I keep getting these letters from my Uncle Bert from his twilight home and you know they quite upset me but no way am I visiting him the last time I went it took me three visits to the laundrette to get the stench out of my clothes.
"Dear niece Edna" (old Fred wrote, in his spidery wavering hand, the notepaper spodged with snot) "I am a bit more depressed than usual today which is saying quite a lot as the only thing which cheers me up is when the old fool in the next bed gets diarrhoea after I slip a cat's **** in his soup when he's not looking, so, dear Edna, I'd be very grateful if you'd send me some more as old Mrs Bloggs in the next ward deserves one too for teasing me about my gangrenous foot.
"It seems I've been in here for centuries but it's probably only a couple of years and the pain since my dear wife Linda passed over to what surely-to-*******-God has to be a better place than here bearing in mind the noisome odours emanating from the rest of the patients in the run-up to bath night which doesn't help much in the long run if you are fifth or sixth in line as the water gets a bit soiled by then, especially if that ****** Mr Ali has done a brownie.
"I'm getting more and more worried about the Bulgarian who has taken up residence in the linen cupboard as he could well be some sort of carpet-slipper thief or even worse a homosexualist after my ringpiece - or he might be an Islamist who wants to behead me which would be a blessed relief if I am to be totally honest with you.
"We had a bit of fun the other week when one of the Nigerian nurses forced my that Mr Jenkins to use the bedpan in public as a reward for stealing Mrs Jackson's home-made enema kit or she could have been from Liberia as the accents are broadly similar (so I read in the Sunday Times travel supplement they gave us instead of toilet paper when supplies run out during the dysentery outbreak).
"All the best under the circumstances from your Uncle Bert and don't forget you stay disinherited unless you visit me soon - no more excuses about your car having broken down - what do you think i am, some sort of addled dementia case?"
It's all very sad, but I have checked Uncle Bert's bank account and he's just trying it on as there's no more than a hundred quid in it and no way am I visiting him for a lousy hundred; for Christ's sake, the smell is enough to knock a cowboy off his horse.
This is the 3rd in my "Uncle Bert" series. Do read the others.