“Ants can-canning into the kitchen all day long,
water stained plaster ceilings from overflowing toilets,
pots with no lids, mismatched cutlery, chipped dinner plates,
strings of old Christmas lights with broken bulbs twisted and stuck inside the sockets …
“I’m sure I can fix the lights!!”
Lady continued:” …wheelbarrows, spades, hedge trimmers, a casket, an MGB hiding under canvas, rusted drill bits and pieces that look like dentist paraphernalia…
“Don’t throw them out! They’ll come in handy to fix the Christmas lights. And the garage isn’t THAT big a mess. And I WILL turn the casket into a flower-box.”
“STOP interrupting me, Harry!”
Lungs renewed, she continued her litany: “A laundry tub so filthy it looks like the inside of a coal-miner’s lungs,
mouse poop polka dots in the pantry and the trapped bodies of mice to dispose of,
cat pee perfuming the basement,
dripping faucets that drip-drop on my heart at 2:00 a.m.,
a willful furnace with seasonal affective disorder,
doors that stick and doors that open by themselves,
a paint colour palette from 1942,
frayed seat cushions – Don’t tell me to turn them over because I can’t turn them over, because the other side is stained, too, because SOME people eat their dinner on the settee –
“You cavil, luv.”
“Cavil emptor, Harry, cavil emptor.”
On she went: “Mushrooms sprouting from the molding bathroom grout,
a four burner range with only two burners working and an oven that switches off half way through banana loaf,
linoleum floors lifting in the corners,
a stained enamel kitchen sink that looks like a tie-died t-shirt,
shabby sheer curtains that didn’t used to be sheer,
floor boards that creak during a thunderstorm,
a crumbling chimney and a chipped hearth.”
Harry, sighed. Life had been good in the manor but the gatehouse…
Lady looked at her down-in-the-dumps sweetheart, his bald spot visible as he blinked into his mug of tea, blowing on the already cool drink.
“But Harry?, she added, “The garden is perfect.”
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