A geust blogg from Damain Thopmson
Up to 40% of old ladies drink hair-restorer, according to recent research undertaken by the University of Adelaide. My own informal observations bear this out, as Patient M, a ridiculously old lady who is also currently my guest in Castle Thompson - as is her great-nephew, a charming man called Eccles - has turned out to be a consumer of many unusual products.
My butler, Will Heaven, reports that Anti Moly, as Eccles calls her, began by drinking my supplies of gin and whisky, but, when he started to lock these up, she turned to other substances.
Did I mention that I have written a book on addiction, called The Fix? Do buy a copy. I am hoping that Eccles will agree to serialize excerpts on his lovely blog. Anyway, in my book I treat all sorts of addictions and obsessions: for example, there is a biologist in South America who is addicted to stories of clerical child abuse, having a whole laboratory wall decorated with stories from the Puffington Post and the New Yawn Times. Another strange addiction I write about is cinnabons, a sticky cake much loved by Yorkshire bishops.
Returning to Patient M, once she had run out of conventional alcoholic drinks, she drank a bottle of my Geoffrey Lean hair-restorer; then she went to the garage and drank my supply of Delinpol anti-freeze (much to the annoyance of Hannan my chauffeur). Finally, getting desperate, she drank a bottle of her own Possumgon, a product she uses to protect the roof of her Australian home from enthusiastic marsupials.
Her drinking is irregular, but when she decides to have a "binge" or "meltdown," she is often seen on the internet, posting insults on blogs (including my own). For some reasons she particularly hates Catholics, especially serious ones.
Patient M seems to be immune to poison, according to her nephew Eccles. The old photograph below shows M and her friend informing a visitor that they had added some arsenic to his drink, "To give it some bite."
Well, it's difficult to know what to do in such cases, but if enough people buy my book The Fix, I will be able to do some more in-depth research (Tenerife looks like a promising place to start).
