Confessions from a Health Farm

‘I’m going to classes now,’ says Mum. ‘Do you think I look any different?’

‘You look a bit paler, Mum,’ I say.

‘Don’t say that! I was thinking how well I looked. I’ve lost half a stone, you know.’

‘Where did you lose it, Mum?’ I ask.

‘Round the bum, mostly,’ says Mum, with an honesty I could have done without.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I say hurriedly before she can impart any more revelations. It’s not nice listening to your parents talk about their bodies, is it? It is bad enough having to look at them.

‘The Lady Beautiful Health Clinic,’ says Sid. ‘That’s what I’m on about. More and more people are becoming worried about the condition of their bodies. You mother is only following a trend.’

‘You want to be careful, Mum,’ I say. ‘You remember what happened when you tried that yoga.’ I have to suppress a shudder when I think about it. Everywhere you went in the house there would be Mum standing on her head against one of the walls. And often without any clothes on! Yoga Bare, that’s what Sid used to call her. Luckily she bombed out in the Padandgushtasana position and we did not hear any more about it.

Further discussion is interrupted by the sound of the front door bell.

‘Who’s that?’ says Sid whose reaction to the unexpected reveals a permanently guilty conscience.

‘Probably Dad’s lost his front door key,’ says Mum. She leaves the kitchen and pads off to have a peep through the front room curtains. A couple of minutes later she returns.

‘There’s a gorilla standing on the front door step,’ she says.

‘A stuffed one? With Dad?’ says Sid.

‘No, it’s carrying a briefcase,’ says Mum.

‘Probably something to do with one of those soap powder promotions. Have you got a packet of Tide in the house?’

‘No!’ says Mum, getting all agitated. ‘You keep him talking while I nip out and get one.’

I grab hold of her just before she disappears out of the back door.

‘Hold on, Mum. We don’t know it’s Tide. It could be any of them. You don’t want to spend a fortune for nothing.’

There is another long blast on the front door bell followed by frenzied banging.

‘Sounds like your father,’ says Mum.

‘Let’s have a look.’ I follow Sid into the front room and peel back the yellowing net curtains. There, indeed, is a gorilla carrying a briefcase. It looks towards the window and jabs its finger at its stomach.

‘I think it’s trying to say it’s hungry,’ I say.

‘No, you berk. It’s trying to say its zipper has jammed. Don’t you recognise your own father? He looks more like himself in that than he does in a suit. No gorilla ever stands like that.’ A small crowd of onlookers has assembled at the gate and the gorilla makes a familiar gesture to them.

‘Yes, that’s Dad all right,’ I say. ‘I suppose we’d better let him in.’

‘About bleeding time!’ says Dad’s muffled voice as he charges through the door. ‘A man could suffocate in one of these things.’

‘Now he tells us,’ says Sid. ‘Another couple of minutes on the doorstep and all our troubles would have been over.’

‘Belt up, sponger!’ croaks Dad. ‘Help us get it off, for gawd’s sake!’

We struggle with the zip and eventually manage to release an escape hatch for Dad.

‘Phew!’ says Sid. ‘Are you sure the gorilla isn’t still in there with you? It doesn’t half pong around here.’

‘That’s the bloody tube for you,’ says Dad. ‘You want to try strap hanging from Charing Cross in that thing and see how you feel.’

‘Did you swing from strap to strap, Dad?’ asks Sid, lowering his voice and beating his chest. ‘Me, father Lea. King of de Northern Line.’

‘Shut your face!’ snaps Dad. ‘It’s a lovely thing. I couldn’t let it go in the incinerator.’

I feel I should point out that my revered parent works in the lost property office and is inclined to ‘save’ certain articles which he considers might be lost to Sir Kenneth Clark, or handed in to the keeping of undesirables – e.g. their rightful owners.

‘I don’t understand why you wore it,’ says Mum.

‘It seemed the best way of getting it home,’ says Dad, mopping his brow. ‘I’d have looked bloody silly carrying it, wouldn’t I? This way I was anonymous so nobody knew who I was. The coon who was collecting the tickets at Clapham South took one look at me and started running across the common.’

‘I bet you weren’t even wearing the head-piece, then,’ I say cheerfully.

‘At least he could run,’ says Sid. ‘Look at you. Puffing and blowing like an old grampus. You underline what I’ve been saying to Timmy and Mum. You’re all overweight and unfit. The whole country is dragging round tons of surplus weight. That’s why we’re in the mess we are at the moment. Pare off those extra pounds and the natural vitality will start flooding through your veins.’

‘Sounds disgusting,’ says Dad. ‘Is my tea ready yet?’

‘You’re the worst of the lot,’ says Sid sternly. ‘There’s a permanent depression in the middle of the armchair made by your great fat arse while you watch telly. The only exercise you ever take is jumping to conclusions.’

‘How dare you!’ bellows Dad. ‘This is my house you’re standing in. You keep your filthy tongue under control. I don’t have to listen to this.’

‘Look at him!’ says Sid. ‘That’s a sick face, that is, mark my words. See those treacherous little blue veins running through that sea of scarlet porridge? That’s not healthy. That’s a face living on borrowed time.’

‘He doesn’t look very good, does he?’ says Mum, peering into Dad’s mug. ‘Still, you’ve got to remember he’s been like that for years.’

‘Stop talking about me as if I’m not here!’ squawks Dad.

‘That’s it exactly,’ says Sid. ‘Very prophetic words. Soon you won’t be here. You’ve got to get a grip on yourself. Like I said, you’re living on borrowed time.’

‘If you ever lend me any, you won’t see it back again in a hurry,’ says Dad bitterly.

‘What are you getting at, Sid?’ I say. ‘Are you starting some kind of keep-fit class?’

Sidney’s lip curls contemptuously. ‘Much more than that,’ he says. ‘Keeping fit is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the whole spectrum of physical and mental welfare that I want to embrace.’

‘Watch your language in front of my wife,’ says Dad.

Something tells me that Sid has been got at. He does not normally come out with sentences like that unless his chips were wrapped in the Weekend section of the Sunday Times.

‘Who told you about that?’ I ask.