I have cracked or broken my ribs three or four times. The doctor checks nothing vital is pierced, gives you a prescription for pain-killers, then adds ‘Don’t let people make you laugh’. Add to that coughing, hiccups or sneezing. With the latter, if you don’t cling on to something you end up like Tom in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, in bits on the floor after hitting a wall.

If I had a script writer and a stuntman/woman while I was away at Easter we could have produced a (very unfunny in fact) farce. I arrived at my ‘bolt hole’ ready for a bit of spoiling, good food and people to talk to. At my arrival, about 4 p.m. I was told they were basically ‘shut’. No kitchen, Covid, so no restaurant, scratch meals on trays in rooms. All to wear masks all the time. Some cases of Covid among residents, others too scared to leave their rooms. All spectral – I decided to stay put, no choice then, my house shut, no food. I went to park my car, with the tele-command for the automatic gate. It did not work. Bystanders directed traffic while I tried to attract attention – a cleaner eventually let me in. Disappointed, frustrated, hungry and thirsty I hoped for the usual coffee and biscuits. No way. One person on duty, temporary. A lift was out of order – she had stuck a ‘post-it’ on the doors of the entrance hall but had not managed to get upstairs. An elderly lady got in at the third floor then could not get out at the bottom. 45 minutes to release her. I would have been screaming hysterically, and they could not have fed a hypodermic syringe through the doors. I got to my room – beautifully sunny, thought longingly of my garden. Waited for my exciting supper and a glass of wine. Nobody had told the skeleton kitchen staff I was there! So this same lady had to dash round to find me something to eat.

On actually laughing. I can still fall about at the car chase in ‘What’s Up Doc’, with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neill? It’s still beautifully timed. They are escaping vengeance, steal an ice-cream vendor’s bicycle, then go through a Chinese dragon procession. This is in San Francisco, the police and a mad Texan join in, and all end up in the harbour.

My husband’s first boss nearly needed First Aid at the circus – custard pie throwing had him in what is called ‘fits’ of laughter. A friend of a grand-daughter, at the pantomime, had to be restrained at the first ‘He’s behind you’. I accidentally backed my first horse, with a very large rear, through a rather dilapidated greenhouse, demolishing it. I could not stop laughing, whilst stuttering ‘I’m sorry’. It was the custard pie addict’s greenhouse, who asked how I looked when I was sorry.

Do you have anything which ‘crack’s you up’? Do you, or a close friend or family member, have a loud or silly laugh which you try to control?

The Gardener

A Moodscope member.