The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

have
been able to see with his own eyes.
    The lady with whom you state you have a
sales contract is in fact an 80 year-old Alzheimer’s patient, living at home,
and completely unable to comprehend the terms or implications of such a
contract. Because she is not ‘compos mentis’ she is not held responsible in law
for the terms of any contract she enters into. In fact, I, as her son, have her
sole Power of Attorney for exactly that reason, so that any legal contracts
have to be agreed and signed by me in order for them to become binding on her;
I have given no such consent at any time to your company.
    If you wish to pursue this matter
further through the courts, then I suggest you prepare yourself and your
company to be portrayed in the public press as the kind of outfit that
browbeats elderly, defenceless mental patients into parting with their life
savings for home improvements they neither need nor require.
    I look forward to hearing from you in
due course,
    Yours faithfully,
    Martin Slevin.
     
    We never heard from them again, and I felt I
had achieved a little victory for Alzheimer’s patients and their families
everywhere.
    That said, I must admit that it was a very
nice door.

3.
The Little Girl In The Radiator
     
     
    ON THE MONDAY BEFORE that Christmas, I
came home from work to find mum sitting in one armchair in the living room
watching television, and a great featherless and headless bird sitting in the
other armchair, as though watching the box with her.
    It had been positioned in the armchair the
right way up, so that its enormous, drumstick legs pointed down, and it was
resting with its back against a cushion facing the TV screen. It had been
placed there while frozen, but it had begun to thaw out and a great wet patch
was now spreading out behind and below it across the fabric of the chair.
    ‘What’s this, mum?’ I asked, expecting her
to explain to me how some long lost relative had come to stay with us for
Christmas, or something like that.
    ‘It’s our Christmas turkey, of course,’ she
replied, as though I was an idiot. ‘I got him from the supermarket this
morning. I couldn’t resist him. Isn’t he smashing?’
    There was a paper tag on one of the
creature’s legs which announced proudly:
    GIANT CHRISTMAS GOOSE.
    WILL FEED TWELVE PEOPLE.
    The damned thing was the size of a
Rottweiler.
    ‘How the hell did you get it home?’ I asked,
struggling under the weight of the mighty bird as I hauled its frozen carcass
off the armchair.
    ‘A man gave me a lift back,’ she said.
    ‘What man?’ I asked.
    ‘He looked like your Uncle Bernard,’ replied
mum. ‘Only fatter.’
    A feeling of déjà vu swept over me.
Her eyes never moved from the television screen.
    ‘Never mind,’ I sighed. I wasn’t going
through all that again.
    I hauled the huge goose into the kitchen and
threw it onto the floor. It landed with a sloppy splat like some sort of
suicidal nudist, with splinters of ice flying up into the air. I looked at our
small fridge. Shaking my head, I knelt down and took out most of the contents
and two shelves. I could just about get the goose in now, but I couldn’t shut
the door. I sat back and sighed. I’d not expected to spend the evening
wrestling with a headless 25lb bird. Like I said, it’s amazing what you get
used to.
    I hauled it out again, put the fridge back
together and wondered what to do next. Christmas Day was still nearly a week
off, and unless I could cold-store this thing somewhere it wouldn’t be fit to
eat. I checked our small freezer: it was also full. (I established this by
quickly pulling out the three drawers, one after the other, seeing they were
stacked, and shoving them closed again, without examining their contents. Only
later did I discover it was actually packed with 50 packets of chocolate
biscuits; but that’s another story.)
    I thought about the people I knew who might
have a fridge large enough to take a giant goose, but I couldn’t think of
anyone. I