Role Models

I’m very afraid that Bert is turning into an eccentric hermit. He feels panicky if he has to venture further than Clint’s place. He uses the excuse that he’s ‘not tidy’ and I think that’s a pity because if a body is going to be an eccentric hermit, surely one of the joys is dressing just as one pleases. Take, for example, Auntie Fungus’s better half – the boul’ Paddy. He never goes to the barber, never shaves. His hair grows strangely in long straggles and he takes these lengthy tufts and winds them round his head and sticks a ‘kep’ on top of it. Sure bits poke out from underneath the ‘kep’ but this only adds to his air of carefree eccentricity.

Paddy is Bert’s role model -Paddy who, with Bert’s help, has turned a pig house into a desirable residence with partitioned rooms made from salvaged wood, mainly old school desks and snooker tables. Bert said that the patchwork effect was very interesting. The green baize, the ink wells, the desk graffiti – ‘Susan ♥ Trevor’. Bert said it was almost a shame that it all had to be covered up with plasterboard and painted. Bert informed me proudly that each and every room has a door with a letterbox – except for the front door.

I said to Bert, never mind all that, you need a haircut. He says, it’s too cold yet. I said, those wispy bits of hair will never keep you warm. You need a ‘kep’. I fear he’s planning to grow long tufty locks and wrap them round his head like Paddy. My lovely Bert – who could have been a model for Kaffe Fasset knitwear. Where did it all go wrong?