We have a pit (literally and metaphorically)

They say that your house is a metaphor for your life. At present the Bonkers House has a very large hole. A yawning pit in fact. This bothers me. Mainly, it must be said, because it’s only a matter of time before someone falls into it, but also because my rather fecund imagination is worrying (terrier style) at the metaphor bit.
What does the pit signify? What am I lacking, what is the gaping hole of my psyche? The pit of despond? Maybe it’s more like a grave? The graveyard of my hopes and ambitions? Or a black hole... The black hole of school fees and, indeed, the paying for all this pit-digging?

Oh for pity’s sake, Jane, get a grip.

Actually, turning it around in a revoltingly positive Louise Hay sort of way, the pit is really the solution. There is something rotten in the House of Bonkers, you see – as in literally rotten, as in smelling distinctly bad (not quite as foul as the stench of fox poo on wet dog, but getting up there). Drains. Not to mention Damp.

We have tried, for the last three years, to pretend it simply isn’t there; to forget we have a front door and a bottom level of the house (home of the Haunted Cellar, the Loo of Doom and the Ludicrously Grand Staircase). If someone does venture to the front entrance, we huff and puff and moan before stomping down the stairs and heaving open the door, accompanied by impressively gothic creaking and groaning (from the door, not me). But the mould has also been bothering me. I watch enough House (as in Hugh Laurie playing grumpy US doctor and - worryingly - being incredibly fanciable) to know that mould can cause any number of seriously weird medical conditions. I am now quite convinced that the mould is to blame for Adrian’s hayfever, James’ cough and my being fat and not getting a book contract. So, long story short, we called in the builders to Fix It – hence the hole.

Thus it is back to making tea and sticking earplugs in so I can’t hear Asbo throwing himself against the window in blind fury at the trespass. It’s back to piles of ‘stuff’ everywhere. It’s back to drills going off the moment the phone rings and I need to have a reasonably professional discussion with someone.

And, of course, it would be this week that I get not one but two bouquets of flowers. Absolutely stunningly gorgeous but (wails quietly) nobody will see them apart from me (Adrian doesn’t count – he simply doesn’t see flowers).  So I will (in my best therapy speak) share them with you.  Now then, interesting this, one was from Paula Pryke and the other was from good old Interflora. Wonder if you can tell which is which?

let's call this one bouquet A (so original)

and let's call this one Bouquet B (because to call it anything else would be simply way too random)