The Blues

A series of posts based on life with elderly people and their increasingly obvious foibles.  These predilections are genetically inclined, so the entries are written with a great deal of love and affection.

Funky and Chicken are The Carpet Whisperers.

After the tremendous stress of laying their new floor feathers, Funky and Chicken decided they needed a break from their scientifically-renowned, pristine nest in Hygiene Heights.  They flew the coop, but not before Chicken had overseen the pre-departure ritual.

There is a reason behind cleaning the entire home before taking a holiday.  I’m sure there is, and like to think it is associated with walking into a respectable environment on return from the getaway.  But that’s only one element.  According to the Sanitization Scrolls of Domestic Godliness, Circa 1932, there are a myriad of reasons for vacuuming, dusting, detoxing the loo and scraping the shower recess prior to leaving for a few days away.

By the time Funky and Chicken arrive at any holiday destination, they are exhausted.

However, imagine the consequences, if one doesn’t clean before taking off on any jaunt!  There could be an influx of white ant (never pluralized to ants, because they come in a tribe), desperate to get to the tiniest morsel of sugar that dares to wisp the kitchen shelves.  What if there is a skerrick of sticky drink refuge lingering ‘pon the tiles in the hallway attracting vermin?

Or, what if a speckle of dust has accumulated on the coffee table, and Funky and Chicken return from hols to find visitors on their doorstep wanting to be let in immediately?  They would barge in after Funky and Chicken open the door with their overnight bags and instantly see said hideous speckle.

It’s highly probable it will happen.  When it does, it will be a calamity!

Chicken also believes that in the event of a robbery, the ‘best kept’ house will be easier to identify as ‘being robbed’.  So, if your home is in domestic disarray and has rooms resembling various pastures of landfill, when a thief (or gang — remember the ‘white ant’)  ransacks the place, it will be more difficult to prove that it’s been burgled.

Secretly, I think Chicken believes if a villain looked through their windows at the splendiferous sight of neat, he/she might think twice about trashing the place, and instead make themselves a cup of pepmint (that’s how it’s pronounced) tea and boggle at the new carpet.

It’s another major reason for leaving Hygiene Heights as an anti-oxidant rich zone while on holidays (ie: impregnating vitamins and minerals into the drapes, hoovering sterilized agents into the fixtures, giving the new carpet an organic carrot/beetroot juice cleanse).

The great news is that Funky and Chicken have returned from their ‘few nights on the river’ to a home that’s as unadulterated as they left it.  Dust mites have been deterred.  Microscopic, repellant-retardant things have been prohibited.  Home-wrecking gnats and gnarls of nature have been nullified.  Thankfully, their Berlin Wall of suburbia has not been breached, as any small Checkpoint Charlie had been blocked with Polyfilla and soldered with impregnable steel.

A relief.

Chicken called a relative an hour after arrival, stating how lovely it is to be back home, even though they’d had a great time away and the weather was superb.  Of course, she’s already unpacked.  A load of washing is on the line, because Funky had got the cuff of his good pants dirty when he’d (unwittingly, horrifyingly) walked through some mud on the way to the club!’

‘Oh, and love,’ she mentions to the relative, who is now thinking about the bits and pieces she still hasn’t unpacked from a weekend away in January.  ’Funky is out washing the car.’

Well, that was a given.  Funky would be washing his car.

‘It’s got bugs all over it.  Ingrained bugs, really, and he doesn’t want them to embed into the duco.  Imagine?’

Imagine.  Hell.  Ingrained bugs in the duco!

The amazing thing is, Funky hadn’t taken his car out of the ruddy garage for the entire few days away.  He and Chicken had been driven by Funky’s brother and sister-in-law ‘up the river’, and his car has laid dormant, under cover for five days!

It just shows that Hygiene Heights isn’t the suburb of sanitation it once was!  *tuts*.  There are bugs under the carport and they have infiltrated the Garaged Automobile of Magnificence.

Funky is recovering.  Slowly.  The bugs are dead.

Random Reads

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• August 28, 2010 -- The Day I Thought I was Dusty Springfield