Another brick in the wall

The Advocate lost my heart – and I blame neither his brown shoes, nor his absence of fuzzy pets. I blame my unfinished shower.

That same shower his black robes billowed around my ears about forever: “Tile the walls”;

“Who hangs an artwork in the bathroom?”; “You need six mirrors? Really? They don’t even match”.

And my personal favourite: “Where’s the roof?” It’s the roof that was the nail in my heart’s coffin.

I like my Banksy prints, thank you, and my mismatched mirrors hanging all over the place in empty frames – and who needs tiles
when the oxide walls look like a set for Out of Africa?

And in case you haven’t noticed, dear, it’s an outside shower and the height of summer, so get over the fresh air.

But, ever-pleasing, I did buy some clear roof sheets and I really was working on the frame for them. I just didn’t bargain on a lusty Highveld storm sending a river down my passage right into my bedroom before I could put them up.

You could’ve sworn Christmas was cancelled the way he billowed and bellowed. For me? At least the floors got a good wash again.

So, when another dark storm brewed, I made a plan: one flat roof plate weighed down with bricks. It worked – for 10 minutes.

But then Christmas was cancelled again…with no support in the middle, the sheet caved under the water.

I stormed in with my broomstick pushing the middle up. Only the middle, like Cyril, folded totally under the pressure – and
the bricks came tumbling down.

I dodged them all but one: the one that broke my toe and my heart.

Drenched, I stood crying in the mayhem watching my blood flow down the drain. Enough. But it wasn’t.

He is standing safe and dry two doors away muttering again. I don’t listen but hear “told you to get that roof up”.

That’s when I mounted my broomstick and hit him with a ton of bricks.

He’s right, I think, watching him packing his shoes. I probably am a bit of a witch with a cutting tongue.

But he probably never really, really liked me, or my outside shower.

Am I putting up that roof? Ha. Who needs a shower when you can bleed in the rain?

Carine Hartman.

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