After a while of nothing to blog, I have something to say but I rather wish I didn’t. On Wednesday night, my mother phoned me to tell me that the previous night my father had had a small, ‘warning’-type heart attack.

Apparently dad had sat down to watch a TV programme about the Grenadier Guards at 8pm, noticed a pain in his chest and was, thanks to mum’s insistance, in hospital before the programme ended. Within a day or so, I’m told, he was looking a lot better: ‘fit to cut the grass’ and just bored and in some discomfort from the shunt in the back of his hand. From my experiences in Kolkatta, I can really sympathise.

Last night dad texted me to ask how to say ‘good morning’ in malayalam to a keralan nurse. (I didn’t know but later found out later that night from a keralan waiter at a curry house that most people simply say it in English anyway. However, the formal Malayalam is transliterated as ‘suprabhatham’ and pronouned something like ‘suprabadam’.) This morning Dad texted me to say he’d been dettached from the monitors, etc, and so could have a proper shower!

Some time next week he’ll be taken to Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital for an angiogram but he’s staying put for the moment because the first week after a heart attack is apparently the most dangerous and so for now he’s better off in a hospital than in an ambulance. Because he was raised as an engineer on imperial measurements, I think he should ask for just under a 28th of an angio-ounce.

My brother is in fairly frequent contact from Iraq by email and has phoned me from there several times since I first emailed him this news. He also frequently contacts his girlfriend by internet chat and has primed the compassionate leave set-up to take messages from us and to be ready to get him home quickly if needed.

Dad apparently also forbade me to come to Worcester precipitately: mum’s interpretation of this is that Dad would fear he’d not been told the truth about his condition if I appeared suddenly. I also know he’s normally self-effacing and anxious for the family to get on with our normal lives, careers and duties. He insisted that mum and Sue go as previously arranged to a scout jamboree today because they’d never get another chance to go to such a world-wide gathering of Scouts. He also got mum to give his Treasurer’s report to the Worcester Scout Fellowship on Wednesday so that as near normal service as possible was provided. I’m not sure I’d be that organised/dedicated under similar circumstances. Still, I have a suitcase packed and ready to go and have told my managers at work that there’s some chance I might need to go at very short notice.

Anyway, I’ll be going to Worcester next weekend for a pre-arranged visit. Meanwhile, despite the better news, the following lyrics (snatched from this entry’s music) seem vaguely appropriate:

I want my dad and I want my mum, a sherman tank and a load of guns.
…
I know the following smut should be censored, OK,
but ‘this shit is fucked’ as they say in the USA.
And they say it in Mexico, London and Jericho,
Berlin and Birmingham, Belfast and Tokyo,
Amsterdam, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan,
Disneyland, Narnia, former Yugoslavia!
…
So just say three ‘hail Jesus-and-Mary Chains’ and two ‘how’s your fathers’,
…
and say goodnight, Jim-bob.
‘Goodnight Jim-bob.’