Up and down.

It’s becoming a leeeetle bit of a tragic farce now. Phone rang this morning, not long after my alarm had gone off. Early. In fact, I was still dead to the world and didn’t hear the phone when Caroline leapt out of bed.

It was Mum. Badly out of breath. Being carted off to A&E.;

She’d woken up unable to breathe and Dad had called an ambulance. Four of them plugged her into things and carried her away, with my Dad left behind, wondering what was going on.

We got over there pronto and realised we’d better imagine settling in for the day. I left it an hour and rang the hospital. Turns out Mum had run out of some of her meds and this caught up with her rather suddenly. So, assuring Dad we’d both be on hand, Caroline unfolded the laptop to try and make headway on an essay, and I began a multi-pointed dash through the south coast rain to run errands – main one being, to see Mum.

She’d been moved to Acute Admissions by the time I arrived, and she was stable. But under a mask and drowsy. Various tubes in her arm. As I sat with her a while, I looked at her and thought: this is Dad’s primary carer?

It seems likely she’ll recover fine once the missing meds balance out in her system – but she’ll be in for at least a night and possibly two. Think we’ll have to stick around for Dad all night. We’re waiting on some test results today from a sample from Dad that Mum managed to get to a lab yesterday, smart lady. If it’s not the rampant Norwood bug, or whatever it’s called, they’ll admit him to hospital to start trying to get some food and fluids into him at last. He’s had a month of sickness and diarrhoea now; a month.

Mum and Dad live at the top of the hill. At the bottom of the hill, meanwhile, just a skateboard ride away, a rather different major medical moment is overdue – Kev and Fee’s tiddler. They both keep scaring me with emails and texts, but so far these have been all about dancing elves.

So it’s all a bit up and down here at the moment. Good job I’m not trying to run a business single handed, eh?

Waiting.

Saw Dad again yesterday. Things are in a bad way.

He’s not improving his ability to eat or keep his stomach settled. A month of this in his condition is… not good. The virus seems too hefty for him to shift, which sounds like the bug that hospitals across the UK are apparently struggling with. Don’t know.

All I know is, Dad is basically very ill. And we all feel helpless, while waiting for tablets to work and doctors to call.

At the same time, I think of my brother-in-law’s father, pastor of their big Baptist church. The chap who married us, in fact, and a big part of our family in Sussex. He’s currently in hospital awaiting a delayed re-bypass operation to try and stop an infection in the original valve replacement, done a few weeks ago. Doctors have had serious expressions around his bedside over the last two weeks. Another larger-than-life man in a grave condition. Another family trying to get on with normal stuff while waiting around for news. And praying.

Thing is, this is normal stuff. And under the circumstances, so is praying. Let’s just see how today pans out.

Growing up and getting down.

Number of reasons to feel old this week. As usual, I don’t really – but I really should. Because, apart from anything else, they tell me it’s exactly twenty-five years since Thriller was released.

I queued for that record when it came out. Or at least, I kept having to go back to John Menzies in Christchurch to get new copies of it because there was a whole funny batch of them badly pressed that made Billy Jean jump. ..And with a courageous stiff upper lip that would make one of Queen Victoria’s finest cavalry front-liners proud to stand next to me, I admit that I bought this fabled Michael Jackson epic along with George Michael’s beat combo debut – Wham! Fantastic! I did. I just admitted it, there. What have you got now?

So Thriller seems both quainter and sweeter second time around. Found it in a bargain bin at Borders on a rain-lashed Friday evening, after a Goodbye Old Chum drink with Kev; little baby Marshall is scheduled for much-anticipated poolside entrance tomorrow. Jeeeeepers. There again – a reason to feel old.

Another reason to feel old is watching your Father do enough aging for both of you in front of your eyes. We went over to help mine celebrate his 73rd today – but there’s no escaping how his current illness has given him extra years. I won’t put into idle words here how it feels, but he and Mum seem to have everything queuing up against them. And I love my Dad, and my Mum.

When I cycled from school to spend my meagre Advertiser delivery money on Thriller the first time, I was enjoying a very happy end of childhood – and looking forward to a very groovy adulthood, thanks in giant part to my groovy parents. Though ‘groovy’ in the Eddie Izzard sense, rather than the would-honestly-ever-dance-to-Thriller sense. Like most people’s parents back then.

As an aside, today – against the natural order of things or not – most of my be-parenthooded friends seem to be doing a remarkably good job of being groovy in a way that wouldn’t have made sense twenty five years ago – ie: still reasonably sexy young Got Its. As much as any of them ever had it, they still seem to have the funk for getting down –no different to two and a half decades ago to my eye. Is this right? Or am I old after all? When do we all become Real Adults?

But look at us as a generation – we still bang on about blummen’ Star Wars and Stardust and Atari home video games and Thriller – and refuse to fully accept we’re no longer that age, even as our heroic creatives and everything else we love slide into mediocrity and decline.

And a bloody good thing too, after all. Maybe. All I know is that, full blast in the earphones, Thriller is making me fug round the studio like a disco zombie – I am doing the dance, yes. Damn right. Do it too. Get the record and do it too, with me.

Because, however grown-up life is trying to make me, I’m still going to fight it. Somehow. And help my Dad fight it. ..Somehow.

Though I’m not sure suggesting a moonwalking class to Michael Jackson would say it right for him – or assure him I’ve taken up the mantle of responsibility at last.

Which would probably reassure my Dad after all.