HELLS BELLS AND FISHY SMELLS

Good morning, dear reader and welcome to a sunny Sunday at Chez Comb. I hope you are keeping well and looking foward to navigating your way around the maze of rules and dates that have been constructed by our government to ease us out of lockdown. Spouse and I are looking forward to meeting with family and friends again, even if we have to wrap up against the fickle March weather to do so. Spouse is going about with a spring in his step as his favourite lady, (next to me, of course), has promised to make him her famous Victoria sponge cake when we meet up. Talk about the way to a man's heart ...

We have had a very odd week. Ha ha, so what's new? I know, every week has something slightly off the wall in it, only it has been even more so this week. Our doorbell has gone rogue. I know it is an inanimate object but I am beginning to think it has an evil genie in it and it's not one that comes out of a lamp. All week and at random intervals, day and night, bing bong, bing bong, similar to the sound that precedes an aircraft announcement.

Bing bong, bing bong resounds around the house and no-one is ringing the doorbell. We have disconnected it from the plug-in mains unit in the house and so by rights it should have been running on the back up battery for a day or two. Instead the bloomin' thing is still going.

I can't put it in the recycling or throw it out. It's still going bing bong and I don't want to give the refuse collectors heart failure when it suddenly goes off - and it's loud. I have buried it in the cupboard in the hall underneath a pile of old coats, (Spouse's if you're interested. He never throws anything out. "it might come in useful". For what I have no idea.) But, dear reader, bing bong, bing bong still issues forth from the depths of the cupboard. Now I am looking for my ear muffs or possibly a hammer, but something tells me that even they may not cure it. The battery should be very very dead by now. (Can you be very very dead, or just dead?) But no, I have a horrible feeling that bing bong, bing bong may be with us for some time to come.

As if that wasn't enough to drive us completely doolally, dear reader and we're not far off anyway, we have had a week of 'hunt the fishy smells', a new sport at Comb Towers. The fishmonger had some beautiful whole salmon trout and cod for sale at a very reasonable price and Spouse and I being lovers of all morsels piscine, a bag of fishy produce was hauled home along with many foodstuffs as supplies needed replenishing. So far so good. Arriving home, Spouse left the bag of fish out in the cold garage to await my attention whilst I put my shopping away. In due course the fish was brought into the house and chopped up for the freezer.

But, dear reader and it's a horrible but, the aroma of the fish remained in the garage and became steadily more revolting as the week progressed. Inside the house it was bing bong, bing bong and in the garage - oh my my, what a pong of rotting fish. You may not wish to imagine the stench, dear reader, but if you do I hope you can empathise with our distress. Had we somehow managed to drop a piece a fish somewhere and it was lying undiscovered? We had a good hunt and could find nothing. All fish were accounted for and were happily, (or not so happily for them) well frozen in the freezer.

Unable to stand the pong any longer and with pegs on our noses, we just about took the inside of the garage to bits. Can you imagine the task, dear reader, knowing Spouse's propensity for keeping everything as, "it might come in useful"? A Herculean task believe me. But in the end worth it, if only to find the source of the pong and eventually we did. Spouse had hung the fish bag up and fish juices had dripped out and into a copper jug beneath and leaked out of the bottom of the jug to fester on the floor underneath it, but not a mark to be seen anywhere!

We have passed another interesting week and some progress has been made. Disinfectant and hot soapy water have been flung about the garage and the fishy odour is diminshing and I think, and I hope I don't imagine this, bing bong, bing bong is slowing down. Give it another few days, dear reader and quiet and serentity might return to the homestead once more. If not, the wretched apppliance can go and bing bong to itself down the garden - see how Mr crazy crowing-all-night cockerel likes that​ serenading him all night. Not a bad idea come to think of it. It might stop him in his tracks. There's a silver lining to every cloud.

Let's hope this coming week is a little less eventful. Spouse has been down in his shed and has just come back to the house dripping blood everywhere. Time to be out with the steri-strips once more. Hey ho, some things never change. Take care of yourself, dear reader and take my advice, stay away from sharp nails and knives, it never ends well.