"Driving Miss Dulcie."

I was up at 6.40 am but did not retch! Normally when I have to get up early my body reacts to the un-natural break in routine and I start retching. I don’t know what is happening to me...perhaps it’s because I am now living upside down.I went with Will to work and drove the car back for today Dulcie and I had a busy morning and needed Roxy. Dulcie was up and ready when I got back at 7.45. She had a doctor’s appointment booked for 9.30 and was not looking forward to it at all. I am pretty sure it was the doctors that she was not looking forward to and not the fact that I would be driving her, but I couldn’t be certain.‘Are you a fast driver, Nick?’ she’d asked at tea yesterday.‘No,’ I said. Will raised his eyebrows in disbelief!I had some breakfast and then we spent some time clock watching. Dulcie went through the jobs we had to do: visit the fruiterer, and the butcher, go to the post office, shopping at Aldi and call at the bank. We looked at the clock, still not time to go. She read out the Aldi shopping list, still not time to go. I took some recycling down under the house and the rubbish out to the bin by the gate and then we sat and watched the clock some more. Finally at 8.45 she said ‘Let’s go!’Will had gone through the route a few times with me and I had checked it out on google maps but I was still pretty nervous as we got into the car. We set off and I drove very carefully, not going too fast, not getting to close to the car in front. I had ‘Dulcie Nav’;“Through these lights, straight ahead, right at the next lights...”The lights were against us. I ended up having to stop at every flippn’ set practically and a few times had to resist the urge to put my foot down and dash through.We arrived at the shopping precinct where the doctor’s was at 9.09 am.“We’ll go get the veggies,” she said.She linked my arm and we got the bag of oranges, a sugar loaf cabbage, a sweet potato and half a jap pumpkin. She likes her jap pumpkin. It’s the only thing that disappoints her about Aldi’s. They don’t sell jap pumpkin. I took the shopping back to the car while she waited on a bench and then we walked to the doctor’s.She had made them some biscuits. She always takes them a tin of her biscuits when she goes. They know her very well but when she had been making the appointment the other day she had had to spell out her name to the ‘new’ receptionist...three times! Dulcie was not impressed.As we got to the door she said ‘Oh it’s her!...D...U...L...C...I...E!”We went in.The new receptionist was sat behind the desk and an older lady was standing over her.“Hello, Dulcie” said the older lady and then went back to instructing the new receptionist about something.( I later found out from Dulcie that the older woman is called Glad.)I left her in the doctor’s and went to the post office to pay the water bill. When I got back to the doctor’s Dulcie was not in the waiting room so must have gone into see the doctor. Glad looked up as I walked in.“I’ll just wait here for Dulcie,” I said. Glad nodded and continued to chat to another woman customer sat in the waiting room. They were bemoaning the cost of parking at hospitals in the area. They looked at me a few times to try and draw me in but I didn’t feel qualified to comment so just kept on reading the posters; ‘The symptoms of whooping cough’,  ‘Do you have shingles?’, ‘Can’t get rid of that cough?...No?..you’re going to die then aren’t you!’They started sharing tales of how they had had to make complaints against hospitals for one reason or another. I was still not qualified to join in. The phone rang and the new receptionist answered it. Glad went back to check on her and the other customer picked up a magazine.‘We support stopping smoking’ said another poster. ‘Having to rush for a wee? It’s not normal. We can help,’ exclaimed another.Glad finished instructing and came back to chat to the customer and they started sharing their ‘induced coma’ stories. Flippin’ heck! If it had been their experience with Pancreatitis I’d be laughing!The conversation flagged and then the customer said;‘So when do you leave?’It became clearer. Glad was leaving and she was shadowing/training the new receptionist.“Friday, hopefully,” she said but she pulled a face which the new receptionist could not see and which I and the other customer took to mean ‘but probably not because this twit needs a lot of help!’‘And what are your plans?’ asked the customer.‘Well, firstly get my will sorted out,’ said Glad.Yikes! I thought she must have a cough she can’t get rid of!“I need to do some cleaning. I need to get my eldest daughter over as well. Do you know she has 10 boxes piled up in her old room full of clothes. I’m going to say to her ‘for my Christmas present do you think you could you sort these?”I was getting drawn in. When Glad went on to say she had a friend who was 70 and the only way she could get into her son’s room, because it was so cluttered with stuff, was through the window, I smiled...that was it, I was now involved. They were looking at me as they were talking.  What could I say?..What could I contribute?...I could feel my blood pressure going up...and I knew that was not good because another poster had warned me about it. Just when the situation was getting critical Dulcie appeared and I was rescued.Dulcie had to sign something and then Glad leaned over the counter took her hand and said;“I’m leaving, Dulcie, but don’t worry Marie will still be here and our new receptionist, here, will look after you.’“I had to spell my name out three times!’ said Dulcie indignantly.The new receptionist looked abashed and started to explain but Glad went on, cutting her off...“My husband died in September, and I have so much to sort out.” She came round the counter and gave Dulcie a big hug.“I’m very sorry” said Dulcie, “it happens to us all.” Men always die first seemed to be the message I was hearing. I was a bit uncomfortable about that.We left taking the empty biscuit tin with us.We called at the butchers for 6 pork chops and then it was back to Roxy and we headed off to Aldi. The ‘Dulcie Nav’ was starting to falter;“Are these the lights we turn at?”They were the right lights. I remember from looking at google maps.Dulcie chose the parking spot at Aldi;“That space there, under the tree.”We spent quite a long time looking at cereal. She picked a packet up, looked at it and then handed it to me saying “does it have iron in it?”“Yes,” I  said.“But it’s bloody 99% fat free!” she said, “and  I need all the fat I can get!”We got everything on the shopping list and headed back to the car. As I was packing the car I suddenly realised I didn’t know how to get back. I had checked out the route to the doctors and the route from the doctors to Aldi, but nor the route home. I just trusted my sense of direction and it worked out fine. We had one more stop before home...the bank.There was an empty parking space right by the door. Dulcie was happy with that. She linked my arm and we walked in. It was quiet. There were only two windows open and they both had customers being attended to, but we stood right by the ‘queue here’ sign.“Look at the arse on that!” Dulcie said out of the side of her mouth, looking at one of the customers leaning on the counter ahead. I laughed out loud! You could hardly miss it.The boss came out of a door behind the counter and opened up a new window.“Oh, we’ve got Bruce,” said Dulcie. We walked over.“Hello Bruce,” she said. I think he came out especially to serve her. I wondered what he thought of me. I may be a pussycat on the inside but on the outside I could pass for a nightclub bouncer!Later on after lunch, I drove on my own over to the local pharmacy to pick up her prescriptions.“Ah,’ smiled the pharmacist, ‘These are for Mrs Rodgers!’It’s absolutely true!Dulcie really is a legend!