Week 1

Came the first evening to water the garden — “don’t over-water, just keep the pots moist” — and just at the end of the session, the rather old and rusty spray thing on her hose broke apart in my hands. Luckily, the fitting is the same as mine, so I knew I could use my hose attachment next time. Fed the fish — “just a handful of food every couple of days”. Fish delighted, a-leaping and a-jumping.

Two days later, in I go again. The kitchen’s got a bit of a stale smell lurking around. I figure it must be the onions and potatoes I’ve spotted in the little rack by the cooker. They’re sprouting arms and legs, and I know potatoes can go really smelly when they get to that stage. So I chuck them away. Out in the garden, the pots don’t need doing. Looks like I overdid it last time. The little blue fertilizer pellets are growing mold. So I just feed the fish. They surface and graze somewhat lazily.

As I’m doing so, I notice a bee hovering around the kitchen window-sill. As I watch it buzzing around the bottom left corner of the pvc double-glazing, I’m amazed to see it disappear from sight. Closer inspection reveals there are two little drainage holes drilled into either end of the beading of the window. The bee comes out again and flies off in one direction, while another bee zooms in from over my shoulder and goes straight in the hole. My God, they’re building a nest in there!

I nip back home and get some Blu-Tac and block the holes while they’re out foraging. Ha! Fooled ‘em. When they both come back, they buzz about in a confused state, searching for the hole, which of course they can’t find. I go home feeling good about solving the problem. I figure they’ll buzz off overnight and find another potential home.

Next morning, I’m enjoying my first cuppa of the day and gazing out my conservatory window, over the fence at Marcy’s kitchen window. What do I see but Bee No.1 making a landing on the window-sill, squeezing himself under the frame of the window and disappearing into it! Bee No.2 then comes in and flies under the sill itself, and disappears. Damn. Turns out they’ve found two more access points — one is a small fracture between the beading on the window itself, the other is where the underside of the sill and the cement of the wall don’t quite meet.

No choice now — I hate to do it, but it’ll have to be the Raid, I’m afraid. Round I go with the spray can. I’m half-in and half-out the patio door (so I can spray and get out the way). As they each make their approach, I give ‘em a good dose. They fly off erratically, coughing and spluttering. Poor things. Ah well. Ten minutes later, they’ve not come back. Success.

My, but that smell in the kitchen’s getting worse. What could it be? I check the cupboards, but no joy. It’s a mystery.

As I walk back past the front of her house to get to mine, I notice … a bee buzzing around one of her bedroom windows and disappearing up another drainage hole. Steps back in amazement. As I watch, about three or four more bees, and several other flying things I can’t identify but which look rather threatening in their black and orange livery, whizz in industriously and disappear up all four holes on this window. I spend the next hour spraying each insect that comes near, then running about the front garden waving my arms like a demented idiot as I do my best to avoid being stung by the intoxicated and very angry creatures. What must the neighbours think? Seems to have done the trick. I return home triumphant.

A couple of evenings later, it’s time to do the watering thing again. The earth in the pots is now dry and cracked (it’s been quite hot and very sunny the last few days.) The mold seems to have died off a bit. Rather like the pretty flowers, God help me. I’ve got my shower rose. I fit it to her hose, squeeze the trigger to make sure it works — and a little plastic nut that’s vital to its correct operation flies off and over my shoulder at a rate of knots. I hear it bounce against several pots behind me. After a fruitless 20-minute search, I decide I’m never going to find it — the ground is gravelled and it could have gone anywhere over there.

I see there’s an ancient galvanized zinc watering-can. Aha! I fill it up with the hose, and start watering the first of the pots. Instead of producing a light misty fall of water, it pours out in one big galumpf from a rusted breach in the rose, drowning everything it touches. Damn it! Why me? But I’ve no more watering implements left, so I fill it again — and as I’m bending over, holding the hose in the can and waiting for it to fill, I gaze absently to my left where one of the pots is standing — and there, tucked right up against its bottom and wedged against the gravel, looking as though it’s been there for months, is the little black plastic nut that shot off my hose attachment. It’s about 15 feet away from where I last heard it bouncing around.

A miracle!

Armed with a working hose again, I do the watering. Feed the fish. They’re not so lively today. The water seems rather greener than the other day. There’s loads of horrible, hairy, green stuff growing in the water, no doubt encouraged by the endless hours of sunlight we’ve been blessed with over the last week. Oh well. She didn’t ask me to clean the pond out, so I leave it alone.

God, the smell in the kitchen! Something’s definitely rotting in there. I start imagining there’s a dead rat behind the cooker.

Week 2

No more bees to worry about. I water the garden on Tuesday. Ten minutes later, the heavens open and a further deluge soaks everything. Does that mean I’ve over-watered? The fish seem uninterested in the food. I can hardly see them through the green water.

Marcy phones on Wednesday. “Everything all right?” she asks.

“Fine, fine,” say I. I’m thinking about mentioning the fish, but I don’t want her to worry and come back early. She needs the rest.

She asks me to take a couple of pints of milk out the freezer next Wednesday, so they’re defrosted ready for her return next Thursday — that’s still eight days away. No problem. I make a note to myself. I’ll leave it in the kitchen when I go in tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes … My God! The SMELL! This can’t be right. Something’s seriously wrong here.

I search the cupboards again. Nothing. Look in the cooker, the microwave, the fridge. Nothing. Open the freezer –

Aargh!

I’ve found the source of the smell.

The freezer’s switched off at the wall, where it shares a double socket with the microwave. Marcy must’ve accidentally switched it off when she turned off the microwave before leaving. Everything’s defrosted and gone bad. Like, w-a-y bad, man. It’s been ten days, for God’s sake. It smells like an abbatoir’s lorry on a hot day.

I go home to consider my next move. I decide I can’t leave it for another week. I have to clean it out. The bin men are due to come next morning, and it would be better for them to take it, rather than for me to have to transport the junk food to the dump in my car. So at 11:30pm (after an excellent double ER on E4), I go in armed with rubber gloves, black plastic bags and air freshener, and clean it all out. It takes me an hour and a half. It’s possibly the most unpleasant job I’ve ever taken on voluntarily.

There’s meat in there. Bacon, sausages, chops … loads of packets of TV dinners, assorted bags of veg, ice-cream, pints of milk, loaves of bread, oven-cook potato wedges, onion rings — quite a mixture. I carefully write down everything I remove. I fill three double-skinned black plastic bags with the stinking stuff. Then I see that there’s a swill of all the water, gravy, blood and gunk collected at the bottom. I hadn’t thought of that. This is turning into something like a Stephen King story. I get some cloths and soak it all up, bit by fetid bit, and transfer it into a bowl to chuck it down the sink. Then I use a diluted solution of Flash in warm water to wipe down the inside of the freezer.

The bags are outside now, happily fermenting in the warming morning sun, awaiting the arrival of the bin men. I’ve put them where our little community gather their bags in one place to make it easier for the men when they come (making the depositors of the bags, thank God, anonymous). I swear I can smell them from here, through the closed windows. Or is it permanently imprinted into my nostrils, my brain, my synapses?

And so to today. I’m about to go in and check to see whether the Glade Circulair fresheners I plugged in have alleviated the smell. And I’d better check those damn fish too. See if they’re still alive in all that algae-ridden water. My quandary: if I need to ring her to ask about whether there’s anything I can do to improve the water for the fish, should I mention the freezer as well, in passing, as it were? I don’t want to spoil her r ‘n’ r.

Watch this space.