Is This Chicken Bad & Broken Doors

Now I'm not talking trivial stuff, I'm talking about things like the rear door falling off my van. Catching covid. Losing my sense of smell and taste. Losing one of my Adidas Terrex hiking boots (I found it in the end, sitting on the side of a layby I was in). Someone has set up a recurring card payment of £41.30 and keeps helping themselves to my pennies.

So where do I start? I know y'all are eager to laugh at my misfortune and to be honest, I have laughed too. I've had to laugh because if I didn't I would most definitely be crying. In fact, there were one or two moments where a tear or seven did fall out but that's hardly surprising really. I'm going to start with the lack of two very important senses. Two senses that we take for granted.

Our five senses just sit there in our subconscious doing their shit, letting us know when we're in danger, when to get excited, when to do or not do something. Two of these senses, taste and smell are highly underrated so I've discovered. I mean when we taste something and we don't like it we spit it out. Or when the milk is bad and we take a swig our sense of taste says "Whoa there soldier, better not swallow that because if you do you is gonna have the shits real bad man!" and we spit it out. It's a similar story with our sense of smell. Just before that bad bit of chicken goes in the frying pan your nose catches a whiff and stops you. We've all been there, check the date "yup that's good" have a good sniff being careful not to touch the raw meat on your lip and "Holy fuck that stinks!" and in the bin it goes. Well I can't do any of that at the moment. It's terrible. I can't smell or taste a single thing. Not. A. Thing. No rotten chicken, no gas leak, no van on fire. No dinner burning, no stinky armpits, no whiffy socks. Not even my 7 year olds disgusting farts that are bad enough to raise Egyptian corpses from a 2000 year slumber. It's the worst thing to ever happen to me and I've been in a month long coma...

Today I went to the back of my van to check the diesel level of the heater tank. I pulled on the handle and opened the door and reached along the inside of the other door to find the other handle and gave it a tug. I felt all weird, like I was rolling over, like the world was turning upside down in slow motion. But it wasn't. My door was though. I was suddenly aware that the door was way heavier than usual, and was pulling my hand towards the ground. Just as the door touched my head I realised what was happening and managed to catch it before it twisted right over and snapped off completely. I just stood there holding this door in a lay by on the side of the road for what seemed like hours. Laughing at my situation. Laughing until I cried a little bit. I had to stop crying because the snot started to come and I didn't have a spare hand to wipe the snot away.

After about an hour of faffing, pushing, twisting, teasing, huffing and puffing (That'd be a pretty good time if I was in bed) I managed to get the door shut again and stay shut. But the ordeal wasn't over, was it. Of course it pissing wasn't. I didn't check the diesel level. So I gently eased the door open again and managed to spy the tank in the corner which was almost empty. Great. Now I needed to shut the door so I could get the fuel can from the other side, and somehow open the door once more and balance the door whilst I filled the tank from the can... What a fucking palaver...

Anyway, between shitting myself from food poisoning 18 times a day and spraying deodorant in my face every ten minutes to see if I can smell anything yet, I have been quietly working on a new "thing" behind the scenes. I have finally been able to advance my passion for writing and establish myself as a freelance writer. All will be revealed in due course but I can tell you, it's pretty damn exciting!

I must go now because I can see smoke. I would normally smell burning first but, well... You know...