It took three big strong men to carry it into my house and what a glorious thing that was to behold.
I said “Put it right here in my lounge room,” as I wanted enough space to walk around it and just take it in from every angle. And so they did, and I stared at it, and I confess I drooled just a little before I waved them out with, “Watch out for Mr. Pringle the poodle on the driveway with your van. He is small and deaf.”
I was the winner of the ‘Queen-for-a-year-Pamper-Hamper’. It was all mine. Hubby was away at the dreary bauxite mine doing bauxitey stuff. He has his mine, he owns it, and I have my mine here…all mine. Oh relax, it’s a joke I tell with the “Me Squad,” and we always laugh at that one. We girls in the Me Squad, we do.
You see, Chloe has her thing with her man, and how he’s a monkey. Prunella makes hers run around for flowers, and goodness knows what else, and Arabella the cut-snake is just mean as mean there ever was. Secretly we are decent, but to show that to our men? Oh, I do not think so. We call ourselves the “Me Squad,” and that’s another story, so let me get back to me.
The Pamper Hamper seemed to nearly fill my entire lounge. It was sealed with shiny plastic that locked all those good things inside. I could see them in that huge basket just waiting for me to get to and in my thrill I tried to break into it first with my nails, and then my teeth, but I just couldn’t get to those things; those very good and civilized things. Knives and scissors are for other people and I never touch them, as is my code. I needed help and I was angry and I felt small and stupid in my rather big smart house. I called out to my neighbor from beyond the ivy and stone fence.
“Myron come here…now!”
God I hate him. He is so pathetic. He runs to me if I call out to him like a dog. I mean, that’s why I hate him. If he didn’t come to me when I called out to him I’d be fond of him. If he was smarter he’d play the game one plays. The game says he must come to me anyway, but slower.
Well sure enough he came over and he broke the plastic wrapping and I pushed him out the door and told him to take that Pamper Hamper plastic wrapping with him “good boy”. ‘Slam.’ I rushed back to the Pamper Hamper thinking of the envious eyes of the Me Squad. Oh how they would smile, but their teeth would clamp when I showed them the wonderful rare things that were inside that Pamper Hamper.
There were coils of satin and oils of green and gold. There was a mink pocket of lotions and creams and soaps and emollients, and, oh, there was so much more. There was an Organic forest and wheat fusion ‘mud-pak’, and a spray for parched elbow skin made from the stamen of a Papua New Guinean Orchid and the dried ovaries of the tiny Hawaiian Calypso Moth. There was a tincture for “Champagne Stem Rash” that soothed the thumb and pointer finger and can you believe it, a balm for eyelash follicles made from the crushed gametophore stemsa of a moss and the pulped optic nerve fibers of the Northern Bahian Blond Titi. They both live in The Atlantic Forest in Brazil and they are critically endangered, but not too critically.
I could go on and on about the other things in the Pamper Hamper, like the aloe finger washes for gourmet truffle and beluga pizza nights, and the lithium battery powered helium micro bubble-wrap ankle warmers that smelled so civilised you could eat them, but I won’t bore you. Something went wrong and the Pamper Hamper lost its glisten. It’s shazam and wow-factor flunked and the posh and woot were gone.
In the Pamper Hamper I found some bubble bath balls and I tried to open one up to check what was inside (I have heard stories from the Me Squad where the greedy soap companies try to cheat you) when something terrible happened. It burst open and my left eye took the brunt of the discharge. What happened next was so quick I almost cannot believe it, but here it is exactly.
I recoiled backwards and hit my head on my 1678 Tompion and Knibb long-case grandfather clock (£ 125, 000) making it fall and crash down on my 1760 Louis Quinze chair, (£ 34,000). The clock and the brace of the chair were destroyed along with it’s irreplaceable fabric and that’s bad enough, but it got worse.
I fell to the ground screaming in pain in my big smart house, and on my 1804 handwoven Shah Abbasi motif Persian rug (£ 76,000) I writhed around wildly and the heels of my Christian Louboutin Lady Daf Veau Velour shoes (£ 635) dug the glass shards from the case of the shattered clock deeply into it’s pile. A heel broke whilst I was in that writhing moment just described.
While I was writhing and crying in pain alone in my big smart house a thought came to me and by habit or talent, the numbers added up there and then – £ 325, 635. That stopped my tears and I thought, “I am not paying for this mess. I’m a trapped soul in a lonely big smart house and nobody really knows the real me. I am in eternal pain because of the burning fire inside me that is never expressed.”
The more I thought about how it would automatically be assumed that I was supposed to replace the expenses incurred by that bubble bath ball the more angry I got. I hatched a plan where that hamper would pamper until the dying of my light. I was going to bring back it’s pamper and it would be bigger and stronger than ever.
I grabbed my mobile phone and called the cops and sobbed. I told them how they “liked the knockers on the toff guv” and how there was pushing and the how the clock fell. He listened and called out to another in the station to get to my address quickly as there might have been a rape and, “What was the name of the delivery company mam?”
I lay back on my 1804 handwoven Shah Abbasi motif Persian rug and smiled up at the Georgian ceiling rose twenty two feet above me. They would be here in my lonely big smart house in a few minutes with their kits and their cameras and concern and god what a show they are going to see. Mr. Pringle, my six year old deaf poodle licked my hand and I stroked his head and waited for them to arrive.
“You’re a vuvly widdle thing aren’t you Mr. Pringle?”
I knew that the soap company and any delivery company can afford 325, 635 pounds in loose change, but what of the millions more owed to me due to my pain and trauma? I was wondering about how deep their pockets would be and oh, there would be the divorce of course.
“I am not sharing a penny with hubby, am I Mr. Pringle?”
And right then and there, in my lounge room in my lonely big smart house, I looked into that stupid dog’s eyes and I thought of the plan that would have the Pamper Hamper burst as a piñata that could never stop raining if it tried.
“The men were mean when they ran over you with their big van. Remember how I told them not to do that to you Mr Pringle?”
