20th OCTOBER 2011

Most of my carer’s are teeny-boppers (gee, maybe I am old) and recently one began to tease as to my age. It was only when she started that I realised that all of my carers are either at least ten years younger or in one case thirty years older. I had never really thought of myself as old but I suppose to a child who has grown up with the Internet I am. It’s all in matters of comparisons and so as planet Earth cannibalises itself I look at the patch of hair that has grown on the bottom of my left rib. I wonder why a patch has not grown on the right hand side. The phone rings and for a moment I wonder if it’s Gadaffi. I wheel myself into the bedroom and pick up the handset. All I can hear is heavy breathing, then I hear a husky women’s voice croak-I know what colour undies you’re wearing. I hang up and push myself to the kitchen where I take a pomegranate out of the fridge. It is so old that it’s started to leak it’s once-precious fluids all over the kitchen floor. I look in the fridge for more but they have all gotten old and died leaving vast puddles behind. It was me that let them get too old. I feel a pang of regret and then I feel nothing. Then I do feel. I feel some bastard’s piece of chewing gum stuck to the left tyre of my wheelchair so I push myself closer to the fridge, take the wheel off and try to jam it into the freezer. It won’t fit so I start to eat an apple instead. I hear the phone ringing again so put the wheel back on and head towards my room with the apple in my mouth. Just as I get to the phone it stops ringing. A moth flies out of the wardrobe with a piece of my favourite t-shirt in its mouth, but I am still smiling

Andrew Stuart Buchanan