Percy Theodore Shelmerdine.

I have met many strange people over the years but one of the strangest was a chap called Percy Theodore Shelmerdine, he was a small chap of indeterminate age with a stoop so bad you would swear he had two humps on his back. He was completely bald and despite owning a tea chest full of wigs used to draw hair on his head with a black ballpoint pen.
He had one eye lower than the other that forced you to look at him lopsided, and the longest dirtiest nails I have ever seen on a man. Percy always wore several shirts at the same time none of which he washed, although he did change them daily and a jacket that was almost completely covered in badges of one kind or another.

His house was filled with junk, or as he liked to describe it, props. He insisted that everything had a use and would one day come in handy. I don’t think he ever sold anything although he had some quite valuable antiques whose sale could have allowed him to live comfortably. Instead he eked out a meagre living on what the state gave him spending most of it on essentials like cigarettes and bottles of Old toms ale. What money was left he bought dozens of eggs with, that’s all he ate, hard boiled eggs, most weeks he would buy a loaf and make it last. But his main diet was eggs, breakfast, dinner and tea. As a result of this his body was covered in boils and there was a distinct smell of sulphur about the place that at times could get very overpowering.

He returned home after the war with his passion for eggs. Brought about according to him due to his having hidden from the Germans in a barn on a war blistered French farm where his only companion was a chicken who served as his friend and provider of food for many weeks. His wife unable to tolerate the stink took off with a sheet metal worker from Sheffield and he never saw her again.

Percy loved eggs, not only was it the only thing he ate, but it was also the only thing he talked about, and he talked a lot. He had a very high pitched, falsetto type of voice which was the result of (According to him) his having his testicles removed after being rushed to hospital with an egg overdose. He complained bitterly that he had been left in the corridor for ages without being attended to and when eventually he was, he was scared he had something really serious because the nurses and doctors all wore masks and gowns.
The poor sod was put in an isolation ward (Private room as he called it) and basically left to his own devices, in fact nothing would be done for him until he had disrobed and bathed.

I can’t really blame the hospital staff; Percy did have a rather indiscreet personal cologne which he himself was unaware of, however bending to the will of they that know better, Percy undressed and had a bath, after which the sawbones set about diagnosing his ailments. They had their work cut out for them; years of eating Oeufs mollets had taken its toll on his pitiful body. I went to see him in hospital; he had no relatives and very few friends. I had only been with him for several minutes before being summoned to the nurses office, the doctor who was treating him assumed I was his son and set about reprimanding me for not taking care of the old man. I won’t repeat what he said but you can be sure that the word eggs kept cropping up during his verbal assault.

I didn’t stop him, he looked like he had endured a stressful day and needed this chance to let of steam. When he finished I informed him that I was a friend and had no influence what so ever in Percy’s eating habits but that I would try to persuade him to adopt a more sensible diet. Of course I knew that was an impossible task, you see when I say that Percy loved eggs, I mean he really loved them. He would eat each one as though it was his first meal for days. It’s quite possible that if he could have made love to an egg, Percy would have done it. In the end his love for eggs took his teeth, his hair, his gonads and his reason. He finished up in a home dressed in bright pyjamas eating healthy food and furiously picking his nose.

I visited him several times, but he didn’t recognise me, and to be honest I didn’t recognise him, the smell had disappeared his bald head was bereft of ballpoint pen and when I tried to help him remember, he just looked at me through his lopsided eyes. The Matron in charge like the doctor before her assumed that I was his son. She informed me that he had no visitors other than myself. I told her that he did have relatives but that he hadn’t seen them for years, they only came out of the woodwork when he was forced to abandon his house and come to live in the home. They had probably cleared the place and were even now drinking the profits.

I asked her if he still ate lots of eggs, she told me that he wouldn’t touch an egg, they had tried him with them a couple of times and he had become quite violent and had thrown the eggs at another resident. Poor Percy oblivious in his dementia of the one thing he had loved most in his life.