Irritable Morning Syndrome

Simon is in Moulins at this very minute, having been summoned to an ‘examination’ by the MSA (mutual insurers for farmers) in respect of his recent ‘Professional Illness’. He has gone armed with a barrel-load of literature about the evidence required for a diagnosis of Lyme Disease, proof that it is recognised as a professional illness by the various Powers That Be, and a wad of receipts and prescriptions showing all the charges that he believes the MSA should pay for in their entirety. Oh, and a French dictionary. He likes to be prepared.

It has not helped that the summoning letter did not explain the precise reason for the appointment. Being of a positive frame of mind (for the moment – for a change) I think they just want to see how he is, and be certain that he is fit to continue work. Simon is perhaps slightly more paranoid about it. He has gone prepared for, and expecting to enter into, a lengthy debate about the veracity of his diagnosis, and whether Lyme Disease can be classified as a ‘maladie professionnelle’. I suspect that he misses the ‘old days’, and is relishing the possibility of an opportunity to smugly brandish the incontrovertible evidence gleaned from his painstaking research, so that he can win the argument. Simon is a small-print sort of person, and he is Very Good At It. I think he will be disappointed if he doesn’t get a chance to prove a point. In French.

I fear that I may not have been as supportive as I might have been prior to Simon’s hurried, early-morning departure. It was my turn for a lie-in, and when he popped his head round the bedroom door to ask brusquely whether I was ‘stirring myself’, about ten minutes before he was due to leave, he unfortunately dragged me instantly out of a vivid dream in which I was frantically and single-handedly trying to pack the contents of a three-bedroomed flat into a trailer with only an hour to spare. In my dream, Simon had already left, saying that there was not much left to do, and when I had phoned him to say there was no way I could get three heavy double beds and a sideboard into the trailer on my own, he had told me that of course I could, and why didn’t I stop fussing and just get on with it. Argh! Too many realities intermingling this morning, and I got my feeling responses muddled up. Poor Simon.

Meanwhile, back in (one of) the real world(s), Max is suffering a bad attack of The Stubborns. The Stubborns is an illness peculiar to Rhodesian Ridgebacks of a certain age, and is characterised by no obvious symptoms other than a sheer bloody-minded unwillingness to do anything at all. He can get up and walk if he wants to, but he won’t. He can eat his food, but he won’t. He can go outside for a wee and a poo, but he won’t. And if you try to help, or persuade, or encourage him to do any of those things he gets a right strop on, so that you fear for your fingers. For a dog who is too weak to move his back legs, he is surprisingly strong when it comes to digging his heels in.

Since Simon will be in England this weekend visiting his daughter, and his newest-of-the-new twin grandsons, any decision to call the vet to end it all will fall to me. So, when Simon returns from his run-in with the MSA, with the big fat French Dictionary, I will need to busy myself with working out the French translation for ‘Please come and kill my dog because he is a stubborn, grumpy old git’.