Away for four days

What I love is how I can't go away for four days without all kinds of chaos reigning in my absence.

#1 The Gadget Man gets pruning
It's one of the great inevitablilities in life that if I go away the Gadget Man will do one of two things: prune or move all the furniture about. The Gadget Man is not Mr Greenfingers. If he were, he might be called Mr Greenfingers instead of the Gadget Man. But he's not. One time he came into the house to get me to come out and admire the great pruning job he had done. I came out. I looked around. I said, "Where's the plant?" It had gone from being two metres across to a stick poking out of the ground. I'm not joking. He said it would recover. It didn't.

This time our neighbour, Mr Brickaday (not my name for him) came over, scratched his head and pointed at the tree the Gadget Man was pruning, and said, "Thirty years to grow and thirty minutes to destroy." Yes, indeed. I think I love Mr Brickaday.

#2 Let there be a disaster
This time it was the hot water service blowing up. I thought it might be the washing machine since it definitely is on its last legs, but no the hot water service was the one. Now, I did say to the Gadget Man all week that I was worried about it because I could smell gas, and he kept assuring me that was just the nearby factories, and I kept assuring him it was not, that I could only smell gas around the hot water service. Guess I won that one, right? And I wasn't the one who had to live with cold showers. Ah, the joys of staying at home.

#3 Let there be another disaster -- one involving pets
So the poor lonely male quail has been alone a long time -- calling and calling for a mate. Finally, he gets his wish, has his mates for a few weeks and what does the GM do? Lets the male out of the aviary by accident, and he's such a panicky, flighty bird that he's immediately away. Gone. For good. Now all the GM had to do was figure out how to tell Sir Talkalot who was away on scout camp.

Ah, yes, the joys...