Carol’s Column

Uncle Walter in long-Johns

"THERE'S a man who looks like Father Christmas at the door. He's wearing his underwear and says he's my uncle", said Jamie at the ungracious hour of 7am on a Saturday when Barry didn't have a rugby match, Ralph was spending the day with a friend and Nicky was sleeping.

I buried my head in the genuine Austrian duck-down pillow made in Hong Kong and gave a gentle snore or two.

"Anyway, he's got two suitcases and he says he's come to stay."

I shot out of bed, caught my foot in the sheepskin rug and tripped into the dressingtable. Thereby gaining a bruised nose, ear and rear.

It was a good start to the day.

My husband, Rip van Winkle in a striped, unisex T-shirt, snored on, oblivious of the drama being re-enacted within a metre of his stocking-stitched, bed-socked flat feet.

On my way downstairs, I almost broke my neck when I fell over the two suitcases on the landing.

The landing? What the hang were they doing on the landing, my landing?

Battered and worn, they'd seen better days. As had their owner, who, dressed in what looked like white, woolly long-Johns, was sitting at the table, sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice and spreading marmalade over a thick piece of wholewheat toast.

It didn't really matter that I'd never seen him before in my life or that his curly white beard dipped into the marmalade jar.

He looked so comfortably at home. In my home.

He caught sight of me and his eyes twinkled below his beetling eyebrows.

As I adjusted my semi-comatose eyeballs to the sight, I realised that from behind the toast, he was pursing his lips.

Good heavens, he was blowing me a kiss.

He stood up and I saw his long-Johns were in fact, rather wrinkled trousers.

"I'm Uncle Walter," he said smiling. "And I thought I'd like to get to know the family."

From a hidden corner of my mind, I remembered an Uncle Walter, a somewhat distant relative of my husband's. He'd even come to our wedding, I thought. Of course, it had been a long time ago, and I remembered him as being a much younger man.

It was Uncle Walter who'd given us the repulsive Portuguese drinking jug, which I'd used as a receptacle for the plastic dirty-nappy scraper.

He twinkled and winkled his way through a gargantuan breakfast, enchanting the kids by eating with his mouth open and talking all the time in a gravelly voice that came straight from his stomach cavity.

In the spare bedroom, I shoved the mending on the bed, underneath, put Barry's weights in the cupboard, Ralph's pinball machine under the sewing machine and Jamie's electronic burglar alarm on top of the mending under the bed.

Uncle Walter was thrilled. "It's a beautiful room," he said, instructing the kids to place his suitcases on the bed for easy unpacking. "I know I'm going to just love it here."

My spouse was thrilled at Uncle Walter's visit. "Who's he?" he asked when he appeared for tea and cheesecake.

Uncle Walter settled in beautifully. Oh, there were minor problems, such as the occupation of the toilet. Which he did for one and a half hours every morning, causing not a little strain to the rest of the family.

Then there was the fact that he snored violently. Turning him on his nose and blocking the door or his nose with foam, didn't help.

Things came to a crescendo when we had a visit from the noise pollution officer in direct response to the neighbours behind and on either side of us.

He wasn't fussy about food, and other than refusing to eat chicken, fish, beef, lamb, cheese, potatoes and all green vegetables, he consumed everything placed in front of him with great relish.

Of course, the family got tired of rice with every meal but they say it's very good for growing bones.

There were the little things that jarred.

Liquorice-the-Labrador ate Uncle Walter's hearing aid which raised the decibel level in this normally tranquil household.

He showered in his boots, which my husband never quite appreciated.

He dropped his monocle down the loo and flushed it well away.

We traced it to Selby Night Soil who suggested we try the Olifantsvlei sewerage farm instead.

Sadly, it was never retrieved. Which on reflection, was just as well.

One evening, after a pleasant dinner of fried rice and rice pudding, Uncle Walter retired to bed.

"Your Uncle's really sweet," I said to my husband, in a moment of closeness while watching Dallas. "Strange, but sweet."

"What do you mean my uncle?" answered my man, an expression of horror on his face. "He's your uncle. He has to be. I mean he's mad, absolutely mad."

"Listen, I've never seen him before in my life," I replied.

We both flew upstairs to the spare room where Uncle Walter in his sleep shirt, was sipping his "blood-thinning", medicinal tot of whisky.

"Uncle Walter," I shouted into his better ear, "You don't belong to us."

"But aren't you Ethel's daughter? he quavered, looking somewhat distressed.

"No, I'm Trudie's daughter and he's Tilly's son." I pointed to my speechless spouse.

Uncle Walter shrugged: "There seems to have been a little mistake," he said. "We'll sort it out in the morning," and he rolled over, shut his eyes and popped off to sleep.

That was three weeks ago. We're still sorting it out. Why only this morning, I said to my husband: "He grows on you, doesn't he?"

"So do bunions," replied Rob. "So do bunions."

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