Dominoes

Last night I was in the garden helping to diagnose the current problem with our atrocious plumbing system, which is very old and accordingly has a stroke every few months. While I was there, a gang of mosquitoes pounced me and bit me six or seven times, including a horrible one on the back of my drawing hand. If you can't see it in that picture straightaway, it's because you're not thinking big enough. Notice how two of my knuckles are missing under the edge of the behemoth. As you can see, I have fairly strong allergic reactions to mosquito bites, hence I haven't gone to college today. I could barely use my spoon earlier, let alone a pencil. I tried bleeding it out like I did with some other ones, but for some reason my hand remains swollen and now painful.

Anyway, this seems a good time to tell a story of subterfuge and vengeance in my house, the principal point of which is my mother robbing me. A new low. It all began one morning when she had run out of tea - I assume she requires several gallons a day to substitute for blood or something, judging by the number of cups of tea she drinks. So, she asked me if I would pop over to the local foodstore and get her some teabags. I said alright, and asked what sort/colour of tea she wanted. She said it didn't matter, and to just get the cheapest, since small shops are murderously expensive. I went down to the shop in boxers and a T, grabbed a box of teabags, and came back to the house. "Green tea?!" was the welcome I got.
   "Nobody drinks green tea!"
   What could I do but laugh. She then told me to go straight back and exchange it. I said no, told her that it was her own fault, and to do it herself. Then I retired to my room and thought no more about it. Some time later, she appeared with the box of tea, put it down and demanded the money for it, adding that it was "mine".
   "Bollocks," I said, and snatched my wallet out of harm's way. She then grabbed the flask full of throwaway silver coins from my desk, emptied it all over my bed, and proceeded to scrabble through it like an elderly chicken to make up the price of the tea (and more on top of it, I shouldn't wonder.)
   In response to this criminal activity, I began to drink all of the delicious Lemon & Lime bitters that she buys whenever she wasn't around, or was otherwise occupied. A week or so later, her suspicions were running high. She craftily marked the bottle with a pen, and so discovered that it was steadily disappearing. One evening while she was out, I made to steal some more, but when I opened the bottle there was no fizz left at all. I troubled myself to examine the contents and thought better of drinking any of it, instead placing it carefully back where I had found it. A few days later, my brother-in-law barged into the fridge and took a few hearty gulps of the stuff without a care. Hilarity ensued. My sister reliably informs me that my mother poured about half a pound of iodised salt into her own drink; ruthless!

It's always gratifying to see El Bean at the bottom of the pecking order, where he belongs. Apparently he sulked for the rest of the day.

And a jolly good time was had by all!


The reversal of the tide