Key Under Blue Pot and Please Milk the Goat

KEY UNDER BLUE POT AND PLEASE MILK THE GOAT

[A diary of a house sitter]

M A R I E S E V E R

Copyright 2011 Marie Sever

E-book, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book must not be re-sold or given away to other people, unless the author permits in writing.

This is a work of fiction. Any reference to people or incidents is purely coincidental.

FOREWORD

Jean is a house-sitter. She travels around mainland Britain, looking after people’s houses, gardens and pets while they are on holiday. The animals she cares for range from chickens to goats, snakes to tortoises and innumerable cats and dogs.

Encounters with a panty nicker, a bigamist and an alcoholic septuagenarian cause her grief. An indifferent husband, computer hacker son, multi-married sister and in-laws make for a comic look at life.

KEY UNDER BLUE POT and PLEASE MILK THE GOAT

Notable people:

Jean – the writer of this diary

David – her husband who is an author

Mark – their son, at secondary school

Cathy – their daughter

Grace – Cathy’s baby

Kevin – Cathy’s partner and father of Grace

Anne – Jean’s sister

Mary – Jean’s sister. Lives in New Zealand

Keith – Mary’s husband

Mum – Jean’s mother

Doris – David’s mother

Tony – David’s father

January 1st

Another year is over. David and I saw the New Year in with mugs of tea at 10.15 then went to bed. David had been slumbering in his reclining chair, snoring so loudly I’m surprised the neighbours didn’t complain. I’ve tried various anti-snoring devices as my ear plugs only reduce the level that stops the curtains billowing. It’s still irritating enough for me to escape to Jane’s old bedroom when I can’t bear it any more. Having a clip on his nose didn’t work. He just couldn’t drop off to sleep with it pinching his nose.

My mother’s suggestion of sewing a tennis ball into the back of his pyjamas lasted ten minutes. His moans and groans were almost worse than the nasal/vocal eruptions. It’s been suggested his tonsils are enlarged and having them removed may solve the problem but he said there’s no way someone is going to start slicing bits of him. I think we need to move to France for a short holiday, then if I murder him in the middle of the night I can claim it was a ‘Crime Passionel.’ Or perhaps we can save having to bring his body back to the UK and I will claim extreme provocation here.

Anyway, Mark went to his room after tea and didn’t return. He’s as boring as we are but at fifteen he should have more energy. Maybe he spent the night on Facebook. I worry about his having access to Facebook but have to trust he isn’t being bullied. He doesn’t produce any symptoms of being bullied.

We usually go up to high town, meet friends and have a couple of drinks in the pub before spilling out into the High Street to link hands and sing Auld Lang Syne. The minus 6 Celsius predicted didn’t motivate us to go last night. David said it would freeze his ‘wotsits.’ He said that’s the one part of the body that doesn’t have specific apparel to provide extra warmth, unless he wears silk long-johns. I suggested I knit him an angora jock-strap.

Anne phoned this morning. Whenever I hear my sister’s voice my heart seems to drop into my stomach. Invariably she’s expecting sympathy for another daft thing she has done or some domestic trauma, that is a trauma for her but a minor annoyance for most other people. She’s been married to husband number four for eight months now, almost a record!

Andy is, I suppose, a good man, but I always feel he’s waiting for some excitement to appear. Lately he seems to exist on nervous energy. He can’t keep still for long. Being married to Anne can’t be easy. She’s flighty and demanding.

Things seem to be working out for her though. She had an extended, noisy Christmas as most of her many step-children appeared, probably for hand-outs. Because she’s attempting to be a mother to them, she tries to be their friend. All they want is her money, and because she feels guilty at having enticed their father away from their mother, she keeps dipping into her purse. During a six day period over Christmas she visited the cash point three times. They prey on that guilt and even though they have all left home and are working they expect hand-outs. It’s her own fault as she started showering them with money and gifts soon after meeting them.

I took Nip and Tuck, as David calls them, out for another long run today down by the river. The poodles enjoy meeting other dogs and chase each other round and round in ever increasing circles. It’s brilliant exercise for them and me. David didn’t come with me today as he wants to complete another chapter on his book. I’m sure an hour walking the dogs would be good for him. He’s definitely getting podgier around the middle. So am I but it’s different for women, we’re biologically programmed to have extra padding there once we get to our forties.

I wonder if Cissie has really gone to Turkey or if she’s having another facelift. One day David is going to slip up when he sees her around, and will refer to the dogs by their nicknames and she will want to know why he calls them Nip and Tuck. He can hardly say it’s after all the cosmetic surgery their owner has had!

She’s certainly a strange person. The skin on her face looks quite stretched, and her eyes have a startled look. She said she never had children because she didn’t want to lose her figure. She has, however, always been a sun worshipper and has damaged her skin which is blotchy. She also has quite bad pigmentation, so she now wears thick makeup. It takes all sorts David says. The dogs are trim and well looked after so David says they must have had cosmetic surgery too.

My facetious husband says she has the airs and graces of the Queen but the language of a fish wife, and that it’s no wonder her husband left her for a man. He was probably driven mad by the constant drone of the vacuum cleaner, while he sat meekly on the settee with his feet up. David has never liked her. In fact, he says he finds her quite frightening. He claims he’s worried all the stitches will unravel from her latest face lift while he is talking to her. He is dreadful.

Cissie’s away for a week and is due back soon. It’s hard work keeping to her demanding standards. Having to wash the dogs’ feet and clean in between their toes every time I bring them back from walks is a pain. They get so muddy in this weather; although today’s ground frost was so hard that there wasn’t any mud for the dogs to roll in.

I prefer this type of house sit when I can either go just to look after animals, then go home, or when I stay there in the day but go home at night. I love house-sitting. It’s like being on holiday all year round. I meet new people, although the owners have often left for their holiday when I turn up. So the people I meet are usually the neighbours who hold the keys for me.

There is such a wide variety of housing. From terraced houses in a city to seven bedroom old and new houses, and farms. The facilities vary greatly too. Some come with hot tubs, swimming pools, inside cinemas and even a wormery. It’s also fun going to different parts of the country. I will go anywhere but not off mainland Britain. Anyone living in the Hebrides or Isle of Wight will have to find someone else to look after their animals and property, although I fancy the Falklands, but only in summer.

David rarely goes with me. He’s an author and has spent most of our marriage in his den. It’s really the spare single bedroom. The sort of room which twenty years ago would have been the nursery, or a storeroom, but now many people install their computer and printer in there as a home office. He has stacks of paper everywhere. All are either manuscripts or printed research off Wikipedia. I’ve been banned from cleaning it. Frankly, it’s so messy I don’t want to go in there anyway. I don’t know how he finds anything. When I do peek in through the crack in the door I see the reason we seem to have a dearth of teaspoons and coffee mugs. They are balanced on various piles of paperwork, all part full with cold coffee. Sometimes when I have returned from a few weeks away and not been able to find even one drinking vessel I have crept in there and raided his cache of mugs containing mouldering black contents. I sometimes think I should hide all the pottery mugs when I go away and leave him with a supply of polystyrene cups.

January 3 - Home

My lovely Cathy is twenty-two today. Last week I spent ages finding a birthday card with ‘daughter’ on, that wasn’t too sloppy. She hates me being sentimental. My granddaughter, Grace, is four months old. She’s beautiful, and Cathy seems happy but I do still wish she hadn’t met that waste of space – Kevin. Why would such an intelligent and attractive girl, with three good ‘A’ levels and the ability to achieve well at university, shack up with an oaf like him? It’s beyond us. It might help if he held down a job for more than three months.

They are always short of money so I posted her a cheque for £75. She doesn’t normally listen to what I say but thankfully she has kept her post office account I opened when she was a baby, so I hope she puts the cheque in there. If it goes into their joint bank account he will draw it straight out and it will go on DVDs, CDs, pot or tattoos etc. And he will arrive home late from the pub. When will her rose-tinted specs fall off? She knows my feeling on the matter but is quite capable of making her own decisions [and mistakes].

I rang Mum today. She was bouncing with rude health as usual at Christmas, and is well today. She was given a dance mat by Cathy and has been having a lot of fun on it. I feel at her age she should be careful as a fall could well result in broken body parts. I don’t think Mum will ever slow down. She’s worried about her bees. There is a mite killing bees and she’s worried there won’t be any honey next year. She can talk ad infinitum about bees. I love her to bits but my eyes glaze over when she starts her bees’ monologue.

She lives near Ludlow, in a sweet little terraced house with the front door opening onto the pavement. The front facade hides a beautiful garden at the back. She has a hive there, but also several hives in a field a mile away. The field belongs to someone in the bee club or whatever one calls it. There are about eleven members and Mum is one of only two females. It keeps her out of trouble, I suppose.

She has all the kit: the essential hat and veil and a smoke puffer thing. She’s been stung over twenty times, but seems to be almost immune. It’s not a hobby I would like but I appreciate the jar of honey every now and then.

Anne rang. She divulged that husband number four is suddenly acting strangely. Although, to be fair, husband number two was VERY strange, and H no 3 wasn’t all there, I’m sure. H no 4, Andy, is fairly normal compared to some of the men Anne has met or married. She is, as Jasper Carrot says, attracted to the nutter on the bus. She couldn’t tell me exactly what is wrong but he isn’t acting ‘normally’.

What IS normal? I said maybe he has swine flu, bird flu or normal human flu, but she didn’t think that was funny. I await the next instalment. There’s always something with Anne and her many failed relationships. And she has the nerve to call me ‘boring’ at times. I’d rather be happy and boring than unhappy and stumble from crisis to crisis.

She’s only a couple of years younger than me, but she has never matured properly. It’s not as if she has become rich from any pay-off from her three divorces. She certainly doesn’t marry for money.

She always picks men who have few assets. H no 2 didn’t have any money, and four months after they married she discovered he had been in prison for pushing drugs and had held up a small newsagent’s in Birmingham. She’s like a moth to a flame – men fly towards her and she always picks the rotters. She’s a beautiful redhead, with pale skin and fits into size eight clothes.

January 6 - Home

I had a very strange enquiry today. Someone wants me to travel with them to Spain, and look after their five miniature schnauzers at the villa they have booked. I have a policy of not travelling outside of England, Scotland and Wales for work however an all expenses paid fortnight in Southern Spain sounds wonderful. Unfortunately, I already have a booking for that period. Also, five excitable little dogs would be hard work, I think. I wonder why the owners are going to all the hassle of meeting the European pet travelling requirements