Empty Monkey (Dot Com) - The real-time story of how the book is written

Well – well, quite an interesting day.

We had Xmas lunch at Nick’s.
We arrived an hour early and were met by Roy, an old friend of Mandy’s, I had said to Mandy ages ago that he was so mean-spirited, obnoxious and rude, that I would never visit again if he was there, but to hell with it, season of good-will and all that, so I asked Carol to be nice to him, talk to his dog and let me help Nick in the kitchen.

He was not rude to us.

I had asked Nick to let me do the sprouts, and he promised I could, but when we arrived he told me he had prepared them the day before and didn’t let on in case I didn’t come.

The meal was typical Xmas fare, and when Nick, Carol and I had finished, we noticed that Roy had left half of his unfinished.
He was still wearing his straw hat, and seemed to be staring at his plate.
Then, very slowly, he started to tip forward.

I grabbed his shoulder and got up to steady him as I thought he may have drifted off to sleep.
He was very heavy, and Nick had to help me prevent his head from dropping into the remains of his dinner.
At this point, I realised that he did not seem to be breathing. I felt his hand, looked at Nick and said “His hand is cold”.
Nick said loudly “Wake up Roy”, but he didn’t.

It was then that I noticed that Roy was not breathing.
I slapped him sharply on the back – nothing happened – so I gave him another one, harder this time.
This may have been a mistake. It was an instinctive response, and I will never know.

It provoked a strange sort of gurgling noise, like when you use a plunger to unblock the sink, and the water suddenly goes down the plug-hole.
Then there was a sucking in of air and an asthmatic gasp or three.

Oh good, I thought, he is breathing again. Premature sigh of relief from me and Nick.
What a waste of a good dinner, it came out like a bilge pump, all over the floor, missing the table and Roy’s lap, trousers and shoes. Nick looked at me, and I looked at Nick, we stole a glance at the floor and agreed that neither of us liked what we saw.

I held on to Roy’s shoulders to stop him falling off his chair while Nick went to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of water and a cloth.

By the time Nick returned, Roy’s dog had almost finished gobbling up the regurgitated meal, and Roy was conscious again, white-faced and looking several years older.

Half an hour later we were all sitting in the lounge drinking coffee and watching the Queens speech in true Brit style.

So passes another Xmas meal, wonder what next year’s will bring?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.