Mor dwt â nyth dryw – as neat as a wren’s nest
Sima pressed the button on the brushed-chrome juicer and counted to fifteen. She opened the overhead cupboard and reached for two glasses and poured the green-grey liquid into them. Joe came into the kitchen still doing up his tie. “Oh, thanks,” he muttered as she passed him a glass. “What’s this? A puddle?”
“Don’t be puerile; it’s a potassium drink recipe. It’ll rev up your immune system and make you feel full until lunchtime.”
“You’re joking aren’t you?” Joe said and he downed the drink in one go and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He grimaced, and then he shuddered. “Maybe it’ll keep me full until the bacon sarnie trolley comes round. Aside from that, it’ll probably just give me the shits.”
“Better perhaps than your usual constipation, though? Come on, Joe, your body needn’t be a temple, but your dad pays more attention to his chickens’ diets than you do your own…”
Joe shrugged, “Spoke to Dad last night by the way, they’ve got snow – two foot in places! Keep getting power cuts – Mother lost the candles apparently – had to wait until the lights came back on to find them!”
“Torches?”
“No, lost them too! All a bit of a disaster! Funny, I miss it really.”
“What losing things and living in the dark?”
“No, weather. Real weather – you know, when you get snowed in. When you have to wear lots of layers. Come on, you must have loved it as a kid, when the bus couldn’t get through or when school was shut and the pipes froze?”
“No, not really. Come on, I’ve got to get going.” Sima quickly emptied the juicer caddy into the bin, then whipped the chopping board, knife, glasses and juicer washables into the dishwasher and slammed the door shut. She grabbed a disposable cloth and slicked it over the surface, removing any hint that food may ever have been prepared in such a temple to hygiene. She tossed the cloth into the bin and the lid shut silently behind her.
“There,” she said, all smiles, “done. Now, can we go?”
“Yeah, s’pose,” said Joe, picking up his briefcase and taking his keys off the hook. “Somehow all that stuff just seems a bit more, well, real.”
“What now? The juicer?”
“No, the weather, losing torches, having to worry about what your chickens are eating – all that unreliable stuff. I mean,” he said as he pulled the door of the flat to and they waited by the lift, “all this – it’s lovely, don’t get me wrong…”
“Good, or you can stay in your own flat.”
“…but it’s so far removed from what is real. I mean, what am I doing today?”
“Well, if you don’t know, I certainly don’t. Go on, enlighten me – you’re going to buy things? Sell things? Make some money?”
“Exactly. Now, what about you?” The door of the lift slid shut behind them and Sima rolled her eyes as she reached for the underground car park button.
“Joe, what is this? You having an early mid-life crisis or something, just because your mother lost her torch?”
“No, but all I am saying is, well, maybe I’m saying that sometimes we should all think about being a bit more real, you know?”
“Joe. I have a client at nine who needs a life laundry. Another at eleven who is having a divorce and I’m having a full bikini wax at one. How much more reality do you need?” Sima pointed her key fob at her car and popped it open. “Hey, come here,” she said and pulled him towards her. “Don’t be sad just because we’ve got a shower that actually washes us and we don’t wear ten-year-old acrylic jumpers. It’s life! If you want chickens and wellies, well, you’ll have to move back home – they’ve got plenty to go round there – mainly in your parents’ utility room. Look, we’ll talk later, OK? Bye, lover!” and she ducked into her BMW and purred away, leaving Joe to walk in the opposite direction to the tube station – in the drizzle.
He waved her goodbye as he walked out of the complex. “You know,” he said to the back of her car, “I might just do that…”
Sima sat in a traffic jam and groaned in frustration. It wasn’t as if she was in threat of being late – she always left plenty of time for traffic – it was just the inefficiency of being sat inside a car in a queue. It wasn’t as if she could do anything; if she got her Blackberry® out, the car in front would shuffle forwards three foot and she’d feel obliged to put everything down and do the same.
She thought back to what Joe had said that morning; he’d been talking like that quite a bit lately. Not saying, I want to go and be a farmer in Bwlch y Garreg, but more voicing little dissatisfactions about his – or their – life in London.
She could sort of see his point. Everything in their life worked. It was organised and efficient; even in a traffic jam she could clench and unclench her buttocks and do a seated mini-workout. Both of them were good at their jobs, money was rarely an issue, as there was so much floating around, and her flat, where he pretty much lived at the moment, worked like clockwork – and if it didn’t, having someone else to make sure that it did so pretty quickly was only a phone call away.
Clothes were washed and ironed and then returned to the wardrobes. Any clutter was put away by a mystery housemaid, bathrooms were cleaned and carpets vacuumed. Shopping was ordered online and delivered when they weren’t there, so that the mystery housemaid put it away in all the right places. All they had to do in the flat was exist.
Their friends were mostly the same: successful, attractive and hell-bent on enjoying life with no responsibilities apart from to themselves. None of them had children or even pets to muddy the waters and they met for drinks after work or dinner at a restaurant on a Saturday night, all looking beautiful and they would chatter, laugh, drink fine wines, and then disappear home in easily afforded taxis.
Joe was right: snow never scuppered their plans, neither did sick cows or hobbling sheep. Their coats really were just bloody fashion items, they didn’t need them to do anything else but look great as they did nothing but hop from heated flat to climate-controlled car to heated office spaces. But then, thought Sima as she joined a different queue at a junction, there is no actual pleasure in having a crap shower or mice in your sofa cushions – otherwise she could arrange for it to happen. It was the kind of romantic notion that people yearned for, and yet they all moaned like hell when their bus was late or they tripped over a loose paving slab, then stepped in a puddle.
Joe might think he missed the farming life, but he also liked good restaurants and the office camaraderie. She couldn’t imagine Isla welcoming him home at the end of a long day with a glass of champagne on a balcony: just the ubiquitous cup of tea and one of those bloody scones.
Maybe she, Sima, should bake Joe a few humungous scones and pop them in a rusty biscuit tin and then store it in a place where no one could reach it without standing on a rickety chair. Maybe when he gets home tonight, I could just pass him a cracked plate with an enormous curranted offering, she thought, slathered in an inch of butter and then ask him about cows.
First though, I’ll have to find a decent recipe for scones. And buy a baking tray and a set of scales, she thought. Actually, sod it: I’ll just text the housekeeping company and ask them to bring some over.
Sima turned into the underground car park at her office building and drove into her space. She reached for her bag and slung her jacket over her arm. Within thirty paces, she was in the lift and zipping her way up to her fifth floor office. Bloody Joe and his need for reality in life. Let Isla and Tomos do an hour and a half of weight-bearing stretches with Work It Bob, then go for a full Hollywood wax. Then they’d understand that there was pain and authenticity in city life too.