Mrs G Goes To Work

And there's make-up on the upholstery

My favourite car is a very beaten-up Nissan. Bits are falling off, but the engine and gearbox are sweet as they come, and parking is a breeze¹. But recently I am doubly smitten.

First my lovely motor has begun to pong. It's quite unpleasantly pungent. I've searched under the seats, in the boot², in all the little handy Japanese compartments, for rotting fruit, dead animals or stale twiglets, but nothing. Maybe it's e Coli in the AC, or a Coli in the EC, or something. I'm not good with cars.

Secondly, Mrs G has begun taking it to work. As mentioned last post, she has found herself gainful employment, abandoning me to clean the porcelain. To add insult to injury, she's nicked my car.

Mrs G loves her job. She works on a smallholding providing opportunities for people to learn horticultural and outdoor skills. They have 100 chickens³, some donkeys, rabbits, three lambs (soon), and about a trillion worms.

And since Mrs G likes to share the love, and they have a constant need of help, she asked me. A door on their chicken shed is loose; could I fix it?

Well of course I could. Like most men I am extraordinarily gifted at fixing stuff. Except cars. I chuck the drill in the (other) car and head up. Mrs G shows me the offending door. Although it is a challenge drilling while being surveyed at close quarters by Chicken Licken and Henny Penny, it's fixed in a jiffy! Damn, I'm good. Mrs G, all impressed innocence, invites me for tea as my reward. Why, I'd love to. Teatime is in about an hour.

It's about now I should have got suspicious.

An hour to kill. What shall we do? I've got a suggestion, says Mrs G, fluttering her eyelashes, today is the day we clean out the chickens. Come and help me. OK. What does that involve?

Over the next hour I really earn that tea. 'Cleaning out the chickens' is a euphemism, like 'walking the dog'⁴. It really means shovelling colossal mounds of chicken crap into wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. I had no idea chickens had such a productive digestive system. It's a foul job (pun intended). The fumes could knock a grown man off his feet⁵.

But wait a minute! I know that smell. And after tea I watch Mrs G pack up. She changes into her day shoes and chucks her gunge-encrusted boots into the back of my lovely car. So there's a silver lining. I simply treat Mrs G to another pair of boots she can use at home; and lo, my Nissan pongeth no more.

And that's my last scatalogical post for a while, you'll be relieved to hear. Spring has sprung; time to move on to more fragrant themes. But not before I show you this, with the best product write-up, ever. Ha! I never need to clean another toilet again. Or chicken.

---

1 - French style. Just drive up to stuff until you hit it
2 - That's 'trunk' to you, colonial chums
3 - 98 if we're picky. Two popped their clogs over Christmas
4 - Which actually means 'taking the dog to poop on the neighbour's lawn'
5 - That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Tripping over a chicken would be undignified