A few weeks ago: I’m in Connecticut, driving my father, who is 100, to his doctor. It’s in an area I haven’t been in for years, and although I’ve entered the destination into my phone, I can’t make the map come up on the hire car’s screen. During a sharp left the phone slides from its perch, and is now issuing muffled instructions from under my seat.
“I was fine until I got the flu last month, when your brother was away,” my dad says.
“Uh-huh,” I say, loudly.
“Since then, Christ,” he says. “I take a few steps and my legs feel like jelly.”
“It takes longer to recover from these things,” I say. “When you’re old.”
I take a wrong turn and keep quiet about it until I get my bearings again.
“I think this is the street,” I shout. “Have you been to this place before?” My father looks out the window at the passing storefronts.
“Probably,” he says.
A few weeks later: I’ve been back in London for a fortnight, and I still feel jet-lagged. If I sit down anywhere for more than five minutes, I fall asleep. It takes longer to recover from these things, I tell myself, when you’re old.
Perhaps sensing my frailty, the machines in my life have seized the opportunity to take over. My laptop signs me out of my email account, and frustrates all my efforts to get back in. Netflix keeps asking me if I would like to continue watching something called Meet Marry Murder.
“What are you talking about?” I say. “I’ve never watched that.”
While I was away my wife bought a siphon that turns tap water into fizzy water, but when I use it nothing happens. I spend 15 minutes doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
“Why?” I shout. The middle one, passing, leans into the kitchen.
“What?” he says.
“Make this work!” I say. He reaches out his index finger and depresses the lever. A stream of gas pours forth, the bottle clouds briefly with vapour, and the water sparkles.
“That’s exactly what I did!” I say. “What’s the secret?”
“There’s no secret,” he says, beaming.
I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get back into my email account, without success. Then I go in and find my wife stitching something while watching TV. On the screen, a retired detective is detailing the many injuries a deceased man received at the hands of his wife.
“What is this called?” I say.
“I forget,” my wife says. My phone pings in my pocket.
“Can you stop signing in as me?” I say. “Netflix is getting the wrong idea.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she says. My phone pings again. I take it from my pocket and read the message on the screen.
“Oh my God. What’s happening?
“I’m trying to watch this,” my wife says.
Help!” I shout. The middle one, passing again, comes into the room.
“What now?” he says.
“I got this text from a Japanese restaurant,” I say.
“Uh-huh,” he says.
“It says: ‘certainly, Tim! What time would you like a table?’ But I’ve never heard of this restaurant.” He takes my phone and examines it closely.
“The thing is, you started this conversation,” he says.
“What did I say?”
“You said: Hello. I’d like to make a reservation, please.”
“I did not,” I say.
“You must’ve clicked some template response,” he says.
“What’s this?” says the youngest one, wandering in.
“He’s freaking out,” says the middle one, giving me back my phone.
“So while I’m sitting here watching Meet Marry Murder,” I say, “my phone is wandering through London, selecting random restaurants and booking tables in my name?”
“Meet Marry Murder,” my wife says. “That’s it.”
“Oh,” the youngest one says. “An old person’s problem.”
I think back to two weeks before, when my father told me off for following him up the stairs.
“I don’t need help,” he said. “I’ve got two goddam railings here.”
“I thought I was being sly,” I told my brother later, “by pretending I was going upstairs anyway.”
“He’s OK on the stairs,” my brother said. “For the time being.”
“It’s just that he told me he was still weak from the flu,” I said. My brother rolled his eyes.
“He never had the flu,” he said.
Join Tim Dowling, Coco Khan and more on 29 June as they share the joys – and pressures – of writing for Saturday magazine. Book your event ticket here
