Stranded in Milan

Wednesday, January 7 09

“It doesn’t look like I’m coming home tonight after all, the snow’s pretty bad here and many of the flights are being cancelled as I speak,” explained Mr Bennet with a sigh. The thought of a night sleeping on an airport bench didn’t obviously appeal to him. Mrs Bennet didn’t care whether she had a bed, chair, floor or bench so long as there were no teething twins or crying children anywhere near her. So an airport sounded quite pleasant.
Mr Bennet was in Milan. She didn’t blame him of course. Living with six females must be a bit much for the poor man. But it was a bit drastic flying to Italy and then coming up with a lame excuse not to come home. If Mr Bennet had expected to get away from this particularly cold snap and sub zero temperatures, he had been disappointed. It seemed the snow in Milan was worse.
She missed her husband when he was away. Mr Smiley-faced alarm clock was not a very good bedfellow. He was active and kept her awake for sure, but his monotonous tick was grating and as bad as finger nails scraping down a blackboard – an associated annoying sound which instantly took her back to the classroom - and did nothing for her.
However he did wake her up.
She hated admitting this to Mr Bennet, but the real reason she wanted him home was because he was kind enough to scrape her windscreen for her on these icy mornings. The fact it had iced over again by the time he left was beside the point – Mr Bennet got rid of the worst of it. The thing was she couldn’t reach the windscreen. Being 5ft, even on tiptoes, she only reached a quarter of it.
The Darcys in the Dirt were always willing to lend a hand with their trusty credit card and teased her.
“You need a step ladder to reach that!” they told her. She didn’t fancy standing on a stool in the middle of the road. So she resorted to throwing a towel over the windscreen late at night, praying it would stay there and not slide down.
Not sure when she’d see her husband again, she took herself to bed with a bar of chocolate and her microwave teddy bear for comfort. Mr Smiley-alarm- clock was still wearing his ridiculous grin, so she wound him up and stuck him as far away from her head as she possibly could. As much as she loved Mr Bennet, chocolate and a hot water bear would do just fine until the ridiculously loud clock he had bought her for Christmas (via the hands of Miss Emily Bennet) rudely awoke her to greet the bracing cold morning air. She happily dreamt of being stranded on a white sandy beach in The Sechelles.