On the 23rd of March 2020, the Prime Minister announced the UK’s first national lockdown.
“I tell you, Polly,” Alan glared at the slate plaque above his cooker inscribed with ‘Home Sweet Home’ in decorative text. “It’s more like Prison Bloody Prison.”
Polly the parrot remained mute.
Picking up his cup, he stood, tripped, and fell violently against his large ceramic sink. His hand struck the edge, shattering three carpal bones and dislocating his ulna. Bouncing off, he crumpled heavily, fracturing his fibula as he fell, and dislocating his other leg’s knee. He passed out.
When he came round, he found himself face down on the chic bare boards, pain searing through him like maddened hell-ants gnawing at his vitals. He gasped and retched. Forcing himself to remain still, he lay for at least five minutes, just breathing. He thought to himself, “At least my ribs aren’t broken.”
Testing his legs, he gasped incoherently. The pain was excruciating. Polly squawked back.
“Bit of a pickle, Alan, old son,” he said to himself.
Nothing, he thought, to be gained from panicking. He had to steel himself and get to the phone in the hallway.
So much for his disdain for modern technology, he thought. A mobile phone would have come in handy right then. Getting to the hall seemed impossible. He let his face press against the boards. Maybe he could shout and someone passing by might hear him. Realisation came as a shock. There would be no passers-by. Everyone was in lockdown. His neighbours had no chance of hearing him, not through the trees and tall fence surrounding his detached retirement home.
“Bugger,” he cursed.
“Bugger,” repeated Polly. He scowled up at the bird sitting in its cage in the opposite corner of the kitchen.
“Now you decide to speak,” he said. He instantly regretted not persisting with trying to elicit words from her.
“Regrets, I have a few,” he sang painfully. He had very few regrets. One of them was a big one, though. He felt an unfamiliar pain well up inside.
“Should have gone with her to Manchester,” he thought, but his business was just taking off. Now, he was going to die here on the kitchen floor without telling her. The thought cut through him.
Polly repeated his song, and it gave him an idea.
They found him two days later. The pharmacy delivery van driver requested police help when Alan failed to respond to his knocking. They broke in and there he was on the floor. Internal bleeding, they said.
The young constable who found him told the local reporter, “He suffered multiple fractures after falling in his kitchen. No relatives, just one pet, a parrot. Curious thing though, it kept saying one thing over and over.”
“What was that?” The reporter asked.
The constable pursed his lips and said, “Bugger. Regrets, I have a few. I love you Susan, I always have. I’m so sorry.”
“Last words of a dying man?”
“Who knows?”
