I put the fairy lights up around the living room window
today. It’s a job I never relish because, however carefully I put them away in
a box on January 6th, come December and they’ve festered into a mare’s
nest of cable and bits of plastic. Getting it all separated without treading on
any of the delicate pieces of brightly coloured frailty is one of those things
I have little patience with. Then again, the job of arranging a finite amount
of cable neatly around a finite amount of window frame isn’t my sort of job
either. I don’t have the patience or the application. Hanging pictures, yes,
but not hanging bits of cable, for some reason.
I decided today that the job needs the woman’s touch.
Unfortunately, there is no woman to touch them, and I could foresee another problem
if there were.
I have a drop leaf table and chairs under the living room
window, and they have to be pulled out to do the job. It’s an alien world
behind there, a rather gruesome one composed of cobwebs, dust and various other
bits of random detritus. And I’m familiar with women.
‘Don’t you ever clean
behind here?’
‘Yeah, once a year when I hang the fairy lights.’
‘You’re a slob.’
‘OK.’
Actually, I’m not a slob, except when it comes to the table
in front of the living room window. And you know what they say about spoiling
the ship for a ha’porth of tar...
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