Two Tramps walk into a wood...

The other day Eileen asked me if ‘I ever got so bored that I could cry’.

At the time I answered no, but things have changed. O.M.Q! (As in, Oh My Queen, as I’m mentally preparing myself for obtaining my British Passport and swearing allegiance to Lizzie) – O.M.Q, I’m so bored that I could...cry? Or eat. I generally only cry once a month and as it’s not that time I’ve embraced eating, with the effect that my work trousers are growing a tad snug and my middle is starting to resemble something rising in a muffin case. As Theresa (my parents’ lovely and now sadly deceased domestic worker) liked to tell me, “I’m coming nice and fat.”

Of course I blame Eileen for my weight-gain, it’s nothing to do with my self-control. You see Eileen (barring the depression and occasional smuggling of soiled sanitary pads) is quite normal. What I need is the crazy German Frau. She knew how to keep me on my toes. With her we lived in a state of constant post-war paranoia involving prolonged curtain-twitching; she would wake me at 2am to study the movement of cars travelling up and down the road and then phone up the local neighbourhood watch to report our findings.

Due to Frau’s anal prolapse I had to follow her around constantly on high alert for little nuggets of poo that would fall miraculously from the billows of her skirt and skitter across the floor to lodge themselves under an armchair or side table. The first time I met Frau I was totally unprepared for the parachuting poos that skittered towards my shoes (not so much ‘diamonds on the soles of her shoes’ round here). Being in the first days of the job I was eager and naïve and so thinking that Frau had dropped something important I bent down hastily to retrieve her rabbity-droppings. Luckily, my self-preservation kicked in and I recognised the nature of that dubious matter before I touched it, as Frau was rather slow to add, “Oh, don’t touch that dear…not vithout some gloves.”

It reminded me of one of my father’s favourite jokes: Two tramps are walking through a wood when come upon a giant steaming turd blocking their path:

Tramp 1: Hold up, I think that’s a shit.

Tramp 2: [Bends down, eyeball mere centimetres from the apparent excrement] Yes, it looks like a shit...

Tramp 1: [Bends down and eyeballs the potential ordure] Yes, definitely looks like a shit.

Tramp 2: [Studying the prospective turd intently, breathing in great lungful of turd steam] Yes, it smells like a shit…

Tramp 1: [Examining the probable faeces while breathing in great faecal lungful] Yes, it unquestionably smells like a shit.

Tramp 2: [Bends down and gently licks corner of the suspected turd] Yes [turning turd around in his mouth like an expert wine taster] Yes, it tastes like shit…

Tramp 1: [Bends down and gently licks corner of the ostensible stool] Yes, [licking lips] it certainly tastes like shit.

Tramp 2: THANK GOD WE DIDN’T STAND IN IT.

That’s what life was like around Frau, the constant fear of you (or her) standing in her goaty nuggets and walking them around the house. Initially I was more shocked at the idea of the old girl going commando (daring in your 90s) for how else would those turdles shit, I mean, hit the ground. I was amazed to discover the old girl wore not one, but three pair of undercrackers or grundies (as the Aussies call them). The sheer mechanics of it still amaze me.

And now, here I am reminiscing about the good old days with the defecating German and coming up with no fewer than 9 synonyms for poo. Dark days.