breakup under the mistletoe

no update on maurice’s search for love but things are not looking good for our other patients’ love lives either. Arnold has been with us for nearly a year and his first few months were spent comparing and interviewing female inmates for the role of paramour. in july he selected Beatrice and they’ve been a couple ever since.

a problem staff have with these two is that Arnold, at 87, is much sprightlier than his 85 year old girlfriend who requires a walking frame to mobilise. whenever they would go out for coffee, arnold would coerce beatrice to leave the frame behind and use a walking stick instead. some of our patients are very prone to falls and beatrice is one of them, so we were forever chasing up the street after them with the frame.

it seems arnold has suffered the ignominy of having an ageing girlfriend long enough. after 5 months of courtship he declared today that ” an artist must be a free spirit and he can no longer confine himself to one woman, especially one whose problems are interfering with his lifestyle”. he told this to the DT and then asked that she break the news to Beatrice as he didn’t want to have to deal with copious tears.

marriage counselling is not in her job description so arnold was advised to tell beatrice himself. the lady in question was waiting in the corridor outside the DT’s office, just under the strategically placed plastic mistletoe nursemyra hung up before christmas.

which is where he told her. and then he actually started singing. he stood there and sang the first verse and chorus of “Don’t Fence Me In”.

at least he then had the grace to look a little embarrassed. they’re both short sighted so I don’t think either of them even noticed she was under mistletoe. strangely enough, Beatrice wasn’t in the least upset to discover she was single again and there were no tears whatsoever.

arnold was probably a bit miffed by this lack of emotion as I’m sure he thinks he’s the catch of the gimcrack. what would probably piss him off even more is if beatrice finds someone new before he does.

I wonder if maurice finds older women attractive…….