Mrs Bennet’s lost bubble

Saturday, March 21 ‘09

The signs were there all around her indicating that she was a mother under stress, overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities. She was run down; empty and just wanted to hide away from everyone. Mrs Bennet had lost her bubbly-ness. Her bubble was last seen floating in the Bristol direction, preferring a city life for a while no doubt. Mrs Bennet listed the evidence of her bubble-less-ness.
1. She’d poured herself a cup of coffee without boiling the kettle first.
2. She’d tried feeding her Boots advantage card into the hole in the wall.
3. She’d turned the dishwasher on, with the newly-cleaned dishes and pots still inside.
4. She’d put her favourite cream cardigan inside the washing machine, turned it on, forgetting there were already pink and red items inside. The cardigan came out an uneven looking pink.
Some would argue that this was quite normal for a mother of five. Perhaps it was but she prided herself on doing one of those things now and again, NOT all in the same morning!
Mrs Bennet was cheered up somewhat when her own dear mother – known affectionately to her daughters as Jannie – announced that not only had Mr Jannie, Mrs Bennet’s father, mistakenly sprayed the fence with weed killer instead of wood stain and had subsequently killed the plants in the flower beds, but had locked his car keys in the boot after watching his beloved team Bristol City lose a vital match. They eventually got home six hours later.
“You’re becoming more like your daughter every day,” Jannie had told her husband.
Mrs Bennet didn’t know if that was a complement or not. She didn’t ask. Instead she hoped her father had managed to trap her lost bubble in the boot as well. Unfortunately it hadn’t been seen for a couple of weeks and any chance of survival was pretty slight, particularly if it had hovered over Ashton Gate. It would have got burst by angry City fans.
However hearing of her own dad’s mishaps Mrs Bennet was reassured. Perhaps her sense of clumsiness or scatty-ness wasn’t due to her losing her bubble. Perhaps it was after all hereditary.