Captain Scowly Face and His Builders Arrive

Ah the toilet saga, anyway, we return to my first night in my new house.
Ablutions complete I broke out the food and, because it has grown dark outside, I light the candle with my Jack Daniels lighter.
“What’s for tea then?” Vikkie settles down by the open boxes and wraps her sleeping bag around her shoulders, for the air is already losing it’s fragile spring heat.
“Well, we have oat cookies, baked by yours truly, some fruit, raisin bread, peanut butter and fig rolls.”
“Anything else?”
“Well…I think there might be a spot of jam…somewhere.” I nod towards the pile of enormous jars, glistening purple.
“I’m good thanks.”
Vikkie selects several things and, in the absence of plates we eat from the lids of the plastic boxes. The candle burns down in it’s holder, as Vikkie packs the remaining food away I take out the bundle of cheap white candles and place them in one of the notches in the wall. The only entertainment we have is a pack of cards, which I brought out of nostalgia for the games of “Sevens” we played in the school library. I deal the first lot of cards, then the second and so on. We play over and over again, not keeping score, until we are so bored we change to “Go Fish” and then back to “Sevens”.
“Not to kill the evening” Vikkie yawns “but I really need some sleep.”
I check my watch, sure enough it’s past ten and with all the excitement of the day I’m exhausted. We change in opposite corners of the cottage, Vikkie into crazy monkey pyjamas, me into psychotic pandas. Vikkie inflates the ancient air mattress built into her faithful sleeping bag, the same one I remember from our school trip to the “Outdoor Centre”, where she fell off the bunk bed because of it’s slippery fabric. I slip into my new sleeping bag and make myself comfortable on the floor, I don’t want to sleep in the bed, not just yet. I feel as if I should save my first night in my new bed, in my new house, for me alone. Vikkie gives me a quizzical look, but leaves it be, she probably already knows why I‘m on the floor, she’s like that.
The last thing I do before bed is place a paperback, the only one I brought, next to the bed. At sleepovers I was always the first to wake, hours before the others and so as not to disturb them I always brought my own entertainment. Vikkie blows out the candle and utter darkness engulfs us.
“Mental note” I yawn “install a street lamp.”
Vikkie says nothing, already asleep.
The next morning I wake predictably early. After an hour or so of flipping restlessly through my book I feel compelled to get up. I roll off the bed and slip out of my sleeping bag, taking the bucket with me in the hopes of avoiding embarrassment when the builders arrive. The morning sun slowly creeps across the house and it’s garden, whilst sea birds call to each other in the air, chasing over the grassy plain and letting out their raucous cries. Mentally I go through my list of things to do. The amount of work is disheartening, and I feel increasingly unsure that this project can ever succeed. Swallowing my doubts and the lump in my throat with a mouthful of biting fresh air, I head back towards the cottage.
Despite the noise I make getting dressed in my jeans and baggy plaid shirt, Vikkie continues to sleep soundly. I take out a hand mirror and look myself over. As predicted my hair is all over the place, dark circles have appeared and deepened with lack of sleep and I look pale and ill. I try a small smile, but it comes out rather threatening, the effect of my unusually long canines heightened by my general appearance of death warmed over. Sighing, I drag a brush through my dull, sandy blond mop, trying to turn it back into hair. Then I brush my teeth with a little of the bottled water and grab some raisin bread for breakfast.
There seems little point in waiting around, and a brief look at my watch reveals that the builders, who are meant to arrive at eleven, will not appear for another three hours. I slip on my wellingtons and, taking up the spade and axe that I bought second hand, walk out into the overgrown garden.
I set myself the task of clearing it from one corner to the other, digging out all the unwanted brush and pruning what is left. From behind the house, where I discovered the metal pail that became our bathroom, I drag my other find, a metal dustbin, almost rusted through. I had learnt from Daniel Shield that the roof of the cottage had been repaired a decade or so ago, explaining the contemporary rubbish dumped out of sight behind the house. As I began to dig out woody shrubs and clumps of grass, I tossed the pieces that could not be saved as proper firewood into the dustbin, intending to make a bonfire later and return the ashes to the soil.
After about an hour of work, during which I had cleared only a fraction of the garden, Vikkie emerged from the cottage eyes reduced to slits against the glare of the risen sun.
“What are you doing up so early?” I tease, holding out the spade to her as she stomps down towards me.
“Very funny, you’d think after making me go to the toilet in a bucket and making me sleep on the floor AND not providing proper food, you could at least let me lie in guilt free.”
“You can complain whilst gardening.” I thrust the spade at her again, unmoved. At least she had an air mattress to sleep on, my back was killing me.
Grumbling she began to scrape at the ground with the spade, I took up the nearly blunt axe and started to chop the thicker shrubs into firewood to store behind the house. After a while Vikkie called me over to help her dislodge a stubborn stump. I trudged through the tangled grasses, breathing in the scent of rosemary and lemon balm as I disturbed their lush spikes. I gripped a portion of tangled root and we pulled hard, dragging the gnarled stump from the light salty soil.
The light spring sun settled on us and my hands were quickly wet with dew from the lush weeds which I uprooted. A fine layer of soil settled on my skin, clinging to my sweaty face and clothes. It occurred to me that I had no way of washing properly. When I lifted my hands to brush away the stray hair that fell in soft clumps from my ponytail, my fingers smelt of earth and herbs. Sooner than I would have liked, I realised it was time to fetch the builders from the village. We left our tools leaning against the garden wall and walked down the hill, a stiff sea breeze chasing us all the way down.
Ahhhh the builders, you have to laugh to keep from crying. Don’t worry, you’ll see.