A new series of posts based on life with elderly people and their increasingly obvious foibles. These predilections are genetically inclined, so I write these entries with a great deal of love and affection.
*stops screaming*
The Carpet Whisperers are 78, have been married for 108 years, are parents to 6 kids, grandparents to umpteen young adults and great grand-folks to one.
Their names are Funky and Chicken and they live in a suburb called Hygiene Heights. They have the capacity to drive people mad. They don’t mean to, it’s just they’re relatively cuckoo themselves. They like to share, especially with their direct descendants.
Recently, a triple zero (911) call was made to emergency services from the phone of Funky and Chicken. Chicken had been to her pantry to fossick for some cereal to feed her man Funky. He’d been eating the same cereal for a couple of days, but that particular morning, as Chicken poured it into Funky’s bowl (he couldn’t do it himself. He’s the man, ffs) Chicken found some weevils in the packet!
Chicken was mortified. So was Funky. To think that such pestilence existed in their pristine environment! Didn’t matter that Old Man Funky might have ingested half a dozen weevils, adding to his fibre intake, over the last few days!
Oh no! It was the fact such disgusting, dirty members of the environment lived inside their home that sent them into apoplexy!
Funky and Chicken’s children couldn’t believe it either. They often wondered how anything could soil the surfaces of a shelf or cupboard or place-mat or towel rail or shower base or window sill long enough without being sprayed/Baygoned/Morteined/nuked/DDT’d to within an inch of its insecty, pitiful life.
It’s just that sanitized.
So, when Funky and Chicken announced they were laying carpet for the first time in 30 years, one child went overseas, another child moved to Footscray, one stayed in Queensland, another committed thyself to the mental health wing of a local hospital, one developed selective hearing problems, another went back to full time study and work … etc, etc.
On the eve of the 30 YO, daily vacuumed carpet’s upheaval, Chicken had a dream during a most fitful sleep. She envisaged that the ‘carpet man’ came and pulled up their ‘revolting, hideously-stained’ carpet and that dust flew everywhere! So much dust, in fact, that the neighbours in Hygiene Heights knew their carpet was gross and many developed asthma as a result.
Chicken’s nightscape involved so much horror about the next day, she woke in a cold sweat and immediately had to wake Funky, strip the bed, wash the underlay and turn the mattress to Summer Side Up.
The reality was far better than the nightmare, although Chicken does admit to vacuuming the old, rotten, deplorable, heinous carpet in the hour prior to the carpet man coming to pull it up. It’s best to be prepared.
Lucky, because when it was pulled up, the carpet man sought out Chicken (rocking worriedly under her line full of washing) and proclaimed that there was not a speck of dust under the entire matting through the house. ’Did you wear out many vacuums on this carpet over the years?’ the carpet man asked of Chicken.
‘Oh nooooo,’ replied Chicken, coquettishly.
I wonder if you recognize The Carpet Whisperers in your own life? They are people who won’t let you move a bookcase, lest you unpack the books in the wrong order and repack with frivolous lack of detail. The interior of their drawers (not their undies or boxers, mind you) are so strictly aligned, it makes the wooden panel of the furniture look bowed. The inside of their recycling bin (so it’s for the rubbish/trash/waste) looks like a stationary cupboard kept by a secretarial dictator. Their surfaces gleam, their garden beds rock, their shoes repel mud and their clothing is better hung than a Playgirl model.
So their new carpet? Yep, it’s a floor covering, but DO. NOT. WALK. ON. THAT! Please.
Related Reading:
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Welcome to Fangirl Sings the Blues
If you enjoy reading about the characters of Bridezilla, Henley & Cass, Veronica Lord, The Carpet Whisperers, Volare, King Pin, and anything else written here, you might like to try a novel or three:
The Fangirl Series
Number 3 - Latest Release
Number 2
Number 1
The Fangirl Series
Number 3 - Latest Release
Number 2
Number 1
Connect with us:
19 Responses to The Carpet Whisperers
Ha ha ha ha, love it!!!!
Is it safe to return from OS yet??? xoxoxo
PLEASE COME HOME. FUNKY HAS NOW BOUGHT INAPPROPRIATE DOOR STOPPERS FROM BUNNINGS.
We had a bad storm here last night, lady. Love to you and the mo-one.
Had a phone confab with the oldies today and heard ALL about those phallic appendages!!! Just hope Chicken keeps her opinions to herself when they return them to Bunnings!!!!! Hahahahahaha.
Saw some photos on the net showing the storm damage etc…….amazing!!!
xoxoxoxo
Oh Gay! The doorstoppers are a hot topic of conversation!
We had another storm last night (sun) but it seems to be finished now. Lots of love and thanks for chatting at the blog. It’s lovely, and so are you xx
Oh yes, OH yes, OH YES. Mmmmm it feels sooooo good, smells amazing and I can’t wait to get between the covers…………….. YEAH, you’re book just arrived in the mail!!!!!!!!
Thanks Rosie, guess what I’ll be doing this week.
Thank YOU for buying, lovely. You are the only sibling that has done so thus far. *slaps the others hard*
Hope you like the purple. I love the cover and I hope what’s inside is okay too.
xxxx
Wait, you never told me you were going to write about my mother on your blog o_0 *g*
Funny you should mention this:
Yep, it’s a floor covering, but DO. NOT. WALK. ON. THAT! Please.
That’s how she greets us at the door every time we come over for a visit. She does say ‘hello’ and ‘did you comb your hair?’ first though *g*
LOL, lady. Your mum is like this really? Gosh, I was just writing about a random coupla peeps, you know ; )
Oh, I know an older lady who asks me about my hair on a regular basis too. Hope the weekend is good, petal.
x
Hey AAE (Amazing Author Extraodinaire) when’s the next one coming out??? Almost finished this one and it only came yesterday!!!!!!!
Btw……..LURVE IT…….hysterical, sad, worrisome and a little too close to home in some parts. You are a very clever lady and I’m sooooooo proud of you!!!
Luv ya xoxoxoxo
I AM SO EXCITED THAT YOU LIKE IT, LADY!!!!!!!
LOVE TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE UP TO. I’ll stop yelling now. You’re the first person to have read it (apart from the editor) and although she gave me great feedback re typos and spelling and capital letters, etc, she didn’t do much about the story.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you.
Oh. No more Fangirls YET. Working on two other things at the moment. Love you too xx
I’VE FINISHED……..now what am I going to do????? I might have to talk to Pat *facepalms* (see I’m even learning something by reading your book!!!!! Although, I had to check, cos I wrote *palms face* first.lol)
Chat soon xoxoxo
LOL @ *palms face* For God’s sake, that is so daggy!
Was it okay? I hope you liked it. I hope the end was satisfying. I hope these storms down here don’t cause a leaky roof in Hygiene Heights and rain to fall upon the new carpet!
New doorstops have been purchased, FYI. xxxxo
The *palms face* was supposed to be OUR secret, now everyone knows ffs!!!!
Loved the ending………..can’t give anything away here tho!!!!
Glad about the doorstops too and can only pray the storms didn’t cause mayhem in HH, or a third world country would be provided with omelettes indefinitely!!!!
Hope all’s well and will talk soon xoxoxoxo
I know they’re not the types to ever employ a cleaner, but if they did, Chicken would be driven to clean first I imagine.
Hey, glad you haven’t inherited those germ-o-phobic genes!
LOL. Yeah. NO germophobe here, lady. Got your mail, will respond tonight.
There is NO way Chicken would get a cleaner. There is no way Funky would get someone to mow the lawns.
You have answered why above.
BWAHAHAHAHAAAA!!
I’ve only just found this little gem of a post and OMG, I think I know people like this, too. I have a friend who is so anal about cleanliness that it is said that if you arrived unannounced at her house, she’ll have the vaccuum out giving the carpet the once-over. For the third or fourth time that day, lol.
They’re the ones who can barely sit still while you’re eating something, mainly because they’re trying to control the urge to use the dustbuster around your chair to collect those stray crumbs you might have dropped, before whipping the plate out of your hand and into the sink to be washed, wiped and dried, then put away. LOL.
Ploise. If I EVER lose my mind and start to turn into one of these people, put me out of my misery and kill me, will ya?
Love your work, bb.
xx
Hey love. Hope the weekend is a great one. I will ensure that you never turn into a person who will be cleaning up while someone is still eating, and if you do, I’ll endeavour to extinguish the urge.
Thanks for the loving of the work, bb. It’s good that someone does : P
[...] were surprising. The first RSVP was from a bone fide Gen Y member. The oldest respondents, Funky and Chicken, actually replied YES three times over the course of the five days, but even the ability to text at [...]
[...] his advanced years, Funky is a techno-head. He loves gadgetry. Anything that blips, encodes, downloads, extracts, [...]