bed with the lovely view of the bush, making sweeping statements about the children’s screen time and the fitness levels of the dog and how disappointed he is about not getting out to see to the back deck, all while being fed home-made chicken soup (from the freezer but still).
We all tiptoe past his room because if he hears movement, he calls out for whoever is around and engages them in conversation so that we may all bear witness to the ravages of this terrible illness. Our bed, while lovely, is an Ancient of Muu Muu and is making ominous boinging noises in the spring area when someone gets up and so every time he coughs in the night I bob about like a tiny dinghy on rough seas and wake up and then doom scroll because I’m buggered if I’ve spent the last two decades being a news junkie only to miss the downfall of the West.
So now I’m tired and jumpy and have zero patience and my carefully crafted plan to have a lovely double playdate for the small one has devolved into an endless round of sandwich making and fruit or water offering and pantry barricading and imploring them to go outside and enjoy the sunshine while simultaneously making cups of tea and heating the aforementioned soup and wiping up the dribble from the dog as he sits perilously close to the only thing I truly love, my silk pillowcase, while he feverishly, hopefully watches Mr mr spoon soup into his terrible maw from his throne of pillows.
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