With Love

[for RDG; here's another recent nonfictional e-mail to a girlfriend]

Dearly Beloved Scumbag,

So… there I went again. Walking the streets of my town. I had done some groceries and came down Lesser North Street. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed the window of a shop selling luxury items of feminine clothing. There was obviously a sale going on because fluorescent yellow and purple pieces of paper had been attired behind the glass, on which texts in black marker were written. What was on them anyway? Not that I cared, but I looked nevertheless, falling for the advertisement heffalump trap. “All articles on the tabble 20% off”, the sign said.

Tabble? What the heretic’s balls is a tabble, I wondered. Could it be a term of the trade, known by all diligent housewives and other members of the shoppers clan? Could it be some sort of standard measurement, as in ‘three tabbles per square meter?’ Or another word for coupon? Get your hot ‘n’ trendy tabbles now! Cool tabbles, fresh from the factory! I really didn’t know… It occurred to me that the intended word could have been ‘table’, but this seemed too bizarre as a writing error. So I stopped in the street, looking around me for someone to seek counselling from. But there was none such person there. Everyone looked unapproachable and walked on without noticing my despair. I hesitated. Could they… could they mean ‘table’ after all? I peered inside and saw something of a table there. But a tabble… ? This was insufferable! I had to know and stepped inside, despite all my reservations.

A little bell sounded in the back of the store and eventually, a remarkable woman came through a stained glass windowed door. Hey, look at that, a solitary man in a women’s clothes store… how peculiar. But she had to attend to the customer. She looked just like Emma Thompson playing Professor Trelawney in the Harry Potter films, the clairvoyant one: thick glasses and big bush of bleak red curly hair.

‘Hello, can I help you?’ ‘Erm, yes… this may sound a bit strange, but I just walked by the store and saw the sign in the window saying “all articles on the tabble 20% off”… and now I wonder what a tabble is… or that it possibly meant to say table… ’

Et cetera… that’s how it went today. Big fun!

Lines

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lady bug
The quick brown fucks humps over the shady dug
The licked brown cock humps Topher the lady dog
The brick brown socks trunks over the crazy hog
The sick frowned hoax pumps Dover the Danish bog
Uh, chicken down ox bumps into the shaven frog
The stick town cops slump Grover the grainy hog
The slick frowned bitch creeps under my blood and bones
The blissful tits drip into my flooding boat
Full blown pocks galore in creepy cuckoo clock
The stillborn ducks junk over the ready blog
The frisk howls Molochs rumps the pastry plot
Fish stick clown rocks lumps stove her baby’s mug
Yer Mick down Jacques thumbs chauffeur the gravy flog
Apparatjik warlocks cups mower that stainy rug
A brimstone luck from the daily dawn

Symptons

Dear M,

I had meant to wish you the very best of luck with your knee operation today, but I’m afraid you will not read this before the blessed event. Once again, I was eliminated by a severe migraine this morning. It’s a very strange affliction with me, or so I think. It manifests itself differently in each person of course. My mother hasn’t got it at all, and neither does my brother. My father has it though. With him, quite often even for a number of days or longer. And you used to have it too, I clearly remember. Do you still? Anyway, in me, the thing displays strange, for me unheard of, phenomena. That’s why I want to write them down.

It doesn’t always, but it often goes like it did this morning. The announcement came last night (11pm): seeing blind spots and a ‘funny feeling’, some sort of exorbitant excitement with a ‘half-headache’. This morning, I woke up after wildsavagedenserampantcrazy dreams, and an unduly long sleep (10am). Fullblown headache.

Dragging downstairs… quickly two tablets of paracetamol and ibuprofen with instant coffee (because I diagnosed that caffeine deficiency was at the root of this ordeal, since I hadn’t drank any coffee yesterday, instead of my usual morning dose of five). Then I sat in my chair (10.15 pm) waiting for the pills to kick in, ready for the storm…

The second phase is worse: the headache steadily building up strength, with developing an intolerance for even the minutest photon of light (closing the curtains, hand pressing down hard over my eyeballs)… total incapacitation… lying down as much as my chair allows, even rolling on my side… rolling and getting chilly, shivering, having strange visions… from endless illuminating, fluorescent blue plains to naked bodies with ladies performing graceful indecencies upon themselves… cold darkgreen seas and a bunch of bearded Little Men in an Oompah Band…

Headache getting worse even, rolling in my chair, hands over my closed eyes… getting the urge to vomit (don’t worry, dear boy, my record still stands since that terrible day in October 1996 in the Sarphatistraat in Amsterdam. And you were there!)… Hovering between daydreams and unconsciousness… And then, suddenly, literary within a scope of three to five minutes… it's gone! Complete relief. This was 12.30pm. As if a storm had been raging at war power, just to stop instantly. Very strange. I got up from my chair, a bit shaky with a dull feeling in my head, but 95% better than the 3 minutes before. Have you ever heard of such a thing?

My oh my, it seems stupid, cruel and wrong of me to write to you about my own petty ailments, after your horrible operation I mean, but I hoped you found it interesting, or even amusing. Anyway, I hope your operation went like a snip and you’ll recover quickly, running the marathon like a Kenyan, beating Mike Powell’s long jump record, outtapping Fred Astaire, be a Sherpa, hauling tonnes up the Himalayas… et cetera et cetera. So I wish you a kickass operation with dropdead sexy nurses, flowers and kisses from your wife, eternal fridge-drawings from your children and lots of icecream afterwards… love you.