The Walking Stick Magpie Tale#11

After my knee operation last year it was several weeks before I progressed to a walking stick. The first few weeks I struggled with crutches and it was with great relief that I was able to use just a stick.

I say ‘just’ a stick but in fact it was a family heirloom with its real silver hand grip and it seems it was worth a several  hundred pounds. Imagine my horror when on a visit to a large London store I suddenly realised in the Ladies Undies department I didn’t have the stick.

Panic set in and I could imagine the look on my old mother’s face when I ‘fessed up’ to losing it. ‘It can’t be far,’ my patient hubby,’ said, ‘this is the first store we’ve been in since parking the car, let’s think where you have been in here.’

‘I did go to the Ladies loo when we first came in,’ I said, ‘and then when I came out you helped me into the lift and so I didn’t miss the stick.’
‘Right,’ he said, ‘you must have left it in there.’ And then I did remember putting it in the corner of the toilet cubical.
The lift to the third floor seemed to take forever and by this time without the walking stick to take the weight off my operated knee, it had begun to ache.
Of course wouldn’t you know it there was a queue outside the Ladies Toilets and I had to wait in line to check inside the cubical I had used. The stick wasn’t there, why I thought it would still be there I don’t know!

I went out and told Tony it had gone and we turned back to the lift to get back to the car park and home. My knee was much too painful now to do any more shopping withiout the stick. As we approached the front entrance several ‘flunkies’ were holding back the customers to make space for someone in a white fur tapping along with my walking stick. ‘Hey,’ I called ‘that’s my walking stick.’
The woman turned and stared at me and whispered something to her companion who was carrying a tower of parcels. The front Doorman opened the door of a Rolls Royce and the fur coat disappeared into it, stick as well.

I tried to push my way passed the store personnel but to no avail.. ‘that’s my stick,’ I said to one, who turned and looked me up and down and said with great clarity, ‘
‘That Modum is Lady Frobisher of the Frobisher’s of Leicester.’ And with that the car accelerated away,  leaving my husband and I standing there in astonishment watching it.

Mother gave me one of her exasperated looks when I told her that the stick had been stolen and the tale of how. ‘Whatever,’ she said.. ‘but don’t expect to borrow my three wheeler walker, no amount of strange tales will induce me to lend you anything again.’ And that was that, she never believed me and I hoped that Lady whatever her name was, fell over using that b----- stick!

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