Old Mate often says to me: “They walk among us” when I do something stupid and it’s something I hear frequently for obvious reasons.
When she was alive, my mum Edna and I had similar habits, not all good.
For instance, one day, mum complained of feeling crook in the belly.
After some questioning from Sheila, Edna conceded that maybe it was the peanuts she had eaten.
On a question of how many, she replied: “Just a whole packet. Maybe 500 grams?“
I am often reminded about the time I ate a whole kilo of plums with disastrous consequences, or the time I ate a large tin of anchovies. The list goes on.
So, I have heard that saying many times, like when I woke up with what seemed like a broken foot, in agonising pain.
I told my dear, understanding, caring wife that it was similar to an injury I had previously, when I was staying in Brisbane overnight.
Anyway, I hobbled off to work and it got worse.
On further inspection, it was red, hot and swollen.
It seemed I had the dreaded gout.
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I have always laughed at blokes who complained of gout but now that I have it, it isn’t bloody funny.
“How could this be?” I asked myself and my dear wife.
She asked the obvious question: “Maybe it’s something you have been eating or (with a smile on her face) maybe you can’t drink beer or red wine anymore?”
I thought, “My goodness. This is a real emergency.”
So I did a bit of research and came up with an explanation, after a CSI-type investigation from Old Mate.
It went like this…
She: “What did you eat and drink before your foot got sore?”
Me: “The night in Brisbane, I had eaten a Thai chilli seafood dish washed down with hearty shiraz. Last Tuesday, I made a salad mid-afternoon with two chillies and some pickles cut up among it. Then that night, a chilli vegetable curry washed down with a hearty shiraz.”
She: “You idiot! Why did you make that salad when you knew you were having chilli vegetables after it? Oh, I forgot what I was dealing with. They walk among us.”
The only thing that made her smile more than seeing the pain I was in, was the thought that maybe it was the wine, not the chilli.
Ashley Robinson is a columnist with Sunshine Coast News and My Weekly Preview. His views are his own.
