Linear view vs. Masonry View

Tag Archive for ‘Story’

Stonewall

Stonewall

He took of his cap and dried the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The linnen cap was already soaking from sweat. He gazed towards the sun. Sun burning his eyes.

He called out to his son to bring him some water. His son hurried to bring him the water bottle that he handed over with his head bowed. With a trembling voice he told his father that the water was almost out. His father bent down. Held him hard around the neck and with his dark growling voice asked him; “Well why don’t run to the well and get some more”!

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He took the bottle and writhed out of his fathers grip. He could feel the slap in the air behind him. With a long harang of swearword the father resumed his struggle with a large stone in the dry soil. As he placed it with the others in the stonewall he looked at it. This would help keeping the neighbors sheep in their place. But the poor soil in the field he was clearing would not feed many mouths.

Was it this stonewall? Today hidden in the forest.

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Mulle Meck

Mulle Meck

The continued story of a black car with a soul.

One of my first blog posts was about a car me and my son bought for him to learn mechanics. Read it here. Now I had to sell it as my son is no longer with us. It was with mixed feelings. But I’m convinced that the VW Golf has a soul, or a ghost. So Mulle Meck provided me with some more stories.

Bilprovning

In Sweden all vehicles needs a safety check up every year by a government controlled station, “Bilprovningen”. I was convinced there would be some things to fix before it was OK for another year. I sat down in the car that we named “Mulle Meck” and turned the key. Nothing! Not a click or cough, nothing. The skilled mechanic, me, popped the hood and looked down in the engine room. Trying to look knowledgeable. Waste, it was only me there. Maybe the car would be scared and start!

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So without doing something else I tried to start again. Yes, you guess was correct, nothing. The German engineers back in 2000 had in their mind that a petrol car need electric power to start. Hidden like a treasure under a plastic cover I found the battery. Do you know how high you jump touching even a flat car battery? About a meter is my estimate, landing firmly on your posterior.

Engine kittens

My father-law had a battery charger and with some instructions from him I managed to charge the battery. Trying to avoid setting a new battery jump record I disconnected the cables. As I turned the key there was lights on the dashboard and after some very nice words, in german, to the car I turned to start. Ignition, Mulle Meck was spinning like a kitten! I could almost go on YouTube! Mjau!

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As I expected Mulle Meck did not pass the safety check. The threshold boxes was infested with corrosion, Covid-19 for cars. Parking brake was too weak and there was an oil leakage. My wallet screamed in fear, seeing all those kronor fly away to a greedy garage owner. It was time for me and Mulle to part by selling it of. I was crying tears and Mulle Meck dripped oil on the parking.

Lockdown

In Göteborg, a two hour drive away there is a company buying old cars after a checking it first. So I arranged a time last Friday. So the day before I started up the car. It started only after multiple attempts. To charge the battery I let it run while I put in the spare wheels in the back to go with sale. As I shut the booth I heard how the doors locking with a loud click!

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Car running and the only key was in the car! I tested all four doors without any luck. Last change was the booth. With trembling hands I reached for the handle and pulled. I think I heard Mulle Meck laughing when it had left it unlocked. Luckily I am very agile still even if I passed fifty years. Hoping nobody could see me I wiggled my way in and managed to open the back door. From there the front door was easily opened. Saved!

Last laugh on me

On the way to the dealer Mulle Meck was running like a Formula One car. Don’t worry, I did not drive that fast. A mechanic from Barcelona started to check the car by taking a short test drive. Came back and placed it in the garage with the engine running. Open the hood and got out of the car to check for vibrations in the engine room. He closed the door and the creepy sound of looking doors was heard! Mind you this Halloween season! The mechanic looked at me and asked if there was another key!

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You can now hear the music from Alfred Hitchcocks horror movies. You know when they abuse the violins. By now I was convinced that there would be no sale while crawling in from the booth. I’m not kidding, the car was laughing! There was a sale but as you can imagine I didn’t get much paid. Enough for a treat at Göteborgs best sausage place. Gourmet Korv in Nordstan shopping mall.

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Stroke part II

Stroke part II

This is the second part of the story of a stroke. The first part you can find here. I considered to call this part Strike but that could give misleading associations?!

More corridors with bright artificial light. The hospital architects should be forced to ride in a bed along the corridors. They might come up with a better idea for lighting that does not poke patients eyes. Some decorations in the ceilings perhaps? He was laying there with the early signs of boredom and anxiety of what was happening in his brain. Also this time he lost count of the lights as the orderly wide-charged the corners.

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Noise

Arriving in the ward he had to tell the story again to yet another nurse. The emphatic nurse heard his loud complaining stomach and offered something to eat. After the stomach has settled down he was taken in to a room. Now is past midnight but the room was not silent. Had he arrived in the engine room? Maybe a sawmill? No it was his new roommates snoring! Call the Work Safety Officer, earplugs needed! He was tired so he managed to doze off. Only to be woken up by the night shift nurses coming to draw some blood and measure the blood pressure. This goes on every two hours until the morning. They let people know it is not a hotel.

At six o’clock new nurses comes in and start drawing blood. He asked the nurse if the blood bank at the hospital was running low? The nurse only answered by showing her fangs (was there blood?). Almost like hearing a silent alarm the nurses was simultaneously ready with him and his roommates and went out the door with a wooshing sound. As the door closed it fell down from the ceiling. Boredom! He lay there with his arm folds looking like a teenagers face from all the needles. It is Amazing how much sound the human body from four older men can produce without anybody saying anything. Again he was thinking about having some art in the ceilings. There should be a hash tagg #hospitalceilingart!

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The Doom of Boring

The door opens. Strange that the doors closes with a silent woosh but opens with a bang! A nurse comes in and attaches him to a portable heart monitor. Gluing on the sensors at his chest. Later when they came of he wished he had gone over his chest with the razor. At least the nurse tells him he can wander around in the corridors of the ward. He soon realized that the monitor was there to make sure he did not leave the ward. Too far away from the ward the monitor set of an alarm. Now it came at him from three angles, the ceiling and each end of the corridor. Boredoom!

The only thing breaking the looooooong hours was the ever occurring blood drawing and pressure measuring. He never thought that breakfast, lunch and dinner would be such highlights of a day. Even when he was taken away by an orderly to a new test with a machine going “ping” or “pong”. He was amazed by how far into his body the probes could reach. As a Star Trek fan he found his dream come true when entering the loudest machine in the hospital. That is apart from his roommates. The Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine (IMR)! At least he was offered earmuffs for the sound. The result was that the ears was the only part of his body not going blue from cold. He was pleased to hear they found something in his head! Not so rude at this machine!

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Not so pleased when the doctor later told him they could confirm that he suffered a smal, but yet a stroke. The words hit him like punch right in the face. Would he now turn into a walking zombie like the other patients in the ward? They reassured him that he would probably be fully recovered but they needed some more test to figure out why he had this stroke. He was convinced the nurses only wanted him to stay since he was the youngest inmate, no sorry, patient in the ward.

Needles and pins

He had to spend a few more days at the hospital to find out how many differents sizes of needles there is before he was sent home. Finally this is over he thought. Just before he was leaving the doctor gave him a long list of medicines he needed to eat for the rest of his life. So this was the reason for all the probing, to make sure the pills would fit the throat. As he went of in the Taxi did he not see the doctor carrying a golf bag with a medical company logo?

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Invisible

Invisible

He was grunting to himself as he poked through the waste basket. Without looking up he moved to the next. Now mumbling louder he started to poke this one also. He looked up triumphant as he found a returnable bottle. A half eaten hamburger was also collected after he taken a bite.

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People walked passed him as if he was not there. Amazingly nobody bumped into him even if the railroad station mall was really crowded at rush hour. Even the mobile phone zombies managed to avoid him. It was like there was some kind of advanced radar system keeping the two worlds apart.

I wondered why this man ended up here. Dirty and worn down clothes. Hair that was a long time away from Head & Shoulders. I recalled the commercial with that hockey player telling the team. “First shampoo, then balsam”. I didn’t think he would care if he only was allowed a shower.

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I was disturbed by the waitress that came with my coffee. When I looked out for the man again he was gone. Suddenly I saw him between two security guards leading him out from the station mall. Out in the cold. Strange that the only ones saw him was the security guards. What was the risk? Probably that he dampen the shopping spirit by reminding us what can happen if we stop fitting in.

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Stroke

Stroke

A strange tickle in his left arm and side. Like the feeling when a part of your body is sleeping even if you are awake. He rationalized it with sleeping in a bad position. Sleeping poorly in the extra bed at his sons flat. He got up and made breakfast for him and his son. Sat down to work as his son went away to a lecture. The tickle did not stop and now he could feel it in his leg and his face. He tried to walk it of with a tour around the campus without any success. The school and work week was finished so they decided to drive the 150 kilometers by car to home. He drove out of the city and half way home. The son took over the driver seat after a lunch stop at a fast food restaurant on the way.

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The call

The tickle was still there and now he started to be a bit concerned. So he went online with his phone to find information regarding these symptoms. Nothing fitted very well and as soon as he arrived home he decided to call a medical advice service. He was set on a long waiting time but he soon got to talk with a nurse. Half way through describing his symptoms she interrupted declaring she connected him to the emergency service and at the same time instructed them to call out an ambulance! Now he was spooked and surprised. The alarm operator told him nearest ambulance was thirty minutes away but an emergency doctor vehicle would be there in five minutes. The questions flew through his head. He was not sick. It was just a numbness in his left side. The doctor took an EKG to check his heart and gave him some pills that would make his blood flow easier. He told him that he suspected a stroke. A STROKE!? But he was a man in his prime age. Only 54 years old and very fit. It cannot be. No smoking and hardly any alcohol. It must be something else.

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ER

Ambulance came but he did not want to go. Afraid to leave his autistic son alone before his wife got home. Finally he gave in but insisted to walk by himself to the ambulance. It started already in the ambulance. The probing and piercing. Afraid of needles? Try get a huge one stuck in your arm while the car is moving 100 km/h on winding bumpy roads. A nice chat with the ambulance guy before arriving the hospital an hour later. There the nurses stripped him of the clothes and left him in a thin gown. Not sure if this was part of the examination but he soon started to shiver of cold. Next test is patience, waiting, waiting. Oh, a doctor opens the door. Looks in her papers. Wrong room! A low rumbling breaks the waiting boredom. What is it? A helicopter with more patients? After a while he realizes that it is his stomach complaining over the emptiness. A new nurse comes into the room and wonders what he is doing there. Symptoms for the tenth time. The nurse answers with a frown the question when he can see a doctor. Soon!

Corridors

After a decade or so she enters the room and the symptoms are presented again. Now shorter and to the point. The doctor looks concerned and orders an X-ray. An orderly comes in after some more waiting. With a short nod he releases the breaks of the bed. He takes him on the most fun you will have in an hospital. The Bed Ride. Before your emagination runs wild. This means you get transported to an examination in an expensive machine in the other end of the hospital. The orderly was very skilled and avoided bumping in to the other bed traffic. The man was thinking the metal rod sticking up at the head end of the bed was not there for the drip bottle. No it was like the flags little children have on their bikes to be seen by cars.

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He was already freezing when he entered an even colder room. Tocked in so he could not move his head. Difficult since he was shivering of cold. He was moved into the X-ray machine and the machine and his stomach competed over who was loudest. Out of the machine and the orderly rapidly pushed him back to the same room. He lost count of the lights in the corridor already after fifty something. The clock was close to midnight when the doctor came back and told him that there was nothing in the pictures of his head. That was RUDE! It was decided that he needed to stay to the next day for more exams and probing.

To be continued….

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The Reunion

The Reunion

She had moved away and gotten married in southern France. Now he was on his way back from that long last reunion. It had been as perfect as he dreamt of all those years.

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She was so beautiful as he remembered. Even if the years had put some fine lines around her eyes. But her smile. Her smile hit him like a hammer in the gut as she stood there at the train station in Marseille. He always thought that her smile could melt a solid rock. He was thrown back to a high school kid and his legs could not move. She waved. Still smiling but now with eyebrows frowned. Questioning why he stopped.

As the platform was almost emptied with people his legs finally started to function again. They met in a warm long embrace. He felt his whole body melt into her arms. He could not hold back his tears. They were tears of longing and time lost. She broke loose from his embrace and held his face in her hands. Those soft warm hands. With the thumbs she dried his tears of and gave him a kiss. He was unprepared so it was short. They looked at each other. Still with her hands around his face before they joined in a long kiss. A twenty year of waiting kiss. He could see it from the outside like in a movie. You know when the camera circles around and the song She with Charles Aznavour playing.

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With a warm feeling inside he told this to the two young backpackers he was sharing train compartment with. He did not have to tell them this. They had only started some small talk as they realized they were from the same country. As the train pulled out of Paris Gare Du Nord he continued his story. The two youngsters listened with big ears and interested eyes. He decided to leave out the first night they had together as they arrived to her small Vineyard outside Marseille.

When he heard that her husband left her he had struggled with himself to dare that first letter to his youth love. The love of his life. Finally the longing got the better of him and he wrote. His own marriage was already over as there was no love. He wrote with the pieces of his shattered heart. The heart that broke when she did not returned after a year as au pair. He waited in turmoil for the reply. Lost several kilos as he could not eat or sleep. After a week he got her reply that he opened with trembling hands and sweat dripping from his forehead. He had to start over several times to finish as his eyes was blurred by tears of yearning.

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He called in sick to work. Booked a train ticket and sent her a letter explaining when he would arrive. He was that confident that the feelings were still there. Confident that if they met the spark would burst into flames. Now he sat here telling his story to the two boys. Going back to finish of his entire life and move to the south of France. Move to her. She who shattered his heart now so gently mended it piece by piece.

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Man Cold

I have a cold and all men out there knows what I am talking about! We try to be brave and show a good spirit but it is impossible to get out of bed. The wife just giggles at me and mumbles something about giving birth. But let me explain how it feels.

The brain feels three sizes too big and pushes hard to make room in the skull. There is however a jolly gang of workers banging away with sledgehammers, pickaxes and shovels while singing out loudly trying to reduce the size of my brain. They all have Hot Work permits since the temperature is now very high in the entire body. They move around in the head with a big old Steam Train on a poor track. You know like in the old days going cathunk, cathunk. The train blows the whistle on every lap around the head stopping with screaming breaks at the station between the eyes. As the foreman realizes that the brain size is not reducing fast enough he decides to use dynamite, no correction, he has been watching Myth Busters so when in doubt he will use C4! They all cheers after the explosion and since it was a good blast so lets do it again, and again!

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The throat feels like a dessert but my nose is working hard to build up a flood to wet it. Unfortunately this flood streams out into my face instead and blocking any attempts to get air though the nostrils. This leaves a man gasping for air through the mouth instead with the result of sand dunes start to form in the pharynx. The water missing from my throat has now started to come out of the biggest organ in the body, the skin, rivers and rivers of sweat. This is hard to understand through the cooking and banging in the head as you lie there shivering from cold in your soaked bed. When the wife comes back from work you realize that the sand in your mouth now have turned into glue as you try to speak. She gives you that no pity look again before she heads out to the TV. She looks at a program where they strangle cats? Oh, it was American Idol.

When you try to get out of the bed you realize that the guys working in your muscles have gone to your brain to support the marry gang to reduce the brain. Resulting in you crawling on all four like a baby over the bedroom floor to get to the bathroom. Every step, if you can call crawling that, feels like somebody is shooting arrows into your body. On the bathroom floor you find out that a wet body that meets tiles is very slippery. The merry men in your head cheers and whistles as your head hits the floor thinking it was a C4 blast. If you manage to find your way back to the bed without getting lost in the closet you find yourself in front of Mount Everest. Trying to climb back into bed makes all the guys in your muscles go to their Union rep and complain. As they go on strike you fall asleep on the floor dreaming of demonstrations, screaming crows and rioting. As it is escalating with sirens sounding louder and louder the left and right side of your brain decides to start a civil war firing artillery at each other.

After a very long time, a few days, you start to recover and the merry men in your head finally managed to reduce your brain size to fit your thick skull. The muscle guys however demands vacation due to the overtime helping out the brain guys so your body still feels bruised. You stumble out to the kitchen just to find the To Do List from your wife!

If you still have any strength left or if you do not have a cold and like this please Share, Like and Subscribe!
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