“Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk
in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.”
The old
man sat back in his armchair. “That's what's gonna' be set on my
headstone, Lenny C himself wrote it (he still talked about Lenny C
like he was a close friend), I lived it, surely did.” Bobby didn't
like it when dad spoke this way, it came around, regularly,
seasonally or every few days, usually in some moment of slightly
drunk reflection. Dad was now moving forwards in the battered chair,
ready to share more wisdom. “Urine!” He cried, “never be afraid
to drink it. Urotherapy, that's the answer to questions you may have
never even have asked. Look at me, pushing seventy seven, a glass
every day, you know what's in that stuff?” Bobby resisted the
question's hook, “Dad, I know all about your thoughts and habits
over urine, you're not going to convert me, mum tried that remember.”
Bobby smiled and laughed a bit, giving dad the slightly mixed message
of pleasant approval, the happy thought of mum all tinged with a
degree of assumed adult scepticism.
Dad had always liked to share his
theories, daily beetroot balls, cigar smoke, red wine, tripe cooked
in milk, turpentine foot spas, exercise by fidget, dairy produce v
vegetables, spending time at high altitude. Bobby had heard them all
and in fairness he had observed his dad's health stay pretty stable
over the years. He wondered if, this complex set of varying regimes
and tastes actually was working. Dad was maybe onto something. He
wondered if his dad was just a lucky, crazy man. That was the
problem, you looked at people, knew them, clocked their behaviours
but you never did really know, life remained a mystery.
Back home, Bobby's dad was labelling up
today's batch of urine. He used the three day theory. Pee it and
bottle it and let it rest up, then in three days, sip it early in the
day and before your first pee of that day. Dad had come across the
urine therapy when researching cancer treatments, he'd also heard
about it used in conjunction with a yoga based regime. It was late,
well ten thirty, eight hours sleep was also a lifestyle requirement,
dad's various theories all knitted together, he felt he was on a
roll. A roll to live a long, long time.
He looked one more time at the clock,
the hands had moved just a minute, he turned to the laptop and
clicked onto the health blog he followed. There was a banner headline
tracking across...bull's semen...cereals from the New World...locusts
and their protein content...Springtime in Malta...Dad blinked and
looked away from the screen, the messages running on...endless bits
of spurious and unproven advice, good ideas, bad ideas and scams, how
could you ever tell? He sat on the leather chair, his head was heavy
and it fell forwards and down into his upturned hands. All this
living, all this struggling and playing, all the schemes and
remedies, none were worth it. They were there like grey distractions,
games and diversions he followed when all he really wanted to do was
follow someone else; his Megan. Megan had been gone ten years now,
ten good years he supposed. She was gone, too soon, but the words
she'd left him with had marked and now he needed to be free and
follow her, not these cherished ideas she'd held. She'd said, a
twinkle still in her eye, still there, “I haven't had Champagne for
a long time, I wonder if it would have made a difference?”
“Since the day of my birth, my death
has begun it's walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.”
Jean Cocteau.
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