So who’s seen the film Stranger Than Fiction? I’m not going to try and explain the plot to you, this website will probably do it better, but I will say that even if you’re not a Will Ferrell fan, even if the thought of watching him makes you want to tear your own eyeballs out, see this film anyway. Because it really is rather good.
Anyway, the reason I mention it is that at one point in the film Will Ferrell’s character goes to see an English Professor, Dustin Hoffman no less, to get him to help him with his rather unusual problem. Dustin’s advice is to try and find out if his life is a comedy or a tragedy in the tradition of Greek story telling. Ferrell’s character decides to roll with this idea and consequently spends a great deal of his time compiling a table of two columns – a tick every time something comedic happens to him and a tick when something tragic happens – to see what kind of story his life will turn out to be.
This is what my week has felt like, veering from comedy one minute to tragedy the next, with very little ground in between. I’ll let you decide which is which.
1. Donald spent two days in the vets this week with gut stasis, incurring a bill of £188 and causing me untold heartache and worry. This is what happens when you have a rabbit that will eat anything, from wallpaper to your hair, to toast left too close to the side of the table and within easy periscoping reach.
2. Upon returning home on Tuesday evening the first thing that Donald went to do? Chew the wallpaper, that’s what. The wallpaper that I’d just paid nearly 200 quid to have ‘mobilised’ in his bowel.
3. Long day at work, visiting John’s mum after school then coming home at 8.30pm and deciding to do the vacuuming so that Donald can’t chew any more wallpaper left on the floor from our redecorating. Vacuum hits our new standard lamp with a glass shade which proceeds to tumble onto the fish tank. The glass fish tank. Glass smashes, water floods the living room carpet, Ingrid the fish flopping about like, well a fish out of water.
4. Ingrid spends the evening in a mixing bowl in the kitchen while we try to get the smell of fish tank water out of the carpet. John declares that her eye has fallen out from the fall and brandishes said eye in front of me. He shortly realises the ‘eye’ is actually one of the many pieces of gravel now on the carpet.
5. Thursday was our trip to the pantomime that I’d organised for 35 Year 7 students. I registered them on the bus, checked that everyone was there and off to Wales we went. Got out at the theatre, passed tickets out to the kids and realised that I had one spare ticket. I’d left a kid at school. Luckily this was totally his fault and in no way mine but it’s hard to enjoy a rock ‘n’ roll panto when you’re picturing the disappointed face of an 11 year old boy.
And trust me, that’s not even the half of it. At this rate by the end of next week I’ll be roller skating down the High Street a la Frank Spencer.
I finished another custom order this week so it wasn’t all bad,
Right, I’m off to the bookies to place bets on what can possibly go wrong this week. Wish me luck, I think I’ll need it x
