|
The Ley Lines Of A Semi-retired Drainage System
By Pem Charnley, Fri Dec 9th
There seems to be at times, a fine line between enthusiasm andfrenzied delight, and with Miranda Krestovnikoff, who presentsBBC 2’s Hidden Treasure, that line is all too frequently blurred. Still, perhaps I’m being a little too hard on the poor girl.After all, it’s her enthusiasm that caused me to go out theother day and buy a metal detector. I’d like to think that I’mthe only one to have done this, at least in my town, butregrettably, I suspect I’m in the majority… After all, I went into one of the local shops on the day ofpurchase, asking if they did indeed sell metal detectors, andthis young man serving behind the counter immediately asked ifI’d been watching BBC 2 recently. I didn’t know how to takethis. Now obviously, he’d sussed me but … well, was that goodmanners on his part, or just cheeky perception?
I mean, had I gone into my local branch of M & S and been caughtperusing the boxer shorts, I think I’d have taken umbrage, had ashop assistant inquired if I’d recently had a case of the runs.I digress. Suffice to say, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed,found out, with my BBC 2 viewing detected so instantly. Anyway, my fiancée and I finally located one of these machinesin one of the nearby catalogue stores…which meant that once wehad got it home, we needed to drive off out to one of the nearbycatalogue stores to buy some batteries, amidst much muttering. Still, once this thing was up and running, the fun we had aroundthe house was fantastic. The brass fireplace was indeed metal,so was a 2p casually dropped on the carpet, then hunted down,with much squealing from both man and machine. And then there was the garden of course. I expertly discoveredthe ley lines that relate to the drainage system. This shouldhave been done privately. However, we live in a quiet, semi-retired, semi-detached area,and my tracking the drainage
caused the district net curtains toact as if there was a tornado approaching. We rent the house we currently live in and our landlord is slowwhen it comes to getting things done, so, in a way, the metaldetector really came into its own when I decided to phone ourlandlord. There’s a ladder on our roof that has been there allyear and it’s been annoying me, so I thought I’d have him ontoast. The phone call went like this. “Hello, Bob, it’s Holmes here. I bought a metal detector todayand discovered there’s a ladder on the roof. This could attractburglars, surely.” There was such a pause at the other end of the line. I couldhear confused steam coming from his ears as he got this mentalimage of my scaling the house with a metal detector. The ladder is still there. All that’s changed is the landlordnow seems incredibly wary of me when he collects the rent eachmonth… Now, where did I put the washing machine? © Copyright Holmes Charnley mmiv. All rights reserved. About the author:Freelance Journalist based in Devon-UK. For more examples of mywork, please visit http://www.articles.me.uk. The two mostrecent pieces have been published in The Guardian (UKbroadsheet.) Pieces also accepted by Jack magazine.
|
