Life amid Catriona’s cleaning regime

Earlier in this run of glorious October sunshine I was languishing on the bed in the middle of the afternoon not feeling up to much. The phone rang. Catriona. Could I manage to get down the path to help carry two heavy shopping bags back up to the house? ‘I’m on my way, mon chou’, I said, maintaining my customary ‘willing helper’ tone of voice.

I went down the path in my pants, which could pass for thin shorts in the event of an encounter at the bottom with one of the neighbours. From here it’s a short climb to a dusty plateau were we park the cars. I gallantly refused Catriona’s offer that we carried a bag each, saying that I’d be better balanced with both.

As we set off, Catriona slid on some loose stones and lost her footing. I looked round and she was on her back in the road. She had turned her ankle over, she said. She thought she had heard something go ping. She was in a great deal of pain, she said. She wept. She sat weeping in the road for five, maybe ten minutes. ‘You can’t sit here in the road all afternoon crying, ma petite puce,’ I said. ‘Let’s try and stand you up.’ I hauled her up on her feet and she gingerly put her weight on the injured foot and took one hobbling step, then another. She wanted to proceed unaided from now on so I stepped back to watch. ‘You’ll soon walk that off,’ I said.

Holding on to me in the difficult stretches, and to walls and branches, we made it as far as the stone staircase leading up to our front door. The staircase has an iron rail for the unsteady, the exhausted and the frail to lean on.