I’ll be laying a litter of tax receipts,
white scales on the living room carpet,
when I smell gas and open a window
forgetting the thick march wind.
Also, no one will ever trust me with a ladder.
Every time I try some new adventure
– to build a greenhouse from a boxed kit
or run a cake factory where dough’s
exuded from rubber nozzles –
there’s a rabbit-haired fat man who will shout at me.
He may put on a new surname each morning
and wear a nylon suit or a golfing outfit.
He may be a yellow-bibbed driving examiner,
a lone policeman or the head gardener,
but his pit-bull fury stops me every time.
