Flabbergasted Gallivanting

[seriessix]

I was flabbergasted when I read the story last week concerning the frozen Eel Olympics. I can only surmise that these annual games were the influencing factor for my grandmother’s unusual choice of walking stick (a frozen eel).

 

Her doctor recommended she partake in a daily three mile walk to alleviate a minor malady she picked up after a reluctant day trip to Doncaster. Never one for routine she chose to take a different route each day, initially this posed a problem as she could never tell if she’d covered the prerequisite three miles. However, after applying some basic physics she deduced that the time it took for an adult sized frozen eel to melt was the exact amount of time it took to walk three miles.

 

What my grandmother didn’t account for were the seasons and in summer time her walks became shorter and shorter. And so her malady intensified and she had to be taken to a special hospital in Leeds were she endured many tests and violent invasive physical therapy.

Six months later she quite literally returned a different person, she appeared to be forty years younger, her hair had gone from grey to brown and she had acquired an eye for fashion. This once miserable, diminutive, hunched old lady was now horse riding and playing golf with local businesses people and famous snooker players. She seemed to be burning the candle at both ends with her wild gallivanting and indulgent lasciviousness. Soon the bright lights of Sheffield were not enough for her and the pull of pastures new was too strong. She upped and left for Paris one autumn afternoon, over the next three years I received a post card from her on my birthday. These communications were minimal to say the least, the first two just had the letter E scrawled on them and the third had the letter L.

 

And that was the last I heard from her, for all I know she could be in Milan now or maybe she’s moved back to Sheffield and hasn’t told me, who knows?