In Praise of Whims

My mate Steve - who I mentioned earlier on in this blog, before the recent ice age thawed - has been going through a bit of a hard time of things lately. He's just moved house, with all the attendant hassles that that provides, his new job (which seemed tailor-made for him) is being ruined by a boss who seems to have no clue how to actually deal with people, and he was due for an operation on Monday (and although he's a sizeable bloke who can readily deal with most stuff that life throws him, the very mention of needles or blood has him donning a dress, clasping a wrist to his brow and swooning like an old-time silent movie heroine. "Big girl's blouse" is the medical name for his condition, I think). So he's not been a happy man lately.

I try to get up to his neck of the woods and visit him, his wife and his wee gem of a daughter as much as I can, but he lives quite far away so I don't get to see them as much as I'd like. We phone each other a lot, but it's not the same as drinking a few beers and talking shite in person.

Anyway, his wife was having a few of her friends around on Saturday night, and Steve didn't really fancy cowering in the corner while drunken women cackled about him all night, so he phoned me up and arranged to make a trip down to mine for the night. "We'll catch a movie or just stagger around a few pubs," said he. "Sounds good to me," I said. And hung up.

And then the fortuitous whim struck. Watching a film or crawling around various pubs is something that I can do anytime - Steve very rarely ventures back to our home town (long story), but every time I go up and visit him he asks about mutual friends who I still see all the time, and every time I visit Steve our mutual friends (that makes them sounds like communist sympathisers) ask about him.

So I thought I'd cut out the middleman. Almost a surprise party. Cooked a three course meal - Cullen Skink, roast chicken, and Apple Crumble (the dishing out of which was accompanied by a roar of "Llllllllllllets get ready for Crrrrrrrrumble" which I thought was funny at the time) - and invited a bunch of friends who Steve hadn't seen for (literally) years.

And a damn fine time was had by all. I haven't laughed so much in ages. It's the power of the whim - anything that had been overly organised just wouldn't have been as good. It was a wee group of people who hadn't been together in the same room for quite a long period of time, but as soon as we were, it was like we'd never been apart. Whimtastic.

So far, so rosey-tintedly good - the only fly in the ointment is (and how rubbish is this) I have no idea what Steve's operation is actually for.

He's definately told me - as I said, I go up and visit them as often as I can, and I remember him mentioning it, and I remember us talking about it (at great length), but there's always a lot of beer and other forms of extravagant alchohol involved (he's the perfect host), so the details seem to permanently escape me.

He went for his operation on Monday, but apparently it had calmed down a bit so they didn't want to operate. Which doesn't help me at all. If he'd been limping or wearing an obvious bandage, I would at least have had a bit of a clue.

It's not like I haven't been angling for clues either - "So, what's the actual procedure?" "Well, they just knock me out and remove it." Not helpful.

Any suggestions for leading questions would be much appreciated.