Mrs High Definition

I had a delivery yesterday. A man rang me to say that he was at the Ostentatious Gates. He had a something for us. High Definition, he said. Brighton Road.

You what? said I.

I have a delivery for High Definition, said he.

FFS, said I.

Up the garden I went.

The delivery was one of tiles. Yes, more tiles. Who would have thought that one little en-suite would require so many bastarding tiles? Certainly not I, dear reader. Yet these tiles are rather exciting. These ones are not beige, strictly speaking. They are wood-effect. They look like oak. Oak, yet very obviously not oak. They sound awful, don’t they? But I promise they are tasteful. They’ll go very nicely with the baby blue/fawn/white mosaic detail we have for the shower wall… truly.

As I signed for the tiles, as Mrs High Definition, I pondered the irony of the situation. With our impressive rubble pile complete with resident vegetative tufts,  the assortment of old washing machine parts flung with apparent gay abandon all over the shop, pallets galore, a mahoosive slab of black granite, one tarpaulin,  a family of lintels, eleventy three chipped paving slabs, an enormous hose, several scooters, our poor, sad, retired oven, many old roof tiles and the jigsaw puzzle that is a double-glazed roof light in pieces,  all shrouded in the grim mists of a rainy November morning, I had to laugh. This lot is in my face enough as it is, without any need for enhanced visual tools. The Funny Little Bungalow suffices in its own version of glorious Technicolor. Although currently that appears to be restricted to all the different shades of beigey brown.

So Mrs High Definition? I don’t think so. Mrs Better with Blinkers, more like. Because if I am good at one thing, it’s shutting my mind to the bomb site. Not a very useful trait in everyday life, but it is certainly handy at the moment. It’s a strategy. A survival technique. I daresay, even a skill.

One day, I promise, I’ll pull my finger out and weed that rubble pile. But I’ll miss the poppies that bloom there in the spring. I can see those through my blinkers alright.