Jane and I drove to South Terrace to pick up an admission form for St Andrews hospital where Jane was to have a medical procedure.
After hastily parking my Suzuki, I walk towards the entrance of the hospital. While walking, I fiddle in my jacket pocket for my mask. My mobile phone must have wrapped itself around the mask. As if my mask was a slingshot, out flies my Samsung into the distance. I pick up the phone and the face has been wiped. ‘Blast!’, I say, or perhaps it was stronger words.
I then need to go to Vodafone on Sunday afternoon. Leaving home, I arrive at Greenhill Road and realise I have no mask in my pocket. I turn around and rush home. Nearly break the front door lock, grab another mask, then slamming the door behind me rush back to the car. Jane was in the toilet. She thought it was as burglary. (I realise later, there were two masks in the glove box.)
I arrive at Vodafone at 4.55pm, just in time to buy a new Samsung phone.
On another occasion, I was going down an escalator at Burnside Village. This time, there go my glasses. Forgetting where I was, I bent over to pick them up. Trying to regain balance, I was nearly a COVID mask casualty.
One solution I found was to wear a mask under my chin nearly all day.
Watching footy on TV with Jane, I made a spur of the moment decision to go to a takeaway where I put my mask on outside the shop. While sitting inside, I realised I was wearing two masks—one over my nose and one under my chin. No-one said a word, well, not to my double-masked face.
I kid you not—it isn’t easy being Robert.
Burnside Writers Group 