Our Home

This home has been ours forever, our parents’ generation and the ten before that too. This home

has been loved, the time battered wood panelling on the floor for something to go by, the cracks in

the paint we’ve attempted to cover. We really ought to buy a rug for that floor.

Let me show you to the bathroom, just in case. The plumbing is on the fritz, has been for a while, but

we will get someone out to fix it soon, it isn’t that big a problem we don’t think, not urgent yet. The

old pipes groan and an occasional drip of black oil spills out, but we’ve taped a plastic bag over them.

Round the Sellotape, round it over and over, to choke the oil away and its practically like we never

touched it.

Now here is the kitchen. Let me know if you want me to cook you something up, we have all sorts in

the fridge, it is overflowing, packed as always. Though I probably should have chucked the salmon

out, we were supposed to eat it last night, and the grapes, well they looked a bit strange, so we have

been avoiding them. Yes, a few of them just weren’t the right shape.

It is often we forget bin day, so the rubbish has piled up, as if we are playing Jenga, how fun. It is

heaping, seeping over the edges, so when you do go by pop it back on top, wont you? Well, the

smell is fine, it is over there, and we are over here.

We are over here, in the lounge. We are by the television, though we aren’t watching it, I just like

the light, and the buzzing noise in the background as I scroll on my phone. I think the ten ‘o’clock

news may be on. Forget him over there, he is on the treadmill, with a video of outside on his iPad.

Yes, it does look just like the path outside, isn’t that wonderful.

It is nearing summer, but the fireplace is lit in the dining room, the angry red haze growing and

growing but still unnoticed. I can’t hear the crackling over here with my noise-cancelling headphones

in. I grew a tad too warm, so I opened the windows. But they are cold up there, so they’ve put the

heating on, let me know if you want it on in here too.

We like the house to look alive, a buzz of energy on the outside, so the lights are all on, even when

there is nobody home. We would hate for someone to break in, we take such good care of the place.

Oh? What’s that you say? You hear an alarm? I don’t hear anything.