Doing a Dot

There was a plotline in Eastenders recently in which Nick, the son of the elderly Dot, tried to convince her and everybody else that she was going mad, by hiding things like her keys and purse, putting sleeping pills in her tea to make her dozy, and inventing phone calls and saying he'd told her things which he hadn't.

The same sort of thing is happening in Grumpy Grange and Mr Grumpy is insisting that it's me who's going barmy. Take yesterday for example. On Tuesday I set the HD recorder to record both Eastenders and The Unsellables, the morning property makeover show. All went fine for two days, then yesterday neither prog got recorded. "Oh," said Mr G with a smirk when I wailed, "it always works perfectly when I set it." "But I did everything right, I know I did!" I moaned. All I got was a pitying look.

Last night I had a bad night due to some allergy that meant I kept waking up coughing, with my nose and eyes streaming. (I had eaten two chocolates during the evening so it could have been that. Choc has done it to me before.) At 7 am the door slammed and I heard Mr G driving off. 'Funny...' I thought. 'He never said he was going anywhere.' I dozed off again and half a hour later he slammed back in, waking me up again.

This time, I got up. "Where were you?" I asked, through a yawn. "Supermarket. I told you I was going there first thing." "No you didn't," I protested. "If you had done, I'd have mentioned a couple of things I wanted." I was treated to a another pitying look. "I told you last night and I read out a shopping list to you," he insised. Well sorry, he didn't. There was no mention, and no list. My memory isn't that bad. But he was adamant that he had, which upset me as now I have to make a separate trip, with no car as I don't drive, to pick up my own stuff, and in addition he's insisting I pay him half for the bill he racked up this morning, which contained nothing at all that I wanted.

It has dawned on me that perhaps he is trying to sabotage me. Maybe he turned off the recorder on both occasions. Maybe he know damn well that he didn't read me a shopping list. For heaven's sake, he didn't even have a list. I searched his pocket, and the shopping bags. Another little thing... who's had two strokes and a brain haemorrhage that has wiped out a goodly portion of his little grey cells? Yes, Mr Grumpy. So maybe it's not me that's going mad, but he who has already gone!