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really nothing wrong with turquoise, or whatever it’s called, and in our bathroom it looked okay. The Big Freeze lasted for some days, and cutting comments were made towards me, when introducing family and friends to the new fittings. As the months went by it looked better and better. The bath on one side boxed in with some shiplap timber. Plus bright turquoise and dark green wall paper with a matching green carpet was rather welcoming. Never was I allowed to forget going out for an agreed white bathroom suite and coming back with turquoise. It’s amazing in a married life how often this subject is resurrected, so that I can be cut to ribbons and humiliated at the dinner table for the delight of others.

JUST LIFE
    There I was, soaking in my turquoise bath, after a hard day in the garden; just like many macho men, I have a chink in my armour, nothing mean or lowly. It’s just that I can’t stand spiders, not at any price. I know they mean no harm, and are not a direct threat to life here in the U.K. but suddenly and without warning there they are, huge, black cardiac inducing.
    I looked up and there on the low ceiling above my unprepared, unarmed and naked body was the one! When I pulled myself together I shouted for my guardian. In no time at all there she was in the bathroom – ready to protect me – wondering what small service she could do for me, that had caused her to drop the ironing, the half-prepared supper, her crossword and sprint upstairs to aid her man. Without thinking through her rescue mission properly, she lashed out at the spider with a cloth or something; it fell down, directly on to my exposed, defenceless naughty bits.
    Panic then set in, me in a desperate self-mutilating fashion and she in an effort to remedy her first futile plan, adopted a milling and machinating action, both of us beating the hell out of my ‘delicados privados’
    Much, much later in the fullness of recuperative time I got over the trauma, enough red wine, and some malt whisky, helped. I returned slowly to my near normal self.

SHADES OF THE DRAGON
    Somewhere at the other end of the house, there comes a blood curdling cry, followed by shrieks of anger, like a howling tornado, this sound of fury is on its way. Seeking me out, hiding is now impossible, there is no safe place for me.
    Death and destruction would be welcome, but first I must be verbally lashed to pieces, with cruel and cutting words. Reduced to a shivering, quivering wreck ‘for whatever I have done I am truly sorry’, I say, hands clasped together in a timid kneeling position. The tide of hatred and venom, breaks over me a constant tirade. What could I have done? what crime? what thoughtless act? ‘ I’m innocent’, I cry but no one cares.
    This morning I went out and shot my mother in law, then I hocked the house and brought us to ruin with gambling debts, before assaulting fifteen women, in a drunken disorderly manner on the way home. These won’t do…worse than that…much, much worse. I had somehow, accidentally, unintentionally left a tissue in my jeans or shirt pocket, then thrown the clothes out to be washed! The proof is there to see, as fallen snow, tiny bits of white tissue are the damning evidence, on the ground and on the clothes . ‘How many times have I told you to check your pockets?’ ‘Why do you do this?’ ‘What is the matter with you?’ I pray for night time to come.
    Dawn broke a beautiful new day, breakfast was battle free, mid-morning passed without a trace of war fare . Even lunch time…. no hostilities…. the truce is holding. Well on the way to a record breaking day, we decided to go out together. Throwing the last bit of caution to luck we left the house hand in hand!
    Then out driving somewhere, I forget exactly where, but the sun was shining, birds were singing, and little white lambs were jumping up and down in the meadows. No, we have not argued