Prodigal Peace Piercer

For 3 weeks I have lived a quiet, peaceful existence in a clean, tidy haven of serenity and calm. I've not had to go to Tesco once. Admittedly, this did involve some careful planning to ensure I visited friends likely to offer me supper on the rare nights that I wasn't attending a catered meeting. The laundry basket has been so empty as to barely justify turning on the machine more frequently than once every 10 days, and only then to give me something to do. I have returned home most* nights to find each room as gleamingly tidy and ordered as when I left it. Empty rooms have been unlit.

Today it was all shattered. I now sit amongst a plethora of wet towels festooning every surface save for the towel rail. My washing machine is spinning for the 8th consecutive time and threatens to overheat. I cannot cross a room without tripping over an assortment of trainers, flip-flops, aftershave boxes, kangaroo testicles and pilfered sign boards. Steam billows from the shower room, sticky puddles of gel are already oozing across the mantelpiece, the air heavy with the aroma of Givenchy for Men and transequatorial sweat. The cat is dizzy from being somersaulted around the room. There is barely an item in the fridge that hasn't been half-eaten. 2 cartons of juice lie empty and abandoned where they fell, not quite reaching the bin. My Bebel Gilberto CD has been silenced, drowned out by the strains of Fall Out Boy and AC/DC. The lovingly-pressed, riceflour-scented sheets of the carefully made bed lie twisted and buckled despite only having been sat upon and not yet slept in. A disembowelled hold-all is abandoned in the kitchen where it first came to rest. I can barely set foot outside the door for fear of being hit by a homing boomerang and lights blaze from every window.

And all this devastation in barely 2 hours.

Yep. Jack's back, at least he hung around long enough to create the chaos described above before heading out, in his new aussie shorts and accompanying aussie t-shirt, sporting a beard, bleached hair, the remains of a black eye and a deep caramel tan to catch up with his mates, tell them the unabridged tales of which I'd been treated to edited highlights all the way back from Newark, and share a bag or 2 of crocodile/ emu/ roo jerky.

Happy days are here again!


* I've slept out at least 5 nights