The awfulness of modern me time

Be gentle with Kirkhouse. He has been in a bit of grump since he returned from, what can best be described as, a Spa Day and he has not recovered his balance yet.

It appears Mrs Kirkhouse announced that they were to assail such a thing, in the company of her nieces, and, as far it appeared to him, it would be a trip to a Turkish Bath; where he would part company with the women of his household and eventually meet up after afternoon tea, refreshed and reinvigorated.  This was not the case.  Equipped with nothing more than a much washed dressing gown and some hastily bought sandals he entered the demiparadise dedicated to the relaxing arts.

It must be said, in his defence, he has been ignoring other people for so many years that he perfected this art and so he was not unduly bothered by the presence of the ‘Ladies that Lounge.’ It started to go wrong, however, when he failed to find a single ash try and, being too polite to point this out to one of the Maids of All Works who were scurrying about, emptied his pipe in a nearby flowerpot. ‘I’m not a damned horticulturist’ he later huffed, ‘How the Dickens’ was I to know the thing was plastic!’

After that start, things did not Improve.  He took on so with the constant urging to ‘enjoy some me time’ – claiming all his time was his own – although Mrs Kirkhouse did point out he was to run the tombola at the next Church Fete and she has some other ‘little jobs’ for him.

I think lunch was a major turning point.  By ‘a chocolate pudding’ he had visions of a huge bowl of suet based confection with several gallons of cream enriched custard; not a small jar of a reconstituted Newtonian fluid lovingly crafted in a warehouse somewhere off the A4.  The ‘glass of fizz’ did not help as he reported it had all the character and depth of one of those coves appear on advertisements and have achieved an almost personal nirvana at being able to achieve happiness through the ownership of a brand of toothpaste. What really did it for him, however, was the décor.

Not many have read Kirkhouse’s several volumed history on the built environment. The last time a copy was taken out from our Library was twenty years ago, and then only as its weight made it the perfect thing to hold a tricky map down. ‘The Buddhas!’ he cried, as if this was, by itself, an explanation.  They had ones from the Gupta period and didn’t seem to give a monkey’s cuss that they were side by side with 7^th Century Khmer interpretations or even knew the so called Laughing Buddha they so proudly displayed by the  Amazonian Experiential steam room was, in fact, a Chinese monk called Pu-Tei. It was at the point he was about to go into an extended lecture on the crimes against Classical Pillars that were around the swimming pool that someone provided a stiff drink, but word to wise, just let him fume alone for now.