I have possibly just experienced the worst week of my life ever.
It began quite nicely. I tootled down to the Albert Dock and met up with Vinny who was living in one of the flats there. There was a whole taradiddle about a rich friend and a Mercedes in the covered garage but, to be honest, what was fact, fantasy or downright fib I neither know nor care.
I was simply quite happy when the clothes came off and a smooth, lithe, lightly tanned body appeared. And then the legs went up in the air and I fucked him. And we continued in that vein for some time.
The oddest part of the experience came when I looked out of the window and over the Mersey to see Cammell Laird ship builders' yard sitting on the bank opposite. That's were my mum's two brothers used to work through the war and after.
I came on his back, mopped up and left.
Well, I shall never know if it was the slightly dodgy taste to the bottle of port I finished off or something to do with Vinny but, on Saturday, my digestive system decided that it needed to purge and, for the rest of the weekend, I was never far from the bathroom.
Oh, I felt rough at work on the Monday having nearly turned myself inside out over the weekend. I can tell you that I did not feel at all safe when I coughed.
On the Tuesday evening, we had a longer than usual staff meeting at which a Sports Coach took us all through some things we should all be looking at. It was an interesting session. I ended up demonstrating shoulder stands. The Coach sort of left me there as he talked to my colleagues. I let him know that I was over sixty and he jumped to assist me in coming down from the position.
I had let Ross know about the session in advance so he was prepared for me to be late home. What I wasn't prepared for was Ross's state when I opened the door.
He was sitting on the sofa in the front room. His hands shaking, his speech slurred, his left hand was numb. Iwas reminded of my granddad and so I really thought that he might have had a stroke.
On Ross's bidding, I rang 119 for the NHS telephone triage service. The medic I spoke to was concerned and suggested that I take Ross to A&E immediately. He thought that Ross might have been having a reaction to the new drugs in his system or, like me, that it could have been a stroke. Either way, someone needed to take a look at him.
I looked at my box of books waiting to be marked and then at Ross. I drove him over to Aintree Hospital's A&E with the box of books on the back seat of the car. I sent emails to work to the Senior Leadership Team and to my colleague. I sent texts to Ross's parents and, good for them, they agreed to come over.
It seemed ages while we waited for Ross to be seen by the medics. They immediately organised for a set of tests to be done but ruled out a stroke fairly quickly and went for the drug reaction solution. Basically, the trick now was to flush the drugs out of Ross's system and to start off all over again.
Ross's parents arrived and I got home at about 1am. They stayed with him until about 3am by which time he was sorted and stable and would be kept in overnight to be pumped full of fluids.
I woke with the alarm at 6am and, using automatic pilot, got myself into work for 7am. At about 8:30, my colleague arrived and greeted me without preamble about her dismay concerning my lack of communication with her. It emerged that she had not read my email and, in fact, had a policy not to read work email at home.
I suggested that she might like to read the email before she said anything else to me. She went off and returned shortly to explain that she understood that I was busy. Then she turned on her heel and completely blanked me for the rest of the day.
I arrived on the school parking lot at about 7:05am on Thursday morning. I was carrying a box with my duly marked books in it. I stumbled and fell to my knees. The books stayed in the box but the shock of the fall caused the top of my coffee flask to spring open. Coffee spilt all over half of the books. It was the only time during the week that I momentarily wept.
I survived work and was settling down to marking that evening when there was a knock on the front door. Out of the blue, there was Ross's brother Sam with his friend Jess. She took charge of the situation and let us know that Sam had had a preliminary HIV test which had given a positive indication. There was much concern expressed and an acknowledgement that the diabetes that Sam lives with was much more likely to kill him these days than the HIV would.
And then suddenly I realised what had not been said and so I stood up and went over to Sam and said "You do realise that this changes nothing don't you and that we will stand by you whatever." We did a big hug and he burst into tears.
Catch-Up Note:
Sam later had a second full test which came back as being negative so the first was a false positive. He was nevertheless very grateful for the support.
On the Friday morning, my car broke down on way to work. I found out later that the timing belt had gone and that it would take close on £1,000 to fix it.
I could weep except that I can't. I'm just going to have to keep going for the present.