More mellow than bellow

In the year since my diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease one of the changes we have noticed in me is that I am more laid back and not so fiery tempered. I don’t know if this is due to the Sifrol that I take or that it is a mellowing process of ageing. I haven’t found anything on the Internet about this ‘symptom’. Take the other day for example. We are renovating our bathroom at the moment as the floor was about to disintegrate. We have had numerous problems with the suppliers who have ordered the wrong parts and it is a two hour round trip for us to change them. The workmen once again couldn’t continue due to missing components so we re-ordered and phoned to check they had arrived before we set off. Of course when we got there they had keyed in the wrong code so the parts for something else had arrived and the assistant said we would have to come back again. At one time, The Long Suffering One would have hidden whilst I exploded but I simply smiled sweetly and suggested they delivered it to us very quickly to which surprisingly the assistant agreed. (The “customer is king” concept has little credence in these parts!) I was reminded of when we bought our present bathroom suite. We were still working and living in England and having fun collecting furniture from auctions etc to take to our house in France. We came here at every opportunity. At one stage we had so much stuff that we considered hiring a van. However the cost was so high we bought ourselves a very elderly, disreputable looking 3.5 ton van for a fraction of the rental price. Then we saw a ludicrously cheap display model bathroom suite in a sale in a DIY store, bought it and agreed a time to collect it. We were so busy in those days we crammed an activity into each last second and the idea was to make it the last thing to load into the van and before the drive to the ferry. Unfortunately the shop didn’t honour their side of the bargain. We arrived just before closing time to find it still on display and our only alternative was to dismantle it ourselves. Armed with a screwdriver we just managed to get it all off display and outside on the pavement in the pouring rain of the cold December evening as the shop shutters rolled down. We did make it to the ferry too! We grew to love our old van and ended up keeping her for two years and not the couple of weeks that we intended when we bought her. She never let us er down and kept going as long as we fed her copious quantities of cheap engine oil. We sold her eventually for just a little less than we paid for her. Thinking about the van I am reminded of an example of my previous tempestuous self. Being very old and worn she wasn’t an easy vehicle to drive. I was doing my turn at the wheel returning to England after one trip when I stalled the engine whilst I was driving uphill on huge bridge in three lanes of traffic. I panicked and couldn’t restart her as all the horns started to sound. LSO said something to me to which I took great exception so I folded my arms and refused to drive any further. It ended up with him clambering over me to get into the driver’s seat as the tail-back grew. There was a knock the window and a little old lady from the car behind said “Can I help?” An embarrassed LSO declined her offer, thanked her and we drove off as fast as possible in a cloud of black smoke. Nowadays I’m more like that little old lady. At least he seems to prefer the change in temperament!

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