Hens Dancing

Hens Dancing Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Hens Dancing Read Online Free PDF
Author: Raffaella Barker
Tags: Humour
becomes a square of misery.
    Am heading out to kill Digger when Giles runs in, breathless. ‘Don’t worry, Mum, it isn’t a hen, it’s a pheasant from the meadow, David just got it with Felix’s catapult. It was such a cool shot, I wish you’d seen it.’
    I joggle The Beauty about and she begins to coo again, so sanity can now return. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’
    Giles giggles. ‘We could hear you swearing from the other side of the garden. You must have left The Beauty’s intercom outside. David said I should run and tell you before you burst a blood vessel.’
    â€˜What a disgusting image.’ I turn crossly and flounce upstairs to give The Beauty her bottle. When I come down half an hour later, Giles and Felix are watching a video of
Calamity Jane
and David has gone. I settle down on the sofa in time to sing along with Doris Day to ‘Take Me Back to the Black Hills of Dakota’.
    May 1st
    Dawn finds me crawling around in the garden with bits of wet grass on my face, having washed it in dew for increased possibility of great beauty. This is an economy drive, and virtue propels me about beneath the apple trees which are bowing and quivering in arctic winds. I could be paying large sums of money to a mail-order beauty company whose boast is that their products ‘give the complexion the glow of a country walk, the texture of a sun-drenched apricot’. I can’t wait to achieve this loveliness, and am convinced that nature can do as well as Agnés b in assisting me.
    May Day is traditionally riven with ice storms and hailstones of record-breaking proportions and today is no different. I do not linger in the orchard, but dash inside to a mirror. A red nose and mud-strewn cheeks are the only sign that I have been involved in a beauty treatment, otherwise the usual pallor prevails. My skin looks nothing like a sun-drenched apricot: the economical rustic beauty treatment is wanting. But I did try. Virtuously, I write a plump cheque to Agnès b make-up and post it off. Within twenty-eight days I will achieve the longed-for apricot look with the assistance of Super Silk tinted moisturiser. Until then I shall avoid being seen in strong sunlight. Pretty easy, if this freakish and foul weather continues.
    May 4th
    Terrible cabin fever this week, caused by the work in the bathroom. All day drills whine, saws rasp and hammers bang until I am forced out into the garden to escape. Have therefore achieved a lot of weeding and no work. Weeding is second only to hanging the washing out in my tally of chores that give job satisfaction. For me, the washing line is as good as any piece of contemporary art. Indeed, when married I could always irritate Charles a lot by telling friends of my plan to take a washing machine, a line, some pegs and a few days’ laundry down to Cork Street and set myself up as a one-woman show. I still think it’s a good idea, and often expand my thesis. A narrative statement could so easily be found in the separation of whites (innocence) and darks (death). The coloured wash can represent anything – sin, love, family life, fertility or joy; even a disaster such as colours running can be turned on its head so that all the grey vests symbolise politics or our cultural identity or something similar.
    Whenever I start thinking about this again I am reminded what a brilliant idea it is. Promise myself that tomorrow I shall take photographs of my washing line and send them to Charles Saatchi. Increasingly, planning and fantasy are replacing any social life in the evenings. It is six months since Charles lived here, and even then hewas only around at weekends because in the week he was in Cambridge at the head office of Heavenly Petting. I realise, with horror, that I am no longer civilised. Have not spent ordinary, companionable evenings with a husband or similar creature for years. I don’t know how to any more. Quickly
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