A letter from Attenborough

Steve is told by Nurse Humble that his pan-species list is full of string
The following post was dictated by Steve Gale to Nurse Humble:

I have settled into the Attenborough Home for Confused Naturalists as well as can be expected. I am in a room with two other patients - both, not surprisingly, middle-aged men. Colin is a steam railway enthusiast who recites the Settle to Cumbria 'Fells Rocket' timetable from 1955 incessantly. Last night, Sister Humble caught him with a piece of 00 gauge model railway track that he had hidden in his pyjama bottoms and this caused quite a rumpus. Colin was dragged away by two porters and we haven't seen him since. The other chap is a science fiction geek who says that his name is 'Quark, Lord of the Sith' although I know that he is really called Reginald and is an accountant from Reigate. Together we muddle through the day, being read to by doctors from a B&Q catalogue.

I realised that I had a problem when I was served supper. I tried to convince myself that the lamb chop, cabbage and potato before me were three additional species for my pan-species list, and became agitated when I couldn't decide if the gravy was, in fact, tickable. After a soothing injection I was placed in a chair facing a poster of that nice Monty Don from Gardener's World.

This morning I attended my first 'reasignment' module. I was taken into a room where there was a strange metal vehicle that Doctor Masters called a 'supermarket shopping trolley'. I was taught how to control it, how to place items within it and also how to converse with the other people that I would find sharing the same habitat as the trolley.

I was woken in the night with Nurse Humble attacking something on the floor by my bed with a rolled up newspaper. Within seconds two doctors had joined her, and they gathered something up in a tissue, all looking my way with worried looks on their faces. I thought that I heard someone mutter something about "it being lucky that he hadn't seen it", but in this pleasantly fuggy state I find myself in, I'm not sure what they meant. That's all for now, I have to go now to find out what a wife really is and what a wife expects from her husband. I seem to distantly remember that I have one...

Comments

Rob said…
I used to have that wooden swivel chair they've given you. If the bearings are still knackered it's no wonder you're permanently listing. (Come to think of it mine didn't have castors..)
18 May 2011 at 19:10
Graham James said…
Does Nurse Humble bear a striking resemblence to Eric Idle or Terry Jones, Steve?
This pan listing (which is an appropriate title as you do it at Beddington Sewage Farm) has obviously pushed you over the edge!
18 May 2011 at 20:42
Steve Gale said…
Rob - it might well have been your chair, as the home was on the Isle of Wight!

Graham - I went over the edge long ago...
19 May 2011 at 08:09
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