On a recent bleak and windy wet season day I was curled up in front of the log fire leafing wide-eyed through a magazine containing full-page colour pictures of……..oh dear, I seem to have forgotten….when you get over fifty, memory is the first thing to go you know…..maybe wildlife.
My quiet reverie was however rudely interrupted firstly by Mrs GOF causing loud scraping noises to be emitted from the bedroom, which were then closely followed by the hup-two-three-four sound of pounding cockroach feet, as an entire platoon of them, with survival possessions in tow on the desiccated upturned carcase shells of their dead ancestors, migrated across the border into the relative safety of GOF’s “Boy’s Room”.
Several large spiders, long term residents behind the wardrobe, were wailing inconsolably at the sight of their staple diet fleeing from the forces of destruction to begin life anew in some distant part of their cosmos.
Q. “What are you doing Mrs GOF, love of my life, provider of
sustenance (and some other things) and mother of my Globet?”
A. “GOF, inquisitive interruptor of a woman’s never-ending work
schedule, I am re-arranging the bedroom to establish the best
feng shui.”
Feng Shui? Right.
There are three circumstances in any marriage when a man should know that it is best to shut up and ask no more questions.
1. When he knows nothing about the subject matter.
2. When he is flabbergasted.
3. When there is a chance that, as a result, he might get roped into
some avoidable physical labour.
In this case, all three applied.
The bedroom was chocka-block full of 30 years worth of hoarded crap lovingly collected essential furnishings.
Any attempt to “reorganise” it all was probably going to require, at a minimum, heavy machinery and explosives.
GOF, setting a splendid example for all the considerate men in the world, did what any thoughtful husband should do in the circumstances.
He disappeared until after the project was completed.
.
.
After a month in exile spent mainly down in the garden shed, it is apparently now safe for me to come back inside Mrs GOF’s Orientally spruced-up house (with conditions attached)……so….. where’s my spray can of Bugkiller?
I’ll just go freshen up the atmosphere for the refugees who invaded my room while I was gone.
.
And ….for a change…. some truth and nothing but the truth.
The front fence is finished.