Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
You will be able to see right through Chris’s latest madcap adventure…
It’s good to have doors. While that opening sentence is about as blindingly obvious as it’s possible to be, I don’t think I ever realised just how great doors are – until I didn’t have any, that is.
So, why did my house suddenly become so startling open-plan that it didn’t even have any doors? It all started when my wife Lorraine chose a new set of internal doors to replace the filthy lumps of rotting wood we’ve had hanging off every door-frame for the last two decades.
A carpenter, who I have to say was absolutely excellent (I have to say that because he told me to… and also because he is excellent) then came along, took all our old doors off and got called away on an emergency (not sure what emergency carpentry involves) leaving us with no doors for 48 hours.
While that sounds like a very minor thing, it’s very hard to describe the strangeness of being in a house without doors.
I first realised that subtle lifestyle changes had taken place when I was clandestinely raiding the kitchen chocolate cupboard and Lorraine called out “remember your diet” from the bathroom.
She could see me from the bathroom. In fact, we could all see each other from everywhere. Bodmin, our giant
Ted the rabbit could suddenly see downthe length of the house
bruiser of an ex-stray tomcat intently watched my every move around the house with a look of narrow-eyed hatred (he didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just the only facial expression he has) while Ted the rabbit could now see down the whole length of the house from the garden.
It’s testament to Ted’s total lack of interest in anything but hay that he turned his back on his newfound view of the world and stared at the back of his hutch wall for two days.
I realise I’m not very interesting to look at, but apparently a single piece of blank plywood has more crowd appeal. Great.
Noise was another problem. With my daughter studying for school tests, I was shushed whenever I spoke, even from the other end of the house. In fact even my walking silently past her door-less bedroom became a major annoyance.
Also, my normal crashing and clattering around the house distracted Lorraine from her reality TV shows, unable to shut the lounge door because there wasn’t one, Reality interrupting reality.
So, with a house offering the opportunity to see me from every angle, I discovered that nobody wanted to see me unless I stole chocolate (except a glaring cat of course) and nobody wanted to hear me speak unless… um, well, just nobody wanted to hear me speak. After a history of disastrous book-plugging interviews, many radio stations were already well aware of that fact, even if I wasn’t.
Luckily, the new doors are in place now, and we can go back to happily ignoring each other like all good families should. Life’s always best when you can eat chocolate without heckling from the toilet…