A Little Black Humour in the Night

If there's one thing I inherited from my Dad, it was his sense of humour. I'm not being disrespectful, but unfortunately even in sad times there are things that make you laugh. We arrived back in England at 11 p.m. on Wednesday. We're staying at the house I grew up in, in fact sleeping in my old bedroom. The house was empty for sometime once my parents moved into a care home, but is now inhabited by Orphan No. 2, her boyfriend Game Boy and my two grandpigs. (Guinea pigs to you). Although my parents cared for the house meticullously for the 50+ years they lived here, its looking somewhat sad. The house was rewired leaving all sorts of mess, and the garden looks like Sleeping Beauty's castle. Plus my mother hasn't yet allowed any kind of clearance so its a bit of shambles.
This sets the scene we walked into. The living room was full of clutter, the carpets ruined by the electricians. You get the picture. This all seemed even worse arriving from Naperville, the place where you can be arrested if you leave a cup in the sink or you have more than three dandelions per square inch in your garden. Oh yes, and it's the place we were due to hold the funeral lunch in 12 hours time.
Having remodelled a whole house in six weeks, clearing a room in 12 hours seemed easy enough. Ok it was now midnight, but so what? Like yet another installment of Home Make-Over: Aaaghh Edition we set to work taking things out of the living room and stuffing them into any other place we could find. If you need the sellotape, look in the teapot. With clearance underway, I went into the kitchen.
"Aagghhhh!"
Grumpy came running in. I think he thought I'd found my father lying in the larder.
"L..l..look at that," I stumbled. "Wh..what..is it?"
Game Boy was reassuring. "Oh that's nothing," he said. "Just a hole the electricans left."
"But it's in the wall. It's huge. My mother will have a fit."
"That's ok," said Grumpy, stepping into the role of husband of the bereaved as if were about to star on Broadway. "I'll take care of it. Have you got some paper? Computer paper? That would do. "
Game Boy started to laugh.
"Oh, I see. This is just going to be like your video." (see side bar if you haven't seen it before)
"Don't be silly," said Grumpy, offended. "There, it's fine."
"Oh very good," I said sarcastically. "Now we have a crater half covered by a piece of paper. She'd have to be blind not to notice that."
"It'll be fine, " said Grumpy. "Just don't let her in the kitchen."
I returned to the hall way."At least the rest of it's a bit better," I said, not really believing it. "You can see the carpet now." Uh oh. My mother's prized hall carpet was completely ruined by the cementy footprints the electrician had left.
"We've tried, but we just can't get it off," wailed Orphan No. 2.
"I know," said Grumpy, with a sort of reverse logic. "We'll cover the carpet with rugs and tell Grandma we've done it to protect it. She'll never know." (Not a blog reader, my mum, so if you see her, keep it to yourself please).
Thus it was at 2 a.m. we found ourselves in a local supermarket looking for rugs. Watford isn't exactly the city that doesn't sleep, but at least you can buy a rug in the middle of the night.
"How much?" yelled Grumpy. "$40 for a trashy rug?" (This exchange rate thing was so much more exciting when we first arrived in the US than when we have to visit England).
"I don't like that one. It's horrible," said Orphan No. 2 helpfully.
"What about these?" suggested Game Boy.
"We can't use those, they're car mats!"
"How about just turning the hall into a giant ball pond?" said Orphan No. 2.
"Or covering it with mulch?" chimed in Grumpy. "We can say it's the latest trend from America."
"Look just get on with it," I said, tears of laughter running down my cheeks. "Who cares what the rug looks like? Just be grateful you live in a country where you can still buy a cheap nasty rug in the middle of the night."
"And sushi." added Orphan No. 2 through a mouthful of raw fish...