?Love is a many splendored thing
(movie, song, and book)
?
It's a variation of Love is a
many splendored thing that greets visitors to our home if they happen to enter
what Sir John Pugney called the smallest room.
?
I told you that we'd moved
recently, didn¡¯t I?? What I didn't
mention, because I hadn't yet realized is that the new neighborhood is
populated by people who go in for things like organic quiche and Fay Weldon
t-shirts and? electric avocado pealers
and indoor plants growing out of chinaware at wellington boots.? To say nothing of stir-frying at Scarbo's in
a wok.? ?And going to PTA meetings where the kids turn
up with three or more parents.
?
We have fallen among
yuppies.? And I don't mind telling you,
it's been quite a job trying to adapt to their ways.
Not simply because I just happen
to be allergic to monkfish.? No. It's
more than that.? It's just not easy
trying to live in what's known as ?the
fast lane when the only fast lane you've previously lived in has been the one
marked "6 items or less."
?
The thing about these type of
people is that all their value systems are defined in terms of consumer
goods.? Items like jacuzzis and cordless
phones and personalized number plates and wooden loo seats and state of the art
kitchen equipment. All of which, either cost the absolute earth, or when it did
happen to be something within our price range, like the cordless telephone, our
dog kept taking it out in the garden and burying it.
?
But as for those other yuppie
appurtenances, have you any idea what traders are now asking for a number plate
that begins "D.N."? It's nearly as much as I paid for the whole
car.? But in the end, I achieved the
effect for a fraction of the cost by simply hanging on to my present number
plate, but changing my name to Joseph Otto Quinlan.?
?
It's the same when installing a
jacuzzi. What worked out much more economical was just leaving the plumbing as
it was, but if ever a neighbor pops round, we just keep dropping entire packets
of Alka Seltzer in the bath water.
?
Mind you, not all those yuppie
accessories can be acquired on the cheap.?
Our pasta maker for example.? It
really was a mistake to buy that from a reject shop.? Its electrical circuits turned out to be so
dodgy we didn't even realize that the off switch didn't work 'till we went out
one afternoon and came back to find the whole house under twenty feet of
spaghetti.
?
But the most damaging exercise in
false economy was in the matter of the wooden loo seat. I don't know how
recently you've checked out what the shops are asking for those.? Honestly for the same price you could have
two weeks in Spain.?
?
So I decided to make one of my
own.?? Now, admittedly that meant
involving myself in carpentry, a craft at which my personal skills could be
judged by the little questions I have to keep asking.? Such as "How do you get blood off a
saw?"
?
But remember the objective was to
save money. And that I certainly did.?
Because all that wooden loo seat finally cost me was just thirty-five
pounds, twenty-eight hours work, and the tip of one index finger.
?
Now I grant you it is not
perfect.? Due to the fact that I don't possess
any kind of lathe or turning tool, the central aperture is square.? That is to say it has four corners rather
than being in the customary oval shape.
?
And because I was similarly short
of a spoke-shave or plane, in fact, any of the tools used to make wood smooth,
the seat presents a somewhat rough and jagged surface to oncoming flesh.
?
So, all in all, that seat does
not make an ideal object for people to park on for any length of time.? In fact, the splinter count is so high,
anybody emerging from there can always be recognized by their rather Groucho
Marx type walk
?
And that is why we have now had
to hang up in there a small hand-printed warning which, as I've mentioned, paraphrases
a well-known song, film, and book title: Lav is a many splintered thing
?
Denis Norden
880912b
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