Brain

The phone rang at 3 a.m which would have been alarming a few months ago, but has become the norm.  Lizzie asked me where I was, they were dressed and waiting.  I told her I'd be there at 8, as arranged.  Go back to bed I said.  How? she said. 
When I turned up at 8 they were in bed.  
I no doubt got flashed on the drive to Foix, but we had to be on time for Doc Bories who was the key holder to the safe of all our solutions.
He asked Bobby why he thought he was here.  Bobby shrugged and said it was probably because he was mad.  The Doc said we don't use that word in these parts.  Bobby sighed and explained that he'd had a meeting with a couple of farmers but they hadn't shown up.  Doc B raised his eye brows at me and I shook my head.  Bobby fell asleep in his chair. 
Doc B took the opportunity to show us the inside of Bobby's head, using the mouse to tilt the scan every which way.  There was a lot of black around the fringed grey.  It looked like his brain had been nibbled away at the edges.  His diagnosis was Alzeimers, vascular dementia and Lewybody disease.  I marveled at Bobby's capacity to have so much wrong with him and squeezed his hand which woke him up. 
The Doc asked him about his education.  He said he didn't have any.  Lizzie took over and said that he'd left school at 16, no he didn't have any A'levels or a university degree, Bobby looked at me, laughed and said 'what a bitch!' I shushed him and he went back to sleep.
A blizzard started outside the window.  A white out that obliterated the hills opposite for several minutes. 
Doc B asked if I could wake Bobby up and asked him what he did as a job before he retired.  He told him he'd been unemployed.  I told him he'd been an aerial photographer.  He wrote it down. 
Doc B moved onto memory testing Lizzie.  I asked Bobby if he wanted anything, a pee? a coffee? He squeezed my hand and said he wanted a large bloody glass of wine. I whispered that I felt the same and he went back to sleep for a while longer.
Two hours later Doc B handed over prescriptions and said he'd got all he needed for now.  Lizzie and Bobby shuffled out of the room and I stayed behind to ask a few last questions. 
I found Bobby in front of a map of Occitanie.  He pointed to Foix, turned to me and said 'we're here'.  I asked him to show me where he lived and without a waver he pointed at Mirepoix. 
Doc B left us with his secretaries to fix up further appointments and said he'd be back. Bobby picked up a leaflet on vascular dementia which featured a picture of bearded old man looking confused.  He said 'I don't look like this bugger do I?'  I said no, but you could do with a shave.  He shrugged and put the flyer back. 
We waited a while and then Bobby said 'do you think he's gone to the pub? Maybe we should join him'. 
Although I got Bobby's logic completely, it struck me that he was turning into Father Jack.
The doc came back, threw some dates at me, shook our hands and tugged my ear lobe which left me more confused than my da. 

I walked up in the hills to mull all this over.  Bobby's nibbled brain had had so much in it. It had the colours and sounds of Africa and South America, the changing constellations of the night sky above the Saudi Arabian desert, it had learnt (the hard way) that you drink rum in the Caribbean and not red wine. It knew what it was like to fly into the eye of the storm, it had stored the sound of the Blitz from afar, it knew the tricks of avoiding prostitute's advances  in the bars along 'Vagina Avenue' in Guyana (maybe? was it?  I'll never be able to check the country now), it knew how to do cryptic crosswords, it had digested Wolf Hall dozens of times, it knew how to make home brew and could tell the difference between a Dakota 3 and a Dakota 4. 

In spite of the cold wind I took 5 minutes to sit up at the cross and watch the snow storms move across the Plantaurel.  Bernie dropped a walnut shell at my feet.  I threw him a stone and kept the shell.  

I picked up a hand full of damp oak leaves, pushed them into the empty shell, then added a couple of rose hips for good measure and headed home.