The Parallax View

There's a common cliche in science fiction stories about a protagonist who travels to a parallel universe where ALL IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS. And so, dear reader, by virtue of moving into someone else's house, I have become such a protagonist.

You see, in my own home I know where things are. Well, most things. For instance, I don't know where the tampons are. In fact, on occasion I find tampons and, since I'm not really familiar with such things, think they're Nerf gun darts.  In my own defence this has only happen maybe six or seven times.

 Anyway, aside from tampons, in my own house I know where to find, for instance, a knife in the cutlery drawer. Because right minded people keep their cutlery in the following order from left to right; spoons, forks, knives. And then below these in the little horizontal bit, are the tea spoons.

No so here. Here the order of the cutlery draw is; knives, forks, spoons. However, the spoons are tea spoons, and the dessert spoons are down below.

This simply will not do. Things like this mess with my mojo, and given the nature of my freaky-deaky offspring, I need my shit unmessed. I was bemoaning this fact the other day to my brother-in-law, father-in-law and evil-step-mother-in-law whilst trying to find the charcoal for a barbeque I was meant to be cooking. Mainly I was bemoaning this because I couldn't find the charcoal until my father-in-law said;

"Found it. The charcoal's in the rabbit hutch."

Of course it is. That's where sane people keep their charcoal. I found the firelighters on a small island in the middle of the point.

Fortunately the Kids have made the transition into a new house relatively easily. Admittedly over the weekend the Boy said;

"I feel homesick for our old house."

"Well, I miss our old house too."

The Girl piped up.

"I miss our new house."

"How can you miss the new house?"

"Ignore her, dad." *Conspiratorialy* "It's the hormones."

But on the whole things are pretty much back to normal. As demonstrated when the Girl told the Wife;

"If you want, I can teach you to be naughty."

"Er...okay."

"Well, first you have to shout 'No, no, no!.' Then you have to cry loads and then you lay down on the floor and don't move."

"You haven't lost your touch then?"

The Girl then showed the Wife what she meant, and when the Wife told her it was time to pick up the Boy, the Girl followed her pretend tantrum with an actual tantrum.

Meanwhile, the Boy is still playing conversational twister by responding randomly to any statement.

"I'm wearing a shirt today because we have to go church for assembly and I want to look smart."

"Well, I think you look very smart."

"Ha ha! And when I went to the office the other day because of my breath* someone had been sick and they put cat litter on it."

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Look at those tits!"

I should point out, they were blue tits.

Best of all, however, was the moment that came when I was making a complete arse of myself attempting to fix the brakes on my bike. As I was persuading the brakes with a hammer I heard the noise of a low flying aircraft and looked up to see a B17 bomber loom over the horizon. I called the Boy and Girl who were having their dinner at the time. The Boy ran to the door with a spoon in one hand a a yoghurt in the other and gazed up at the bomber as it buzzed over the horizon.

"Cool."

"That's the Sally B. I think it's the last airworthy B17 in this country."
"What's a B17?"

"It's a bomber."

The Girl's, who was looking a bit bored, suddenly looked more interested.

"Is it going to bomb us?"

"No, darling. It doesn't have any bombs. It's a old bomber from World War II"

She looked at me disapprovingly, as if to say "Well, if I'm not going to see a bomb, what's the point?" The Boy decided to regain her attention by teaching her what he knew about World War II.

"You see, some really horrible people started a war with England."

"Why did they want a war with England?"

"Well, they had the First World War and they thought; 'That went well' so they decided to have another one."

* He had asthma. Not, like, halitosis or something.