My neighbour’s gobby daughter was last sighted by me over a year ago when my neighbour told me she had got her own flat. I sometimes see my neighbour’s gobby daughter’s children, but I don’t see the gobby daughter herself. It has never occurred to me to think that my neighbour, a single mother herself, has built a cellar in her back garden and shoved her daughter into it. Only a lunatic thinks such far-fetched things about ordinary occurrences.

However, I’d like to think that if I happened to live with a man who spent hours in the garden shed, and who forbade everyone from ever going near it, that I would wonder why he did that.

I think I’d probably notice tons of earth being removed from the garden too should he happen to dig out a cellar under the swimming pool. I’d probably notice he was dirty, sweaty and tired after such work too and be a little curious as to what he was building and why.

Also, if he started spending his money on bathroom suites, cookers, fridges and things like tiles, electrical cables and steel doors that weren’t for our own house, I think this would occasionally come to my attention. If he regularly bought enough food to feed a larger family than we had, along with various clothing items, including nappies, I’m pretty sure that once or twice over 24 years I’d notice such things. I’d spot high electricity bills and wonder at them.

I’d always be a little suspicious too about why my husband enjoyed men only holidays to Thailand. And whilst he was away, I would be curious enough to search the fucking shed ten, fifty, a thousand times to find out what he did there.

If my husband was violent, domineering, cruel, with a criminal record, I’d be very very worried about his prolonged and excessively odd behaviour. It would run my life. I would not be able to rest until I knew what secret that shed held. I would be tormented.

Unless, of course, I managed to build myself a wall of denial about his behaviour that was so thick not even a tank could have demolished it. Then I wouldn’t give a shit.

Your President doth proclaim toward you in this year of our Lord 2008 here.

It is worth noting that Harry’s Place has a new location and new software. Here we go again…

Quote:

“I find it easy to say I’m not a socialist now,” he says. “Painful though I found that, it didn’t cost me as much as to say I’m no longer a Marxist, which wouldn’t really be true. Because it’s the way I think. I think like someone who uses the historical materialist method of analysis.”

It apparently got loose earlier Tuesday. Its owner, a member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, adjacent to Maniwaki, has told police the animal is not dangerous. Kitigan Zibi police chief Gordon McGregor said six reserve police officers and 12 SQ officers were involved in the ground hunt, as well as game wardens.