From Hags To (Not Quite) Bitches

Celtic Hags - Korrigans

This has been a week for parties, two lunches and a dinner party. And before you think that my life is a series of brilliant social occasions, let me quickly put you right, this was very unusual. The social scene in January is normally as dull and dreary and grey as the January sky.

Still having Beloved’s seemingly innocent but very appreciative exclamation ringing in my ears:  “Aren’t Italian women beautifully groomed!”  while watching a TV show set in Rome, I decided to do something for my outer woman – internally, I am extremely well-groomed, it just doesn’t show up on the outside.

Three parties in one week called for a visit to the hairdresser. I know what I owe myself, after all. That these well-groomed, beautiful women were all twenty years younger than me and more than thirty years younger than Beloved didn’t seem to matter. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

While I was getting my coat and bag upstairs an ominous clunking and thudding sound reached me.

A few moments later a voice hailed me:
“Dearest (!), are you there?”
The ‘are you there’ is part of the ritual on these occasions.

“Just a mo, I’m coming”.

“Dearest (!), I’ve done something.”
This very gently, an apology and a hint of fear already in the tone.

“I’ve got the car out of the garage for you. The rake fell over, hit the window and smashed it. I’ve smashed the side window.”

Our garage is not one of these tidy places you see on TV or in ads, it’s full of junk, gardening tools, two thirds empty cans of paint, shelves with bottles of home-made wine, sacks of dog food and bird food, large terracotta pots and tubs that would crack if left outside in winter, yard brooms, etc. It all works. Everything is stacked and shoe-horned  in and secured, and there is enough room for the car too, provided you snap back the wing mirrors and stop when you hit the tennis ball hanging from the ceiling on a string at one end  and line up the front right hand car door exactly with the door leading into the workroom. It’s easy. A child could do it.

The window was smashed to pieces; there was no chance that I’d be able to use our one and only car.

I am a picture of restraint at these times. I promise I stopped cursing after five minutes and asked politely: “what happened?”

“Well, ‘somebody’ must have shifted the bird seed bucket which shifted the spade which pushed the rake and loosened it from its holder. The wing mirror must have accidentally nudged it which made it fall forward at exactly the moment the window was in its path downwards.”

We never established who the ‘somebody’ was, presumably some unknown intruder in the dead of night; the explanation itself couldn’t have been more logical. And detailed. And well thought out.

I went to all three parties well-groomed only on the inside; nobody seemed to mind.

Beloved and I are speaking again.