I’m on the sofa with a beer, watching a show where people always end up not buying property in Mediterranean resorts
I’m sitting in my office shed looking through the open door into the garden. It’s warm and sunny – the first spring-like day of spring.
Across the lawn I see my wife open the kitchen door and place the tortoise on the back step. Later it will be cold and he will have to come in, and I will not be able to find him. I make a mental note to start the search before dark. On my way to the kitchen an hour later, I notice he’s already disappeared.
That evening I’m celebrating the end of a long week by sitting on the sofa, a beer in my hand, dead tired.
My wife is watching the show that’s always on before the news, in which a middle-aged British couple, after viewing several modestly priced flats in a Mediterranean resort town, decide they don’t like any of them. Or, alternatively, they put in a derisory offer on one, which is instantly accepted, before a voiceover informs viewers that in the end they decided not to buy after all. I have watched the second half of many episodes of this programme, and those are the only two outcomes.
