PARASITES COST By R.A. (Milton) O’Keefe

Wow! How many times a day can you go to the lav? How long is a piece of string?

Age, not content to humiliate me with grey (aka transparent) hair, pink to purple blotches and everlasting scabs on forearms and legs, lumps and growths under arm and betwixt bum cheeks and Nigel knows what on unseen back, has for the last three years subjected me to an annual bottom lip sting. That’s my mouth I’m talking about for those of you with imaginations faster than your reading skills. For three years now each February the centre of my lower lip has become a burning hellhole that requires the constant soothing of Luca’s Papaw Cream. How much more proof one would need of mortality I don’t know unless you were to count the following which thankfully has not yet become an annual event.

I hasten to warn that the following is rated MA and protest that it is here documented as my contribution to the evidential bank of scientific knowledge, rather than a blatant ploy to gain sympathy.

Some three months ago my as till now perfectly functional waste disposal unit (bowel I believe but I’m no doctor) began to malfunction. I remember a radio lecture, um maybe sound grab, after all I was able to follow it from start to finish so it cant have been too long, by my great friend the scientist Dr. Karl Krushilinski when he described the magnificence of the ‘bowel bladder human waste evacuation machine’. The machine that sorts waste product, just as Visy must do, into solids, liquids and gases and directs them to the appropriate orifice ( I do love that word but love of course is not scientific so I shall henceforth cease to make any reference to it) Now whilst my bladder is tolerably functional for a man of my age my bowel has completely lost the plot. Not entirely its fault I’m sure, its probably experiencing early bowel altimers, however whatever the cause it creates a great many difficulties.

Any expression of evacuation, some subconscious or even unconscious such as the wake up fart, can result in soiled underwear or worse. I can no longer piss as a gentleman does from a standing position without risking disaster. This necessitates a great deal of risk taking in public where I’m forced to use pans rather than my favoured bail. It would be no surprise to find I’m infected with some parasite bred by Bunnings in the hellhole they call our toilet. I’ve yet to make inquiries about adult nappies at the pharmacy and am reminded in this respect of my embarrassed inability as an adolescent to ask any pharmacist for prophylactics. I always knew that I would be unable to pronounce it and would speak so softly that I would be met by a series of ‘pardons’ and ‘whats’ compounding my embarrassment and pronunciation problems. When the time comes I shall certainly heed the lesson and go to an out of state pharmacy.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with what will no doubt become known as ‘my proctologist’ to get started on the round of tests and inspections his profession deal in. Perhaps my condition will gain a name that will be more socially acceptable than ‘something wrong with my bum’ on a doctor’s certificate.

In other good news, Alice is being sent to New York next month to represent her magazine at Oakley’s new sportswear launch. Four days in Soho with travel and keep for a fashion launch by a glasses company was an obvious call for a women’s health mag don’t you think? Well they all have women as part of their customer base don’t they. Alice has convinced her employer she should stay a couple more days to interview some top proctologists

That’s all now for you non readers, congratulations to you and Mart, Kell. I don’t wish to pressure but if you are marrying in the UK and you want me there, as of course you do, you’d better set a date for this October.

Love you all,

Robert





Alice kits up for those wet and frozen streets of New York……..At

I have fond memories of this building that used to be the nurses quarters for Prince Alfred Hospital when nurses were the acknowledged slaves of doctors. It seems wrong that it has been totally abandoned for years now.