Bettie finally arrives back home only to discover that, in her absence, things are definitely sliding to the crazier end of the scale…
The way I see it, diary, the world falls into two camps: those who believe everything comes down to two outcomes, and those who don’t. And as I arrived back at our crumbling ruin of a new home, I could just smell we were approaching zero hour for the success or – more-than-likely – total and complete failure of Big Frank’s 39-4-Ever misadventure.
Stepping from the taxi, I met hubby #3 acting head honcho as hordes of workmen wheeled expensive-looking computer servers into the coal cellar.
“Hi, honey!” he said, as I breezed past.
“Good morning, darling,” I replied. “I see the assassins failed. Been busy?”
It turned out he’d been fiddling with his backend all week – hardly a revelation – so I escaped inside to unpack and freshen up. This turned out to be far harder than I’d imagined as when I arrived in our Dickensian-drama of the archaic kitchen, I found my maid Mona laden down with bowls of tripe.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m feeding the cats.”
“Cats?” I questioned. “We don’t have any cats.”
It turns out I was wrong on that count as, following the crusty slattern to the back yard, I found the entire place was stuffed full to the fence posts with dozens and dozens of freaky, tail-less felines.
“What are these?” I said.
“They’re Manx cats,” Mona replied, reminding me that anything from the Isle of Man was dubbed with the descriptor, ‘Manx’.
“There’s two varieties,” Mona continued, as I stood in shock. “The rumpy what ain’t got no tail, and the stumpy what’s got this twisted lump of…”
“Stop,” I said. I’d heard enough. “If you don’t, we’ll be overrun!”
“I tried not feeding them, but they just picked up little stones from the rock garden and pelted the bedroom windows morning, noon and night. It gets on me nerves.”
“But I hate cats!” I shrieked, which is true as I believe they are the work of the devil on a mission to enslave all mankind. It will certainly come as a surprise to no one that if there was a little red button on my desk that would exterminate every cat on the planet instantly and painfully, then I’d push it. Repeatedly.
“Maybe that’s because you were a dog in a previous life,” Mona intoned.
Thinking, ‘Well, that’s far better than being a dog in this one’, I left her to sort out the chaos, and headed back for the front door. Only fifteen minutes home after a twenty-six hour flight, and I already wanted off this island more than a whole planeful of Lost regulars. Still, as my anxieties and stresses of this whole venture collapsing into its own half-cooked conception reached boiling point, I decided that now was as good a time as any to confront Big Frank. Yep, I hit my ever-loving husband with the big one. The $64,000 Question? Since buying this online casino, relocating to Nowheresville and stocking up with enough Eskimo seal jackets and huskies to survive the British winter amounted to one huge chunk of change, would it ever – could it ever – like, make any money?
“If you build it, they will come,” he said.
Jesus, if only that was the byline for our sex life.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t think your truly appreciate the sacrifices I’ve made on this crazy scheme.”
“Like what?”
Well, round about then I let him have it. The List. How things would be like dancing on the steps of Disneyland Palace:
- if it wasn’t so fricking wet
- if it wasn’t so fricking freezing
- if it wasn’t so fricking dark all the time
- if I didn’t have to suffer a nine-hour flight every time I wanted to visit my nearest Walmart Supercenter
- if it didn’t scare the Holy Bejeebus out of me at the amount of money this was all costing
- if there was proof of a God, so that at the end of civilization as we know it I had any chance of being saved
- Yada yada yada…
The final rant took the best part of an hour, and you’re just getting the highlights here, diary, but when it was over, you know what the big lug said?
“Is it really nine hours to the local Walmart?”
Arrrggghhh!!!
