Christmas 2018

Christmas 2018 ©

By

Michael Casey

Normally I write a missive to my relatives in Ireland at Christmas, it’s like a school report, in a page I try and say it all. This year has been a busy one, we found our new house on Saint Patrick’s Day, 17^th March, and then you wait for the previous family to move out. Which was 4, four months, we had to wait for the end of the school year in the end. This was the obvious exchange date really as the old owner had young kids and they were moving far away.

So hopes of sliding into the new house during a half term were dashed, we’d have to wait till the Summer. Then once you have the keys, and we ended up with 7 sets, you have to have to change all the locks anyway. Though we waited till the builders were done before we did that, so 7 sets were useful. You have the joys of finding good tradesmen, luckily my wife had a list and then there was a bit of trial and error.

It took 3 months before we could move in. There are things that you want to do, things you need to do, and things you must do. Such as a new floor, which really busts the budget. A boiler in a bedroom is never a good idea, so you need to move it, or rather scrap, it and get a new one. This again busts the budget, but at least the bedroom is bigger and safer.Then there are electrics, when was it actually rewired? Look at the sockets, the size and shape and colour discoloration tells their age, and again whether or not you should, or could or must replace the electrics.

And on it goes, for a bloke a kitchen is just where you make yourself a coffee. For your wife, its a puzzle of 1,000,000 sides, Rubic’s cube gone mad. The looks and styles and colour combinations of all you could possibly have. To you the kitchen is nice and much better than the one in the old house. But to your wife its like taking LSD, Look Shape Design, the housewife’s LSD. Everything MUST CAN and WILL conform to her will. Resistance is Futile, you will be absorbed. LSD rules, Look Shape Design.

So the kitchen is changed and 50Shades of Grey, no not something kinky in private, but 50 Shades of Grey for Kitchen Colours comes out of the closet. Why oh why couldn’t you just be tied up and left in a corner to fester. Instead of being interrogated about shades of grey, not even 50 more like a million, it was like Chinese water torture by your Shanghai wife. But she want’s perfection, so she must have it. I always give perfection,but never in grey, 50 shades of grey, kitchen cabinet grey.

In the end the 1^st choice, or was it the 2^nd was the final choice, the 50 shades of grey were just some trick of the light, I had had the full spectrum of pain. All the colours of the rainbow in fact, picking or rather being picked on, to chose a colour,so long as it was grey, 50 shades of grey.It left me black and blue, and not having a clue.

But the kitchen would be fantastic when it arrived on the back of a lorry and was put together by her personal crew of builders.

And on it goes, meanwhile our Polish worker paints everything white, but grey has to be somewhere as an accent colour. We have plenty of accents with all the workmen, at least English was the common language. One tip, put some of your work on Gumtree and you can get lucky, but recommendation is better still. One Iranian carpenter was very good, otherwise your main builder knows his onions and he can recommend this and that.

And on it goes, as the pain of the budget overspill goes on, and I could go on but my own pained left shoulder is making me nearly cry, but at least as my small daughter makes brownies in the kitchen with her friend I can say the end does come. The brownies are at least now ready, and they are not grey, any colour but grey. The painting is over and all the changes, the good, the bad and the unexpected are over. Your guitar is not gently weeping, because the little Polish lad down the lane has it, you are no weeping willow, a reed that has bent with the wind or is that the Polish boy playing clarinet, as grey has sprayed everywhere. You know as any designer knows, grey is the new black.

So finally you move in, just in time for your daughter’s Birthday, only all the money has been spent so no money for a present, as you sit around on cardboard boxes. There is a sale in the furniture shop next month, and it’s easy terms, so long as you buy shop soiled stock in GREY.