Elma's Visit

 

Aunt Elma came to visit us from Glasgow again. What else can I say? 

She said she needed a break from her husband so she told him she was going out shopping, went to the airport and flew in to see us. When she arrived she phoned her husband and told him she was at the supermarket. He asked her to bring home some ice-cream. That's when she told him that it would melt by the time she flew back home. He was not amused.

As a protest, like before when they've had an argument, he left home and moved in the garage until she returns home.

She told us an interesting, albeit weird, story.

Her neighbour who is in her late eighties, Mrs Mac Aroni is her name, went out shopping in town. By the way, Mrs Mac Aroni is a widow. Her husband died a few years back. He was the manager of a shop selling vacuum cleaners. It was his wish on his death bed that his ashes are spread all over the carpet in the store and then vacuum cleaned. His favourite saying was, "Life Sucks but not as good as our cleaners!"

Anyway, as my aunt was saying, Mrs Mac Aroni went out shopping in Glasgow. She stood outside the travel agent's shop window admiring all the places people go to on holiday. A few moments later an old man, about the same age, she said, came and stood by her watching the holiday brochures in the window.

Suddenly, the travel agent came out of the shop and invited them both in. "Congratulations," he said, "you are the 1000th people to visit my shop. You have won a free holiday abroad. All expenses paid!"

He took photos of both of them for publicity purposes and gave them tickets for a week's holiday in Italy ... or was it France? Aunt Elma couldn't remember which but it doesn't matter.

Anyway, after returning from her holiday Mrs Mac Aroni went back to the travel agent to thank them. They were delighted and asked her how she enjoyed the holiday. She said it was really wonderful, but who was that old man who shared the bedroom with her?

What else has been happening here? Oh yes ... might as well tell you about this in case it is of some help. The wi-fi in our house has been weak. We live in an old Victorian house with large rooms and high ceilings and sometimes you cannot get an internet signal on the laptop if you move from one room to another. The techie guy said he increased the router signal by some gigabytes; whatever that means.

What else? Oh yes, Aunt Elma. I did not know this but she fell off a horse recently and broke her femur. That's the big bone in the thigh. Can you imagine? At her age, she is about 88, riding a horse? And it was not a real horse either. It was one of those mechanical electrical horses which jump about like a rodeo bull which you sometimes have in pubs. A mechanical type seat that spins and jumps to make you fall off. It was at the pub. The Drunken Bishop, I think. Or was it The Fat Handmaid? Doesn't matter which pub it was.

She went to the pub and had a go on the mechanical horse thing and fell off breaking her femur. She went to hospital and got it fixed. It's OK now. Apparently they put in a metal plate round the bone to hold it together. She said it beeped at the airport security desk when they checked her.

But that's not all. Now with our improved more powerful wi-fi signal she gets radio wavelengths through the metal plate which acts as an aerial. It is very disconcerting when she's sitting there and we hear Frank Sinatra singing "I did it my way!" in her thigh.

She is a bit hard-of hearing so she does not realise it is happening. First time it happened we were at the table having dinner. Someone asked, "can you hear music?" It was Frank Sinatra then also. He was singing, "I've got you under my skin!"

Someone said the sound was coming from under the table. I looked under the table and realised what was happening. To save her blushes I changed the subject and told the family it was probably the neighbour's radio a bit too loud. 

I could not make out what was happening. Then she mentioned the metal plate in her leg and I realised. 

I told no one about it. At night, when I was in bed using the laptop I could hear from next door "Rock around the clock!"

The only way to remedy the situation is to get the techie guy to lower the power of the router to fewer gigabytes. This means I won't be able to use the laptop in all the rooms. We can increase the power again after Aunt Elma leaves.

In the meantime, "You put your left leg in. Your left leg out. In, out, in, out. You shake it all about. You do the hokey cokey. And you turn around. That's what it's all about. Woah, the hokey cokey. Woah, the hokey cokey. Woah, the hokey cokey. Knees bent. Arms stretched. Ra-ra-ra!"