The Auld Lad

‘Let's take him out to the front so he can get some sunlight,' my missus says.

'He's not a bloody houseplant,' I say.

'Oh, just do it. I don't know who's more miserable sometimes, I swear.'

So I tear Da, cursing John Wayne for a yella' son-of-a-whore, away from his cowboys and wheel him blinking and bewildered into the light. My missus unearths a tartan blanket from the dog basket under the stairs and uses it to bind him up tighter than a lunatic, before we plonk ourselves in the garden, a trio of gnomes bored rigid by the inanity of our plaster cast lives.

'Isn't this lovely?' Herself grins beneath her Elvis shades as she thrusts her cooked cleavage at the sun's leery gaze.

Da's snort loosens the ectoplasm of the head cold still haunting his passageways, and he gobs a golf ball of goo into the garden. It's a potpourri of rusty tea mingled with geriatric pheromones that attracts the local birds of prayer, their moustachioed lips gossip-twitching.

You can hear Mrs O'Reilly's fat lungs gasping lustily from across the street, mushroom clouds of lavender blooming. She's beaten to prime position though, as flirty Mrs Mullen rests her bounteous bosoms on the fence, each one the size of a snoozing cat.

'Well Martin, god you're looking quare well. Heading to whist later?'

'Nope.'

'Ah, that's a shame. Don't tell me you have a date?'

'I have.' Da chews coppery satisfaction. 'With m' own right hand.'

The sleeping cats jiggle to life. Pink titters iron out the creases of Mrs Mullen's cheeks. The more my missus' face turns the heating up, the harder I laugh through both barrels.

It doesn't happen very often but, every once in a while, me and the auld lad really see eye to eye.