Bathroom cleaning
I really do not want to generalize or stereotype, but I am yet to meet a man capable of doing this properly and thoroughly. Very, very happy to be proved wrong. Please. Let me one day be proved wrong.
Assembling IKEA furniture
It’s like a puzzle to be solved and I love it, which was useful because Matthew was much too impatient and hated stuff like that. Sometimes when I’m doing DIY, I pretend to be Nicolas Cage in a British-inspiredNational Treasurespin-off and I have to assemble this excellent shelving unit to retrieve a clue to the location of the stolen Magna Carta. I know it sounds odd, but it really does make it so much more fun when you’re examining each different screw and you’ve got an epic suspenseful theme tune playing in your head.
And finally, the capability I never would have known I’d had if Matthew and I were still together, because I would have forced him to deal with it:
Getting a bird out of the house
It happened on a pleasant, tranquil Thursday evening. It was still light outside. A warm day. I’d gone out to the garden to check on my budding plant pals but when I came back inside, I musthave left the back door wide open. I got some chocolate from the fridge and then I went to slob on the sofa and begin the process of going through the whole of Netflix to end up choosing something I’ve already seen a hundred times. I was very happily clicking my way through all the options when suddenly I heard what sounded like flapping wings.
Strange, I thought. Then carried on with the clicking.
It was at that moment thatan abnormally large London pigeonflew into the lounge to join me for some television viewing. It swooped in and landed on the floor. I blinked at it. It tilted its head at me.
I admit, I may have overreacted at first.
I screamed my head off, jumped to my feet, leaped up on the sofa, and slammed myself against the wall as though the pigeon had cornered me with a rifle. My screaming, in turn, must have scared the pigeon, who then began to fly around the room in a panic, trying to escape this shrieking banshee, but finding no route of escape.
“Oh my god!” I yelped, sliding along the wall toward the door, as it knocked into the window and then landed on the sill. “Please don’t poo in here!”
This was a silly request. Of course the pigeon couldn’t understand what I was saying. It didn’t speak English. And, also, it was a pigeon.
Still, as I’ve said before, shock makes you react in bizarre, surprising ways. Once I’d safely exited the living room, I stood in the hall slowing my breathing and collecting myself. I realized that I was going to have to deal with this unwanted visitor. No one else was going to do it.
“You’ve got this,” I told myself, because, quite frankly, I didn’t have a choice.
I marched into the kitchen and grabbed a tea towel. I marched back to the hall and opened the front door. Then I cautiouslyreturned to the lounge. The pigeon was a bit more chilled now that I’d left it to its own devices. It was strolling around the floor, not really going anywhere or doing anything, just being a pigeon.
I snuck around until I was behind it and then I started waving the tea towel at it and going, “Shoo! Shoo, pigeon! Shoo!”
It jumped away from me and flew about a bit, often in the wrong direction, untilvictory,it managed to fly out into the hall, where it landed next to my running shoes.
Just where I wanted it to be.
I moved toward it again, covering the route to the kitchen, waving the tea towel at it and ushering it toward the front door.
“Shoo! Out you go! Shoo!” I repeated haughtily, like a housekeeper inDownton Abbey.
After a few irritated hops away from me, it finally got the message and flew outside into the warm evening air.
“Yes!” I cried, pelting after it and slamming the door shut.
