My nephew has been staying for a few weeks while he did work experience in London, but now he is gone and the house is strangely quiet and empty, without him stomping around making the floors shake. Why can't they all just stay forever four years old?
Despite my many libels against him in the blog and podcast - God please don't let him get the idea of sueing me, RBS have opened a can of worms here - he has been a mainly delightful house guest, apart from his tendency to smash my favourite drinking vessels. How he managed to pinpoint the cups and glasses of most financial and emotional value I don't know. But the first cup to go was one of the coffee mugs I love, because they're just the right size and I've had them for ages and they were expensive. I got them from Heals and they had letters of the alphabet on them. I had had three originally, but one of my cleaners broke one, but the other two had lasted for years. Until my heffalump of a nephew turns up. The first one I found with its handle broken off in the dishwasher. Someone (not me and no one else lives here) had pushed a glass into a slot designed for a bowl and then shut the drawer, not noticing that the mug's handle was not in a precarious position and that was the end of that. My nephew denied culpability, but unless a mischievous ghost had got into the house then I don't know who else it could have been.
But I love him and I forgave him and at least it wasn't my absolute favourite mug - the one with R on it.
A few days later though I realised that the R mug was missing. I asked my nephew if he'd seen it. Perhaps he had been using it to catch his gametes as he spied on my naked neighbours and masturbated (will I never learn not to libel people? 0y nephew almost certainly never did this, though of course I can't guarantee that). He claimed to know nothing about the mug, but I have searched all over the house and there is no sign of it. It seemed likely that he was responsible for its disappearance, and probable breakage, but aware of how infuriated I had been when the first mug broke had decided to deny all knowledge of the event. He is a coward like all his family.
There was no proof though. I couldn't call the police and have him arrested for destruction of property without proof.
When he left he finally got round to tidying up his disgustingly messy room and there was a black bin liner full of his rubbish down in the kitchen. "Have you separated out all your recyclables?" I asked him. He looked momentarily shifty but then said he had. "Because I could get sent to PRISON if the bin men find any newspaper or glass in my black bin liner rather than the orange one," I lied. He is nothing if not gullible and it's a lot of fun to wind up this green around the gills country rube. He asserted that he had separated everything out, but then admitted that he didn't know where the recycling bin liners were kept, which was an odd admission. I opened the cupboard under the sink, which would be the first place most people would look and there they were. So when he said he didn't know, what he meant is that he hadn't even looked. Honestly young people today. I was never so lazy and feckless and inconsiderate and if my parents claim that I was it's just because they are quite old and senile now and are getting things mixed up in their addled brains.
Once he'd gone I undid the tightly knotted binbag to see if he had been lying to me, and of course he had. About 50% of the items in the bag were recyclable. But as I was digging around in the detritus of my young nephew, trying not to think too hard about what unguents might be smeared over everything inside I nearly cut my hand open on a broken glass.
My nephew had broken a glass and conveniently not bothered to tell me about the loss.
Worse still it was an expensive one, made from Dartington glass that I had been given as a present for being the best man at Mike "Cont" Cosgrave's wedding. It thus had both financial and sentimental value and yet here it was in the bin, without so much as an apology. Surely an indication that my nephew was the kind of person to smash a drinking vessel and then just hide the broken shards and hope to get away with it.
Now admittedly in the last ten years since I've had these posh glasses I had broken two of the four, but now thanks to my clumsy, freeloading, wanking nephew (and if anything in that sentence is not true then let him sue me - oh, I see, oddly quiet now, aren't you, dear nephew?) I had just one left.
I asked him to confess that he had also broken my R mug to save me the bother of searching for it, but he still insists in the face of overwhelming evidence, that he is guiltless of everything but the glass breakage, that he tried so artlessly to cover up.
I don't want a trial by media, but isn't it obvious that he is as guilty as sin. During
today's podcast I encouraged anyone who knows him at college to smash up all his cups and glasses. I clearly have learned nothing about using my blog and podcast as a platform for petty and juvenile and illegal retribution. So maybe people could just all hide his cups until he comes clean and says what happened to the R mug.
I am 100% confident that its demise is on his conscience and will not apologise if I find it behind my sofa or under my bed and realise that its loss was my fault all along. Because that will not happen. And even if it does it will still somehow be his fault.
The truth will out, dear nephew and I shall have my revenge on you.
I've told him I am going to take the cost of the cups and glass out of his Christmas present money. So he'll be paying off this damage for decades to come.
Wanker.
Still don't see you sueing me.
Because everything I have said is true.
