Home Sweet Home

My place may not be much to look at, but it is home. It has been set on fire more times than I can count, had explosives planted beneath the floorboards, had burst pipes, hosted any gunfights and even been redecorated by an RPG. And yet it is still standing...sort of.

It's the one place that is mine in this whole world, the one place I can come back to and shut out everything on the outside and not have to deal with it. Yes, that is by close a very thin connecting door, and yes, the moment I open it again the world is sat in my office with guns pointed at me - but the differentiation is very important.

Everyone goes on about how you need to take time to rest, to have a space to relax in, well this is mine.

No matter how many times it gets invaded by annoyingly inquisitive police officers, and overly sexually active police officers. No matter how many times I have walked in to find Mexican drug dealers playing Russian roulette with delegates from the UN. No matter how many times it has been burnt to the ground, blown up or used as a shooting gallery - it is still my home and my quiet place.

Here there is nothing that does not belong, the mould on the window frames, the unwashed dishes, the small rodents that scurry about their daily business, the four automatic weapons strapped to the underside of my mattress - all of it belongs in this delicately balanced place of my harmony.

At least it was all these things before Fred got termites and then Harry got woodworm - I'm not entirely convinced there is a difference between the two - but apparently neither of them can stay in a hotel because they might be transporting the insects about so instead they have both decided to stay here.

Isn't it just wonderful how they both decide that it's okay to bring invertebrates into my home that will devour my belongings and not into a hotel where they pay to use the facilities so they can afford to replace things that get destroyed.

So now I have no place of tranquillity, no refuge from the outside world because my home sweet home has been taken over by two men that have been hunting the rodents, cleaning the dishes, destroying the mould and making my home into somewhere that most people would want to live in and not avoid. I walked in the other day to find them both looking at wallpaper samples and paint charts, a new three piece suite sat in my living room with a new laminate floor, standing lamp and 56 inch flat screen up on something Fred referred to as the 'feature wall'.

It always concerns me when men seem to know more about interior decorating than women do, normally when it comes to me that's okay, but when the words 'feature wall' are mentioned in conjunction with my home, there is something very wrong.

If the two of them don't stop soon, they'll find out very quickly why it is exactly that I keep four automatic weapons under my bed...or I would if my bed was still there...

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