Mayhem

OCTOBER -

Tuesday 1st October

‘Anyone for a cuppa?’ Barbara said, coming into the

kitchen. ‘Bob made these healthy herbal infusions the

other day. They’re really refreshing.’ My mother-in-law held

up a little brown muslin bag, tied up with some grubby-

looking string.

‘I’ll give it a miss, thank you,’ said Andrew. ‘God knows

what he’s put in it.’

‘Honestly, Andrew – there’s no need to be quite so rude,’

she said, pouring some boiling water from the kettle onto the

bag and poking it with a spoon. A strange aroma of rising

damp mixed with sour washing filled the kitchen.

‘I’m going out in a minute,’ I said, quickly, ‘so I haven’t got

time, I’m afraid.’

Andrew mouthed ‘liar’ at me when Barbara wasn’t looking.

‘Where’s Dad?’ he said to Barbara.

‘He’s at his first meeting as a councillor this morning. He’s

very excited about it,’ Barbara said.

‘He’ll soon be causing mayhem, then.’

‘Dad, don’t be mean,’ said Flora, joining in.

‘I’m not being mean, I’m being realistic.’

‘How’s he going to have time to do any renovation work

next door?’ I said to Barbara.

‘It’s not a full-time job. He’ll have plenty of time to get on

with converting Mona’s garage.’

Andrew snorted, ‘I can’t believe Mona and Roger have

agreed to let him anywhere near their house. They must be

even madder than I thought.’

‘Well, you can poke fun if you like, Andy, but your dad is

very handy – he’s built lots of things in the past.’ She scowled

at Andrew and took her mug of ‘tea’ upstairs.

It’s true, Bob has built lots of things, as Barbara says, but most

of them were less than satisfactory, and quite a few either had to be

demolished or fell down of their own accord. However, what he lacks in

prudence, he certainly makes up for in enthusiasm and gung-ho spirit.

The trouble with Bob, though, is he’s pig-headed and obstinate as well.

I don’t know how Barbara puts up with it. His building disasters

are legendary, not forgetting his most recent entirely experimental

underground tunnelling project, which could have completely wrecked

our home, and family relations to boot. Bob always thinks he knows

best; like the time he decided to build a giant greenhouse in his garden.

An actual greenhouse would have been fine, except it wasn’t so much

a greenhouse as a sort of whacky kaleidoscope of coloured glass he got

from a skip full of broken splashbacks from the back of a kitchen

factory. He’s nothing if not resourceful. What he didn’t take into

consideration is the fact that plants don’t grow very well under black,

dark red and navy-blue glass. Another time, he had a sudden impulse

to build a sauna in the garden out of some pallets that he collected from

a nearby building site. At first this seemed like a great idea, until he

discovered that they’d been treated with a lethal chemical compound.

Luckily, his neighbour pointed out the ‘MB’ stamps on them, signifying they’d been dipped in methyl bromide. It doesn’t bear thinking about if

he’d carried on. That stuff burns holes in the ozone layer, for heaven’s

sake! God knows what it would do to bare flesh in a steamer. I suppose

he should be admired for his inventiveness and eagerness to reclaim and

salvage things that have been discarded. He’s certainly creative in his use

of such things. One day, Barbara came home from work to find he’d

laid Astro turf in the kitchen. He’d found some in a skip and decided

it would make a nice feature after seeing a new gardening programme

on the TV, extolling the virtues of bringing the ‘outside in’ to benefit

well-being and feeling closer to nature. Barbara wasn’t impressed

with it and, in one of her rare moments of dissent, told Bob to take

it back to the skip. “I didn’t want the outside coming in”, she said.

“It’s unnatural…”

‘I need to get to work,’ I said to Andrew.

‘Same here. My book’s coming on a treat if I say so

myself,’ he said, smugly.

‘Great news,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea how much I’m

looking forward to it being finished.’

At the shop, Bertie asked me if I’d found anyone to

replace her.

‘No, I haven’t really thought about it,’ I told her.

‘Well, you will need to get someone quite

quickly, won’t you?’

‘I just don’t know how I can replace you, Bertie - no one

will be anything like as good.’

‘That’s very nice of you to say, Dora, but I’m sure you’ll

find the right person if you actually look…’