Look great, feel great - as long as you're not a mouse!

Sunday, August 31 08

“Have you got a minute? I want to show you something,” shouted Mr Bennet from the vicinity of the marital bed.
Mrs Bennet, not being used to such offers in the middle of the day, ran back upstairs. Over the sea of boxes, dust and clothes, she could just make out her husband’s outline, bent over something.
“You know you’ve been complaining about a smell on your side of the bed?"
"Mmm," she mumbled, not sure where the conversation was going.
"Well it isn’t gone off milk.”
“Do I want to know what’s coming next?” she asked.
“Probably not but I’m going to tell you anyway. It’s a dead mouse.”
Her stomach turned. There lying next to a romantic novel and a book called “Look Great, Feel Great,” was the source of the offending aroma. It didn’t look great, feel great and it certainly didn’t smell great either. It obviously hadn’t managed to read any tips on love either. It had no sexual companion, died alone and thankfully hadn’t followed the Bennet's example on the production front.
“At least it hasn’t got any babies,” remarked Mr Bennet, reading his wife's mind, as he fished the mouse out of the box.
This was not a good start to the preamble of building Pemberley. If Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy could have an impressive country estate, the modern Miss Bennets could at least have a slice of it. With six women in the house, Mr Bennet did agree that perhaps another bathroom might be a sensible idea. The builders were moving in within five weeks, so Mr and Mrs Bennet were on the move. They couldn’t afford to move out as first promised (it had been the only condition Mrs Bennet had set in stone) so there was no alternative but to move out of the bedroom into the lounge. Without a third bedroom, a garage, conservatory, probably a kitchen and a safe garden, the already cramped house was about to get smaller, commonly known as short-term pain for long-term gain. Mrs Bennet wasn’t complaining, well not outwardly anyway. It was just that there was a huge list to tick off before the builder had a chance of even starting work.
“Come on, think of it as a chance to dejunk and declutter. Everyone tells me how liberating that is. I’ll see whether they’re telling the truth,” Mrs Bennet told herself.
One mouse and one awful smell less, she could almost believe them.