I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [92]
‘What was that? “Can all those hours be taken in one go?”’ I knew she’d said no such thing, but I was keen to try to make this as interactive as possible. ‘Good question,’ I continued. ‘No they mustn’t be used all in one go. Instead the allotted hours may be taken at any time in the next month, but in units of no more than three hours.’
This system – flexi-grief, you might call it – may sound odd, but I knew the blues could strike at any moment. Just like a young chimp raised by humans, your grief can seem totally under control. But one day that grief will reach adolescence and dish out a frenzied and unprovoked simian beat-down, I explained as we accompanied Mum to the mortuary (her mum, not mine).
What would happen if a person took a straight 36 hours off but then grief hit when that person was back at work doing, I dunno, her employer’s quarterly underwear shop?211 You can’t very well just wipe your nose on his ice-white cellular briefs and carry on as if nothing has happened. Marks offer a wonderfully forgiving returns policy but even they would draw the line at snotted grundies.
And how glad I was that I had insisted on spreading those 36 hours across the month, because we had problems a couple of weeks after the death. My assistant was busy double-checking my Sainsbury’s receipt for any instances of over-charging. I just saw a flicker on her face. I leaned over.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes. I thought they’d diddled you on the kidney beans but …’
‘No, I don’t mean that. You looked like you were about to cry.’ I demonstrated this by doing a sad face then lifting my fist to my eye and waggling it.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Good. I just wanted to check on you,’ I said in an ‘arm around the shoulder’ kind of way, although there was absolutely no physical contact between us. ‘Because your lip was wobbling. It looked like you were, y’know, thinking of things you should’ve said.’
Suddenly my assistant burst into tears. So she had been upset after all. The little fibber! I didn’t mind, though, she was a mum down. I pointed to a box.
‘Tuck into those tissues. They’re laced with aloe vera so you can be as rough on your nose as you want.’
In the end she found the whole thing harder than anticipated. I’d said she could take 36 hours overall, but when we totted it up at the end of the month, it came to almost 40!!! In other words my assistant had loved her mum 12% more than I’d calculated. That was fine, though, not a problem at all. Ultimately, you can’t precisely gauge amounts of sadness. And I actually wanted to help with the healing process. Not least because it was dragging me down a bit.
I got her straight back to work. To start the healing process, I had her buy and assemble, then disassemble and return, a gas barbeque.212 What she didn’t know was that I already had one, I was just trying to keep her mind off things. Namely her racist mum, or lack thereof. But every cloud has a silver lining, and I suppose my assistant’s loss is the black community’s gain. Not that life is ever quite so clear-cut. She may have been one of the most profoundly prejudiced people this side of Eugene Terre’Blanche, but she also cooked an excellent shepherd’s pie. Shades of grey, everybody, shades of grey.
Both of my own parents are also thoroughly dead. I have to be honest and say I wasn’t too cut up when Poppa213 passed on. Our relationship had been so complex I could write a book on it. (What do you reckon, HarperCollins?!)214 For a time I was determined not to shed a tear over him, so if ever I felt myself welling up – useful tip this – I’d just think of all the bad things about him. I soon felt better. It’s not what he would have wanted, but in a way that helped.
The first and worst death of the lot was Mum’s. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to lose your mother. But HarperCollins have insisted I try. Their suggestion is that I think back to how I felt at the time of her death and use words that relate to or convey those emotions. So where to begin? Well unlike someone else’s mum, she certainly